I was toying with the idea of publishing a piece ranking the media companies with how entrepreneur friendly they were. You know, giving each one a scorecard with both how easy it is to work with them as a startup that plays in their ecosystem, along with trying to strike business and corporate development relationships.
Of course, it would be pretty foolish for me to do that, for one, it opens up the kimono a bit too much, but more importantly, what is trying to be constructive criticism and feedback would be misconstrued as a public flogging. So, I scrapped that idea…
However, I did want to make a general observation about the state of confusion and in some cases, disarray, at big media companies who have - in the past few quarters alone - made a lot of changes and 180 degree shift turns with particular regard to their video strategy, or lack thereof.
If you:
a) work at a big media company,
b) are reading this,
c) are thinking I am talking about you [alone].
I’m not, I swear. You’re not alone. Pretty much every company out there is shifting people around from department to another as if they were trying to maneuver in a crowded, confusing and cacophonic orgy.
In fact, last year, pretty much every company out there was mapping out a “build” strategy for video capabilities for content, and they are not moving towards a content sharing or outsourcing model.
In technology, people are delaying the investment in platforms because they are unsure of the business prospects, let alone the model that will prevail.
While search was different that content in that the former is technology-based and out of big media’s element, video is in fact a core competency, yet the inability of most big media companies’ to form - let alone accelerate - a strategy in this high-growth but uncertain segment might prove a bigger weakness and risk than search ever was.
The problem stems from one simple reality:
- TV-centric media companies look at online video as cannibalistic, but reluctantly get into it because they need to have a low-cost, agile, made-for-web strategy.
- Print-centric media companies look at online video as incremental, and see it as salvation and retribution for missing out on Web 1.0 media opportunities, which were largely text-based, and which were as cannibalistic to them as online video is to TV-centric media companies. The problem? These companies lack the know-how and DNA to do this wisely.
Again, I swear I am not talking about - or to - anyone in particular…
Of course, big media ain’t alone, big tech is knee-deep in video, too, and it’s still trying many things.
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