این متن را با ذکر تمام تیترهای (تاکید میکنم تمام تیترها) به انگلیسی ساده و روان خلاصه کن   Acceleration of the hit model

In the creative industries success always begets more success, but in an era of globalisation the success can be very big indeed. (Hutton, 2007: 24)

An eternal strategic challenge in the media industry is that content is supremely npredictable. Despite decades of research and increasingly sophisticated arketing techniques, customer tastes are fickle and it is still more or less impossible to predict which products will succeed, and by extension to reliably produce a stream of popular products (although, as discussed in this book,
ompanies like Amazon, Netflix and BuzzFeed are using sophisticated data capture nd analysis techniques to reverse engineer customer content preferences and are sing these insights to drive content creation). But for players whose organisations re not built around data science, content creation remains a game of chance, specially in the book, movie and music sectors.

Content involves alchemy – informational, creative and entertaining elements are ombined in a way that may or may not strike a chord with public taste. It is not possible to fully explain whyTitanicwas a worldwide hit andWaterworld, eleased at a similar point with a similar theme and a similar budget, flopped. The
ule of thumb in the music industry is that 80 per cent of its new releases will fail to over their costs, despite the experience of the executives who signed up the artists oncerned. During Jeffrey Katzenberg’s decade at Disney, of the thousand plus projects he oversaw, just 10 per cent accounted for 91 per cent of the studio’s perating income (Stewart, 2005: 2).

In response to these existential uncertainties, the media industry traditionally mployed two strategic responses. The first, which was followed for decades and is still used in mature sectors with low margins that do not have the resources or infrastructure to play the blockbuster game, is known as the ‘mud against the wall’ formula. This seeks to increase the odds of success by increasing the number of ttempts. In product terms, it means generating high volumes of unique products in the hope that a number of these will spark random interest. Thus publisher Bloomsbury had no idea that the first Harry Potter book would be a bestseller, and its initial print-run was around 500 copies – a standard quantity in book publishing for a first novel by an unknown author.

The primary impulse to create content under this system is creative or artistic, and the underlying assumption is that ‘cream rises to the top’. The market, prompted by ritical acclaim and word-of-mouth recommendation, will find good products and ales will follow as positive word-of-mouth publicity spreads. From an rganisational perspective, this is alaissez-faireapproach: all products receive a ertain amount of time and investment until clear winners appear, at which point arketing attention scales up rapidly. The disadvantage is that resources are spread thinly over a wide range of diverse products and revenues and profitability overall re generally low. The advantage is that such systems allow a wide range of mployees to work creatively, meaning levels of intrinsic motivation tend to be
high. Historical accounts of ‘the golden age’ of book or magazine publishing often describe media organisations operating under this product strategy.

In recent years this model has been replaced by the ‘hit’ or ‘blockbuster’ model. This is a risk reduction strategy that is becoming both more entrenched and more xtreme in the broadcasting and entertainment fields, where blockbusters increasingly dominate the revenues of the largest media firms (Aris and Bughin, 2005). In a blockbuster or hit environment a few media products – bestselling books, blockbuster films, television shows or sports fixtures – generate the bulk of evenues for media organisations, which become disproportionately reliant on these products, and it makes strategic sense to pay high advances and royalties to top content creators and then spur demand by spending aggressively on promotion (Vogel, 1999). Media organisations’ product strategy, then, involves identifying in dvance a handful of products that offer the greatest market potential and then devoting the lion’s share of investment and attention to these.

The primary content-origination impulse under this approach is economic rather than artistic, and the creative and marketing strategies are closely intertwined.
There are two underlying assumptions. First, that larger budgets – for talent, production and marketing – mean larger audiences, and, second, that those udiences choose products according to how heavily they are marketed, that udiences can be ‘herded to the cinema’ (De Vany and Walls, 1999).

