Andreessen: "If you own newspapers, sell. If you own TV stations, sell..." | Hacker News Reader

Andreessen: "If you own newspapers, sell. If you own TV stations, sell..."

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18 pointsnickb23 comments

Industry behemoths have been known to change to keep up with the times (case in point: IBM), although it's damn rare. So maybe some of the studios and newspaper companies will figure out a way to endure.

It would be a useful exercise to go over the list of companies that were in the S&P 500 in 1950 and see which ones did better than their peers in 1950-2000 and which ones faded from view. Unfortunately, the last time I checked, online stock listings only go back to about 1970, and with all the mergers, breakups, name changes, and stock splits that have happened since then, running these numbers by hand strikes me as a non-trivial project.

AFAIK, India is the only country where newspaper subscription is/has been increasing over the past few years. I have even seen new papers launched in the past couple of years.

Hispanic markets have done better as well.

I started thinking on this subject after the major cable networks started picking up premium channel reruns.

It seems advertisements alone aren't covering expenses. The premium content (with higher production costs) brings increased viewers, so cable networks license premium content for better advertisement revenue.

However, I assume the premium channels will continue existing and prosper as long they get their tech right.

While I wouldn't want to run a newspaper or TV station (although I could do some cool stuff if given reins), I'd probably keep my movie studio. Movies are still a pretty premium form of entertainment, whereas newspapers and TV are just ad inventory sales in an era where inventory is increasing.

Marc Andreesen should stick to what he knows: Text. He may be right about newspapers but his remarks about television and movies are premature. Audiences may be ready to give up ink smeared on paper but they are not ready to abandon storytelling delivered on a screen.

how do you know what he knows?

Look at his areas of expertise. Netscape. Ning. Loudcloud. Don't see any TV or movie industry experience. Do you?

"... Look at his areas of expertise. Netscape. Ning. Loudcloud. Don't see any TV or movie industry experience. Do you? ..."

But Andreessen is just smart enough to know that "computer + foo = computer".

I found this neat heuristic in Alan Coopers "inmates running the asylum" ~ http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/06723164... It means digital media processed by computers are right up his (and other computer/digital natives) alley.

Henry Ford probably didn't have a lot of experience with horses either.

Audiences may be ready to give up ink smeared on paper but they are not ready to abandon storytelling delivered on a screen.

You mean like...your computer's screen?

Sell to whom exactly? Marc has also been quoted as saying "Never sell a company while it's still growing." In both cases he seems to ignore the motivation of the buyer.

"Sell to whom exactly?"

And buy what? I agree with Marc's core premise -- monolithic media is going down -- and I suspect that diversification is the answer. But there doesn't seem to be clear information on where the media markets are headed. Stuff like Hulu and iTunes offer up some clues, but not enough to bet a billion dollar empire on...

In my opinion the problems old media have is that they're tied to existing cost structures - too many employees, too many buildings, machinery,... while new media is busy accumulating all those same things in order to gain credibility, reliability, and scale and to look like real businesses. What's going to happen is that old media will shed those old costs and new media will grow and accumulate new costs until it is no longer possible to tell the difference between them.

Sell to the people who say he's full of hot air and traditional media will be around for a long time.

Saying that one should sell or buy a security is always an exercise in predicting the future. When you say "sell", it's shorthand for "In the future, there will be fewer buyers and more sellers for this than there are now, so the price will go down, so you should unload now while you can still find eager buyers." You could be wrong about your future prediction, in which case you lose money. But if you're right, you stand to profit from all the people who thought you were an idiot.

I found it curious that a lot of people seem to think Marc is trying to pump & dump media stocks. He's got plenty of money already, and I bet he dumped all his old media a long time ago. Rather, I think he wants to be seen as the guy who correctly foretold the death of old media - his incentive is to be right, gosh darnit, and not to make a whole lot of money.

I don't think he's trying to dump old media stocks - he's trying to promote new media. The natural way to do that is to attack the "dinosaurs" that are being replaced.

Yeah, I realized after I'd posted that I'd misread the comments in question. Anyway, pumping up new media by attacking old media seems like a pretty risky strategy - investors are just as likely to go to energy or defense or finance or other hot/undervalued sectors than to new media. I think it's more likely Andreesen believes that old media is doomed anyway, and that's why he's interested in replacing it.

And they predicted the demise of the motion picture...

And they predicted the demise of radio...

"They" also predicted the demise of the steam locomotive, the horse and cart, the vacuum tube, the oil lantern and the whaling industry.

Predictions are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, we all know this. Do you have anything to suggest that the newspaper is more analogous to the motion picture than to the telegraph?

The examples you quote are all technologies. What Marc is also predicting is a change in the technology of content distribution.

But what is not gonna go away are content producers. I still prefer watching movies made by Hollywood than home-made videos of cats. Where and how I watch movies may change but the fact that I will still watch professional made movies is not very likely to change.

Similarly newspapers may go away as a content distribution mechanism. But professional reporters and news agencies may not necessarily go away even with bloggers and social news sites and so on.

On the surface, this appears to be a major shift in markets. But deep down inside, it's really a major shift in philosophy. No one clause better represents the difference between old and new thinking than:

...according to one attendee, who spoke anonymously because the sessions are off-the-record...

How is this new?

Well, the way of the future, for television, will be ala carte programming over IP.

We're cancelling our cable TV service today, as all the shows we like we can get from the cable networks own websites, or places like Hulu.

We'd even pay to subscribe, over the internet, to a HD stream of a few channels, if we could!

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