by Mike Stiles
Let me as you a hard question. Is your content worth anything? Are you okay? I know it can be harshly unsettling to get hit point blank with a question like that. But seriously, have you ever thought about whether the content you?re putting out on your radio station is really worth anything? Movie studios think their content is worth something. Even after a movie has had its big theatrical release, they continue to believe it?s worth something. It?s worth something if viewers want to see it, and if it?s made available to them in the times and ways in which they want it.
The studios have determined viewers want movies streamed, while retaining the social aspect of movie-watching. Social streaming startup flickme launched a library of over 1,000 movies for rent or purchase with Facebook and Twitter integration with cooperation from Sony and Warner Bros. In August, Miramax's eXperience started offering 20 titles to rent on Facebook. Universal recently launched a Social Theater app. Paramount made "Jackass" films available for Facebook rental.
flickme?s "sharable discount" feature lets you watch a movie for half the normal cost provided it was recommended to you by a friend. End result: the studios literally have consumers marketing their older titles for them to other people. And they accomplished that by being willing to treat Facebook and Twitter as serious content distribution platforms.
Here?s you: ?Harumph. That has nothing to do with me. Ours is an ad-supported medium. I?m not selling any content.? Well if you?d just glance over at that canary in the coal mine, he?s looking not quite as bright yellow, and he?s having a coughing fit. The ad revenue is no longer enough to afford you the entertainers and content-creators of yesteryear. That leaves you trying to make money renting time using music you don?t own to advertisers who won?t know if their ad worked.
If radio would return to seizing opportunity, experimenting, blazing trails, talent developing and innovating, it would create original content and use the social networks as a distribution platform for that content. Then we?d have something to sell that would supplement traditional ad dollars. Then we?d be evolving. Then our content would be worth something.
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files. Find him on Facebook or on Twitter @mikestiles
If the links above do not work, here they are:
flickme: www.flickme.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com
eXperience: https://apps.facebook.com/miramaxapp/
Social Theater app: https://www.facebook.com/notes/universal-studios-entertainment/the-big-lebowski-is-now-available-on-facebook-as-a-social-theater-experience/10150360106278319?ref=nf
Vitrue: www.vitrue.com
Sketchworks: www.sketchworkscomedy.com
Stiles Files: www.mikestiles.com/stilesfiles
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