Dumb Pipes, Devaluing Content: It’s All About Context
Originally published at x-post from loudpoet.com. Please leave any comments there.
Snake Oil Tonics By Wesley Fryer
In fact, the dirty little secret of the media industry is that content aggregators, not content creators, have long been the overwhelming source of value creation. Well before Netflix was founded in 1997, cable channels that did little more than aggregate old movies, cartoons, or television shows boasted profit margins many times greater than those of the movie studios that had produced the creative content.
-“Why Content Isn’t King,” Jonathan A. Knee, The Atlantic
Netflix is the media’s disintermediation darling du jour for its undeniable success over the past couple of years in aggressively transitioning into video streaming and growing its subscriber base, and Knee’s Fluffpo-esque fawning in The Atlantic is an interesting read for its combination of mixed metaphors, illogical conclusions, and awkward boosterism that feels rather unseemly coming from an investment banker. The biggest annoyance, though, is his myopic embrace of the technophiliac’s vision of the world, where “dumb pipes” rule and the content that flows through them is irrelevant, as if Netflix’s surge in popularity isn’t equally attributable to its savvy content deals, something he specifically notes as one of Amazon Prime’s challenges in fielding a viable competitor.
On the publishing side, the devaluation of content isn’t anything new, with publishers themselves as guilty of it as the technology vendors they often rush into bed with without thinking through the ramifications (eg: $.99 apps vs. $9.99 ebooks and subscriptions?!?!), so it was heartening to see Steve Jobs forced to back off last week on Apple’s proposed in-app subscription rules, at least partly thanks to a few publishers refusing to play along, including the Financial Times, who announced an HTML5 “app” that would circumvent the app store and Apple’s 30% extortion fee.
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