Posts
Short reads on a Saturday morning:
• Well, it might not be here yet, but pre-orders have begun: Apple yesterday started taking orders for its iPad; and no, I didn't cough up the $500+ needed to be the first person at my local Starbucks to sport a tablet. But it IS coming, and it looks like the offerings from publishers will be substantial enough to declare tablet publishing a reality. Here was my take on the subject of business models and strategy yesterday.
• In trade publishing, the big news, especially here in the Chicago area, was the return of Stagnito in a major way. Backed by private capital firm Cardinal Growth, Stagnito Media picked up the food group from Nielsen Business Media. The group includes Progressive Grocer, Convenience Store News and The Gourmet Retailer. "Our goal is to introduce a new business model to the food market to take advantage of the trend towards targeted and measurable integrated media,” said Harry Stagnito, President/CEO. We'll see what this means in the coming months.
In the meantime, Penton Media is officially out of bankruptcy, having cut its debt load. With some magazines experiencing modest increases in ad pages, we'll see if Penton can make it in an industry where many of the major players -- Reed and Nielsen, for instance -- are getting out.
• Joe Strupp, former Editor & Publisher editor, has found gainful employment with Media Matters and now has his own blog there -- appropriately titled Strupp. Congratulations. This week he points to a new blog on the Sacramento Bee's web site: Weed Wars, overseen by reporter Peter Hecht who covers the "pot beat". I visited the blog and report that it does not give the reader the munchies.
• Finally, rather than do yet another round-up of layoffs in the newspaper and magazine industry, I'll leave it to Roger Ebert of the Sun-Times to review the decision by Variety to layoff two of its veteran critics, film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theater critic David Rooney. Let's just say that it not a rave. In fact, the only artwork included in the piece is a giant thumb's down.
"What I'm saying is that Todd McCarthy is not a man Variety should have lightly dismissed. He is the longest-serving and best-known member of the paper's staff, and if they made such a drastic decision, we are invited to wonder if Variety itself will long survive," Ebert concludes.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Week in Review
Friday, March 12, 2010
Photoblogging Friday - 10
It's Friday and this week Dean Brierly, who helps me with Photoblogging Friday, has brought a little sixties to the site.
"This is the French pressbook cover for the 1966 eurospy film "Special Mission Lady Chaplin," starring Ken Clark and Daniela Bianchi — the Bond girl in From Russia With Love," writes Dean.
"If Roger Moore and Peter Graves had somehow trumped the laws of nature and produced a love child, it probably would have looked a lot like Clark. Tall and muscular, he radiated manly mojo and looked like he could have kicked Sean Connery’s ass if the occasion ever arose. Even his chest hair looked tough. The athletic actor performed all of his often-dangerous stunts and, perhaps more important, was the undisputed master of the action man stance. With feet planted shoulder-width apart and torso angled slightly forward, his entire body radiated lethal prowess as he dispensed brutal punches and stylish karate chops. Clark looked equally convincing handling a wide variety of firearms and females, projected an engaging cockiness and, topping it off, looked pretty damn suave in a tuxedo."
"This promotional image, and many more like it, can be found at the Facebook page for Dorado Films, a cult DVD label."
(Dean also would like to disclose that he did a little work for Dorado. Dean's own site is Photographers Speak.)
I haven't seen this film but the actor, Ken Clark, starred in a trilogy of spy films playing Secret Agent 077 -- really. His career was a long one, most of it in television. But Clark did appear in the film version of South Pacific playing Stewpot and appearing in the "There is Nothing Like a Dame" scene (where he was dubbed apparently). But the film that I really want to see is his starring role in Attack of the Giant Leeches, which boasts a 2.9 rating on the IMDB site (ouch).
Mobile commerce is still in its infancy; location based advertising could spur growth
According to a report from TBI Research, mobile commerce is growing quickly, but growth is from a small base.
TBI Research quotes a Nielsen report that 90 percent of Americans may own a cell phone, but only seven percent have conducted a transaction from the device. Since, I assume, many of these phones are not smart phones, mobile commerce is still a relatively new phenomenon. Nonetheless, growth in mobile commerce is impressive.
☜ Chart courtesy of TBI Research
TBI Research attributes the gains to the growth in smart phone usage, retailer awareness and industry buzz, pointing to Apple's significant iPhone marketing. The company also states that they see smaller retailers entering the mobile commerce market.
I think this trend will obviously only increase and all phone become "smart" and as younger users begin to drive mobile sales.
An additional spur to mobile commerce may also come from location-based-advertising, something that will be become more common during the coming years.
The iPad and Tablet Publishing: the key to success is experimenting with revenue models right at launch
Today you can go to the Apple web site and place your order, pre-order really, for an iPad. The first iPads, the WiFi model that lacks 3G, will be delivered on April 3rd and you may start see them showing up at your local Starbucks that day -- the start of tablet envy.
