Convergence, media density and Africa

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Convergence, media density and Africas
Information Society

• Guy Berger, Rhodes University
• 1 September 2003

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What well cover

• Information society context
• Media density
• Commercialisation
• Media coalescence and convergence
• South Africa experience
• Prospects in Africa

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1. Info Society context
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Us and Information

• We tend to assume that info is vital for
• Democracy/despotism
• Why? Write down a reason
• Development/underdevelopment
• Why? Write down a reason
• African medias place in the role of info
• Reactionary or progressive?
• Mainstream or marginal?

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2. Media Density
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Conceptualising Media Density

• What would it refer to? Write a definition
• First World and Third World
• Info overload vs Info starvation.
• Media -gt identity, vs Media -gt low impact.
• Media -gt politics, vs Politics -gt media.
• Media as economics, vs Fragile media.

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Density quality or quantity?

• Write down 2 arguments for why,
• wrt to Africas politics and economics,
• the quality of content is more important than the
  volume of content.
• Write down 2 arguments for why
• quantity is overall more important

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My view

• More media prospects for quality
• Schechter more you watch, less you know
• Berger the more there is, more you can find
• Africas priority is to grow its media industry!
• Aim should be to build media density.

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How???

• Coming up
• What drives media development?
• Can media grow faster than the general economy?
• First, write down 2 points for each topic
• Political preconditions for media growth
• Economic preconditions
• Sociological preconditions
• Technological preconditions

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Analysis Media Density

• Modernisation theorists looked at
• Urbanisation, literacy, newspaper sales, radio
  ownership, cinema attendance, telephones per
  head, TV set ownership,
• Implicit in this
• Tech Distribution (sets per 1000 people)
• Tech Usage (sales, calls, paper consumption)
• Spending on information ( of GNP)
• Info workers as of occupations

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Deconstructing density

• Distinguish between
• Media Provision
• More media in the society
• Media Consumption
• More use of the media
• For me density works at both levels

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Growth on the supply side

• Give 3 examples, then look at mine
• More media by expanding existing
• More pages, new supplements
• Faster, more frequent delivery turn-around
• Longer news bulletins
• cntd ..

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Growth on the supply side

• More media thru increase in outlets
• New titles in a stable, sister stations,
  greenfields ventures
• More media thru increased reach
• wider signal distribution, reach extra audience
  outlets, syndication, more possibilities for
  advertisers.
• More media thru new platforms
• (eg. web, cellphones, electronic billboards)

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Growth on the demand side

• Give 3 examples, then look at mine
• Access (literacy, language)
• Availability of receivers (sets, phones)
• Awareness (result of marketing)
• Appropriateness
• Timing, content appeal and use-value.
• Advertising (ad-readiness by sellers)
• Affordability (elasticity of budget items)

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Which is more important?

• Deepening media density depends on both the
  supply demand side working at optimum levels.
• But
• Does supply drive demand, or
• Does demand drive supply?
• Write down 2 reasons in favour of
• Media supply drives demand,
• And Media demand drives supply.

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Complex linkage

• Consumers can increase time with media, or imbibe
  extra media by sharing others intake.
• So demand can increase, without any increase in
  supply.
• And, increased production does not necessarily
  mean more consumption!
• You can add inserts to a paper, who reads them?
• But whichever leads,
• ultimately, expanded supply is needed if media
  density is really to show an increase

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3. Looking at the supply-side
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Growing media supply

• Media grows through new products or expansion of
  existing ones.
• The demand market is a both a constraint and an
  opportunity.
• We can pinpoint conditions for growing supply,
  relatively independent of demand.

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Growth is facilitated by

• Politically enabling environment (eg. pluralistic
  policies in broadcast)
• Conditions increasingly favourable
• Economic context possibilities
• Economic strategies
• Commercialisation
• Concentration centralisation
• Tech (eg. FM, dtp, web, convergence)

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Ecos context possibs

• McCoombs Constancy Factor
• Media in USA was never gt 5 GNP
• Media spend per household also 5 max
• Implications
• New media have to take from old media.
• Re-slicing of a fixed ad and audience pie.
• People dont increase their total media
  consumption, instead they switch between
  Functional Equivalents.

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Africas context

• We come off a low base (less than 5)
• Also have potential to export
• In the Info Age, industry has to grow!
• Unlike the USA, we are open to role of
  extra-market resources for growth eg.
  volunteers in community radio, state subsidy for
  public broadcasters or grassroots media.

