The UK media business is enjoying massive change this summer as new managers and new ideas start to impact TV channels, newspapers and magazines. Advertising revenue is doing ok too and that’s leading some media companies to wonder if they have overdone the gloomy messages of last year. Audiences are consuming more media not less and buying more devices to enjoy it on. This should be a boom time but there still remains a basic problem-advertising breaks between the content are so last century and unless we can find new ways of funding content, the commercial basis for journalism and programme making is thrown back upon subscription. That can only support the few and the very best or the very niche. So, there is a major problem and it will need a revolution in thinking to get to grips with it. I think that’s more likely to come from the social media upstarts than it is from the established media industry. It’s all about the content (and the device and the context) but is it any longer about the publishers or the broadcasters?
Mark Cullen
