Media Management in an Era of Change
Why does Metro newspaper have 20 million daily readers? How does the BBC master new technologies and how do they influence the company’s management? We publish the answers given by Swedish professors to these questions at a seminar which took place on September 30th at the HSE. We’re also publishing a video of the presentations given by Nils Enlund on ‘The Role of Technology Factors in Media Systems Development’and Christopher Rosenqwist on ‘Changes in Business Technologies through the example of Metro Newspaper’.
The main thesis of the lecture by Nils Enlund, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, was an explanation of the necessity to focus modern media management on technological changes that are constantly taking place.
New technology presents not only new opportunities but also new problems and requires new management. To support this idea, the Professor gave some examples of significant technological changes, each of which radically transformed the preceding image of media and changed the whole of society. Guttenberg's printing press made 30000 monk copyists redundant. As a result of the inventions of Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi (1837 - telegraph, 1876 - telephone, 1895 - radio) the existing media lost major parts of the market. In 1885 the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph, in 1924 John Logie Baird invented television, both of these causing losses to radio and telegraph.
In 1941 Konrad Zuse developed the first computer. The discoveries of John von Neumann and Martin Cooper in the 1970s lead to the creation of the mobile phone. In 1976 Wozniak and Jobs created the Apple I. In 1981 the first IBM PC saw the light of day and in 1984 the Apple Macintosh came into the world. The Spread of the Internet led to a burst of ‘citizen journalism'(when any person able to write a note or post a video on a blog becomes a producer of information) as well as exacerbating the narrowing and differentiation of the audience. Today every new day brings new technologies. Borders between them blur and disappear. That's why in order to be up to speed, a modern media company has to work simultaneously on many different levels of media environment.
The professor split the changes in media into three subdivisions. The first concerned the slow development of one specific technology, for example, the transition from monochromatic to colour television. The second dealt with ‘architectural'changes in information production and consumption, such was the creation of a video recorder which allowed the viewer to be more independent from the TV programming schedule. The third basically changes our idea of the media and puts an end to the preceding technology;an example of such a change is the rise of YouTube.
The greatest mistake a modern media manager can make is thinking that technologies are permanent. In only five years, according to Enlund, every media we know today will change dramatically.
Inertia, associated with customary identity, which often occurs in large successful companies, may lead them to lose their markets. According to the professor, an interesting example of a media corporation which successfully masters new technologies is the BBC. The company was one of the first large corporations that created its own video project and, moreover, they managed to get their competitors involved in its development. Entering the market of online news, the BBC created a subsidiary which had no established traditions that could have been an obstacle for the development of new media management principles. In addition to this, the company is proactively acquiring the internet television sphere:for example, they have published a huge archive of documentaries and other TV programmes on the Internet.
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| Christopher Rosenqwist |
‘In 1980s many Swedes used to read newspapers at breakfast. - Professor said - Today many of them do not have breakfast, but buy a latte and go to work'An average inhabitant of a large city spends about 20 minutes on the subway trip from home to work. The idea of Metro was to create a product which could be read in this time. According to C. Rosenqwist, that demands the information to be ‘easy, interesting and giving a view of the world'. At first, its competitors didn't take Metro seriously. But in just one year the paper became profitable in Sweden. Today it has a ramified network in big European cities. According to Rosenqwist, the newspaper's audience is rather broad:people aged from 18 to 39. This century, Metro has been developing rapidly:every week they open an editorial office in a new city.
Rosenqwist said that the most serious problems Metro faced (i.e. in Paris) were ‘political'. There was a moment when competitors wouldn't let the newspaper enter their territory. In Paris, Metro couldn't sign a single contract with a printing house. In the end, they had to print the paper in Luxembourg. They sent 20 trucks to Paris instead of the usual 4, so that some newspapers would reach their destination without being stopped somewhere by someone. In the end, exactly 4 trucks managed to arrive in Paris. The problems didn't come to an end when the papers were finally delivered. Students-distributors were attacked by people with dogs, guns and batons. During the first three weeks up to 90% of Metro copies were destroyed by different means, and many distributors were hospitalised with injuries of varying severity. ‘It doesn't look like freedom of speech and press'the professor noted.
So, after this, Metro changed its business strategy:they started selling franchises and got rid of all unprofitable assets (such as those in Paris). As a result, in spite of the crisis, in March 2009 the newspaper had become profitable again and, according to Rosenqwist, ‘can afford a team of good journalists'.
Well, we can only be happy for the staff of BBC and Metro. Both of these examples are very instructional. But when you pause after the initial excitement and start comparing these two stories, you see that Metro (a printed media which was not, as we can see, destroyed by new technologies) has triumphed only thanks to good old marketing and product quality. And the Parisian episode of the newspaper's development proves that new technologies, despite Professor Nils Enlund's words, do not really change ‘the whole of human society':people's morals and manners unfortunately remain unchanged.
This seminar which took place as part of the international project ‘Media Management in the Contemporary Context'. This joint project between the HSE School of Journalism and KTH - Royal Institute of Technology has undoubtedly given the students a broader view of modern media management problems and enabled them to imagine the future of the media more clearly.
Sergey Stepanishev, HSE News Service
Photos by Viktoriya Silaeva