Folge 162: Sterbende Demokratien, Sieg der Creator Economy, falsche Debatten – Tag eins der MEDIENTAGE MÜNCHEN

00:00:00: I think the words that come to mind is that it is intense.

00:00:07: It is also exhilarating from the perspective of being an organization of journalists that are really motivated by covering the most exciting stories.

00:00:23: And there are a lot of them today.

00:00:26: And it is actually the pace.

00:00:32: It is relentless in Washington and so it can also be exhausting.

00:00:37: But

00:00:37: on day one, it was not only about the rather concerning analysis of the situation, but also about how we can deal with it.

00:00:55: We will hear about this in this episode, among others.

00:01:09: Wolfram Weimar, Jagoda Marienic, Jeff Jarvis and in the second part a conversation with Evan Shapiro about the creator economy.

00:01:18: Very interesting.

00:01:19: Now, let's get

00:01:20: started.

00:01:24: This is Media

00:01:24: Now.

00:01:26: The update for all

00:01:27: the media.

00:01:38: My name is Lukas Schöne and I welcome you to this episode of our podcast.

00:01:44: Yes, it's that time of year.

00:01:46: I'm sitting here in the Podcast Studio in the House of Communication.

00:01:50: Day one of the media days has just come to an end, where I record this and the night of the media is about to start.

00:01:57: But I would like to give you a few more highlights of the first conference day together so that if you weren't there, you can get a little impression of the conference for whatever reasons.

00:02:08: This first day it had, as usual, in itself, especially with the large opening summit, where also BLM President Dr.

00:02:18: Thorsten Schmiegel's thoughts on the motto, What the Future, was revealed.

00:02:23: I look into the USA,

00:02:24: the

00:02:24: one and only democracy, where I now mix the state-owned views into the program design.

00:02:33: and with us in Europe, in Germany, we can really be satisfied.

00:02:38: I'm concerned that we have more and more of that feeling.

00:02:43: You can no longer participate in public discussions in fear of hate and hate.

00:02:48: Even for us, if we have more and more of the classical media, because you have that feeling, you are no longer represented, you are no longer understood by the classical media, and especially for us.

00:03:00: about the public right to vote, which is also legally more and more under pressure.

00:03:05: And at the same time, the most important question is, how should reliable media finance themselves in

00:03:32: the future?

00:03:33: In a time when I clearly say, where they are more important, where they are needed more than ever, to make a functioning democracy a stable society, short, What the Future.

00:03:53: Yeah, what the future.

00:03:55: I

00:03:57: know eight minutes is already a lot for the Munich media day and in these times anyway because in eight minutes Google earns six million euros and at the end of the eight minutes it will be a little more than at the beginning because Google is growing this huge machine and for the duration of the media days Google will have done as much turnover as pro-seven-sat-one concerns throughout the year, with the first of my three greetings of the day, the first goes from brand the current reasons for Silvio Per Belosconi, whom I warmly greet over the Alps.

00:04:34: Dear Mr.

00:04:34: Belosconi, we had intensive and, in the end, good talks both in the Chancellor's Office in Berlin and, in particular, here in Munich with our Prime Minister, Söder.

00:04:48: Maybe, dear Mr.

00:04:48: Belosconi, you don't know our Söder yet.

00:04:50: But you should know that he is a true lion.

00:04:53: And he has a special eye on strong media, because he really fights for it.

00:04:59: And that's why it's good that you promised us to really strengthen the prosaic position of Munich.

00:05:07: We will have an eye on it.

00:05:09: We are sure

00:05:10: that

00:05:11: you will keep the statements and want to see the Bavarian media view and our lions happy.

00:05:20: That's smart and good for ProSieben, but that's also important for our media stand in Munich and Germany in general.

00:05:27: Yes, said Löwe, Markus Söder, was also at the summit of the media day as a guest and he was talking about a topic that Weimar has just talked about at the beginning.

00:05:37: The market makes big companies like Google.

