Better and more profitable media

By Blanca de Lizaur, PhD, MA, BA, Content specialist.

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Redimensionador de tamaño de fuente

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Redimensionador de tamaño de fuente

La lectura en México

© Satori13
For everybody Para: Magazine

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING SPECTATOR has little to do with the Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution (i.e.: the proliferation of the internet, personal computers, mobile/portable devices, etc.) is currently being blamed for the dramatic sales fall that traditional and electronic media are experiencing. This article, originally published in 1994, witnesses to the unfairness of this myth: The Internet was officially born in 1993, only one year before this article was written, and its reach in Mexico was still scarce at that time; yet media had already been losing sales and audiences steadily –for years in some cases, and for decades in others.

The fact is so evident that few –if any, of the media products’ sales recorded here (including a couple of national newspapers), ever recuperated their previous audiences, and many have disappeared altogether:

Contrary to professionally-generated mainstream-media contents, those internet’s contents that have been generated by the general audience (think of FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, e-mail chains and attachments, and the like), are majoritarianly “clean” (amiable in regards to the general audiences’ values, ideas and beliefs). And people are consuming them massively, close to the verge of addiction.

Society cannot possibly deliver mass media a more conclusive message, or put its case in a stronger way.
What are they waiting for to react accordingly…?

© Yuri Arcurs
For media people Para: Magazine

If it is not the readers’ fault, WHOM SHOULD WE BLAME…?

This article analyzes the consumption of cultural works in Mexico, at the end of the XXth century.
In the years elapsed since it was published, however, the number of copies magazines sell -like national papers’ and other media products’ sales, have plummeted.
Several best-selling magazines it mentions, have disappeared from the market; and others are publishing less than a fourth of the copies they did at that time, as a consequence of the very same issues this article analyzed: Creators, producers and distributors of both “high brow” (elite) and “low brow” (popular) works, have alienated themselves from their audiences, and through the continuous opposition to the latters’ values, ideas and beliefs (through both veiled and overt contestation), they have lost their consumers’ trust. And also their money.

In other words: What this article concluded, is still true, including the fact that people -even the younger generations, are reading… –yes, indeed!; but not what some would like them to read.
In the end, this is more positive for society in many senses, than the consumption of media works that would otherwise have corroded even more, the social and cultural tissue of our countries.
What we have observed is the displacement of average audiences, towards works that better reflect the latter’s values, ideas and beliefs, as we should have expected since the beginning: This facilitates the survival of the larger part of the social group and its culture –the part that has been less influenced by media in general, by the way.

Anyone could have foreseen what has happened, from a social-anthropology or systems-theories’ frames of study –we certainly did, and published it all around, while many stared at us in disbelief. Nowadays media fear for their very survival; but the social-body demonstrates a vigour and an intuition, few would have vowed for. It will soon produce new works, away from dominant content agendas, that most of us (but sadly not all), will love.

Utilizada como portada del vídeo en la sección Multimedia
Multimedia For everybody Para: Videos

When and WHY MASS MEDIA DIE

Many say that the Digital Revolution –the birth of the internet, mobile (cell) phones, etc.– killed traditional electronic media (radio, tv and cinema), as well as paper media.
Nevertheless, when we analyse media sales-and-consumption statistics around the world –and particularly in the Western world, we realize that they started to lose credibility, reach and financial viability, long before the Digital Age.
This talk makes a quick review of seemingly indestructible mainstream media along centuries and decades of our history –many of whom we are still familiar with, and how and why they met their end.