Rupert Murdoch's Big Strategy? Turn Little Media Into Big Media

from the does-that-work? dept

There's been a lot of talk about Rupert Murdoch this year as he's suddenly found the religion of the internet and has decided he needs to pay up to catch up on what he may have missed before buying up just about every available site with some traction and a somewhat youthful audience. So what's he going to do with it all? According to Fortune, it's not entirely clear that he knows himself. It basically sounds like News Corp. is just going to experiment quite a bit. However, the early experiments don't sound too promising. The article seems to focus on two prongs. One is to "differentiate" by adding "web features, like video search, instant messaging, and Internet calling." Yes, read that again: differentiate by adding what everyone else has been doing for years. Hmm. Second is to turn little media into big media. It appears that the mind of a "broadcast" media exec doesn't change quite as easily as he'd led us to believe. The big strategy for MySpace -- a site based on user-created content -- is to turn that content into traditional big media broadcast style content. They're going to create a music label and a film studio to try to pluck out the top content creators on MySpace and turn them into something more. It's an interesting strategy, but seems to be focused on turning what's unique about the internet (the interactivity) into yet another form of broadcast media. That's going the wrong direction. However, this shouldn't be a surprise. The broadcast media has always viewed the internet as yet another broadcast outlet which is why it's reasonable to wonder if this "new" media strategy is really a lot like some old media strategies when it comes to the internet.