Can Fox News Survive?

I’m not talking about Rachel Maddow and I’m not talking about Obama.  I’m speaking of the dreaded Internet, which has eviscerated the music business to the point where even Interscope is laying off staffers.

CNN.com rules online news.  And that’s a significant sphere.  By 3:30 on Tuesday, CNN.com had served 21.3 MILLION streams.  Far eclipsing the 5.3 million streams served up on Election Day. According to AdAge, 40 million unique visitors watched online versus 37.8 million who watched the inauguration on TV.

Can you see a trend?  Just like the one that occurred in the music business in the last decade?

I’m waiting for those TV ads.  Telling people to turn off their computers, to continue to pay for cable, not to access their media online.  Those thieves ruining the business model…  Americans must pay exorbitant rates for cable television, the networks depend on it!

Sure, cable has a foothold in Internet access, but even that is threatened.  Verizon Wireless has EV-DO on every tower in New England, and if you don’t know what this technology is, you’re probably still using a RAZR.  In other words, last fall in Vermont I didn’t have to worry about lack of cable Internet access or Wi-Fi, I just employed my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry!  And not only got my e-mail, but surfed the Web at high speed!

CNN.com triumphed on Tuesday.  The site had 11 million unique viewers.  MSNBC was a close second with 10 million.  Then came Yahoo with a bit over 9.  Fox had 4, AOL 3.95 and the "New York Times" 2.4.

There’s so much to learn here!  Fox did better than usual, because it was a special event.  AOL normally does better, because people go to that site to check their e-mail.  But, is this another nail in the coffin for Steve Case’s old service?

Newspapers, online for eons, still don’t get it.  That you’ve got to have video along with words.  People don’t think of going to the "Times" for breaking video news.  Nor the Tribune papers or the "Washington Post".  Maybe newspapers are truly dying, because they just can’t adjust that fast.  Not only are they losing classified ads to Craigslist.org, they don’t seem to be able to deliver what the public wants online.

The record business is still trying to claw the public into the past.  Wants people to pay exorbitant amounts for very little music.  And their dollar (now more!) per track offering is a solution geared to 2003, not 2009.  You can’t rest on your laurels.  To survive in the digital age you must be ONE STEP AHEAD of the curve.  Giving people what they don’t even know they want.  So when it comes to watching the inauguration, people don’t even think of staying home in front of the TV, but know they can watch online, at work, because they’ve seen all those other little, maybe irrelevant, news clips on your site already.

Train people to come to you.  Don’t yell for them to come back.

Facebook/MySpace

What happens when a major media company takes over the flavor of the moment.  No different from Time Warner buying AOL.

These sites are stored on servers.  Which can be wiped clean and covered over with the creation of a new company overnight.  What are you buying here?  Temporary eyeballs?

Sure, MySpace was a better Friendster.  But that’s like saying a Tesla is a better DeLorean.  Is the Tesla the electric car of the future?  Turns out the company is having a problem raising cash.

MySpace allowed people to hook up.  Literally.  Never underestimate the power of sex.  But the company didn’t make it easy.  The interface was slow, buggy and cluttered.  They tell me you can hear the history of recorded music on the site now.  Could be true, but I can’t FIND IT!

Then comes Facebook.  Which is really no different from an Apple product.  The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, just the best!  It worked!

We love efficiency.  Which is why the wii is burgeoning and the PS3 is dying.  Utilizing my PS3 is like launching the Space Shuttle, without a manual.  I’m stunned they can even sell a product like this. Then again, Stringer is steering Sony into the cesspool.

However, Facebook suffers from being run by Mark Zuckerberg, an anti-social brain looking to monetize at all costs.

Can social media ever be properly monetized?  Maybe not.  But people want to connect.  And right now, Facebook is the place.  In case you missed it, as of November, Facebook had 200 million unique users to MySpace’s 100 million.  Sure, MySpace is holding its own in the U.S., but it’s a worldwide business.

In other words, MySpace, if not completely toast, could soon be an also-ran.  Actually, usually only one site survives online.  There’s one Amazon.  One iTunes Store.  There might be only one social networking site.  You want to go where everybody else is.

How did Fox fuck up so bad?

By concentrating on money first and foremost.  You’ve got to have soul, then comes the money.

If the money comes at all.

Apple

Would be laughing hysterically if their leader weren’t so ill.

Even so…

While Facebook is figuring out how to make money, Apple has created a whole ecosystem around its iPhone, known as the App Store.  The iPhone is becoming the portable gaming platform of choice. Even if the Palm Pre survives Apple’s legal challenges, that doesn’t mean developers will write programs for it, and that people will download them in droves.  There’s an advantage to being first. Despite Roger McNamee’s Kanye West-type histrionics, there’s a distinct advantage to having a functioning device in the marketplace two years ahead of your competitor.  We’ve learned that not every OS can survive.  Otherwise, people would be computing using Gassee’s Be.

So the iPhone is great business.  Not only for voice, but games, services, etc.  And, the iPod Touch can employ almost all of these advantages.  Meaning that Apple is no longer dependent on the music business to sell its hand-held devices.

But more fascinating is the computer business.  Pundits said that Apple’s products were overpriced and the line was absent a netbook.

But Apple exceeded their projections.  In a nation where even Microsoft fires people, Apple had a stellar quarter.  It’s like the recession doesn’t exist in Cupertino.

But the great quarter has been built upon ten years of hard work.  Apple stands for innovation and quality.  People switching to Mac today may have been thinking about it for years.  Mac is not flavor of the month, it’s established.  And users know that a computer is often used for hours a day.  They’re willing to pay more for something that won’t break down, that they can rely on.  Which is the same reason that the Yugo failed in America and even now, it’s hard for car companies to sell their smallest, least equipped automobiles.

In other words, price is something, but it’s not EVERYTHING!  People will pay more if they believe they’re getting a quality product.

No one believes the new acts being promoted by the music industry are lasting quality products. Usually, they’re here today and gone tomorrow.  You don’t even have to pay attention to their quality, they’re already gone.  How can we get people to pay attention to acts, revere acts, the same way Steve Jobs gets casual computer users to watch his keynote addresses?

There must be honesty.  And trust.  And value.

Not sizzle and artifice.

The music business focuses on explosions.  Arena shows are spectaculars.  They’re like all those unusable features in Vista, or the craplets loaded on to a Dell machine.  The purveyor says they’re added value, to the end user, they’re a headache.

If you create quality products and have an honest relationship with the consumer you can profit in this recession.

Sony is closing plants.  Apple outsources production, so they don’t have this burden.  You’ve got see into the future, you’ve got to be nimble.  You can’t be focused solely on the bottom line.  You’ve got to make something people want.