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How Bezos is Changing The Post

T

TheBigA

A few months ago, I started a post titled What Radio Can Learn From Bezos. The Amazon founder bought the Washington Post last summer. Now, he's starting to remake the paper and the organization to fit the new media world. One of the first things he did was sell the old headquarters building. No need for a big massive building anymore. Now he's making changes in staffing. The changes were reported in today's USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...things-looking-up-at-washington-post/8046347/

Some of the changes might sound familiar. He's not hiring more local reporters. He's hiring more bloggers and other writers that will create more content for the internet. He's repositioning the Post as a national and international news source, rather than strictly a DC or Metro area paper. What's familiar about this change for radio people is the replacement of local DJs with digital and social media staff. Big radio companies have been in the process of doing this for five years. Now it's happening at the Post.

So what does this mean for radio? It means that radio is on the right path, creating multi-platform media strategies that put radio content where the people are. That means mobile, laptop, iPad, or desktop. If it's all about content, it's also about putting that content where it can be consumed. Bezos knows this, and so do we.
 
Sounds nice--so trendy, cutting edge. But--most of the revenue comes from the broadcasting side, not all the multi-media flash and dance. True in both TV and radio.
 
tpt said:
Sounds nice--so trendy, cutting edge. But--most of the revenue comes from the broadcasting side, not all the multi-media flash and dance. True in both TV and radio.
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For the time being.....

As the linked article says, there's no growth in print. Same with on air.
 
TheBigA said:
As the linked article says, there's no growth in print. Same with on air.
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What was the term Groucho Marx made popular? "Say the magic word and win a hundred dollars!"

In the business world today, the 'magic word' is growth. The Big Bucks for the stock-ownership crowd is in the growth.

Many of us grew up in an era where Caterpillar made money by selling "yellow iron" and that is all they needed to do.

Kodak make money selling film in "yellow boxes" and that is all they needed to do.

Companies could have sales equal to the sales the year before, and year before that and the year.... you get the idea. As long as there was a bottom line that would support the payment of dividends... everybody was happy. But everybody woke up one day to the fact they were paying income tax on dividends.

But if your company sales are GROWING, the price of the stock goes up (even if no dividends are paid) and eventually you make money by SELLING THE STOCK... and the tax rate for Capital Gains is way down there. Bezos and Warren Buffet and all of Wall Street understand this.

We who enjoy radio (as participants, as owners, as observers, as listeners) lose track of that. Sounding good does not translate into value. As Groucho would say if he were among us today: "Growth is the MAGIC word. Here is your fortune."

Yeah... the revenue today may be based on selling advertising, but the growth of your 401k account depends on 'Growth of Capital Value'... not on profits from advertising sales.
 
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Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
"Growth is the MAGIC word. Here is your fortune."
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Exactly. What we look for are trends, and you can see the trend in where the growth is. So while OTA radio is very healthy now, it may not be ten years from now.

Back in the 1930s, radio was making money hand over fist. It was growing so fast that Bill Paley couldn't wait to take CBS public. But the big radio people, like Paley and Sarnoff, weren't just getting rich and enjoying long vacations. They were taking their radio profits and investing in other technologies. RCA invented the 45 record, CBS invented the 33-1/3 long play. And both companies were early investors in TV. So today, OTA radio companies are investing in digital. The TV profits took 30 years to pay off, because once standard TV became commonplace, then they had to invest in color, and then digital. So those of us in radio are just starting the long road of digital. It won't be an instant payoff. For the time being, revenues will still come from OTA. But that's no reason to sit back and get fat. Paley & Sarnoff didn't, and it worked out for them.
 
Small Market Guy said:
So in 3 years the Post will be another Bleacher Report or Examiner.com?
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Not exactly. However, user-generated content is a big thing these days. You're using one right now. The Post owns Slate.com and several other web-zines. The more of them they own, the better multiple they can deliver to advertisers. The Post can still win Pulitzers (they just won 2), and make money. When you go to their main site, you can see which stories get the most clicks or the most forwards. They're not always the ones that win the Pulitzers.
 
Small Market Guy said:
Hiring more bloggers?
So in 3 years the Post will be another Bleacher Report or Examiner.com?
No thanks.
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I just finished a time-consuming-project so I haven't gone back yet and read for myself what I am going to recommend to you: A week or 10 days ago there was industry news about who is billing what, and "once again" one pundit put it: WTOP is the #1 billing station in America. Fine. Not my market. Whoop-tee-doo. BUT, what caught my attention was one commentators remarks about WTOPs skills at using modern day social media to get things to happen.

When "Top 40 Radio" or whatever terminology you want to use to describe what changed the narrative of radio in the 1955 to 1959 era. Program Directors would travel to cities where one of these new style radio stations was reportedly making history with a new style of radio. They would rent a hotel room and start writing out a diary of what they heard. It was like people today trying to find "The Secret Code" buried in the Bible or something. They were trying to do what in later years computer programmers would call "Reverse Engineering". What were these fabulous stations run by Storz and McClendon and others doing? Can I copy it? Is there a secret formula I can take home with me and turn my town upside down.

So my question to some of the gurus that frequent this forum: Is there some secret success code to be learned by camping out in Washington and figuring out what WTOP is doing behind the scenes in Social Media and other venues that other people can plagiarize?

If Bezos can't make the newspaper work, maybe he can make a fortune publishing a book on "The DaVinci Code of the Newspaper Business". :cool:
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
Is there some secret success code to be learned by camping out in Washington and figuring out what WTOP is doing behind the scenes in Social Media and other venues that other people can plagiarize?
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I've lived there, and can tell you even the homeless people are news junkies. Washington is a company town where news is one of the products the city generates. So to be the heritage news station in the news capital of the world is a very unique position. Probably wouldn't translate to Atlanta.
 
TheBigA said:
Not exactly. However, user-generated content is a big thing these days. You're using one right now.
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I also don't think it's the "news".

To turn this back to radio, I see shows where the hosts read stories verbatim from Examiner, Bleacher Report, Gawker or some other such junk media. It's not good for journalism.
 
Small Market Guy said:
To turn this back to radio, I see shows where the hosts read stories verbatim from Examiner, Bleacher Report, Gawker or some other such junk media. It's not good for journalism.
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That's why some journalists are concerned that profit-making companies should not be the sole source for journalism. The Post is no different than commercial radio. But then who pays for journalism? What The Post is doing is taking the money it makes from "pop news" and using it to support the serious news department.
 
TheBigA said:
That's why some journalists are concerned that profit-making companies should not be the sole source for journalism. The Post is no different than commercial radio. But then who pays for journalism? What The Post is doing is taking the money it makes from "pop news" and using it to support the serious news department.
Click to expand...

You certainly can't trust the government to do it. People just have to be smarter with how they consume media.
 
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