Re:Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news
by cturner on Friday July 31, 2020 @10:05AM
(#24008681)
An amusing angle on this situation. If you go back thirty or twenty years, it is hard to think of an industry better-positioned to capture the momentum of the internet than the news media.
(1) They had teams of people producing regular fresh content, to a high quality.
(2) They had existing subscriber bases, which could have been converted to other purposes (consider the online dating services offered by some of the UK newspapers.)
(3) They had existing economies of scale from business lines which were not dependent on the internet, buffering them against dot com downturns and the like.
(4) Several of them had other divisions producing other good content. e.g. motion picture rights.
(5) They had international presence, and internal connectivity.
(6) Many had existing consumer-connectivity through cable relationships.
Yet. None created geek-friendly workplaces, they were too tied to their cash cows, and they have done badly.
(1) They had teams of people producing regular fresh content, to a high quality.
(2) They had existing subscriber bases, which could have been converted to other purposes (consider the online dating services offered by some of the UK newspapers.)
(3) They had existing economies of scale from business lines which were not dependent on the internet, buffering them against dot com downturns and the like.
(4) Several of them had other divisions producing other good content. e.g. motion picture rights.
(5) They had international presence, and internal connectivity.
(6) Many had existing consumer-connectivity through cable relationships.
Yet. None created geek-friendly workplaces, they were too tied to their cash cows, and they have done badly.