How social audio apps are changing the audio landscape.
“One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen?” The very first radio transmission of a voice in 1900 by Reginald Fessenden* was little more than a casual question about the weather. His name is now long forgotten but that initial conversational aspect of broadcast radio seems to be more alive than ever. Digital, distributed, in spontaneous organized rooms, audio conversations are taking the internet by storm. I’m of course talking about Clubhouse and various other social audio apps that are currently seeing a steady rise in popularity.
Since many years I have been coming to Kochi, on the island of Shikoku in Japan with my wife and daughter. It has become a winter holiday ritual for us. The Miyamoto family waiting at the airport. The short drive home to the house in suburbs of the city were the food is warm and plenty. After a few drinks we laugh loud and share stories of another year that has passed.
In a fast moving world I always feel Kochi brings me rest. Time slows down here, gets stretched between the end of the old and the beginning of…
In 2014 an internal strategy document from the New York Times was leaked to Buzzfeed. Under the title ‘The Innovation Report’ it painted a stark picture of a well-respected newsroom that was clearly struggling to adjust to a new digital reality. The New York Times cared a lot about its journalism but not enough about how to get it to its readers. To survive it would need to embrace data and grow audiences through better discovery and promotion of its content and by creating more engaging digital experiences. …
More than 20 years ago I bought a little flipbook in the Centre Pompidou in Paris. With the flick of your thumb it lets you travel from the outer edges of the universe to a man sleeping on a picnic blanket in a park, then moving inward into his hand until the journey ends inside his DNA and ultimately a single proton. With every page everything gets magnified 10 times. Only later did I discover that the little flipbook was based on a film by Charles and Ray Eames: Powers of Ten.
The movie is a remarkable piece of art…
A man sits in first car of a train and films the landscape in front of him. As he zooms in the train seems to slow down — but not really — it is only an optical illusion. In reality his mind plays a trick. This curious experiment by a Japanese professor shows how our field of view has a massive effect on how we perceive speed. Zooming in limits our view and compresses visual depth. Somehow it stretches our sense of motion and time. Wider lenses expand our view. …
The Algorithm of the World’s Most Successful Companies…and What That Means for Public Service Media.
During the last two weeks, I have taken a deep dive into the business algorithm that drives the most successful companies of this age as part of a strategy sprint course by NYU Professor Scott Galloway. Prof G as he calls himself is fascinated by the strategies that grow promising platforms in behemoths with huge market capitalizations that go beyond the GDP of most countries in the world. We are talking about the so-called Trillion Dollar Firms (T-firms): Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon.
Survival skills for the streaming wars.
Public Service Media (PSM) know that in order to stay relevant they have to master the new online and on-demand reality. But against the backdrop of the hyper-competitive streaming wars, it’s easy to get sucked in a race to the bottom or throw their hands up in the air before the race has even started. In this last chapter of the streaming wars, I take a look at some of the strategies and tactics that can keep PSM grounded and can help them to leverage the unique place they occupy in the media ecosystem and society. …
To the victor go the spoils.
By now you are all highly familiar with the big names of the streaming wars. The ones that have so far enjoyed great triumphs and the ones that might endure heavy losses. But as the dust settles in a few years from now who will be the real winners and losers?
While it’s hard to predict the future we have seen in part 1 and part 2 of this series that some criteria may determine the outcome. Some parties at the table just have a better hand.
- A large customer base of subscribers
- Pricing power to balance growth and margin
- …
Op zoek naar de toekomst van onze merken.
Soms krijg je een boek in de bus dat je hoopvol stemt. Omdat het mogelijkheden ziet waar veel anderen problemen onderscheiden. Beyond Brands van Tom Van den Bergh is zo’n boek. Over de toekomst van merken en de merken van de toekomst. Nochthans hebben merken het vandaag de dag niet onder de markt. In een snel veranderende wereld, voortgestuwd door disruptieve technologieën, een overaanbod aan informatie en signalen en hyperkritische consumenten, staan merken voor een veelheid aan uitdagingen. Je zou voor minder verdwalen.
Beyond Brands is een boek dat merken mee helpt zoeken. Het zet geen richtingaanwijzers, dat zou te…
Strategies and logistics will win the streaming wars.
Winning or losing a war is not always a matter of having the largest army or the most lethal weapons. More often it’s a matter of strategy and rightly assessing the importance of less obvious operational elements like supply lines, knowledge of the terrain, and the morale of your troops. When Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire with his Grande Armée in 1812 he started with 422.000 soldiers (some say even 685.000) and ended up losing all but 10.000 by the end of the campaign. …
Ezra Eeman
EBU Head of Digital, Transformation, and Platforms.
