It’s been quite some time since I wrote Part 1 and Part 2 of this little series. A little thing happened in the intervening time… I left local TV.
It was time for a new challenge, although I didn’t really know what that looked like. I was pretty darn sure that it didn’t involve staying in media, but as I know all too well, predictions are sometimes wrong. I’m a senior weather producer for Spectrum News, a member of a digital team that produces content for their app.
I suppose this last challenge is a fitting one, since Charter Communications has launched Spectrum News in several new markets in recent years. For established media in that market, it was somebody coming trying to take a piece of their pie. For Spectrum, it was an opportunity to expand reach (and, putting on my employee hat, a value-add for Charter subscribers).
The third challenge: new entrants.
Attention is a zero-sum game. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Someone paying attention to Netflix for an hour means that hour is not spent paying attention to something else.
(Curiously enough, as I write this, Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants is sitting next to me; I picked it up from the library an hour ago and haven’t even cracked it open.)
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Obviously, the fragmentation of media has had huuuuge implications. With so many options on how to spend our time, including how and where to inform ourselves (or to choose not to, for that matter), fighting for those eyes and ears becomes an ever-greater challenge.
Weather information is becoming more and more of a commodity… and with that, weather consumers are, as well. People need weather information for all sorts of reasons, whether it’s something as general as “what do I wear today?” or as specific as “how much irrigation is necessary and at what time?”
Companies are finding ways to create new markets or products of weather information. Where weather data wasn’t used before, it’s now becoming an integral part of the business model. Meteorological insight can help inform decisions on demand, for example.
It’s not just businesses that want customized information tailored to their individual needs, though. People want that, too. Partly cloudy and a high of 75 gets the job done in general, but there’s that “what do I need to know, how will the weather affect my day and my plans?” that’s oh-so-important. An audience that’s traditionally belonged to local media (and, to some extent, some national providers such as The Weather Channel and AccuWeather) is a big target for outsiders.
What’s to stop some other entrant from looking for media’s weak spots and attacking those weak spots to get market share? Just because local media are an 800-pound gorilla doesn’t mean they’re invincible. Those ships turn slowly and somebody more limber who can iterate faster and isn’t beholden to traditional thinking and methods could, with the right skills and good timing, make inroads into grabbing some of the local media weather consumers.
Disruption is always happening. Adapt or die. If somebody new has a better offering, something that’s more worthwhile of one’s attention, then that’s attention being shifted. Local media can’t afford to let some new guys come in and take even more of the ever-shrinking pie. Weather consumers are too numerous, too important, to let slip away.