Celebrity Blogs Future Winners?
Folio has been reading the Lost in Transition: The Revolution of Celebrity Media (PDF) report, and reasons around the issues celebrity magazines have and are facing today. What’s even more interesting is that the web, including celebrity blogs, is viewed as the future winners.
In terms of the future of celebrity media M&A, “select Web sites”—such as perezhilton.com—“should be acquisition targets” as they appear to resist the recession’s downward pull and continue to attract eyeballs and advertisers.”
The problem with online celebrity media is apparently to get loyal audiences, according to report author Ken Sonenclar, which makes sense. Look at most celeb blogs, they are built around linkbaits and often looking at social media for more traffic. Compare surfing a social media network celeb links from numerous sources, to picking up your celeb mag each week – it’s quite a difference in readership, although it might not really be such a problem as Sonenclar obviously thinks. This quote tells of an old media view to these things:
Long-term winners online will have roots in print, TV and the web—and so will the losers.
That might very well be true, although there are already celeb media doing just fine online, without a magazine or TV channel behind it. Sonenclar mentioned Perez HIlton himself, yet he still clings to the belief that old media publishers will be new media winners. I’m not so sure about that.
I also don’t agree that old media winners will be the new media winners. Look at BBC iPlayer and ITV Watch On Demand here in the UK. Very similar services, and on paper the ITV service should trounce the BBC’s (their shows are stored for longer) but the BBC player is way more used. But then far and away more used than either are YouTube and Torrent sites. Old media looks at how to get the most money from a model. New media knows that isn’t how it works.
There is room for all of us…