The End of Channel Media

Channel Z realized.

CNN used to be a cable news network.

The New York Times used to be a newspaper.

The Huffington Post used to be a blog.

But that’s not the case anymore.

CNN, New York Times and the Huffington Post (like almost every other major news organization) are no longer defined by their channels.  This is because all of them delivery of multiple channels in multiple formats.  CNN does video, but so does the Times and the Huffington Post.  They all produce text articles.  They all blog.

Channel media doesn’t really exist anymore.

We are now in the era of news delivery companies.  These companies are channel agnostic.  In other words, they deliver the news in multiple formats (text, video, photos, images, audio) through multiple vehicles (news articles, blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates, slideshows, infographics and even email) to multiple channels (websites, blogs, social networks, broadcast channels, forums, print, etc.).

The New York Times typifies the new 21st century news delivery company.  Here’s a sampling of how the Times delivers on this vision:

• It publishes a print edition newspaper delivered to more than 1.2 million subscribers.  The newspaper is responsible for producing thousands of text articles each week.

• The Times publishes a website that averages about 15.5 million unique visitors per month.

• The Times produces hundreds of videos every week (published on the website and for its smartphone and tablet applications) and hosts a weekly TV series called NYTV (which can also be found on YouTube).

• The Times has more than 65 blogs on its website on everything from politics and football to recipes and science.

• The Times has a Facebook page filled with reproduced content from other channels as well as original content that has more than two million likes.

• The Times creates interactive content hubs for different news events that is promoted and accessed from different venues.  For example, the Times created a Super Bowl Dashboard on its website that was a mixture of live blogging and tweeting, Facebook status updates, video and still images.

• The Times produces news applications for smartphones and tablets with interactive and multimedia content

There are many other examples, but you get the picture.  The New York Times has grown way beyond the description of newspaper.  And the same holds true for CNN as a cable network or the Huffington Post as a blog.

All of these organizations are news delivery companies – pushing out their content on every channel and in every format possible.

And that’s why brands need to start doing the same thing.

Links:

New York Times “Print News Organizations Plunge into Live Video”

NYTV on YouTube

New York Times blog directory

New York Times Super Bowl dashboard