An interesting paper recently published by IBM on the television industry, highlights the main challenges that will be presented to that industry in the coming years and poses a hypothetical scenario of the offer of media content in 2012.
The authors of The end of television as we know it find two main movements on which the market will evolve: greater openness of access channels and increasing consumer involvement with the media. They clarify, however, that this will not be presented in a homogeneous way and that passive consumers will coexist with others who will demand radical changes in business models.
There is no space here to describe the six lines of action that the authors of The end of television as we know it propose to those who intend to survive and grow in this industry (segment, innovate, experiment, mobilize, open and reorganize), but I do dare to enunciate a series of challenges that, from the perspective of content production, we must face in the coming years:
Migration. Sooner or later, your organization, of whatever size, will be forced to execute a migration plan to HD. You'd better have such a plan in place before the time comes. And it is very convenient that you start planning now.
Conservation. Audiovisual archives are a cultural asset of society. Also one of the main monetizable assets of content companies. It is worth advising yourself on the best way to preserve them, archive them and give them commercial value.
Reuse. As stated by the authors of The End of Television as We Know It and most industry analysts, this is one of the biggest market growth opportunities in the short term. The possibility of offering content on iPods, the internet and other devices, produced only once, requires a content reconversion strategy that involves much more than recoding.
Efficiency. New competitors have arrived in the market, with new commercial strategies and new technologies. Whether you are one of the traditional content producers or one of the newcomers, the condition for survival is to desperately look for the most efficient way to do things.
The financial muscle. Finally, this factor is worth mentioning, as it is critical in the survival of television and video companies. Financial muscle does not refer only to the amount of money that a company can invest but to the agility with which it can make those investments.
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