Future of the Media Industry
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives
Ashoka Media Fellow

A short history of media
production

Index Librorum Prohibitorum
• Censorship has been with us for a long time
• Rabalais, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Copernicus,
Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal,
Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu,
Rousseau, Defoe, Goldsmith, Sterne, Falubert,
Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal, Hugo, Zola, Mill,
Sartre
• In 1948 still over 4,000 books
• Abolished in 1966

“Free media” needs to be
qualified
• Cover prices and subscriptions do not cover
costs of content production
• Advertisers have a de facto control over print
and electronic media
• Readers of alternative press are not purchasers
• Lack of advertising increases costs, decreases
market share, volume, distribution and impact

The “marketplace of ideas”
• The market, left to its own devices, will of
itself provide what media consumers want
• Regulation distorts this process
• Deregulation therefore encourages
competition and increases individual choice

Big business likes the
“marketplace of ideas”
• Rupert Murdoch in 1989,
The \"eeing of broadcasting... is very much part of this
democratic revolution and an essential step forward
into the Information Age with its golden promise. It
means \"eeing television \"om the lie of spectrum
scarcity... to cater to mass and minority audiences...
placing it in the hands of those who should control it -
the people.

The assumptions
• A network of providers and recipients
• Information as a commodity, not a public good
• Private profitability over public accessibility
• Media audiences are consumers, not citizens

The problems
• Existing inequalities go unaddressed (e.g.
access and cost of access)
• Media marketplace dominated by big business
stifle independent and alternative voices
• High costs of entry

The problems
• Citizens rights to know comes at a price
• Information rich and information poor gap
increases
• Minority tastes are often sidelined since
competition leads to more of the same (tyranny
of the majority)

’57 Channels and Nothin’ On
• Increase in number of channels
• Narrowing range of programming

Contours of the future
• New Media and Citizen Journalism will merge with MSM
• Consumers will become producers
• Citizen will become witnesses who report
• Audiences will fragment, broadcast and distribution will be
redefined
• MSM on the web will become places not static products.
• News will be a conversation - reported and then responded
to.
• Mobiles will be ubiquitous and everyone will be addressable

7 driving forces shaping media
industry trends
1. Increasing media consumption
2. Fragmentation
3. Participation
4.Personalisation
5. New revenue models
6.Generational change
7. Broadband availability

Global Trends

Where will revenue come
from?
Accenture, 2007
Monetising user generated content

Content consumption
Accenture, 2007

YouTube.com
• 5 bi'ion video streams watched by 91
million viewers in September ’08
• Average duration 2.9 minutes
• 44% of online video on Google / YouTube
• Average of 55 videos a month per user
• In July ’08, Americans watched 11.4 billion
videos, a total of 558 million hours
Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2444

User Generated Content
Future of the Media, 2008

What are the media?
Accenture, 2007
Moving away from print and terrestrial to online media

Media consumption
Future of the Media, 2008

Newspaper readers (in print)
Future of the Media, 2008

How media industry has
embraced the internet and
web

France24

Yahoo

CNN iReport

Nowpublic.com

Facebook.com

Twitter.com
Source: http://apramana.com/web/top-10-sri-lankan-twitter-users/

Local / Asian Trends

Mobile broadband growth
• The number of users in Asia subscribing to
HSPA will swell from 26.5 million to 53.5
million over the next 12 months.
• Fuelling this trend are soaring demand from
both businesses and consumers, coupled with
falling prices of mobile broadband services, he
said.

Mobile growth in Sri Lanka
Mobiles (in millions)
Fixed lines (in millions)
10.0
7.5
5.0
2.5
Lirneasia
0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Overall
• 200,000 broadband users
• Several thousand mobile broadband users
• 3 million fixed lines / 8 million mobiles / 11 million SIMs
• Heavy use of SMS
• Most newspapers have websites
• Around 1,000 blogs
• Facebook groups / social networking vibrant
Source: Lirneasia

Citizen journalism (English)

Mobile news

Informants

New witnesses
• The web is littered with examples on how SMS helped in the
immediate aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
• “I'm standing on the Ga'e road in Aluthgama and looking at 5 ton
trawlers tossed onto the road. Scary shit.”
• “Found 5 of my \"iends, 2 dead. Of the 5, 4 are back in Colombo. The
last one is stranded because of a broken bridge. Broken his leg. But
he's alive.”
• “Made contact. He got swept away but swam ashore. Said he's been
burying people a' day.”
• “Just dra(ing them off the beach and di(ing holes with his hands.”

Going where journalists can’t

Put it all together...

Future of Media, 2008

How will new media will shape
media industry?
• Emphasis on communicative rights: citizens
have a right to produce and access a wide and
diverse range of information and views that
inform them on the main issues of the day.
• Information treated as a public good
• Freedom of expression not simply the media’s
right to publish / produce but the ability and
rights to participate in the discussions

Long tail and niches
• Hyper-local, topic specific media now possible
• Niche content attracts consumers over time
• Niche content archives become valuable over
time
• E.g. paddy cultivation best practices in Mahaweli C
Sector, surf conditions in Arugam Bay, garment sector
worker’s mobile blog

Evolution of media ethics
• Groundviews vs. The Island (PCC useless)
• The Sri Lankan blogosphere vs. Lakbima
(emergence of a strong new media collective)
• MSM journalists will need to recognise blogs are
legitimate sources of information - good enough
to quote or publish, but not good enough to
attribute?
• Bloggers need to leverage the reach and influence
of MSM in Sri Lanka

Two challenges to the future
of media industry

Convergence | Quad Play
Internet
TV
Telephony
Wireless

Convergence creates censors
• Tamilnet.com blocked
• Teleconferencing disallowed
• SMS blocked on independence day
• Mobile telephony shut off in East and North
• Private TV Broadcasting Regulations make
ISPs liable for tele-visual content
• Working with MoD?

Future of media industry
depends on media literacy
• In 1787 President Jefferson noted,
... and were it le+ to me to decide whether we should
have a government without newspapers or
newspapers without government, I should not
hesitate to prefer the latter. But I should mean that
every man should receive these papers, and
be capable of reading them.

Truth, half-lies, satire,
falsehoods?
Media industry will have to grapple with anonymity | online identities | verifiability |
impartiality | legal and moral responsibility | political and social consequences

Thank you
sanjana@cpalanka.org