00:05:40: We're talking about competition and

00:05:42: partner.

00:05:44: The alle fünf Nummern größer sind als wir.

00:05:46: Wir haben das zugelassen, aus wegen Gründen noch immer, wo das ist stärker sind.

00:05:48: Und deswegen müssen wir uns in diesem Wettbewerb bewähren.

00:05:50: Natürlich können wir mit Regulationen arbeiten.

00:05:52: Natürlich können wir bei uns machen.

00:05:54: Aber jetzt schauen Sie mal ehrlich.

00:05:56: Wir haben in Bayern die hervorragende Landeszentrale für neue Medien.

00:06:00: Von Professor Ringe auf den Weg gebracht, Schmiege heute großartig geführt.

00:06:05: Wir entscheiden über kleine Frequenzen für Radiosender

00:06:10: in

00:06:10: Bamberg, in Aschaffenburg, in Nürnberg, in Traunstein.

00:06:15: All great.

00:06:17: We have media state contracts that last about a half, three quarters of a year until you can change a comma.

00:06:23: Because we Bundesländern look very closely at it.

00:06:27: We Bavaria look at it, that it corresponds to our interests, the North Rhine-Westphalia look at it, that it corresponds to your interests and many others.

00:06:33: It's worse,

00:06:34: because the few media stations we have.

00:06:36: So, all good.

00:06:37: But the speed and the regulation is just ridiculous.

00:06:42: when we look at it, when I ask my children, all full-year students, how do you inform yourselves in Estonia?

00:06:51: Then the core answer is about platforms.

00:06:53: And that's why the dimension of our regulation is small.

00:07:01: In Germany, in the media, it's simply anachronistic.

00:07:06: And we need a different approach to the basics.

00:07:10: And for Europe, it's like, my trust in European regulation eats itself from the experiences with other regulatory fields in Europe.

00:07:19: And that's gross.

00:07:19: Because in the case of doubt, there are extremely close limits.

00:07:24: I am a person, forgive me if I say that, I rather believe in freedom.

00:07:29: and I would rather find the way to create more investment, more freedom, own counter-arguments, find competition at eye level, create more possibilities, and use regulation, if so, to create competition benefits for us, but not just stand in the corner, suffer

00:07:50: and

00:07:51: make it annoying.

00:07:53: These are the others too strong.

00:07:54: You have to be stronger to be able to talk to others at eye level.

00:07:58: That's the only thing we're trying to do,

00:08:01: otherwise this rail... Yes, it's a huge mess.

00:08:03: On the one hand, the market makes the big platform certainly only oppose something, if you work together strong bonds and also take over like Skydorch RTL or ProSiebenSat.Eins through Media for Europe are a sign for it.

00:08:16: On the other hand, it is especially the local.

00:08:20: Markus Söder has also spoken about it, often the strength.

00:08:23: And especially there would be effect of serious media important in polarized times.

00:08:28: A topic that also Goli Shekoslami from Politico is very concerned

00:08:36: about.

00:08:41: world and increasingly polarized environment in the United

00:08:45: States.

00:08:46: I was speaking with someone last night, and I think that in the United States, and there was actually a story about it in my feed this morning, One of the main reasons for this polarization, there are multiple reasons, one of them being actually the complete sort of decimation of the local news ecosystem in the United States.

00:09:06: So over the last, you know, twenty years, nearly forty percent of local news organizations in the United States have gone away.

00:09:16: And I think that, you know, the fact that The only access to news

00:09:21: is

00:09:22: national news, which is usually the more polarizing conversations and not local news that really brings the community together, I think is a challenge.

00:09:35: Talk a lot about you know in America and think a lot about how do we make sure that we are supporting the local ecosystem so that there is healthy conversation in

00:09:59: the community.

00:10:24: And I think that I presumed that scale mattered.

00:10:27: that size

00:10:28: was important, that if you weren't big, you didn't matter.

00:10:32: I think that's a dire mistake in society.

