Given the first-to-be-tested organizational conditions, the endogenous driving force for change is the strongest. If the corresponding policy space can be clearly given at this level, it will quickly activate most of the radio and television employees across the country and provide diversified practical experience for the reform model.
But the long-term management system has determined that the inertia of resource integration can easily gain the upper hand in formulating strategies in most places, because the more important it is, the more you want to control risks, and the more you want to control risks, the more you need to top-down. , The more top-down, the more thorough consideration, the higher the cost of time, the higher the cost of time, the first-line media units are caught in anxiety about the uncertainty of the policy arrangements and at a loss, especially those who are originally in the personnel and financial aspects. Where there is no independent right.
The terrestrial channel not only has to maintain the status quo in a downward industry cycle without any problems, but also seek opportunities to break through and successfully achieve structural adjustments. The room for fault tolerance is actually getting smaller and smaller. After the first quarter of 2021, traditional media operations seem to be generally better than 2020, which is affected by the epidemic. However, if you carefully disassemble the composition of operating income, you will find that most channels’ special advertising and local event marketing account for a larger proportion.
In recent years, local event marketing has increasingly become an important income-generating method for local media. However, it has been constantly involuntary in the competition for more people and less meat. Profits are getting lower and lower, and it is unable to provide a stable operating cash flow.
In essence, most of the current source of income for terrestrial channels is the realization of stock resources, and the business content is traditional. In such a business situation, it is difficult for terrestrial channels to boldly invest in new tracks and lack the necessary capital turnover. To cultivate new formats.
I want to move but I can’t help but want to do it but I can’t do it. I am afraid that most terrestrial channels are now in the basic situation to promote the development of media integration. Professionals are getting older and the performance of the system is getting slower and slower. Terrestrial channels will either gradually withdraw from the battlefield and take the initiative, or they must prove their ability under limited conditions and continue to sing on the new media track.
Rationally judged that terrestrial channels, as the most numerous media product type in the television era, have been difficult to have a systematic solution. All choices will be based on the individual media’s own endowment and the desire for self-breakthrough.
Possible role direction for terrestrial channel transformation
Emancipating the mind and breaking the shackles of ideas are the first essentials for self-revolution. In the reform to promote the development of media integration, do not define yourself as a TV channel, but see yourself as a market-oriented organization, break away from the original business structure and operating mechanism to renew Setting industryBusiness direction.
The form of TV channel products is past tense. With this as a foothold, innovation in content products and business models cannot be called media convergence. Don’t worry that the assets and resources accumulated in the past will disappear and become useless, but we need to reconfigure these elements with new containers, which will raise the starting point for us to start again.
Terrestrial channels have different content types, resource endowments, team genes, and brand values. Facing the future, you can boldly imagine more possibilities, as long as it conforms to the basic trend of Internet development, and pay attention to three levels of consideration:< /p>
One is whether there is any problem with the development of the selected track, that is, whether it can be done. This is at the cognitive level, and there is enough information to help us judge.
Secondly, this track has little to do with me, that is, whether I can do it or not. A good business opportunity, you may not be able to do it yourself. In a comprehensive market competition environment, time card position is the primary factor, unless you have lore-level resource card position capabilities.
The third is, if you do, where is the smallest entry point? That is, the question of how to do it. Doing the right thing is the direction; doing the right thing is the methodology.
For broadcasters, the most difficult thing is that the methodology is very different from the past. We can’t be easily fooled by information on success studies from various channels. In fact, many statements in the Internet industry have context and preconditions. For example, Bytedance’s “strengthening miracles” must not be misunderstood as applicable to all enterprises and all stages of development.
The terrestrial channel does not have a unified preset solution, and the copying operations in the industry are also not effective in the fast-changing situation. In view of the long-term trends in the media field, we must first learn to build a basic system. This capability system roughly includes four dimensions: product, operation, commercialization, and technology.
We can try boldly around this capability system. OneOn the one hand, we regard the basic system as a stable business support point, which does not change with the market trend; on the one hand, we continue to make small steps to try and make mistakes. Gradually screen out new media business products, and at the same time cultivate the adaptability to capture market opportunities.
These two actions are in parallel relationship and need to be grasped with two hands, one for long-term content capacity building, the other for short-term business opportunities, to maintain timely review, continuous error correction and continuous optimization. This process is a business-driven systematic refactoring, and it is always necessary to create continuityValue as the foothold of institutionalized survival.
