Destiny of Failure

It never ceases to amaze me that businesses sometimes fail to understand that distribution without product = a dead business.

So does product without distribution, but one can hang on longer than the other, especially where inventory costs for the products are zero or near-zero.

It also amazes me that there are supposed "New Media" people who don't get the three key parts of the changes the digital universe creates in our world.

1. Distribution is not scarce - neither in terms of platforms to reach people, nor the specific time slots you can reach them. There are a million platforms, and the time is *anytime the user wants*
   
2. The money generated is much smaller, and only picked up over periods of time that favor revenues being generated by a long tail that does not exist in the broadcast world
3. If you're creating distribution platforms (pretty much a cheap thing to do these days), you have to have the content to fill it, keep it fresh, and keep users coming back. No new product = no new views. Period.
   

In light of these well-known facts, it would seem to be antithetical to create "programming schedules" where shows would actually be put online, *then taken offline* in an attempt to create scarcity... but at the same time forfeiting all of the long-tail ad revenues.

It would also seem that if you are opening up a big fat pipe (platform) on which to distribute (as a bit of continuation on my prior post about the digital space), if you don't have new content flowing in all the time, you're dead.

New content means fast-moving deals and production teams, along with a well-rounded acquisitions or licensing person or team that can produce fast, equitable, strategic deals with other content owners and producers who don't want to open their own platforms (which they can increasingly do without your "Big Time Hollywood" help, thank you very much).

This is not a game for the slow-moving, wishy-washy, flip-flopping, mind-muddling wanna-be-media-moguls.

They will be crushed... and part of me will enjoy watching it happen.

The rest of me sees great opportunity for people who think differently.