The Media Forest

Trees are falling in the media forest. Can you hear them?

You’ve no doubt heard the riddle: “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound”? I’ve pondered that occasionally, but never more than now.

If the current landscape of media options is “the forest” then once mighty redwoods are falling….one by one.

It doesn’t occur everyday, so you may not have noticed. But slowly but surely the landscape is being remade before our very eyes.

First it seems was Encyclopedia Britannica.

The first editions in the U.S. were printed in Philadelphia in 1790 by Thomas Dobson.
Two hundred years later thousands of salespeople went door-to-door to sell these volumes for more than $1,500 for the entire set of accumulated knowledge. In 1989, the company boasted a sales force of 2,300. In 1990, company revenues hit an all time high of $650 million. Life was very good. In hindsight it was the proverbial calm before the storm.

Enter the PC, the Internet and the digitization of content.

Microsoft Corporation wanted to offer an encyclopedia with its operating system and first sought to license the name and content from Encyclopedia Britannica but was rebuffed. Was it arrogance fostered by 200 years of success? Others called it a lack of awareness and a misjudgment of what consumers really valued.

As a result, Microsoft bought Funk and Wagnall’s in 1992 and launched Encarta in 1993…selling a digital version for about a hundred dollars. Many PC manufacturers gave Encarta away for free with a computer purchase.

In 1998 Encyclopedia Britannica disbanded its massive direct sales force. In 2003, you could get the Encyclopedia Britannica for about one-twentieth of the price you may have paid in the mid-1980’s.

Electronic versions of encyclopedias were more up-to-date, and consumers could easily justify another $49.95 to keep the information fresh and current….something the old printed versions could never do at that price or with that speed.

Encyclopedia Britannica sales in 2000 were $190 million and the company employed only 230 people…a ninety percent reduction in less than a decade.

In June 2005 Thomas Register announced that it was going to be offered exclusively online in 2006. What was once volumes of thick printed material that needed a sturdy shelf to keep it up, it’s now transformed. Thomas Register must have learned a thing or two from watching Encyclopedia Britannica. The president of Thomas Register made a bold statement in 1994 that “We’ve got to get our clients print catalogs up on the World Wide Web”. Today the company promotes it ThomasNet service, builds websites for several industrial firms, offers online local search tools and a host of online business building services for its clients. Smart.

What characteristics do other large redwood businesses have that need to be concerned? Any old line business that possesses rich content that is distributed primarily in print.

1. Think newspapers (whose circulation continues to slide).


2. Think yellow pages (whose monopoly grip will start feeling the pinch of much better search local tools from Google and others).


3. Think trade magazines (whose print business is under pressure and its readers are online at work)

Keep your eye on the forest and listen for those giant “thuds”. Keep your eye on the forest and watch for companies transforming themselves like Thomas Register…avoiding an Encyclopedia Britannica.

photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike