Andreas Kluth has written an excellent article, Among the audience, which is published in the current issue of The Economist. Kluth writes about the disruption being felt by mainstream media and in particular, the impact of high-speed broadband. He writes that its advent represents a true revolution in the way we communicate. He says that whereas in the past media was a push down affair from editors and proprietors, in this new wired world it is about participants. “This has profound implications for traditional business models in the media industry, which are based on aggregating large passive audiences and holding them captive during advertising interruptions,” Kluth writes. The more articles like this from Kluth are published the bigger the snowball of change rolling down the hill. The article is well worth reading.
While most media companies are of a scale and diversity to cope with and, indeed, embrace the coming change, at the in the supply chain newsagents and newspaper delivery people are yet to adequately accept that change will happen and what it means for their businesses.
I’ve blogged a short overview over those parts of the survey which are not publicly accessible — I recommend to buy this issue.