Digital media’s efficiency and, to boot, the lack of inventive resistance to it (can you ever truly resist efficiency?), having destroyed traditional media, then began eating itself.
Gawker, however scabrous, actually succeeded in quite traditional media terms. It developed highly branded niche sites with a sales organization able to sell the value of being part of these brands rather than just the value of the numbers of people who visited them. But during the Gawker age, audience thresholds grew from a daunting 10 million monthly visitors as the acknowledged minimum for a high-profile site and big-budget advertising accounts, to a fantastic 50 million visitors as the price of entry, to even an absurd 100 million. Now, in the BuzzFeed era (with its claims of 150 million and more monthly visitors), a media company is really a technology company, with its highest resources devoted to automating and increasing the efficiency of audience aggregation. But somewhat confusingly, such automation turns out to require hundreds of people to perform. While Gawker is owned entirely by Denton and has been self-financing for most of its history, BuzzFeed has needed vast investment. While Denton has rebuffed all offers to buy his profitable business, BuzzFeed searches the market for a greater fool.
Gawker, or the Gawker identity, Denton seemed to acknowledge in his memo, is a casualty in the race for traffic: Gawker succeeded because it was a carefully molded product (a small band of young people overseen by Denton—with Denton constantly hiring and firing his editors). But then it morphed into a business with a much larger number of ever-younger people having to produce more and more, and working with less and less editorial vision or leadership. Gawker began to focus on an open area of parallel writing (i.e., free writing) designed to enhance its traffic base—but, too, with the natural effect of diluting quality and confusing purpose.
Curiously, or ludicrously, The New Republic, the one-hundred-year-old Washington magazine, with a circulation of under fifty thousand, announced at the end of 2014 that it wanted to transform itself into a digital media business. This desire seems to have been born out of a sense that all media is now digital or must be, that, in the conventional wisdom, “digital is the future.” Print is the trash heap, and digital is a wide-open world of possibilities and opportunities.
Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, made vast sums as a member of the founding Facebook team—as Mark Zuckerberg’s fortuitous Harvard roommate, as Hughes is no doubt tired of hearing and a description he would like to overcome. He went out of his way to say The New Republic could no longer be a charity case. In this regard, and hardly choosing from the top of the class, he hired Guy Vidra, a former news executive at Yahoo, another company that has been thoroughly outpaced in the medium, and Gabriel Snyder, a former Gawker editor (fired, like so many) turned into for-hire digital bureaucrat.
Since 10 million monthly visitors barely signifies in digital media terms, it is hardly far-fetched to estimate that to maintain The New Republic’s current level of outsize influence, it will have to transform its 50,000 print readers into 50 million monthly digital visitors. In ballpark terms, the revenue potential for 50 million monthly visitors is $25 million to $50 million a year, at a cost that usually exceeds what you will make on such traffic. (As with Outbrain and other traffic-trading deals, it’s a kind of fool’s arbitrage.) This is not, of course, an editorial proposition, but the result of better systems management—a hard game, because there are always newer and better systems and systems managers. And, in fact, that is just the digital publishing business now. Undoubtedly it will morph into something even further from publishing as we know it. Denton took advantage of a moment when he could use new technology to bootstrap himself into creating an original and influential new publishing form. But today’s “vertically integrated digital media company,” in Vidra’s self-hoisting words, is another duck altogether.
The peculiar development, full of dramatic irony, is that television, with its more circumscribed audiences making much more active selection and choice, becomes upscale media, and digital, with its mass reach and reflexive actions, becomes the downscale side. Television is a discerning and measured choice, a conscious and affirmative vote, and digital passive—a new sort of half-aware audience of couch potatoes mindlessly shuttled between social media prompts and headlines.
The latter, although often the result of millions of individual contributors, is in essence automated, rote, algorithmic, and, in the end, undifferentiated. The former is, practically speaking, a handcrafted, elaborate, complex, difficult construction. One a housing development, the other an ambitious piece of architecture.
It is a juxtaposition of two cultures. One creates a system that has value, the other creates individual works that have value. (CBS is not the principal value; its principal value is that it has created and owned things like NCIS, a billion-dollar franchise—a key aspect of every entertainment company is the value of its library.)
The former believed it could overtake and replace the latter. But that was a system view—an efficiency model. In the system, you are part of . . . the system. Whereas, making hits is inefficient, making a unique product is an effort to distinguish yourself from the system. Relative conformity versus relative independence. Curiously, the entrepreneurial ethos and romance of the technology world is much more present in the world where a creative product is the currency.
One would be hard-pressed to find, in the great scheme of media executives and chief marketing officers and media buyers, someone who could ably articulate the particular value of an imaginative moment or mood or relationship or leave-taking from everyday life. But that is ultimately what advertisers are buying, that quality of attention and of identification, and what audiences are paying for, a plot worth following, characters worth knowing, a world worth being part of.