00:10:34: That's not a pluralistic view of society.

00:10:37: That's a monolithic view of society.

00:10:41: So number one, and I started a program with my colleague, Kerry Brown, in Engagement Journalism.

00:10:47: I think we have to change the relationship that we have with the public.

00:10:51: Number two, I think we have to bring media down to a human scale.

00:10:55: Number three, this is a hard lesson.

00:10:58: I think we have to teach ourselves that we are not in the content business.

00:11:03: Content is a Gutenberg era notion.

00:11:06: It fills things.

00:11:08: It has a beginning and an end, an alpha and an omega.

00:11:11: It's a logical progression.

00:11:13: And I don't think that we're in the content business.

00:11:15: I think in journalism, we are a service.

00:11:18: We are a service to communities.

00:11:20: And that we need to help communities.

00:11:24: Not only understand themselves, that's our ego, but also feel heard, be able to talk, be able to communicate.

00:11:51: My message is not cheery.

00:11:53: It's depressing.

00:11:55: Democracy is dying in America.

00:11:58: And mass media are dead.

00:12:00: They don't know it, but they're dead.

00:12:03: And

00:12:05: the total picture for media in the US is troubling from a business sense.

00:12:10: We know that.

00:12:11: Most American newspaper chains are now owned by hedge funds, which do not invest.

00:12:16: Radio is a dead medium.

00:12:18: Television, the audience is geriatric, is old and dying.

00:12:25: We now see that the Ellison's, whom I call the mini Murdochs, have taken over

00:12:35: CBS

00:12:36: and are bringing in far-right management there.

00:12:40: They're likely to take over CNN as well.

00:12:43: Our escape from that should be social media, but now of course they control tiktok.

00:12:48: Meanwhile the Murdochs spent three point three billion dollars to keep their far right wing publications far right wing.

00:12:58: And the most depressing of all to me is that in my view the New York Times is failing us.

00:13:04: When Trump was in the Oval Office demanding that his enemies be prosecuted and his legal people just stood by, the New York Times called this a diorama of power dynamics.

00:13:18: No, it's fascism.

00:13:20: At the Charlie Kirk funeral, they called it an extraordinary fusion of government and Christianity.

00:13:28: No, it's white Christian nationalism.

00:13:33: They said about Epstein.

00:13:37: They said the latest revelations so complicate Trump's sweeping denials about Epstein.

00:13:46: Meanwhile, if you read Dietzeit, their headline on the same story was Luger zu viel.

00:13:54: as a positive example, as the example of the time has just shown.

00:13:59: And another point is that

00:14:14: journalists often say, we want to win back trust.

00:14:20: And that's the way it is.

00:14:33: For if you were black or Latino or immigrant or LGBTQ or disabled, it wasn't the way it was for you.

00:14:40: You

00:14:40: weren't represented there.

00:14:41: Mass media was the media of people who look like me, old white men.

00:14:46: So we didn't have this trust.

00:14:48: Voices were not heard there.

00:14:50: And she also spoke to Markus Söder, who previously gave an interview in the Gipfel, that he had given to the portal Nius.

00:15:21: In a way, it was called that he would also give an interview

00:15:26: to the TATS,

00:15:27: for example.

00:15:28: I observe that we actually reproduce this very randomly, that in broad parts we take spin-offs or have the phenomenon that the medium that Mr.

00:15:38: Söder previously saw in front of the TATS.

00:15:42: That I would like to use to do my freedom of opinion and the freedom of opinion to do that again.

00:15:47: That I don't think that's right.

00:15:50: That I see very big differences there.

00:15:52: But that we have media that want exactly what you see in the USA.

00:15:56: You have some kind of a spin.

00:15:57: You sit with Jal and drive the other media, the social media, in front of you.

00:16:04: And I say to him, it's like a ping-pong.

00:16:06: We already had that at the first evening of Donald Trump.

00:16:08: He wakes up in the morning, throws out some kind of a treat and the whole... And there we are right now.

