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Until recently, profit in the television industry went to the owners of the conduit, the distributors of content. As the industry enters the digital age, the distribution bottleneck will disappear and be replaced by the content creators themselves. This book explains patterns of profitability from the golden age of television to the emerging digital age. Television today is not just 500 channels: it is countless millions of hours of programming stored on video servers around the world. For media companies wanting to create value in this new era, including the major networks, digital branding is key. Just as consumers manage to make their way in 30 seconds through a 100-foot aisle jammed with hundreds of boxes of cereal by reaching for a box of whatever name brand product they know and love, viewers will also navigate through the vast wasteland of content by returning to their favorite digital brand.
This book provides detailed historical data, financial models, and informed discussion of profitability trends in the industry. It offers a framework for understanding and predicting profitability and describes the nature of branding as it applies to the television industry. It shows how a handful of dominant brands will emerge as sought-after organizers of content. Investors, industry consultants and executives, policy makers, students and academics will all find this book fascinating and informative.
List of contents
The Distribution BottleneckIntroduction: Value Migrates Upstream
The Distribution Bottleneck Strategy
The Digital Era: How Technology Broke the Distribution Bottleneck
The Great Value ShiftIntroduction: The Digital Dilemma
The Commoditization of the Conduit
Where Is the Value? The Corporate Response
Digital Branding
Epilogue: The Great Media Free-for-All
About the author
Timothy M. Todreas
