Media And Information

Front 1

What was the world's largest private company in the 18th Century?

Back 1

Thurn und Taxis Postal Firm: Postla - Monopoly in Hapsburg territories, forgotten today

Front 2

What was the world's largest private company in the 19th Century?

Back 2

Western Union: telegraph

- monopoly in usa, started in 1851

by 2006 insignificant, telegraph service ended

Front 3

What was the world's largest public company in most of the 20th Century?

Back 3

AT&T
- Built and owned 80% of all telephones and access lines U.S.
- 2005 On the ropes, bought out for a mere $16 billion by SBC, which renamed itself AT&T inc.

Front 4

What was world's largest mass media company in 1950?

Back 4

RCA

Front 5

What do these fir have in common?

Back 5

they're all media/information firms and they've all disappeared.

Front 6

Are managers well regarded in creative fields?

Back 6

No, considered "suits," "Bean counters," "narro-minded"

Front 7

What are the commonalities among all businesses?

Back 7

Raise funds, select projects, hire employees, arrange for inputs, control costs, create outputs, price htem, market them, account for the results, etc.

Front 8

What was the industrial industry an extension of?

Back 8

Human physical strength

Steam engine - muscles
Product machinery - arms
railroads, cars, planes - legs

Front 9

Muscle power led to...

Back 9

Machine Power

Front 10

Mass production led to ...

Back 10

rising living standards

Front 11

social strife led to...

Back 11

urbanization

Front 12

information revolution is an extension of what ?

Back 12

Human mental strength

Front 13

in which areas does the information revolution act as an extension?

Back 13

-Logical processing
-memory
-communication
-senses

Front 14

What were the technology drivers of the industrial revolution?

Back 14

Steam engine in 1712

Front 15

what are the technology drivers of the information revolution

Back 15

the ability to manipulate subatomic particles - Creation of devices that harness these particles for useful functions and then string together devices

Front 16

Is there a large or small rate of change currently?

Back 16

Enormous, processor power adn memory power costs in 2010 less than 1/100,000,000 than it did in 1971

Front 17

What is the second major driver of the technological revolution?

Back 17

People, 90% of all scientists who ever lived are living today, in this year alone more research articles were written than in the entire human history before 1900.

Front 18

Are we at the beginning, middle , or end of technology age?

Back 18

Beginning.

Front 19

How has the history of information production in western cultures trended over the years?

Back 19

average in -1000 BCE, peaked around -400 BCE, dipped to all time low at 1000 AD, then has been on the rise ever since

Front 20

What are the 3 basic types of functions with value chain, with associated industries?

Back 20

Content production
distribution platforms
devices

Front 21

What was the breakdown of the us information industry sector in 2008?

Back 21

Content industries: 360 BIl
Distribution industries: 500 bil
Device industries: 100 bil

total: 1 trillion

Front 22

What are the classic factors (sectors) of production?

Back 22

- Capital (Capitalists)
- Labor (workers)
- Land ( land owners)
- and now INFORMATION (creative class)

Front 23

Does the information sector have economic/social theories equivalent to the ones for finance, labor economics, real estate, and spatial studies? If so, why? if not, why not?

Back 23

No. Information has no real body of theory as an input and output that could be used for managment analysis and decision making

Front 24

What are two types of studies that call themselves information theory?

Back 24

- that of techonlogists: how to squeeze more bits into a pipe
- that of economists about risk and uncertainty

Front 25

what can be said about the fixed and marginal costs of media information?

Back 25

High fixed costs, low (often declining) marginal costs. expensive to make, cheap to reproduce.

Front 26

What are the business implications of this fixed costs/marginal cost situation?

Back 26

- many large firms
- incentives to acquire large size by M&A
- Incentives to piracy
- large "consumer surplus" in competition
- incentive to price discriminate among customers
- competitive prices often unprofitable

Front 27

Has the media production industry become more converged or diversified?

Back 27

Converged,

Front 28

What are the business implications of the media industry having shifted towards more converged or diversified?

Back 28

- competitive pressures
- incentives to conglomerate firms

Front 29

Are the cost trends in the value chain of media divergent or convergent?

Back 29

Radically Divergent cost trends. Distribution and devices are subject to rapidly increasing economies of scale

Front 30

Is content production subjection to increasing or decreasing economies of scale?

Back 30

DECREASING, much easier to produce content.

Front 31

Is information subject to accelerating or deaccelerating returns?