A blockbuster strategy imposes a template on content creation. A new concept hould appeal to the largest number of audience groups and eliminate the risk that particular market groups might reject the project. Blockbuster movies illustrate this oncept neatly (Schatz, in Collins et al., 1993). Ideas for new film must have the potential to be reincarnated in different media forms and become a franchise. This dictates the creative components: narratives and characters are simple, plots xplore broad universal themes, and special effects are extremely sophisticated –
to compensate for the simplicity of other elements (cynics have suggested blockbusters are designed to work for sub-literate audiences with short attention pans). There must be soundtracks strong enough to support linked music
downloads and music videos. The term ‘blockbuster’ is inextricably linked with the ‘high concept’, a term attributed to Steven Spielberg. High concept movies appeal to wide audiences and have plots that can be described in a couple of sentences that instantly convey the gist of the movie (thus ‘Bus with a bomb’ is the high concept for the movieSpeed).

Why is the hit model proving so pernicious in the era of user-generated content and iral media? Why is the dynamic becoming more attractive to large media rganisations in the current environment? There are a number of underlying factors. First, audiences have become more fickle as the range of entertainment and leisure ptions has increased. Against this backdrop, the appeal of stars like Adele, who
an guarantee audience attention, grows. Second, technological advances in ecording, processing and transmission have increased the number of multimedia eincarnations that are possible, meaning more outlets to recoup investments and therefore greater leverage for successful products – that is, the potential for conomies of scale. Third, globalisation and the borderless nature of media products mean that the potential market for media products has grown and that the potential for economies of scope has increased. Fourth, consolidation means orporate purses are larger: the media majors have more to invest in content and tronger distribution architectures to support their products. Fifth, what is known as ‘killer content’ has proved to be one of the most powerful means of persuading onsumers to abandon existing patterns of consumption and adopt new technologies
nd products. This has intensified the bidding for certain categories of content, such s key sporting fixtures or movies, to a point where some traditional legacy
players, such as public service broadcasters, can no longer compete. Finally, there is a growing recognition among creative talent of their power in the marketplace nd a desire on their part to negotiate the best deals they can. This is related to the increasing prominence of agents and attorneys in the media and entertainment industries.
 
Demassification and the emergence of the iche

While the largest entertainment organisations continue to seek to perfect ‘one-size- fits-all products’ – blockbusters like Rihanna’s songs, films in theStar Wars franchise,The Game of ThronesTV series or the computer gameGrand Theft
Auto, which will appeal to the largest audience possible – a parallel trend can be bserved, the growth of the niche.

Mass media products are designed to reach large cross-sectional audiences and are based on technologies that allow massive duplication at low cost for huge
udiences (newspaper or printing presses, radio or television networks). Advertisers tend to prefer products that are moderately popular with many and ctively disliked by none – expressed in the television industry as the concept of the ‘least objectionable programming’ (LOP). However, this can only work when the choice of viewing options is limited. Technological advances have reduced the barriers to entry in content creation, made professional-level production tools
idely available, and provided global distribution and promotion architectures. The result is that across all segments, the mass media products – the television hannel, the daily national newspaper, the general-interest magazine – which owed their success to catering to many different groups of consumers simultaneously, have declined in favour of specialised products aimed at specific segments – a development first picked up by broadcasting analysts, who termed it a shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting. The stages in this development are shown in Figure 2.7.

From the 1980s onwards, technological advance increasingly allowed specialised ontent to be matched with specialist audience niches, and audiences embraced this possibility, showing that in many genres of content they prefer targeted products ver generalised ones. Thus, in the UK between 1993 and 2003 the viewing share
f non-terrestrial channels (i.e. niche or specialist ones) increased from 6 per cent to 33 per cent, at the expense of the dominant mass-market networks, BBC 1 and ITV1.

Of course, mass media products still hold appeal. When audiences across all platforms are consolidated, viewership can still be substantial. The global appetite for video content continues to grow, and television is still the dominant advertising
edium (the BBC’s weekly global news and entertainment audience in 2015 was ver 308 million). Some TV series are garnering higher audiences and bigger budgets than movies:Borgen, a Danish drama on the unlikely theme of coalition politics, has been seen in over 70 countries.Mad Menhas reputedly earned over
$100 million in video and iTunes sales, and a further $100 million from Netflix.
Figure 2.7Evolution of media content models
Yet mass media audiences are splintering, driven by new offers based on new technologies. ‘Over the top’ (OTT), video on demand (VoD) and streamed internet TV services are eroding broadcast networks’ monopoly of distributing video ontent to the home. VoD is now present in well over half of US households. These hanges in consumption habits will be mirrored in the advertising market. As Mary Meeker pointed out in her 2016 internet trends report, both TV and print receive a higher percentage of ad spend than time spent on those platforms merits, with a particularly sharp disconnect between time spent on print and the ad spend it
eceives. For mobile media, the misalignment runs in the opposite direction.2
 
