Mediaweek & the scary thing about the vanishing point in media

John V Willshire on November 18, 2009

It’s really sad see today that Mediaweek is to stop producing a weekly physical copy, and it’s sister title Revolution is to become quarterly supplement in Marketing rather than a monthly title in it’s own right. 

Both were splendid titles, written by passionate, knowledgeable individuals, and they will be greatly missed.

Perhaps as you’d expect, there is a heartfelt outpouring of sympathy for all the people involved in the titles (on Twitter, unsurprisingly), and no doubt that a lot of the shock is at the sudden nature of the news…

…in comparison, when the Londonpaper & London Lite both announced they were ceasing production, it was some weeks before they disappeared (maybe due to the intense production cycle making an overnight winding down tricky).

No one expects media that they read or watch to simply disappear… but I guess the expectation of when media will disappear for reader or advertiser is later than when it actually will from a commercial perspective.

For example, if the money coming in is in decline…

 

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…and the money out, despite continued cost cutting measures, finally exceeds money out…

 

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…then people do accept that, at some stage, something’s going to give…

…but the expected ‘vanishing point’ in the heads of the people who read or watch media, and the companies who buy advertising in it, might be down here…

 

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Yet from a business perspective, if you think that the ‘money in’ is simply going to keep dropping, the best ‘vanishing point’ for you is here…

 

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Hence the sensation of shock when things we like disappear…

It happens before we actually expect it to, even if in the long run we could ‘see it coming’… it’s a very real reminder about the state of flux we find ourselves in.

It did make me wonder though… will seeing some beloved media properties disappear make us more likely to save other we love?

I have, in the past, referred to the fact that “you’re going to miss us when we’re gone” is not a viable business plan… people can’t imagine, or motivate themselves to do anything about, a world without ‘media’ in it.  So when companies say “but you’ll miss us…”, no-one really responds…

 

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But there is perhaps the chance that when some things disappear, the shock they cause and the gap they create in people’s lives will make them more willing to fund the entities that still exist, or indeed regenerate ones that they did miss.

If you know that a magazine or newspaper you liked had disappeared already, and another one was under threat, would you be more inclined to do something about it (sign up for a subscription, say)?

Anyway, it seems that both Mediaweek and Revolution will continue in online forms which, given the nature of the fast-changing world we find ourselves in, I think will work very well for them in the future.

(I’m particularly keen to here more about the proposed “new blogging initiative” for Revolution, which I can really see working as a high frequency news/commentary service like Mashable or ReadWriteWeb.)

And I’d like to wish all involved good luck for the future… see you all in meadja land 🙂

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