Back 31

Accelerating. Information is exponential and cumulative, therefore a media product, once created, becomes a part of the human stock of knowledge. H

Front 32

How has information production and accumulation trended in western cultures?

Back 32

from -1000 - 200 it increased, from 500- 1300 it dipped, and until now it is increasing rapidly.

Front 33

Is there too little or too much information in the media climate?

Back 33

Excess supply. More information than there are consumers.

Front 34

how does production increase?

Back 34

exponentially.

Front 35

How does consumption increase?

Back 35

linearly and slowly.

Front 36

What are the implications of today's availability of information in comparison to consumer's interest?

Back 36

- competition for attention, mindshare
- content style/marketing must change to meet consumer demands

Front 37

What did Herbert Simon say about the Economics of Attention?

Back 37

"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. "

Front 38

In comparison to 1998, do more or less new products make it to bestsellers lists, reach the top audience rankings, or win platinum disc?

Back 38

Fewer than half.

Front 39

Is there an increase or decrease in specialization and customization of media content?

Back 39

increase

Front 40

Is there an increase or decrease in marketing and production effort currently?

Back 40

increase

Front 41

Are costs rising or falling per use, does it cost more or less to gain a user's interest ?

Back 41

more.

Front 42

Are media business more or less reliant on networks?

Back 42

Much more, creates network effects.

Front 43

Does demand increase or decrease on account network effects?

Back 43

INcreases with the size of the network. the more peopel that are on teh network, more people are willing to pay.

Front 44

Is the demand change on account of network facts normal or reversed?

Back 44

Reversed. demand curve looks like a U, not the other way around as usual.

Front 45

do network effects increase or decrease the barrier to entry?

Back 45

INcrease.

Front 46

What are the implications of network effects?

Back 46

Size is important, the larger the better
- market share is important, definite first mover advantage
- interconnectivity is important

Front 47

Is the distribution of performance in teh media sector normal or non-normal?

Back 47

non- normal

Front 48

What is the 80-20 rule?

Back 48

80% of films, books, and music do not generate enough of an audience to become profitable.

Front 49

what is hte 90-10 rule?

Back 49

90% of all profits come from 10% of the products.
50% of all profits come from 1-2% of the products.

Front 50

Does teh statistical distribution of media perforamcne act in accordance wiht a Gauss Distribution or a Pareto Distribution?

Back 50

Pareto. payoff is extremely high for lucky few, low for the long tail

Front 51

What are the key features of intellectual Capital?

Back 51

1) Not inherently a scarce resource
2) Proliferates, rather than depletes, with use (non-rival consumption)
3) Often enhanced when shared among organizations (network effects)

Front 52

What are some problems that arise when dealing with intellectual capital?

Back 52

- hard to control the access to information becuase it is non-physical
- it is easy to share the product
- together, there are the classic economic characteristics of public goods

Front 53

What are the implications of Intellectual Capital?

Back 53

Tough to charge for information, difficult to protect property rights, media products often given away rather than sold (what non-media sector gives away its products?)

Front 54

Are there non-maximizers of profit present in the media sector?

Back 54

Yes. Producers get utility from the creation of the product and it is often hard to distinguish production from consumption.

Front 55

Does media production follow the economic theory that is based on profit maximizers on the profit side? Is there usually utility maximziation on the consumption side? if not, what replaces this.

Back 55

No. Often, in media production a key incentive is peer recognition, closer to utility maximization than profit maximization.

Front 56

What is the implication of the fact that non-maximizers of profit are present in the information environment

Back 56

- managers need to reconcile these two conflicting goals of their employees and customers

Front 57

Does government often get involved in media or usually stay out of it?

Back 57

gets involved! Strong need to manage gov't relations

Front 58

For media products, is the average or mean teh most probable outcome?

Back 58

No, in fact thae average is dominated by rare, extreme outcomes and is quite far above the most probably outcome.

Front 59

Is media and information more likely to inflate or deflate in price?

Back 59

Deflate, information wants to be free. It's getting cheaper adn becoming difficult to charge anything for it!

Front 60

In which areas are prices dropping?

Back 60

Phone calls, bandwidth, software, semiconductors, IT devices

Front 61

What two big outcomes does price inflation have in the media sector?

Back 61

1. Volatility of prices
2. Istability of the entire information sector.

Front 62

Is information adn media based on real, physical products or intellectual capital?