Emergent strategic environments

About fifteen years into the digital wave, tectonic plates seems [sic] to drift more apart that ever. On one side, most media brands — the surviving ones — are still struggling with an endless transition. On the other, digital native companies, all with deeply embedded technology, expand at an incredible pace. Hence the central question: can legacy media catch up? What are the most critical levers to pull in order to accelerate change? (Frédéric Filloux, 2014)

The media industry finds itself in a new context, an extremely challenging strategic ituation where long-established revenue streams are diminishing (say, classified ewspaper advertising and sales of print copies, or music CDs), new delivery and onsumption patterns have emerged (including streamed content, time-shifted television viewing and news stories distributed via the Facebook feed). Audiences display very different consumption preferences (for example television watched ccording to traditional linear schedules, on-demand, or all episodes at once via binge viewing) and new demographic groups like Gen Y, Millennials, Silver Surfers, and so on. This has brought media organisations into the strategic force field of giant new players from the tech industry, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

The industry is being transformed as a result. Legacy organisations, or legacy lements of media organisations, are shrinking, digital technologies are permeating ver further into companies’ central nervous systems, tech industry innovation principles (agile methodologies, releasing products in beta versions, and reframing failure as learning) are becoming standard practice.

From a management perspective, these changes mean a very different strategic nvironment, an ‘emergent’ one. Emergent environments are highly uncertain: industry boundaries are unclear, business models are evolving and consumer preferences along with them, and competition can come from hitherto unknown players (Eisenhardt and Brown, 1999; Robins and Wiersema, 2000).

Emergent contexts present a complex management challenge, particularly for incumbents encumbered by their legacy systems and processes. They will need to mbrace new strategic directions that will lead to corporate renewal. They will equire new domain-relevant skills, or new fields of expertise. They will need to
aster new product areas that involve different types of content and different ontent competencies. They will need to be able to strategise more rapidly (even if decisions regarding strategic priorities, technological choices and capital investments must be made with imperfect information) and make their organisations ore agile.

But at the same time as they are damaging existing business models, technological dvances are also creating opportunities. They have lowered barriers to ompetition and allowed new players into the industry. Entirely new categories of products and services have emerged – the iPhone, Snapchat and Twitter would have been inconceivable 20 years ago. ‘Fundamental’ and ‘radical’ are over-used djectives, but they do accurately describe the changes taking place in the media – the development of an entirely different set of technologies for producing, distributing and consuming media.

Figure 2.8Transformations in technology and consumer behaviour put pressure on legacy media organisations
Burgelman and Grove (2012), who have studied such shifts in the IT industry, describe them as ‘strategic inflection points’. They are extremely dangerous for incumbents because they change industry dynamics so irrevocably that business as sual will ultimately mean no business at all. The basis of industry competition has hanged, strategic assets (production and distribution systems, competencies and xpertise) have lost relevance, or even become liabilities. Organisations find themselves in the ‘valley of death’ (see Figure 2.9).

Ideally, they need to make early radical strategic change which involves acquiring ew competencies and a strategy designed for the new environment. This needs areful calibration – if the changes are too radical they may undermine the existing business and revenues or be rejected by some senior managers. If, however, leaders try to navigate the valley by making adjustments but avoiding fundamental hange, there is a significant risk that demand or financial resources may collapse before the company makes it across, or inertia prevents change when it gets there. The art, therefore, is to transform the organisation, to make it across the valley of death before the legacy revenues collapse. An early start, made while legacy evenues are holding up, and fundamental change are critical.

Figure 2.9Crossing the valley of death (based on Burgelman and Grove, 2012)
As this chapter has shown, the traditional media industries are operating in mature ectors with rising costs, declining revenues, increasing competition for audience ttention and evolving technological platforms. To ensure future survival and growth they must adjust to this strategic environment and this will require rganisational transformation – the second part of this book explores various trategic and organisational levers and tools which can help achieve this.