00:16:12: For me it's the big task.

00:16:13: the media and everyone who has to do with it, also in the social media, how do I get a step over it?

00:16:23: So how do I get to the meta level, to the ping-pong, that at the moment, right-authentic, right-extreme and right-extreme external forces are very good with flat-the-zone, this shit practice?

00:16:35: How do we get out of there and into the agenda setting?

00:16:38: And that's the moment for me, the crisis of discussion, we are reproducing at the moment, actually only the polarization.

00:16:44: In fact, we always want to do something against it.

00:16:47: but always stronger.

00:16:48: We have much more to discuss than pro con.

00:16:53: But to get there, we really need a piece of calm, a piece of meta-level.

00:16:58: And really, with every message I have to ask myself, do I have to get away from it?

00:17:04: How will I manage, in the sense of how broad I am the angle, how much longer I am the angle?

00:17:09: And that is already the crisis of the discussion culture for me, but no one that we could

00:17:16: not master.

00:17:19: Yes, more perspectives, debates, not only black and white think, with the people in exchange, other opinions, that are the recipes.

00:17:28: By the way, also for Oliver Kalkhofe, the satirist and comedian was also at the summit as a guest and has expressed that in his own way.

00:17:37: The fear

00:17:39: of the sender in front of the shitstorm, there were always, actually a beautiful book title, but we should think of the old rules, who is panicking in the shitstorm, let the shit just spray even more and everything gets much worse.

00:17:59: Who?

00:17:59: If you just stand upright, you can take a shower afterwards and stand still.

00:18:05: We might notice that and maybe we just accept it as a controversy, even if it annoys you.

00:18:11: Let's say, well, and, yes, people can get angry at each other,

00:18:16: but let's

00:18:16: just try... as media, to take people seriously and to give them the opportunity to think on their own, so that we don't always simplify and shorten everything and reduce them to travel times.

00:18:33: Maybe we should learn not to jump on every incineration train immediately and crush the pipes, but maybe for the first time a shitstorm to question himself before we distribute him with the medial ventilator.

00:18:51: Because it is very clear, of course, that it looks stupidly good.

00:18:59: Everyone knows that.

00:19:01: It brings coal and quota.

00:19:02: But we don't have to wonder at some point if the people continue to shoot the ball exactly as we have

00:19:15: played it.

00:19:15: And at the same time, it is important to take up the competition with digital giants.

00:19:20: We have heard it at the beginning with cooperation, with key regulations and with investments.

00:19:27: And everything to keep this decisive media and opinion diversity.

00:19:31: That was the big topic in the media days on the first day.

00:19:37: Well, if it's nothing to us.

00:19:38: And that's all.

00:19:40: Why, Markus Söder?

00:19:41: Without media, it's boring and that's why we need it urgently.

00:19:44: Yes, so much to do

00:19:45: for the media industry.

00:19:47: And we haven't really talked about artificial intelligence yet in this podcast.

00:19:54: Very good, that's still coming.

00:19:54: But don't worry, also KI is of course a big topic for the media days.

00:20:01: There it will be in the next episode and coming a little more.

00:20:11: I'm looking forward to seeing a few guests again this year in the podcast studio at the Medientagen München, so that we can talk a little bit more about one or the other topic.

00:20:22: And at the beginning of this year Evan Shapiro.

00:20:27: Evan is already a guest at the Medientagen for the third time, which makes us really, really happy.

00:20:38: I think you can say that he is the Medienuniversum.

00:20:58: Let's call it that.

00:21:00: Analyzed like no other.

00:21:02: About him it means that he has been developing for a long time, especially for others.

00:21:05: And why is that?

00:21:06: Because he values incredibly much data about the media world and then in his... famous, well-known maps in his maps, which are supposed to represent this part of the media universe.

00:21:16: If you haven't seen that yet, I'll

00:21:17: put a link in the show notes.

00:21:18: You

00:21:18: can have a look at that.

