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Conferences, Presentations & Speaking Engagements

  • Available for public speaking around media transformation and opportunity. Please inquire for schedule and rates.

Content Bridges Services

Press Mentions

  • Ad Age/Nat Ives: It's Back: 25 MORE Media People You Should Follow on Twitter
    25 media types worth following on Twitter.
  • Ad Age: Why So Many Media Companies Stumble Globally
    The few news brands that have succeeded, to greater or lesser degrees, arguably include CNN, Bloomberg, People, Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times and The Economist. Other contenders are the Associated Press, the BBC, ABC, NBC, maybe CBS, National Public Radio, News Corp. and the top U.K. dailies, said Ken Doctor, the newspaper veteran who's now an analyst at Outsell. "If a news-media organization sees itself as covering the wider world, sees it as its foundation, that in and of itself differentiates it from all the local media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- out there," he said. "If, in addition, it has substantial reporting and editing resources, then it can play. The tough part is the part we're in: Who wins the race to ubiquity and can make it pay off?"
  • NYT: If The Globe Were Sold, What Price?
    “The best guesstimate of the real price: a buck. The best of an announced price: between $50 and $100 million,” he wrote in an e-mail message. The devil will be in the details of the obligations that a buyer would assume, he said, adding that “a buck essentially represents a gentleman’s agreement: I take a liability, headache and a distraction off your hands.” He said that the Times Company could hang on to some pension liabilities or other obligations in exchange for a higher purchase price, a number that would give the appearance that it was getting something for the more than $1 billion it paid 16 years ago. He added that no bank would be interested in financing a deal given how other deals have blown up, so “the owner’s own money is immediately at risk.”
  • Economist: It isn’t just newspapers: much of the established news industry is being blown away. Yet news is thriving
    Ken Doctor of Outsell, a research firm, reckons that the Kindle appeals to baby-boomers who would otherwise read a paper magazine or newspaper. The young prefer their iPhones and their aggregators. Indeed, the top four magazines on Kindle, according to Amazon’s website, are the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time and Reader’s Digest. Not much of a youth market there.
  • Forbes: San Diego News Shoot-Out
    "The Union-Tribune is cratering. That opens a hole in the market and the opportunity for some unconventional business models."
  • BizTimes.com: Journal Sentinel faces daunting choices
    “There’s no strategy – this is panic. What we’re likely to see this year (around the country) and what we’ll see in Milwaukee too is (publishers asking) how much they need to cut back and how much they can do to still hold their place in the market. For publishers, it’s about ‘How do we stay alive and stay profitable until we can get to some sort of breathing period?’ (Economic) recovery will not bring back their old business, but it will give them some breathing room.”
  • AP: Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is saf
    The threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers — that this is not business as usual. This is uncharted territory....Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood."
  • Guardian: Seattle mourns the last day of its venerable Post Intelligencer
    "There's a lot less reporting happening, on a national scale. For the 1,500 or so daily newspapers, it's just a matter of getting smaller and smaller."
  • Seattle Times: Seattle's oldest newspaper goes to press for the final time
    "They're bringing the full force of their national relationships and content to bear on Seattle. They [Hearst] could sustain this experiment indefinitely. If it makes a million or loses a million, that's nothing to a company like Hearst."
  • AP: Hearst hopes Web-only Seattle P-I will turn profit
    "It [online-only PI] definitely can make money. They have a head start in terms of the brand and (Web) traffic. They have to run like hell to create a new identity."

What's On My Netvibes

  • Steve Goldstein
    Fellow KR alumnus Steve Goldstein understands the research/info needs of end-use enterprise customers, and he's built a company that is helping satisfy them.
  • Peter Krasilovsky
    Centered on e-commerce of all kinds from Yellow Pages through classifieds and new ad models.
  • Mark Potts
    Mark Potts is an experienced journalist, observer of Internet journalism and an alumnus of the Backfence experiment.
  • John Blossom
    Thoughtful views on a wide-ranging mix of media change.
  • Jay Rosen
    Jay Rosen is a provocateur in the best sense, an NYU journalism professor deeply committed to keeping the press accountable and vibrant in the digital age.
  • David Meerman Scott
    David Scott understands web marketing of digital content. Check out his site and his new book, "Cashing In With Content"

My Work as an Outsell Analyst

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April 18, 2006

Bridging: Microsoft's Randomness, Fox's Model and Times Select for Students

  • Sidewalk, 1996?: Check out the cumbersomely named Windows Live Expo beta , code named "Fremont" and you'll love a glimpse of Microsoft oh-so-last-century humor. Middle of the page:  "Completely Random Listings!." That's got to be engineering humor from some geeks who have tried to find a place (sometimes buried ten clicks in) for everything.
  • Visit Fremont before Microsoft redesigns it.  Here's the vibrant Seattle neighborhood Fremont_logo_2to which Microsoft has given its Google Base beater the aspirational code name. Fremonts in Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area and beyond :  Which Fremont can the new Microsoft take you to?
  • Fox gets it right. The network's 7-year deal with the affiliates is just the kind of thing print publishers need to do. No, publishers don't have affiliates in the same way broadcasters do. But they do need to find and exploit many forms of distribution asap, and remove the roadblocks to using them. For broadcasters, their affiliates -- understandably feeling some ownership in the promotion of shows now being offered up on VOD-- could have been a stopping point. Sharing a bit of the 99 cent-downloads with them lets Fox go about its business.  For publishers, it's learning to use every distribution channel possible, finding micro-pricing models that work, and being willing to share a few pennies here and there. As Josh Bernoff, a Forrester analyst, said: "This is a way to get the affiliates to stop whining. " To which Jay Smith, head of Cox Communications and outgoing chair of the Newspaper Association of America, would have added, as he said at Chicago convention: "Stop whining. Start winning."
  • Channel surfing: The New York Times is one of those trying out some new channels. Its TimesSelect product has won many subscribers and provided a vital new revenue stream -- impact on ad pages unknown. Now it is offering and promoting big-time in the paper: www.nytimes.com/university  It's not a new idea: half-price for the students and faculty, this time for the online Times Select product and, importantly, its impressive newspaper-of-record archive. What will the product, if successful, do to the Times' own substantial revenue from academic distribution, licensed largely through libraries, and how else might it disrupt the academic licensing market? As is too common with the Times, its own interface and buying process is too hard.  If you want to buy a gift sub for a student, and you're already a Times or TimesSelect subscriber, it won't let you -- reminding you "According to our records you already have access to TimesSelect." Thanks.

April 18, 2006 |

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Peter Krasilovsky

It's good to see a TV network like Fox keeping its affiliate network intact for seven years. But sharing revenues from downloads (and apparently, advertising) doesn't go far enough. Fox ought to start marshalling its vast resources to buy Websites that can support local advertising for its affiliate network (directory advertising, coupons, ecommerce etc.)Since the deal was announced, Fox has invested a few million in SimplyHired, a recruitment site. Maybe that's a start....

Posted by: Peter Krasilovsky | April 24, 2006 at 10:49 AM

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