The changing media landscape

The Nation Media Group (NMG), parent company of the Daily Monitor, NTV and other media brands, last week announced a re-thinking of its editorial and business direction.

The statement read, in part: “[We] are cognisant of the changing trends in which individuals are consuming our products. In line with this new reality, we are reorganising ourselves with the objective of transforming the group into a modern Twenty First Century digital content company embracing a digital/mobile first business model.”

This announcement by the largest media company in East and Central Africa was the latest in the global re-adjustment to the disruption that digital technology is causing life in the 21st Century.

Yesterday’s giants (Kodak, IBM) are being brought low; new giants (Amazon, Google, Facebook) are dominating the scene; and old giants that have adapted well (BBC, National Geographic, Apple) are taking the changes in their stride.

At the heart of all this change is the fact that digital technology has vastly reduced the cost of distributing media content, advertising, political messages and increased the ability of the ordinary people to take part in public life.
With the barriers to entry now so low, practically everyone today has become a newspaper columnist, political commentator, videographer and photographer.
There are too many radio and TV stations, websites, blogs, shopping malls and of course just too many social media pages.

The world is drowning in information. There is now so much content online, it has started like trying to sell sand to people in a desert.

What separates the successful people and brands in this digital environment and the less so is content. Relevant content or high-quality content.

As the SEOPressor website put it on December 4, 2015, “You’re just not going to get anywhere without high-quality content that is tailor-made for your target audience.”
That is the key to all this.

The average number of Facebook followers around the world is 200 people, most of whom are relatives, friends and former schoolmates.

This means that although we all can post, tweet and upload content, not all of us have an impact beyond our immediate circle of friends, relatives and contacts.

To start getting above the 200-follower average on Facebook and get to 500, one must stand out a little in one’s school, town, office, neighbourhood or online.

To get more than 1,000 Facebook followers, one has to start being a public figure of some kind, either from what one does or is.

In almost every country around the world, the people with the largest number of Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, SnapChat and Twitter followers tend to be comedians, musicians, movie actors, sportsmen, a few politicians and media personalities.

Media brands and well-known consumer brands from cars to beverages, fashion houses, key government institutions and business corporations also tend to have a large number of followers.

Most people, brands and institutions with a large social media following tend to already be fairly well-known in real life, public life.
In other words, the more things change, the more they remain the same.