John Houghton’s New Media Blog

Today’s article in the Wall Street Journal, With Sexy Story Lines, Low Budgets, News Corp. Will Launch MyNetworkTV shows the results of the fragmentation of media and its effect on production - it’s driving costs down and requiring that directors do more with less. Shot in high definition and premiering on September 5, 2006, Rupert Murdock’s MyNetworkTV will launch the shows Desire and Fashion House.  These productions are shot non-union and not in LA, allowing them to reduce production costs to 1/10 of their normal level.

What does this mean for us?  It depends on who you are.  If you’re a consumer, you might find programs that are more tailored to your taste.  If you are an advertiser, you might find smaller but more targetted audiences.  If you’re used to working on high budget productions, these aren’t going away (superbowl still in vogue), but there will be fewer of them; you might ditch your high priced assests and reinvent yourself so you can compete.

If you are in a major metro area, you might see more productions shot in your city, less in LA.  Silicon Valley used to be the meca for startups and it’s still said that the most successful are located within 5 miles of Sand Hill Road; however, we’re seeing lots of startup success outside of Silicon Valley.  Same with Holywood, the current meca for film/media but that’s all changing.  I live in Silicon Valley and it would be fun to see productions shot locally.   Local government has been asking for it.

If you’re an indie producer, you might get some of this new work.  If you’re a big media company, do what Rupert is doing: Start your new MyNetwork and as the market changes, focus your attention on the new.

What does that mean for celebrities?  I don’t know.  In my studies of celebrity, the mass tendancy is to idolize only a few, however, with fragmentation there is room to expand.

For those of you who don’t know what media fragmentation is, it is division of the media audience as the number of media outlets increase.  For example, in the 70s the TV audience was divided among just a few major networks.  A company could run 30 second spots for a matter of weeks and establish a national brand.  They were able to spend a lot on that spot and reach a large audience.  Then comes cable with a few hundred channels, then the internet with it’s millions of web pages, XM, Sirius, podcasting, videocasting, and blogs.  The audience is now quite divided, “fragmented” and this is having a large impact on society.  I produced a podcast on this at www.newmediacurrents.com, complete with expert comentary.