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Regator has launched to the public - check it out. 

The value proposition of this type of service is that it enables you to expand your reading list by seeing what others who are into the same topics or industries are reading. You are only as sharp and informed as the depth and breadth of your reading list. With your own RSS Reader that pulls in only the content you have subscribed to you may not be widening your horizons as much as you could be.

From Regator:
How is Regator different?
Its blogs are hand-selected by real human beings, who choose them based on their good writing, original content, frequent updates, and relevance. But Regator’s editors don’t handle everything (there’s only so much caffeine a person can take). Our users’ actions create top rated, most viewed, and most commented pages. And complex algorithms create the aptly titled What’s Hot List, which keeps you up to date on what the blogosphere’s writing about at any moment. 

I have just finished reading the Future of Media Report 2008, which was recently released by the Future Exploration Network. The report projects that the size of the global media and entertainment will grow from $US 1.6 trillion in 2008 —> to $US 5.7 trillion in 2024.

They highlight here with this massive growth projection that “the current positioning of some media companies in a rapidly changing market means that they are not experiencing this upside…” (Get some background: Charles Warner: Media Morph - Huffington Post) but also that “others are doing fabulously well in tapping people’s almost insatiable desire for content and connection.”

The 7 forces they list as “shaping media” are below. I have picked out one or two key facts or learnings from each relevant to Comms and Media professionals.

• Increasing Media consumption: Most media will be consumed with partial attention. Appetite for content is virtually insatiable.
• Fragmentation: Audiences are being divided into smaller and smaller segments. Revenue per channel will decrease, production costs will need to be scaled down.
• Participation: Consumer Generated Media is now certainly a reality. Pro-Amateur models will (continue to) emerge. People are now actively participating in creating content, not just passively consuming the content generated by media companies and professionals.
• Personalization: Consumers expectations of their level of control over their media is increasing. Advertising can now be more targeted but future here is dependent on society’s view on privacy of profiles online.
• New revenue models: Current trend is a migration from subscriptions to –> ad supported business models. Another expectation that has grown is that content should be free. (Get some background: Compete with free by going beyond free: Poynter Online)

But: 37% of consumers say they would rather pay for online content that be exposed to Ads - Deloitte

• Generational Change:Media channels will be increasingly age-segmented. Ad agencies will shift to new media outlets. Also, another point I found interesting here, “sharemarket valuations will reflect age profiles of audiences”. Is this hinting at a correlation between age (and relevant disposable income) and valuation e.g. teenagers lower than baby boomers? Interested in thoughts in agreement or to the contrary here.
• Increasing Bandwidth: Majority of developed country homes will receive over 100 Mps. Mobile bandwidth also soaring.

In Part II of this review I will look at the second part of the report which is also extremely relevant, even critical if you take into account the projected growth forecasts above, for those in the communications and media industry to know and understand. Part II will focus on the Future of Media : Strategy Tools and my thoughts of the key points to take from this research to put into practice.

Reuters will supply FT.com with Reuters News Video comes days after the news wire unveiled plans for a co-branded business news section in the International Herald Tribune and on IHT.com.
Read more HereÂ

This is
“part of the news agency’s drive to provide increasingly demanding media clients with more than just text.”
A word from the Journalist..
“For the most part, we journalists don’t retain any residual claim to our own work; our publishers and station owners do. They own all our photographs, our raw tapes and our clips. And most journalists are well-aware of the fact that media companies haven’t figured out an economic structure for journalism on the Internet.”
Read an interview here with the CEO of Associated Press:
-News is a growth industry and that it was high time to kick ‘despair’ to the curb.
-Breaking news is worth more these days than it ever was. So breaking news is a premium business.
-A balance of power that exists online, between the portals and the creators of original content.
The solution: fairer deals to ensure that creators aren’t giving away the house, along with a willingness to adapt to the changing ways readers consume the news.

Read Tom Curley, “Portals, Local content - The mother of all battles” here

Sam Zell, prospective majority owner of the Tribune Co.”I think the newspaper industry has stood there and watched while other media enterprises have taken our bacon and run with it,” he said. “It’s too much complacency.”

The industry as a whole, Zell said, has been “standing there and letting this happen while Rome is burning.”

Read Scott Karp - The New Media consolidation here