If you are too eager to make a breakthrough in the project, although you have achieved something for a while, it is actually difficult to continue. The value of products and services in the Internet ecosystem is characterized by high-speed flow and nonlinearity, and even platforms often worry about their status.
Terrestrial channels used to be a thousand channels in terms of product form, but in terms of organization and management mechanism, they showed the characteristics of thousand channels. If you want to explore a general development direction, perhaps only around the core of “content” can it have overall operational significance. Roughly speaking, we can set a three-sided content company model according to the future media ecological environment and needs, as a reference for the transformation of terrestrial channels.
The first is to make good content.
The so-called good-looking content is content productization, which has two different directions. One is that content products have consumer value. TO B can sell copyright, and TO C can be paid by members; the more advanced layer is to create IP influence Power, but also fun in peripheral product development.
The form of this direction belongs to the category of the traditional film and television industry, and it is easier to understand. At this level, a good idea is a good business, and a good work is a good model. If you have advanced content creation capabilities, then the advantages of product production are basically available. It is nothing more than switching the business logic of the product from traditional TV media management to content Production area.
It is understood that some terrestrial channels have done very well in the original column dramas and have formed a complete production line. If these creative elements can be transferred to the web dramas, they may become a good content company. However, the threshold for the content production direction is very high, and most existing terrestrial channels can only sigh about it.
Then, the second direction for good content to watch is that content products are positioned in the production of traffic, and the requirements for creation are similar to news and social education programs. Through the re-editing and combination of real materials, they can be accurately output and commercialized. The main way of monetization is the placement of content advertising and marketing.
The more mature cases in the market are vertical media accounts, such as the “two micro” new media that we often call. They follow the past media model and are a professional and extreme “small and beautiful” route. However, such media accounts must achieve a leading position in the subdivisions to obtain good economic benefits.
The terrestrial channel uses the short video platform as a vertical account. Strategically, you can choose a brand column with strong industry resource attributes, and strive to become a big V of similar accounts. Since the Internet has no distribution boundary and its business scope is nationwide, the income scale is sufficient to replace the past volume.
Then, the path of the integration and development of the entire channel is actually to grasp the core content resources for single-point amplification. The prerequisite for this choice is to have the depth of the brand’s resources and the depth of the content of the team. Based on well-watched content, it can be summarized as content industry direction and traffic media direction. The former focuses on IP building, and the latter focuses on traffic operation.
The second is to make good use of content.
The so-called useful content can be understood as content tooling, used as a kind of packaging and carrier to help companies, individuals and commodities achieve the purpose of communication. In this paradigm, the content is not an independent product, but a kind of emotional cement for communication between the main body and the user, a kind of information glue, used to shape the brand, build the personality, help sales, and transform and divert.
After the emergence of information flow advertising in the native mode, coupled with the rise of algorithmic recommendation, content as a means is increasingly regarded by merchants as a low-cost customer acquisition method and conversion tool. Of course, the underlying logic is because commercial activities must adapt to the channel trend of Internet information dissemination after going online, and fragmented video content is the priority information dissemination and display carrier, which promotes the further generalization of media content services to become basic The commercial elements of the company enter more circulation links.
Currently, the demand for content based on market activities is increasing. A typical example is that new consumer brands are, without exception, the packaging results of cultural concepts, and the content is planted into daily operations. The clearer business operation model is various MCN organizations. Their content team is not only responsible for content creation, but the most valuable work content is to serve as a product manager, making choices for account positioning and incubation of Internet celebrities. E-commerce service organizations have more clearly digitized and streamlined the cost and value of content, and promoted the standardized delivery of content services.
So what does this content service demand mean for terrestrial channels? As a packaging carrier, content has a circulation advantage. If content capabilities are liberated from traditional media and content industries, they can gain greater value in e-commerce and other fields. This trend of combining content with products will obviously provide content practitioners with a larger stage to showcase their skills, and also provide a position for professional media and content organizations to transform themselves out of the circle.
This change still needs to be disassembled into two directions: One is to become a specialized media and content service provider. Different from the previous self-media, it adds self-media for other subjects. Business, such as the agent operation model of government affairs account, enterprise account, and talent account. The second is to use media and content capabilities as competitive factors to advance into the new service track.With the rapid development of channels, it is extremely dependent on short videos and live broadcasts, and is eager to find content service providers to cooperate. For useful content, the evaluation standard is mainly to look at the transformation effect, not the image aesthetics.