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Economic strategies

• Commercialization problem in North
• Oligopolies alliances ( barriers to entry)
• Commoditization ( sensation, expense)
• Conservatism ( panders to prejudice)
• Cultural ethnocentrism and narrowness

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Economic strategies

• Commercial positive role in the South?
• Develop dynamism outside of moribund states?
• Democratic significance independent of govts?
• Good for governance wider economic growth.
• Small markets, but low labour costs
• Eg. local content can be competitive to imports.

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Economic strategies

• Commercial positive role in the South?
• Leapfrog into new markets (eg. cellular).
• Retain space for non-commercial facilitation.
• Incredible info riches lying waiting to be
  mined.

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Commerce and African media

• Much growth nowadays is market-driven.
• Services the elite.
• Cherry picking ( the poor are neglected).
• Limitation in terms of democracy devt.
• Knowledge Gap theory elites use the info.
• But
• no point in shared info-poverty,
• An un-informed elite benefits no one.

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Commercialisms children

• Coalescence
• Industry level,
• Organizational level
• Convergence
• Technological level
• Both of them
• Reduce costs
• Expand output
• A blessing or a curse?

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Coalescence

• Merger, acquisitions, ownership.
• Alliances and 3rd ventures.
• Collaborations
• Marketing
• Content-sharing
• Research
• Purchasing inputs

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Examples from SA

• Joint advertising sales
• Cross-language publishing eg. Naspers
• Fusion eg. Business Report
• Piggy-backing eg. Sun
• Newsrooms Cape Newspapers
• Audience data-mining sale Sunday Times
• Conclusion positive for Media Density

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4. Convergence
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Significance

• Digitalisation and Networking

• Media content costly to produce,
• But cheap to reproduce.

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USA example

• Time Warner and AOL merger

• Bid to control content distribution platforms

• Various Telcos looking at content link-ups

• Effect on media density? Too early to tell

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Convergence in media
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Examples in USA

• Chicago Tribune, Tampa Tribune, Washington Post
• Combining newspaper, radio, TV and web.
• Mainly content-sharing after production,
• A degree of production integration.
• Results
• Less cost-effective than expected.
• More, and richer, content outcomes.

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Examples in SA

• History of Web 1995 -gt
• Web sites emerged as added-platform publishing
• Portal development e-commerce aspects.
• But 2000 -gt
• Medium neglected poor interactivity,
  multi-media.
• Poor revenue and sustainability.
• Websites now just add-ons, brand-building role
• Small but strategically NB - incr in density

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More examples in SA

• Production convergence
• Most print/broadcast web were failures at
  integrated newsrooms.
• Ghetto mentalities too hard to change.
• Convergence -gt diverged operations -gt re-location
  but still no real integration.
• Web remains picking up crumbs.

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More examples in SA

• Production convergence
• Bi-media experiment at SABC failed
• radio Cinderella, diluted output quality
• Hard to train, hard to manage.

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Indications

• Convergence is thus not a panacea for increasing
  Media Density
• Technology promise is not realised
• But dont write it off yet

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Glimmers of hope

• Web advertising is growing.
• Non-media groups are now web-publishers.
• Co-ordinated multi-platform synergies evident in
  Big Brother.
• Database-driven multiple media publishing is
  growing.

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Glimmers of hope

• Cellphone platforms show potential.
• Wi-fi is emerging.
• Connectivity increasing, costs declining
• More online users each day.

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5. Overview
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Context Africa

• Poor results from Pana
• Due to old politics, ecos, analogue media
• Now there is increasing democracy and economic
  integration across continent
• Prospects for more media?
• Good global and African preconditions
• Coalescence proceeding
• Convergence not dead, just beginning to walk

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Summing up (a)

• We have
• Looked at the Big Picture
• Medias place in information society
• Analysed concept of media density
• Media production, and media consumption
• Assessed political conditions
• Generally more positive for media growth.

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Summing up (b)

• Looked at economic trends and conditions
• Commercialisation, coalescence effects
• Taken stock of technology
• Track record of convergence, limits potential

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Conclusion

• African medias reach and role is changing
• Will we lead or lag in relation to the political,
  economic, and tech possibilities?
• It depends on our information and understanding,
  and our ability to communicate this.
• So, it is partly up to us!

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Thank you

• http//journ.ru.ac.za/staff/guy/fulltext/
  density.ppt
• See also
• http//journ.ru.ac.za/staff/guy/Research/Demo
  cracy/moremedia.htm