Social Media Week in NYC

Yesterday we had a great discussion about the effect of social media on the news industry and in particular on "agenda setting". The panel was composed of a mix of academics and practitioners from traditional media as well as some new entrants. The discussion suggested that it was a little too early to see but we all shared the view that the role of brands in setting the news agenda will be larger in the future. It was a wonderful event thanks to the AP.

The oscars

And just one day after the results The Economist (see article here) does a wonderful analysis of the Oscars putting into perspective the change that slowly happened over the last 10 years and explaining why the industry has become more "open minded" in its praise. The highlights: less risk taken by big studios to create original content, more experimentation, especially by TV series and more openness for indie and foreign productions.

New York City Media Seminar: Vertical integration

At last week's New York City Media Seminar, Greg Crawford from the University of Zurich presented a fantastic paper on vertical integration yesterday. The paper examined whether and when an integrated content owner and content distributor would foreclose their content from a rival distributor. They collected data on the availability of regional sports networks on multi channel cable and satellite services across the US. They definitely find evidence that the integrated entities tend to optimize the joint profit of the enterprise (maybe not fully but almost). Yet, for this particular content it is not obvious that this necessarily leads to foreclosure of content. This depends on the demand (consumers' willingness to pay for the content). The paper is remarkable in its treatment of institutional details - rarely seen in empirical work, especially for such a complicated problem. And, again, it shows that regulation is extremely complex for these industries.http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/media/faculty/researchseminars