For newspapers and magazines, this is potentially the start of a new medium. For now, its just another way for readers to access online content.
The business model of the iPad is simple: the iPad is an app deliver system, the same way a cigarette is a nicotine delivery system. The iPad does not make phone calls, and because it is not always online -- since you need a WiFi connection, or when the 3G model is available, a data contract with a carrier -- the main utility of the iPad is running application written specifically for the device. The New York Times, for instance, should have their app available from Day One, as will some Condé Nast magazines.
For those publishers waiting to see what happens with readers like the iPad, the only way readers will be able to access their publications will be via the Safari browser. For them, the iPad will simply be another online device that takes readers to their web sites. The business model, therefore, is not different than regular online publishing: sell banners and models, and whatever other monetization the site offers.
For the tablet publishing pioneers, the real challenge is grappling with the new medium that is being created: tablet publishing. Tablet publishing is not publishing on tablets -- after all, since tablets will have browsers this is simply online publishing -- but application tablets: applications written specifically for an e-reader, whether that is an iPad, the Kindle or any other reader that enters the market.
I don't think the New York Times gets enough credit for their commitment to the form. In most cases, major media companies come late to the party, entering after the some early adapters have proven the merits of the form. In the case of the Times, publisher Arthur Sulzberger has been right out front in stating that the Times will be among the first to offer an app specifically written for the device.
Just yesterday Sulzberger laid out the philosophy the Times will embrace. The iPad is also going to be a critical part just the way the Kindle's a critical part. At the end of the day we can't define ourselves by our method of distribution. What we care about at the end of day is our journalism, our quality journalism," Sulzberger said at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Media Summit.
☜ Starting today, Apple is accepting pre-orders for the iPad.
For the Times, the future is the paywall -- or at least until they shift directions again -- and although I disagree with the merits of the paywall, I don't think the Times is crazy for trying. The metered paywall model is a reaction to the realities of web publishing: costs may be lower than print, but so is revenue due to the lack of subscriptions and the limits of current web advertising methods.
So what about the iPad? Will the Times create a reader like their iPhone app -- no, we already know that won't occur because the screenshots we've seen already show that the Times sees the iPad as being more like web publishing than mobile publishing. The two biggest questions will be "will the Times charge for their iPad app"? and "will the Times look different from what we already see in print or online?"
This is where it is important to look at other publishers.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The State of Trade Publishing: additional thoughts on the market, magazine ad pages, and diversification
I was going to add these thoughts as an addendum to this morning's post about B2B, but thought a new post would work just as well.
This morning I mentioned that a few B2B magazines are showing signs of recovery but that for many magazines not enjoying a dominate market share of the business times will continue to be rough. An important caveat to that would be this: this assumes that the magazine continues to be the largest share of the revenue brought in by the unit.
☜ Magazines supported by trade shows or association, such as Specialty Food which enjoys both, are better positioned to thrive in today's B2B environment.
A magazine supported by a trade show, or with association backing, lives in a different environment than the stand alone book. A magazine such as Specialty Food, owned by the industry's trade association, not only gets financial support from the organization should times get rough, but can ride the coat tails of the trade show (also owned by the association).
The State of Trade Publishing: print can still be profitable, but only expect the leaders to survive
Yesterday's news that Stagnito Media had acquired Nielsen's food group was as good a time as any to look deep into my stack of B2Bs to see how some of the leading magazines were doing. For some of the leaders in their industries, the issues looked healthy, with some seemingly on the way back from the brink. For others, especially those magazines that rank third or fourth (or worse) in their industries, not much have changed since last year's debt declines in ad pages.
This is usually the lesson with media fragmentation: new products generally don't kill off other mediums completely, they simply make it harder for those struggling to continue -- the industry gets a hair cut, if you will.
☜ Grocery Headquarters: a strong March issue, up from 2009.
Several issues of a leading magazines surprised me. Last year one wondered why they even bothered printing some of the issues. This year hasn't looked much different except that several special issues looked very healthy indeed.
Many people have underestimated the effect the recession has had on B2B publishing. Across the board whole categories of books dropped 15 to 25 percent. The Internet was not responsible for that, it was the recession. Now that some money is slowly being released into the market, the leading trade pubs are experiencing a bit of a recovery. I expect that when first quarter numbers are released there will be a sprinkling of good news mixed in with the bad.
When reading some of the dire headlines proclaiming the end of print newspapers or magazines it is always good to understand that things are magnified in a recession. Trends that effect everyone are often interpreted to mean that the entire industry is without hope, when it sometimes just means that the economy is tanking.
For publishers the question today to consider is this: can my print publication survive in an environment where only the leading publications will get ad schedules, where the rest the budget will get increasingly sliced and diced to sprinkle schedules to web, mobile and other mediums? In a B2B world where only print magazines could promise an advertiser serious penetration of their markets, a specific industry could have a stack of magazines serving it. In the future, a crowded B2B field may look like a city with two competing dailies -- rare.