00:21:19: Evan, we speak before you talk on stage at Media Target today.

00:21:24: You talk about the new normal of media industry.

00:21:27: What is the new normal of media industry?

00:21:31: The new normal of the media industry is this collision or melding of what we've traditionally called the creator economy, which is media that's produced primarily or exclusively for social media and social video and mainstream media.

00:21:49: And these two ecosystems are melding into one.

00:21:55: Even for mainstream popular culture like movies or television or music, the vast majority of the excitement initially for that intellectual property starts on social platforms.

00:22:11: And increasingly for consumers under the age of millennials, And I think it's important to understand that seventy percent of the world's population are millennials and younger now.

00:22:25: Those consumers aren't just learning about popular culture on social platforms, they're actually consuming more and more of mainstream culture on social video, on TikTok, on YouTube, on Instagram.

00:22:40: First, if not exclusively.

00:22:42: And I think there's been resistance from mainstream media to allow that to happen.

00:22:51: There's been resistance.

00:22:53: There's been this thought that, well, if they watch there, they'll never watch on the traditional platforms of broadcast or pay TV.

00:23:01: And the answer to that is, for the most part, millennials, Gen Z, Gen A, probably will not consume mainstream media the same way that their parents or their grandparents did.

00:23:15: And so the new normal is a collision, is a melding, is a melting together of traditional media, television, film, radio.

00:23:25: and creator economy platforms, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, into one ecosystem.

00:23:32: I like to call it the affinity economy, where fandom is the primary objective and the primary motivator.

00:23:40: But call it whatever you want.

00:23:41: There is this new mixture of the two ecosystems.

00:23:44: About this fandom thing, we will talk later on a little bit because I find it very interesting.

00:23:51: You create your famous maps, maybe the listeners.

00:23:55: saw one or two of them before and your current map is the map about the creator ecosphere and you said after you presented it the term creator economy it's under understood.

00:24:11: what do you mean by that?

00:24:12: why is it under understood and what is the creator economy?

00:24:16: we talk a lot about them.

00:24:17: Yeah, I mean, there's there's that's a lot to unpack.

00:24:20: Mostly what's under under understood or not understood about the creator economy is that it's just influencers doing makeup tutorials or, you know, kids doing dances.

00:24:36: Increasingly, it is a an ecosphere of artists.

00:24:43: So podcasters, I think, are in my mind, considered the quintessential creators.

00:24:49: They are their own producers, oftentimes they're their own marketing agencies, often they're their own sales agents.

00:24:56: And so, I think anyone who makes content and puts it out directly to their consumers, I would consider a creator.

00:25:06: And I think if you look at someone like a Taylor Swift, who refinanced her entire song library, to take it back from the mainstream publishers and then self-released her own concert movie.

00:25:21: Now, she's a huge star, but she self-funded it, self-released it, and it's now the most popular concert film of all time.

00:25:31: That is a creator endeavor Enoch's tag who is a creator kind of like the mr.

00:25:36: Beast of France.

00:25:37: Mm-hmm.

00:25:38: He climbed Mount Everest.

00:25:39: He shot a feature documentary spent a lot of money on that documentary.

00:25:44: He then released it into theaters and sold a lot of tickets and then released it onto you.

00:25:49: Yeah, he is a creator.

00:25:51: He is a filmmaker.

00:25:53: He is that is a creator endeavor even though was released in in mainstream theaters.

00:25:58: So the reality of creators are people who are good at doing movies and television are also increasingly becoming major presence on creator platforms.

00:26:14: And so I think this idea that you can either be a filmmaker or a creator is this dichotomy that doesn't really exist anymore.

00:26:23: So that's thing number one.

00:26:26: And then thing number two is You know, Frontline, which is a documentary series in the United States put out by the public broadcaster there.

00:26:35: They won the Academy Award for Twenty Days in Maripole two years ago.

00:26:40: They put out their feature documentaries, which air on PBS, so the ZDF of the US, although much smaller in funding an audience.