Back 62

intellectual capital.

Front 63

What are three jobs of universities?

Back 63

1) Create knowledge and evaluate its validity
2) preserve information
3) pass it on to others

Front 64

Has the higher education system changing a lot throughout history or remained stable until now?

Back 64

stable for about 2500 years

Front 65

is today's production and distribution of information undermining or helping traditional flow of information?

Back 65

Undermining it.

Front 66

Which sides of universities will be most affected by upcoming change? Least?

Back 66

On the teaching side, the greatest negative impacts will be on mass undergraduate and professional education and on highly specialized and advanced fields. Least affected will be contact-intensive programs such as selective and tutorial-based liberal arts education (especially if it is backed by healthy endowments) as well as skill training that requires hands-on instruction and feedback, and small but stable fields of graduate study that are not lucrative for commercial providers.n the research side of the university, least affected will be fields that do not experience rampant growth and specialization, and where the various researchers share a strong core. (They will be financially squeezed, however, by the loss of cross-subsidies from previously grant-rich parts of the university). Most affected will be highly specialized research, where keeping up-to-the-minute is critical. This is not to say that research requiring physical teams and shared equipment still often be located on campus. But the research units involved will connect primarily to other units elsewhere in academia, industry, and government. The university then exists as a sort of office park of semi-autonomous units, each a soft-money tub on its own bottom. The administration of universities is then likely to be even more decentralized than today, and partly run from a distance by telecommuting staff and specialized subcontractors.

Front 67

Is social media trending towards more or less social climate?

Back 67

less, privacy settings make the interactive social experience much more private.

Front 68

Are corporations likely to scale in the future?

Back 68

Yes, many companies will use outlets like Twitter to cut costs, such as using it as an outlet for customer support.

Front 69

Is social networking trending towards community or competition?

Back 69

Competition. Many companies like Foursquare use competitive incentives to increase usership.

Front 70

Will your employer really care about your facebook page?

Back 70

yes, in fact many will have policies restricting what you can and can't do/post.

Front 71

Are social media sites like facebook being accessed more or less via mobile device?

Back 71

More, much more.

Front 72

Will social networks act more or less like email in the future?

Back 72

More, many already allow mass broadcasts, and it could feasibly replace email in the future.

Front 73

Did consumer expenditure on leisure and entertainment rise or decrease from 2001-2008?

Back 73

Rose, by 38%.

Front 74

Are consumer tastes or digitization driving media meltdown?

Back 74

Digitization. Tastes are the same but because there is more information, consumer demand is stronger and therefore competition for ad revenues is steeper. It has damaged the extant monetization model, which worked for advertisers and publishers.

Front 75

is TV in jeopardy, too?

Back 75

No, it's actually increasing in terms of people watching.

Front 76

are users completely abandoning traditional entertainment mediums?

Back 76

No, not entirely, but they are certainly in decline.

Front 77

Will young users pay?

Back 77

yes, for the right product.

Front 78

Which industries will struggle through the media turn?

Back 78

- Businesses that are over-reliant on advertising revenues alone will struggle.
- Digital transactional models are struggling, too.
- · Sellers are still overvaluing much of their online catalog. Users are prepared to pay a premium for great content, as evidenced by the numbers of consumers who subscribe to pay TV and for live events. But for most users, most content would appear to have little individual value, and this mismatch between buyers’ and sellers’ valuation of digital content will be tough to resolve. Sellers do not want to cannibalize other revenue streams by undercutting themselves, but buyers are reluctant to pay the same for intangible digital content as for physical media. Consumers, it seems, are happier to pay for access to content than for content directly.

Front 79

what are effective ways to make money through media?

Back 79

· Subscription models are a much more effective way to generate revenues for certain content.
- Bundling will be key to future media monetization. Both bundling of content services into a wider household subscription — such as BSkyB’s triple play of pay TV, broadband, and voice
— and the bundling of content services into a broadband package — as Danish ISP TDC has initiated with its free and unlimited Play music service — will help content providers retain subscribers.
- Successful media companies will build multiple revenue streams across multiple platforms.
One major lesson from the media meltdown is not to rely on one source of revenue alone.
- Programming — and great content — will still drive success.
- Content brands will be crucial. Just as programming skills will drive engagement with content, so will a clearly defined brand proposition, whether it is a newspaper or a TV channel.

Front 80

By what margin has traffic to online news sites jumped in 2008?

Back 80

27%