Heavies Weigh in On the Long Tail

Chris Anderson has a (admittedly, I found it late...) great post about thinking about a Bear Stearns report on the basic assumptions of the media industry regarding user-generated-content and about the mantra of "content is king."

It's a good post, and has a great map of giving an overview of how random "hits" are from an industry that has an ever-increasing need for hits.

The bigger, and more excellent point is that it put "content is king" in context.

Bear Stearns believes (as do I; indeed a third of my book is focused on this) that in a world of infinite choice, content is only as valuable as your ability to find it. They call that "context and aggregation", and it's what both Google and your favorite blogger do when the filter the web according to a narrow lens, be it your expressed search term or their own sensibility.

And then, in one of the best parts of the report, they illustrate the problem with the notion that "content is king". In practice, only good content is king, and good content is impossible to consistently create.

Reports like this give me ever greater hope and inspiration that this is the time to step out of the media business and do something that will give me the opportunity to step back in at the time of my choosing, and have the resources to create entertainment my way.

Forget mega-studios. Forget notes upon notes upon revisions from the MBA's and the lawyers. Take the experience and knowledge of well-managed production, couple it with story well-told, your own way, unbeholden to anyone but yourself and the people contributing their talents and hard work to your creative endeavor, and just do it.

Good work, and good storytelling will find it's way to an audience.