00:26:49: They put out these feature documentaries on PBS and on YouTube at the same exact time.

00:26:57: So they are a creator too and in reality their audience is twice as large on YouTube as it is on PBS and it's two to three generations younger.

00:27:10: So it's different audiences different ways of consuming.

00:27:14: but I would argue that the filmmakers and producers of Frontline are just as much creators as Amber Chamberlain is, or as Amelia DeMoldenberg is, or as Pewdiepie is, they just put out different types of, of different types of content.

00:27:30: So

00:27:31: we're all in the same market, the traditional media companies, and the creators, and even Taylor Swift is a creator, you say?

00:27:39: So it's all one big market.

00:27:42: I

00:27:42: mean, when Martin Scorsese is going on TikTok and doing film trivia with his granddaughter.

00:27:50: You know, the worlds are colliding, right?

00:27:53: You know, he understands it.

00:27:54: He's getting it and I think you know this concept that that movies are one thing and television is one thing and then YouTube and tiktok are another.

00:28:03: That's true.

00:28:04: If you're a hundred years old, it is no longer true if you're anything younger than that They're used to.

00:28:10: I talk a lot about the generation gap in media that there's one ecosystem for Millennials and younger and another for Xers and older and that is Generally true.

00:28:20: Broadcast and regular traditional television is really dominated by exers and older from a viewership standpoint.

00:28:29: And social video is really dominated by millennials and younger from a viewership standpoint.

00:28:34: But the fastest growing audience for YouTube on television are people over fifty.

00:28:41: So, you know, and millennials are now forty five.

00:28:45: and getting older every year.

00:28:46: And Gen Zers are thirty and getting older every year.

00:28:49: So their habits are becoming... It's just math, man.

00:28:54: And there's this fear of finding out these things.

00:28:56: People don't want to recognize the data that's staring in front of them because it means we're getting older and we have to face our own mentality.

00:29:03: I can get into the psychology of that another time.

00:29:06: But, you know, Germany has this interesting market where you're one of the only countries on the planet.

00:29:12: where the majority of people aren't millennials and young men.

00:29:16: You are super old.

00:29:18: We are a super old country.

00:29:19: That's true.

00:29:20: So that's creating financial and social political pressures that you're seeing in your country.

00:29:28: But what's going to happen is millennials and Gen Zers are going to become the majority very soon in the next couple of years.

00:29:36: And when they do, when they run the government, when they run all the businesses, when they run all the households, when they make all the financial decisions, things are going to change.

00:29:45: And in media in particular, especially now that the mandatory utility bill as far as paying for pay TV is part of your rent, now that that's gone, yes, a lot of people are just signing up for the pay TV again, but twenty five, thirty percent aren't.

00:30:02: What are they going to do?

00:30:04: And so, it's going to be interesting to see what happens to Sky-Dutchland and what happens to Proceben and all these other entities over the next years as millennials turn fifty and Gen Zers turn forty.

00:30:18: What's going to happen?

00:30:19: So, you say it's simple math and it is.

00:30:22: I will agree on that.

00:30:23: Nevertheless, many media companies are very skeptical when it comes to the term... part of the creator economy now.

00:30:31: No, no, no, we are traditional media.

00:30:33: We are journalists.

00:30:34: That's a huge different thing.

00:30:36: So which switch in mindset we need in the media industry?

00:30:40: Yeah, that's why I feel like talking about the creator economy is getting to be a bit old because I think it denotes a time that doesn't really exist anymore where there was a separation where Reese Witherspoon wasn't a massive presence on Instagram.

00:30:54: Do you know what I mean?

00:30:55: Like she's massive movie star and she has a massive Instagram presence.

00:30:59: That's somebody who interlopes between the two.

00:31:01: Mr.

00:31:02: Beast has a massive presence on YouTube and got paid a hundred million dollars to make a television show for Amazon.

