Looking forward to this interview between Brad Howarth and Private Media head Eric Beecher this Thursday.
The interview is based around the following premise.
Survivor 2.0: In 2008 a group of media companies found themselves stranded on the world's largest island, washed ashore after the sinking of the global financial markets. With a population of only 21 million to feed on, slow-moving traditional media companies struggled to reinvent themselves in time to fight off the challenge of new media upstarts. Who will survive...?
Rest assured Beecher will pull no punches, and I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
Register here - http://www.the-domain.org/ - but get in quick as it's this Thursday
Showing posts with label Eric Beecher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eric Beecher. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Is this man the smartest guy in AU digital media?
Former Text Media owner and Sydney Morning Herald editor Eric Beecher is building up a pretty impressive web business.
With Crikey established, Business Spectator growing rapidly, Eureka Report and Smart Company - Beecher has 4 publications that are hard not to notice.
Plus he has a team of people who are well respected - Kohler, Gottleibsen, Mayne, Amanda Gome, Jonathan Green and many more - who are delivering engaging content.
And he is making very strong in roads on an extremely valuable audience and showing that there will always be demand for strong, intelligent content.
So whilst the groups that used to dominate eyeball share of this lucrative audience focus on singles sites and trying to nail youth, Beecher has put together web assets that would be pound for pound, page for page probably the most valuable in the country. Advertisers want to reach a quality audience in quality surrounds - the Beecher sites achieve this.
Sure, the audiences aren't super massive - but they are strong and they are loyal to quality content. And right now, quality is the key differentiator as it is relatively easy to reach most audiences online ... but difficult to reach them in quality environments.
According to Nielsen Market Intelligence, to 22 September they had achieved the following user figures this month.
Business Spectator - 152,000 users
Crikey - 118,000 users
Smart Company - 65,000 users
Eureka Report - 39,000 users
.
These four are sites to watch - because I feel they haven't even started to scratch the surface on what they could do.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Future of Journalism online: A must see Media Watch
A must see Media Watch aired on Monday night.
"The newspaper format is a dead duck" pronounced Guardian media columnist Roy Greenslade, as Jonathan Holmes presented a special Media Watch that looked at the future of journalism in an online world.
They aired opinion from Greenslade, Crikey publisher Eric Beecher and Fairfax's Mike van Niekerk.
The show covered a few core points ...
- the online news model isn't as profitable as the traditional news model (Beecher talked about the SMH in glory 'rivers of gold' times pulling approx. 40k per page in revenues ... whereas the same ads in a digital format don't pull in the same bucks. Beecher:"So the 40-thousand dollars that advertisers pay for a classified page in a newspaper becomes something like 4-thousand dollars on the internet. "
- Given the above, who is going to pay for the foreign bureau's and the quality journalism. Especially considering digital mediums are so trackable, that editors have the luxury of seeing in real time what is generating page views, and in essence, revenue.
- Are Fairfax's core mastheads - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald - heading in a more tabloid direction
It was great to see the conflicting views of Greenslade and Van Nikekerk.
Greenslade: "It's not a matter of saying 'hooray' newspapers are dying, it is simply a factual matter of revenue."
Van Niekerek: "People who say that newspapers are on their last legs and are about to die are completely wrong in my view. I think that newspapers have a very long future."
Greenslade's view was that the direction of journalism was shifting. "In future there will be advertising, it won't be enough to fund huge staffs as there are now, but we'll have a core of professional journalists. We can fund them and then, in company - in participation with citizen journalists, bloggers, user-generated content, however you want to describe that, amateur journalists - that in company with them - crowd-sourcing, mash-ups, however you want to do it - that you will form a different kind of approach to journalism. "
Personally I think this is already well underway - especially in the US.
Holmes spoke of renowned US and European mastheads, and their lack of trash/tabloid content. Check out http://www.nytimes.com and http://www.guardian.co.uk/ and you won't see articles on Amy Winehouse smoking crack or Britney Spears having a meltdown.
However on the Fairfax mastheads digital versions trash isn't taboo. Media Watch cited one day where Fairfax ran the following on the homepage
Dolphin killed in mid-air trick
Balls up: Ronaldo's prostitutes turn out to be transvestites.
I had you babe: Cher tells Oprah of Tom Cruise affair.
Janet's GLAAD about award— Sydney Morning Herald online, 29th April, 2008
Mike van Niekerk: "Absolutely you will see some stories that will resemble entertainment, stories about celebrities, I don't deny that. They are there. And that's part of what we do, is entertainment, but we also inform. And the quality journalism is there and those stories actually represent a very small fraction." Mike van Niekerk
So where is journalism heading as more eyeballs migrate online and the essence of newspapers changes? And how can brands like Fairfax that actively sell their premium AB audience maintain that position whilst heading more and more tabloid to generate reach and frequency in an ever competitive marketplace?
