Uh, Oh...

If "offline media" weren't bad enough, now print is being called "legacy media"! Some food for thought at the Publishing 2.0 blog on "Shifting the Economic Center of Gravity in Media." Two fundamental problems are addressed:

1. You are print publisher whose audience is rapidly shifting to the online version of your publication, but your print/online ad revenue mix does not reflect your print/online audience mix. Your advertisers are still paying more for your print advertising on a CPM basis, despite your delivering more media value online in terms of both audience and accountability. Your online advertising is more profitable, but only because it gets content “for free” from your print editorial operation.

How do you shift the center of gravity online without upsetting the apple cart?

2. You are a cable network watching the emergence of on-demand digital video. Your business is built around advertising, which depends on controlling the distirbution channel, and on content fees, which is based on cable TV bundling. You realize that you can likely reach more people with your content by making it available digitally and on-demand.

If you give up control of distribution, will your content fees make up for the loss of ad revenue? Or can you figure out how to bundle advertising with your distributed content?