00:31:08: Jake Paul is a massive presence on YouTube and broke Netflix.

00:31:12: and has a show on HBO.

00:31:14: So I think we have to realize that the old rules and the old kind of dichotomy and black and whiteness of the world no longer exists.

00:31:22: That's why I'm pushing people to focus on something like the affinity economy, where creators and traditional media players all operate on the same platforms all the time.

00:31:33: And really all that matters is the nature of your fandom, the nature of your relationship with your audience.

00:31:39: The key important factor is that ZDF ARD, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, whoever you are in the world, your relationship directly with your audience and your consumer now matters more.

00:31:54: than it did before.

00:31:56: You can't just push something out into the ecosphere and hope that people watch it.

00:32:01: And even if they do watch it, you can't really call them a fan.

00:32:04: The question is, are they engaging?

00:32:06: Are they commenting?

00:32:07: Are they sharing?

00:32:08: Are they buying your t-shirt?

00:32:10: Are they buying your merch?

00:32:11: Are they showing up at the live show?

00:32:14: Having a TV show is no longer enough if you are a creator of content.

00:32:18: You have to really build out the universe around your intellectual property to super serve the fans who love your stuff.

00:32:27: That sounds a bit like we have to build a people's business from people to people, which I find very constructive view to the future, if I'm honest.

00:32:41: It's a different way of working.

00:32:42: It's

00:32:42: very different.

00:32:44: Yeah, because we used to look at reach, reach, reach.

00:32:48: So just the numbers we have, the more reach, the better it is.

00:32:53: Yeah,

00:32:53: that's a vanity metric from the past.

00:32:55: And it's also, remember that the methodology of measuring that reach is really bullshit.

00:33:02: I mean, it was never really accurate to begin with.

00:33:06: And so like chasing reach measured by Kantar.

00:33:11: It just doesn't make sense anymore.

00:33:13: It's the same thing as measuring, you know, chasing a reach measured by Nielsen or Barb.

00:33:17: It's not really the thing anymore.

00:33:20: It's how many people are engaging.

00:33:23: Because at the end of the day, whether you're a news program and you want people to engage in democracy, you want them to not just passively sit there and have the stuff wash over them.

00:33:33: You want them to get active.

00:33:34: You want them to go out and boom, right?

00:33:37: If you're an advertiser, and you're advertising on Perseven or RTL, you don't want just people to watch the commercial.

00:33:44: You want them to buy the stuff.

00:33:46: That's true.

00:33:48: If the consumer isn't engaged in the program and if the advertising isn't contextual to the experience, it's probably not going to work.

00:33:56: And so you're wasting your money.

00:33:57: So where is the money in the creative economy?

00:34:00: Where exactly?

00:34:00: in this, you call it the engagement quality and you try to measure it with your creator ecosphere.

00:34:09: Where is the money in the engagement quality?

00:34:13: Yeah,

00:34:14: I think you really have to understand that moving the needle is now the new metric, right?

00:34:20: So I like to focus on key passion indices as opposed to key performance indicators.

00:34:27: And I do believe that you can measure passion monetarily.

00:34:32: I did an episode of a podcast recently with Angel Studios.

00:34:35: Angel Studios is an independent film studio like M-IIK or Neon or A-Twenty-Four.

00:34:45: But they have the highest per release.

00:34:48: theatrical release box office average in all of independent film because they cater to their users and their fan base in a completely different way.

00:34:57: They call them members.

00:34:59: Those members get votes on which films get made or not.

00:35:03: That is a whole new way of measuring success.

00:35:08: And they measured in dollars, in box office, in average revenue per film released, in average revenue per user.

00:35:17: I think what you'll see is not how many impressions did we sell to the advertiser, but what is the average revenue per fan?

00:35:25: What is the average revenue we can generate per engaged audience?

00:35:32: A, from subscriptions.

00:35:34: Subscriptions here in Germany are skyrocketing on SVOT, on premium streaming.