Will the real 'premium' eyeballs (ie the high net worth people) migrate off the Fairfax mastheads and look to overseas sites like The Guardian and the NY Times? Or even The Australian - which is probably News Digital Media's most underutilised resource - great articles, solid readership and broad content (with no tabloid)
Whatever happens, it's happy days for advertisers. The options keep on getting broader and the reliance on 1 or 2 publishers to hit the 'newspaper' readers has well and truly gone. There are hundreds of options now and it's a positive thing. I can buy ad space on virtually any newspaper in the world and can do it within 24 hours. This is the case with all content verticals - from music to movies, gaming to social networks, business, finance, technology and everything else ... I personally feel that sometimes local publishers neglect to recognise this and almost expect advertisers to spend with them despite superior options (context, audience) being available offshore.
I am also interested to see whether Media Watch evolves to cover more journalism - professional, amateur and blogs - on the show. Sometimes I scratch my head in confusion when they will cover a sourcing error at a North Queensland local paper for 10 minutes yet seem to ignore the blog world ...
Anyway - it is definitely worth a watch. Download link is below.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/mediawatch/download.php?file=mediawatch_2008_ep12.wmv
"The newspaper format is a dead duck" pronounced Guardian media columnist Roy Greenslade, as Jonathan Holmes presented a special Media Watch that looked at the future of journalism in an online world.
They aired opinion from Greenslade, Crikey publisher Eric Beecher and Fairfax's Mike van Niekerk.
The show covered a few core points ...
- the online news model isn't as profitable as the traditional news model (Beecher talked about the SMH in glory 'rivers of gold' times pulling approx. 40k per page in revenues ... whereas the same ads in a digital format don't pull in the same bucks. Beecher:"So the 40-thousand dollars that advertisers pay for a classified page in a newspaper becomes something like 4-thousand dollars on the internet. "
- Given the above, who is going to pay for the foreign bureau's and the quality journalism. Especially considering digital mediums are so trackable, that editors have the luxury of seeing in real time what is generating page views, and in essence, revenue.
- Are Fairfax's core mastheads - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald - heading in a more tabloid direction
It was great to see the conflicting views of Greenslade and Van Nikekerk.
Greenslade: "It's not a matter of saying 'hooray' newspapers are dying, it is simply a factual matter of revenue."
Van Niekerek: "People who say that newspapers are on their last legs and are about to die are completely wrong in my view. I think that newspapers have a very long future."
Greenslade's view was that the direction of journalism was shifting. "In future there will be advertising, it won't be enough to fund huge staffs as there are now, but we'll have a core of professional journalists. We can fund them and then, in company - in participation with citizen journalists, bloggers, user-generated content, however you want to describe that, amateur journalists - that in company with them - crowd-sourcing, mash-ups, however you want to do it - that you will form a different kind of approach to journalism. "
Personally I think this is already well underway - especially in the US.
Holmes spoke of renowned US and European mastheads, and their lack of trash/tabloid content. Check out http://www.nytimes.com and http://www.guardian.co.uk/ and you won't see articles on Amy Winehouse smoking crack or Britney Spears having a meltdown.
However on the Fairfax mastheads digital versions trash isn't taboo. Media Watch cited one day where Fairfax ran the following on the homepage
Dolphin killed in mid-air trick
Balls up: Ronaldo's prostitutes turn out to be transvestites.
I had you babe: Cher tells Oprah of Tom Cruise affair.
Janet's GLAAD about award— Sydney Morning Herald online, 29th April, 2008
Mike van Niekerk: "Absolutely you will see some stories that will resemble entertainment, stories about celebrities, I don't deny that. They are there. And that's part of what we do, is entertainment, but we also inform. And the quality journalism is there and those stories actually represent a very small fraction." Mike van Niekerk
So where is journalism heading as more eyeballs migrate online and the essence of newspapers changes? And how can brands like Fairfax that actively sell their premium AB audience maintain that position whilst heading more and more tabloid to generate reach and frequency in an ever competitive marketplace?
Will the real 'premium' eyeballs (ie the high net worth people) migrate off the Fairfax mastheads and look to overseas sites like The Guardian and the NY Times? Or even The Australian - which is probably News Digital Media's most underutilised resource - great articles, solid readership and broad content (with no tabloid)
Whatever happens, it's happy days for advertisers. The options keep on getting broader and the reliance on 1 or 2 publishers to hit the 'newspaper' readers has well and truly gone. There are hundreds of options now and it's a positive thing. I can buy ad space on virtually any newspaper in the world and can do it within 24 hours. This is the case with all content verticals - from music to movies, gaming to social networks, business, finance, technology and everything else ... I personally feel that sometimes local publishers neglect to recognise this and almost expect advertisers to spend with them despite superior options (context, audience) being available offshore.
I am also interested to see whether Media Watch evolves to cover more journalism - professional, amateur and blogs - on the show. Sometimes I scratch my head in confusion when they will cover a sourcing error at a North Queensland local paper for 10 minutes yet seem to ignore the blog world ...
Anyway - it is definitely worth a watch. Download link is below.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/mediawatch/download.php?file=mediawatch_2008_ep12.wmv
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