• ↓Tra­di­tion­al me­dia must em­brace dig­i­tal tran­si­tion and pro­duce bet­ter con­tent

• ↓For­mer TV GM calls in me­dia hous­es to pay for sur­veys to ac­cess crit­i­cal da­ta

• ↓Ad agen­cies say tra­di­tion­al me­dia still the most trust­ed source for in­for­ma­tion

Over the last two years there have been ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing at the pri­vate­ly-run me­dia hous­es as the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties of chang­ing tech­nol­o­gy and a shrink­ing ad­ver­tis­ing mar­ket hurt their op­er­a­tions and have left them fight­ing for their eco­nom­ic sur­vival.

COVID-19 has sim­ply ex­ac­er­bat­ed an al­ready chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment but me­dia vet­er­an Bernard Pan­tin has as­sert­ed there is still a place for these es­tab­lish­ments to re­main vi­able if they have the rel­e­vant da­ta to make de­ci­sions.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Pan­tin in­di­cat­ed: “There still re­mains a place for tra­di­tion­al me­dia, and this will con­tin­ue, but it needs to be sup­port­ed by da­ta.”

Ac­cord­ing to Pan­tin, tra­di­tion­al me­dia com­pa­nies need to spend mon­ey im­me­di­ate­ly to get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the true me­dia au­di­ences at this time.

With da­ta, Pan­tin ar­gued prod­ucts can be tweaked, true au­di­ences can be dis­cov­ered and the im­pact and rev­enues can be max­imised as a re­sult of en­gag­ing the right in­for­ma­tion.

Pan­tin point­ed to the main source of rev­enue for lega­cy me­dia com­pa­nies, ad­ver­tis­ing in­come, which has been suf­fer­ing for the last five years, con­cur­rent with the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges im­pact­ing T&T.

It is es­ti­mat­ed over the last ten years to­tal ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue fell by close to 50 per cent, with tele­vi­sion (TV) ad­ver­tis­ing falling by 60 per cent and ra­dio by 33 per cent.

Pan­tin posit­ed that while the de­cline in the T&T econ­o­my con­tributed in a ma­jor way, “the lo­cal me­dia com­pa­nies have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their role in their own demise.”

The for­mer me­dia boss in­di­cat­ed that this is so due to the lack of da­ta. Pan­tin added that the last for­mal­ly com­mis­sioned me­dia sur­vey took place in mid-2014.

He high­light­ed: “Since then, the lo­cal me­dia hous­es have not been able to agree on a time for the next sur­vey. But the re­al­i­ty is that in more re­cent times, they look at sur­veys in terms of cost.”

Pan­tin con­tin­ued to note that this short-sight­ed­ness and ex­plained why the ra­dio and TV busi­ness “has de­clined by more than $150 mil­lion in the last five years.”

But this does not mean peo­ple do not want to con­sume con­tent pro­duced by tra­di­tion­al com­pa­nies, which is in­dica­tive of its vi­a­bil­i­ty, as de­mand is still present.

Sarah In­gle­field, CEO of the ad­ver­tis­ing agency Ogilvy Caribbean said: “Ogilvy Me­dia In­flu­ence’s re­cent glob­al sur­vey of over 200 re­porters and ed­i­tors found tra­di­tion­al me­dia out­lets are still the most trust­ed sources of news over paid, di­rect-to-con­sumer and so­cial chan­nels.”

In­gle­field added that tra­di­tion­al me­dia hous­es must fo­cus on de­liv­er­ing unique and en­gag­ing con­tent to re­tain their au­di­ences. She not­ed that the con­tent must add val­ue.

The Pres­i­dent of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers (TTP­BA) Ki­ran Ma­haraj al­so echoed this sen­ti­ment. Ma­haraj told the BG that au­di­ences of tra­di­tion­al me­dia com­pa­nies are read­ing a lot more. There­fore, she not­ed that it was in­cum­bent on lega­cy me­dia hous­es to cre­ate “con­tent that would trav­el well”.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, con­tent that trav­els well in­cludes sto­ries that have ap­peal and a hid­den per­spec­tive. She added that this means that jour­nal­ists and ed­i­tors need to look be­yond the Caribbean as the re­al­i­ty of liv­ing in a glob­al world po­si­tions lo­cal con­tent with­in a larg­er con­text.

The Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) Bran­don Khan al­so ex­plained to the BG that lega­cy me­dia in gen­er­al, re­mains a pow­er­ful tool that con­tin­ues to in­flu­ence pub­lic be­hav­iour and shape opin­ion.

Khan said that high fixed costs, neg­a­tive in­dus­try growth and high­ly com­pet­i­tive pric­ing char­ac­ter­ize tra­di­tion­al me­dia com­pa­nies in T&T and around the globe.

He ar­gued: “These en­ti­ties are now tasked with re­shap­ing an­ti­quat­ed strate­gies that were the back­bone of these in­sti­tu­tions on­ly a few years ago.” Ac­cord­ing to Khan, in or­der to be suc­cess­ful in the fu­ture, these strate­gies must in­clude re­duc­ing fixed costs while en­sur­ing that con­tent is high­ly com­pet­i­tive.

Guardian Me­dia is the par­ent com­pa­ny of the Trinidad Guardian and the Busi­ness Guardian.

The CEO of One Caribbean Me­dia Ltd (OCM) Dawn Thomas, agreed with Khan. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by the BG, Thomas said: “Lega­cy me­dia needs to align their or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture with the rev­enue re­al­i­ty of their re­spec­tive mar­kets while striv­ing to main­tain the qual­i­ty of their ed­i­to­r­i­al out­put.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Thomas re­marked that a re­view of all of the process­es with­in which these com­pa­nies are en­gaged is re­quired with the aim of max­i­miz­ing ef­fi­cien­cies. De­pend­ing on the size of the me­dia house, Thomas con­tend­ed that, “there may be a need to pur­sue part­ner­ships with oth­er play­ers in the mar­ket since there may be help­ful cost syn­er­gies that could be achieved.”

Thomas not­ed that with the grow­ing con­sump­tion of con­tent on dig­i­tal plat­forms, in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies must be de­vel­oped to mon­e­tize con­tent dis­trib­uted on all so­cial and dig­i­tal me­dia plat­forms.

She posit­ed that, “leg­isla­tive sup­port is re­quired to stop the Tech com­pa­nies from ex­ploit­ing the lo­cal con­tent be­ing gen­er­at­ed.” Thomas added that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion where ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enues of lega­cy com­pa­nies are be­ing swal­lowed by in­creased com­pe­ti­tion from glob­al tech gi­ants.

How­ev­er, Thomas said “the in­dus­try was al­ready un­der tremen­dous pres­sure due to years of eco­nom­ic de­cline.”

Mean­while, Khan said that dig­i­tal me­dia is a new con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel that em­pow­ers con­sumers fur­ther, by pro­vid­ing con­tent on de­mand, con­sumer feed­back, par­tic­i­pa­tion through the cre­ation of con­tent.

He high­light­ed: “With the in­creas­ing ac­cep­tance of dig­i­tal prod­ucts glob­al­ly, cou­pled with the Covid Pan­dem­ic, which has ac­cel­er­at­ed the rate of dig­i­tal adop­tion, tra­di­tion­al me­dia has been forced to re-look and re­think its’ role with­in the me­dia land­scape.”

Khan al­so ex­plained that me­dia com­pa­nies must al­so seek out and adopt strate­gies that mar­ry the tra­di­tion­al with dig­i­tal to en­sure prod­uct rel­e­vance, con­sumer adop­tion and loy­al­ty.

He re­marked that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, while ac­cel­er­at­ing adop­tion of dig­i­tal prod­ucts, has al­so had the ben­e­fi­cial ef­fect of in­creas­ing tele­vi­sion view­er­ship, ra­dio lis­ten­er­ship and con­sump­tion of news­pa­per con­tent around the globe as well as in T&T.