The third is to make fun content.
The so-called fun content is the contextualization of content, with the purpose of increasing the user’s immersive experience. The most typical one that meets this definition standard is games, but game development and operation are too difficult for traditional media. We only discuss new opportunities and possibilities based on the Internet media content ecology. At the technical level, the universal application of VR and AR will have a wave of content requirements for experience upgrades, but for the time being, for terrestrial channels, it is still “far from being able to dissolve the near thirst.”
The traditional cultural and tourism industry, stimulated by the online celebrity check-in effect, has a strong demand for content upgrading. Whether it is new media announcements or content placement in venues and facilities, there are terrestrial channels in return. value.
In the past two years, room escape and script killing, which are popular among young people, are also real-life entertainment that terrestrial channels can pay attention to and are worth trying to intervene. In terms of economic benefits alone, the scale of revenue from opening a few local stores is not worse than that of ordinary channels. The most important thing is that all the content elements and organizational processes of its operation are formulas that we are familiar with. In the future, it is possible to follow the technological development and enter a more imaginative vast space.
Of course, the fun content is not limited to this, but the basic characteristic is to create a new content scene, allowing players to participate and immerse in it. The degree of involvement can be deep or shallow, and the project can be large or small. The terrestrial channel can be integrated with its own publicity ability and content organization level in advance to achieve relatively low-cost entry. From a long-term development point of view, it is difficult to find a set of sustainable operating product models.
In the context of media integration, broadcasting and TV MCN, as a typical case, has been paid attention to and discussed by industry personnel.
The Sinicization of MCN is still in a dynamic period of rapid evolution, and the industry connotation is very rich. The entry of terrestrial channels into the Internet ecological context under the name of MCN reflects a positive attitude of embracing change. You should enter the circle calmly and not be too sensitive and care about your identity. The bottom line is that MCN does not conform to the scope of the content economy. Can it? solve the real problem.
Hunan Entertainment Channel, as the pioneer of radio and television MCN, has always had a clear attitude: First, we don’t argue about whether MCN will work or not. We are not doing academic research, but seeking to survive through market practices. Second, don’t worry about what MCN is. We accept any possibility and insist on using effects to correct problems in the process..
In the past two years, we have reached a basic conclusion that MCN institutions increasingly need to compete with front-end and back-end integrated operational capabilities, and ordinary social companies cannot handle the risk of investment in content infrastructure. The background MCN may develop into the largest force in the MCN organization.
Analyze the future trend of change and the real situation. If our thinking is limited to the identity of the terrestrial channel, we will find that the situation is dim, but as long as we adjust the angle of view and put down all the settings of the terrestrial channel, the way forward is actually bright and bright. Lively.
What needs to be vigilant is that seeing the opportunity does not mean that we can seize the opportunity, all changes mean from familiar to unfamiliar, often in unfamiliar areas, we often underestimate the difficulty of making it, and high Estimated the speed of learning.
In addition, it should be noted that there is no problem in opening the situation in a single-project approach, but it must not stop at the thinking of the project. The future economic scale of the project, product form, technical requirements, and the original Compatible space for channel people, finances, things, etc. Our ultimate goal is to achieve the successful transition of business and personnel.
Each generation must solve the problems that history has entrusted to this generation. The predecessors have fulfilled their responsibilities in the brilliant television era and showed their full glory. Now the backbone of the Mesozoic era in the management position of the terrestrial channel, how to keep themselves and the organization up with the times is not only our responsibility mission, but also a great opportunity to create new stories.
When designing the roadmap and choosing a new track, we are not laying out the Internet, but the Internet of content. When such a challenge fully impacts our thinking habits and knowledge structure, we must have the courage to admit our limitations, we must also have the courage to do nothing, but also have the courage to be fearless and enterprising, believing that we can learn skills and knowledge in practice. Solve the problem.
The media integration of terrestrial channels must establish a sense of “people” adapting to ever-changing changes. Action is the best declaration and the only entrance to the sea of stars. There is no air outlet for being late, only people who are late.
This article is from WeChat official account:Dewaiwuhao No. 5 (ID: dewaiwuhao), Author: Li Zhihua (Party Secretary and Director of Hunan Entertainment Channel, President of Innovative Entertainment, CTR Media Convergence Research InstituteHome)