In some sense, the future of the future, the higher value of the future, is always analog—handmade, sought after, exclusive (the art market being an extraordinary example). Standardization—digital being the ultimate standardization—occurs and price and value are lowered. Then the culture advances once again toward the unique, the differentiated, the original. Digital’s early attraction, its counterpoint to television, was the promise of infinite uniqueness, but the reality, after an era of top-down systemization and control, and the constant optimization of the technology itself, was an effective repetition and blandness—the Hallmark drivel of social media, the qualified and tested lists and headlines of BuzzFeed. Meanwhile television, once the land of the banal, became something of a hothouse of the unexpected to which both popular culture and commercial culture (always finely connected) were drawn. In a curious way, twenty-first-century television has become rather closer to the movie culture of the 1930s and ’40s that so held the popular imagination that people would go seriously out of pocket for it.
Now the digital industry, wearing out the various novelties of the medium that once propelled its cheap programming, reverts, like cable before it, to its pure distribution function, and seeks out the highest-value products it can provide its customers, which, in the media business, is the extraordinary variety, the quite astonishing inventiveness, and the cultural primacy of television. The revolution that began in the 1950s continues on—leaping over the digital distraction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chip Bayers, my longtime friend and colleague, one of the earliest journalists in the digital world and one of its most discerning observers, has been a critical sounding board for this book. The discussions we have had for many years about the future of the media business continue to bear rich fruit. His views inform every page.
The research firm Schireson Associates has contributed time, resources, and empirical wisdom to this effort. In a world where digital numbers can supply any answers you want, Schireson and various of its principals and partners—Kern Schireson, Ethan Bauman, Jacob Harris, and Nathan Hugenberger—have helped provide rigor and context.
Aspects of this material h
ave appeared in my columns in USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, British GQ, and Vanity Fair. I am grateful to the editors there for their insights and the opportunities they have afforded me.
Adrian Zackheim and Eric Nelson at Portfolio / Penguin have been crucial and valued collaborators. As always, my great thanks to my agent, Andrew Wylie.
Michael Wolff
New York, 2015
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
A&E Networks, 61, 65, 117
ABC, 183
Abrahamsen, Kurt, 2
Advance Communications, 116, 117
advertising:
adjacency strategy of, 59
ad-skipping devices, 49, 84, 96
and audience, 63, 72–73, 87, 198–99
billboards, 77, 115
brand, 23–24, 25, 26, 49–50, 67, 182–83
buying space vs. making ads, 48, 57, 63, 87–88
classified, 69, 115
and content, 59, 63, 84, 158
CPMs, 52, 65, 66, 71–72, 73
direct mail, 55–56, 69–70, 86
direct-response, 24, 25, 26, 85, 87
display, 69
dual markets for, 80–81, 85–88
falling prices of, 33, 50, 51, 52, 70–73, 74, 78, 167
global online industry, 75–76
government regulation of, 56
low tolerance for, 83–85
market predictions for, 79
and mass media, 123
measuring effectiveness of, 71–72, 79, 84–85, 87
media, 18, 21, 52
print, 25, 54, 69–71
programmatic buying/selling, 73, 76–80
as pyramid scheme, 57–58
remnant space for, 78
response rate, 55, 56–57, 72
as revenue source, 41, 43, 48
revolution in, 69–74
sales, 40–41, 56
and sports, 181–88
television, 24, 25, 40, 70, 79–80, 83–84, 99, 115, 119, 125, 129
too much space, 76
and YouTube, 153, 154–55
Advertising Week, New York, 21
aggregation, 18–19, 50–51, 59, 66, 190, 195–96
Ailes, Roger, 119
Alibaba, 19, 20
Allen, Mel, 182
Amazon, 42, 110, 112, 142, 161, 169
Andreessen, Marc, 2, 3, 4, 39, 60, 83, 97
AOL:
and Huffington Post, 12, 58
and newspaper format, 18, 33, 189
and Time Warner, 11, 117, 126, 132, 159
Apple, 101–5
Apple TV, 109, 112, 113
Arledge, Roone, 183, 187
AT&T, 135, 136
audience:
and advertising, 63, 72–73, 87, 198–99
auctions for, 77
behavior patterns of, 50
building, 47, 48, 50
and carriage, 125, 184–85
cost vs. profitability of, 54
demographics of, 73, 78
downmarket vs. upmarket, 192
drive-by, 54
eyeballs of, 57, 77–78
holding the attention of, 32, 50, 67, 71, 74
identifying, 47–49
illusory nature of, 64, 73–74
manipulation of, 50
mass, 35, 76, 195
measuring and monitoring, 48–50, 57, 77
migration of, 70
monetizing, 16, 40
and pay cable, 47–48
programming focused on, 128
and scarcity premium, 72
self-selected, 78
stand-alone unbranded entities, 78–79
as traffic, 18–19, 49–53, 73, 86, 196
value of, 48, 49
you don’t own it, 53, 54
Auletta, Ken, 95–100
Bartz, Carol, 19
Bewkes, Jeffrey, 121, 126
Blockbuster, 91
Blu-ray DVD players, 110–11
books, 115, 117, 124
broadband, 109, 135, 138–41
broadcast, 108, 112, 131, 168
BSkyB, 120
bundling-unbundling-rebundling, 171–78
BuzzFeed, 12, 18, 23, 57, 58–61, 62, 66, 67, 87, 102, 189, 193–94, 195–96, 199
cable companies:
and broadband, 140–41
and bundling/unbundling, 174–78
bypassing fees of, 112
and costs, 99–100, 174
declining quality of, 168
deregulation of, 127
and digital access, 133
and government bureaucracy, 139
and Internet, 125, 129, 130, 135
mean and stingy deals from, 10
and “must-carry rule,” 131
pay cable model, 47–48, 113, 127
paying content providers, 125–26, 127, 130, 133
and sports, 184–85
streaming, 99–100
and television, see television
upgrades, 134, 168
Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act (1992), 96, 131
Cannes Lions Festival, France, 21
Carey, Chase, 126
Carlson, Nicholas, 21–22
carriage, 125, 126, 131–32, 184–85
CBS, 97, 118, 121, 129, 130, 131, 160, 185, 198
Chiat, Jay, 101–2
Clear Channel, 116, 126
click fraud, 26, 74
CNN, 22, 32, 35, 65, 95, 126, 130, 132
Coleman, Greg, 58
Comcast, 10, 116, 120, 130, 132–36, 138, 143–44, 175, 185
Comedy Central, 3, 5, 130
computers:
cloud, 108
as entertainment devices, 106
and television, 105, 108, 110, 111
comScore, 63
Condé Nast, 116, 117
consolivision, 114, 115–21
Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 83
“cool,” meanings of, 41, 63
copyright infringement, 146–49
Coupland, Douglas, 107
Couric, Katie, 21
Cue, Eddy, 103
curation, 36
Cusack, John, 2
Dacron Republican-Democrat, The, 18, 167
Dauman, Philippe, 126
Deadline Hollywood, 25
Delphi, 118
Demand Media, 52
Denton, Nick, 193–94, 196, 197
Deutsch, Donny, 2
digital convergence, 107
digital media:
and advertising, 18, 21, 24, 25, 52, 70, 76, 84–85, 87, 128, 130
audience for, 16–17, 49, 54, 74, 87
and bundling/unbundling, 174–78
bureaucracies of, 19, 24, 138, 199
changed business of, 194–200
circulations strategy of, 56–57
click fraud on, 26, 74
and content producers, 189–92
as distribution deal, 104, 194, 199
efficiency of, 195
forecasts for, 25–26
functionality of, 16, 17, 41, 166, 168
image-based, 157–58
inevitability of the new, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15
life expectancy of, 194
as news outlet, 33, 58
and profitability, 15, 49, 66
promotion as chief function of, 56–58
as reinvention of media business, 42, 168, 194
revenue sources of, 43
and sports, 181–88
digital media (cont.)
stalled market of, 58
technology view of, 3, 11, 17, 43, 152–53, 166
traffic sought by, 14, 52, 59, 86
transitory nature of, 23, 194
unregulated, 138
and user satisfaction, 18
as video, 97–98, 109, 139, 157–59, 169
vs. traditional, 1–5, 14, 40, 190–91
as wasteland, 190
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 148
direct marketing, 55–56, 69–70, 86
Discovery Channel, 117
Disney, 60, 61, 102, 116, 117, 154, 185
dongle streaming device, 110, 111
dot-com crash, 65, 66, 134, 148
DoubleClick, 72
DSL, 133–34, 135
DVDs, 91–92, 111, 190
DVorkin, Lewis, 66–67
DVR, 83, 110, 146
entertainment businesses, 115, 142, 146, 168, 189–90, 192
ESPN, 95, 117, 120, 126, 127, 171, 184–85
Ethernet, 109
Everson, Carolyn, 40–41
Facebook, 86, 195
advertising on, 40–41, 161
and BuzzFeed, 59, 60, 102
News Feed, 33, 36–37, 157
rise of, 26, 117, 130–31
social strategy of, 52–53
and television, 157–62
as utility, 41, 42, 43
video on, 44, 158–62
FCC, 141–44, 174, 175
fiber optics, 135
Final Cut Pro, 62
Food Network, 21–22
Forbes, 57–58, 65–67, 161
Fox Broadcasting Company, 97
Fox Interactive Media, 20
Fox Network, 118, 120, 183, 185
Fox News Channel, 32, 35, 119
Freston, Tom, 62, 117, 126
Galloway, Scott, 99
Gannett, 116
Gawker media, 33, 193–97
generation gap, 13, 26
Godard, Jean-Luc, 31
Google, 42, 43, 52, 112
AdSense, 59
and Android, 102, 110