Tougher times mean more media innovation
Things are getting interesting in media at the moment.
I wonder if the downturn is actually good for making everyone think a bit harder.
In radio, we’ve got Austereo doing interesting stuff like, Radar Radio, Pink Radio and yesterday’s Semi Pro Radio iniaitive. Plus Nova’s new digital stations Koffee and novanation will be a welcome change in the market.
In newspapers, the advertising has been getting smarter. There was even Fairfax’s one-day experiment with print editions of its websites.
In online, lots of intriguing things have been happening. In Australia, the newly launched We Are Hunted music site leaps to mind, along with the forthcoming The Punch from News Ltd, which sounds like it will be based on a similar principle to the US-based Huffington Post
Then there’s Crikey’s new look website, which launched, I think, on Friday. Also, based on the HuffPo principle, it offers lots of outward links to the best of the rest of the web.
It’s well designed, and has high quality links, which is the key thing. It will, I think, be a direct opponent to the Punch. The challenge of curating the web (and I still think that phrase is a bit wanky although it seems to be getting popular) is staying up to date. Finding dozens of new links for its five sections – politics, media, environment, business and life – every day or two, will be massively time consuming. But it’s certainly one of the most exciting Australian online content developments of 2009 so far.
And if TV’s not exactly innovating, then audiences are at the very least holding their own.
And that’s just a sample from the last few days. I wonder if there’s a correlation between media firsts and the difficulty of getting of ad dollars?
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It will be interesting to see what the bigger content creators will think of aggregation/curation type properties like the new Crikey … especially given the recent comments from the likes of News and AP.
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Traditional print media is still missing the mark and in Australia at least is slow at adapting to change and the use of 21st century technology – well, some of it’s actually 20th century.
While there is now a greater amount of reader feedback being provided though online pages, traditional news media is still not engaging with it’s readers.
Some US television and print publications are now opening up their news conferences to readers/viewers using Twitter and MSN chat resulting in more community topics being covered thereby engaging more with the community.
Given the slow rate of adoption of new technology by Australian news media I can’t see this happening for a while. Runs the risk of too many broken egos of those who think they know what the community wants to see and read.
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