New Media Changes The Game For Entertainers, Media Personalities
Mar 2nd, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: General, Podcasting 
Econsultancy has published an interesting post that looks Adam Carolla’s podcast, and at how podcasting and new media are changing the game for entertainers and media personalities:
With his podcast, Carolla runs the show. He controls operations, can set his own direction without approval from higher-ups and has almost no limitations on what deals he makes. Even if he eventually expands and monetizes but never makes anywhere near what CBS was paying him, those things have their own value.
Media companies need to take heed. To keep top talent around, they have to realize that they’re competing with the internet. Their best entertainers and personalities have already made their fortunes; control (both creative and commercial) is going to be more valuable to some of them than an extra $5-10m.
From Radiohead’s distribution experiment to Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die to Adam Carolla’s podcast, it’s clear that entertainers and media personalities are getting hip to the power the internet provides them with. It’s now up to the media companies to decide whether they’re going to come along for the ride or fight tooth and nail for an old way of doing business that’s clearly not nearly as appealing.
As mainstream entertainers find success with new media, it promises to radically change things.
Bigger names coming into podcasting and Internet video will drive larger audiences, but could also shift attention from indie, user generated content to more mainstream fare.
Do you think podcasting is headed for the mainstream? If so, will indie podcasters be coming along for the ride?
Image: Foraggio Fotographic
THIS IS SO ON POINT! My brand is Santalivenow and I’m a real bearded Santa. Last December I created my live video podcast show on the STICKAM platform. Only doing nine shows for an hour each I had over 266,000 live views and that was only on Stickam I also embedded the player on 22 different sites from Facebook to MySpace. This is only the beginning.
Mass media (and broadcasters in particular,) suffer from a particular kind of ADD.
If something shiny is not dangled in constant motion in front of their eyes, they figure audience fatigue has set in. (For every “M*A*S*H*,” “Rockford Files” and “Seinfeld” to prove them wrong, there’s hundreds of “Cleopatra 2525” experiments which, like self fulfilling prophesies, prove them right.)
As mass media stars get bounced around and dropped, because mass media needs to keep their profits up, and head to podcasting as a way to stabilize their contacts with their fan base, the indie podcasters/producers WONT get dropped, because there ISN’T ANYBODY TO DROP THEM.
Podcasting was seen as a wild west where small indie podcasters thrived and no one else lived. I got into podcasting because I saw in a flash the potential of “Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code.” Liebnitz may have said “Power of the press belongs to those who own one” but he couldn’t have foreseen MY power to own one.
Now that mass media is pushing out their own stars as the pool of profit opportunities shrinks, podcasts are being seen as a kind of salvation or safety net for those pushed out.
They are being pushed out into a world WITHOUT a scarce and expensive resource, a transmitter, which has to be paid for. Podcasting exists because of the internet and the internet belongs to anybody with the very small price of admission.
Jonathan Katz, a.k.a. Dr Katz [ http://www.jonathankatz.com/ ] is a funny man, another MSer like me, and an example of someone who could not maintain the profit margins, the shiny spoon, demanded by the mass media broadcasters. So he’s got his own podcast now.
Neil Patrick Harris, a.k.a. “Dr. Horrible” [ http://drhorrible.com/ ] is also an extremely talented man. He went into podcasting as an exploration of the possibilities of the internet, of podcasting as a means of leveraging his popularity into a sustaining presence despite not still being a “shiny spoon.”
Oprah is also well aware of podcasting and when the mass media mavens can’t pay her price and decide that they can do without her, she’ll be moving in to the neighborhood too.
The current debacle of Sirius/XM satellite radio means that Howard Stern migt be moving in sooner than he thinks.
As the mass media continues to throw off the very star system that they love to hate as being too expensive, that very star system will continue to find a way to thrive without the mass media.
You don’t need a mention on a radio or television station, with its real-time audience limitation, if you can get mention on several well focused blogs.