00:35:39: I mean, really growing faster than any other segment of the media economy.

00:35:45: That's a good indication of success.

00:35:47: It is.

00:35:49: We got used to, hey, we did advertising, sometimes we did subscriptions, and that's the whole business model.

00:35:54: That's no longer enough.

00:35:55: You have to sell products.

00:35:56: You have to sell live experiences.

00:35:58: You have to sell downloads.

00:36:02: Getting somebody to be a fan means they're going to buy your merchandise.

00:36:06: And frankly, in the kids, I got into a conversation with somebody about the kids market recently, and they're complaining that the business isn't what it used to be.

00:36:15: No, it's not.

00:36:16: Because the laws changed you can't advertising kids programming.

00:36:20: chances are that was a bad idea always.

00:36:24: I'm sorry that your business got screwed by that, but like you're gonna have to invent a new way to do it.

00:36:29: and then you look at bluey.

00:36:32: It's the biggest streaming show on the planet.

00:36:34: It's a massive hit.

00:36:35: a massive hit on YouTube and also a massive hit on Disney Plus subscription service free and paid ads and subscriptions.

00:36:45: And then you look at their merchandising business and their live performance and Blue Eon Ice and all these other things.

00:36:51: And that's the BBC.

00:36:53: That's not Disney.

00:36:55: That's not Universal.

00:36:57: That's not some commercial entity.

00:37:00: That's the commercial arm, the studio arm of the BBC.

00:37:05: the oldest, most traditional media company on the face of the earth.

00:37:09: Look at ZDF.

00:37:10: Look at what they're doing with their direct-to-consumer business here.

00:37:13: Then look at what they're doing with their nightly comedy news show.

00:37:17: They're distributing the whole thing on YouTube.

00:37:19: at the same time they're distributing it on television.

00:37:21: And guess what?

00:37:22: They're getting a third more audience.

00:37:25: They're adding a third new humans watching it and they're all twenty years younger than the television audience.

00:37:32: So they're generating new revenues there that they wouldn't otherwise.

00:37:36: it is not going to be easy.

00:37:37: This is a whole reinvention of the media ecosystem And if you're not prepared to do that this may not be the business for you, but if you are.

00:37:45: It's exciting.

00:37:47: The amount of interplay that an artist and a producer can have with their audience today is so much different and so much more educational and so much more satisfying than it was when you just pushed a television show out.

00:38:00: you hoped the people watched it and then some asshole somewhere told you how many people watched it.

00:38:06: Based on a

00:38:08: survey.

00:38:09: It

00:38:10: was such a ridiculous shell game to begin with.

00:38:13: We all fooled ourselves into following it because it worked for a while.

00:38:17: Now it doesn't work anymore.

00:38:20: Is there any secret sauce for success in this building of a fandom ship of this engagement quality?

00:38:28: You mentioned some.

00:38:29: examples in your creator ecosphere where you say that reach is not the same as engagement quality.

00:38:40: Are there some ingredients for a successful building a fandom ship with people?

00:38:46: I think there are two major ingredients.

00:38:51: Let's say you're a producer of content, whether you're a broadcaster or a producer.

00:38:55: You're making the same program no matter what.

00:39:00: The major secret is know who your audience is.

00:39:02: Who is this for?

00:39:04: What do they love?

00:39:06: What do they think?

00:39:07: How do they act?

00:39:08: Know everything about your audience that you possibly can.

00:39:12: Because then you can super serve them.

00:39:15: This is a different approach.

00:39:16: Knowing that they're eighteen to forty nine is not a thing.

00:39:19: Right?

00:39:20: Knowing what part of the shows that they really like and all that kind of stuff, really getting inside the psychology of your fandom is important.

00:39:28: And then the other secret sauce is, no matter what you make, the platform is going to have a major influence on who sees it.

00:39:37: So if you make a comedy television show on ZDF that stars a fifty year old average white dude.

00:39:46: Sorry, a lot.

00:39:47: Which

00:39:48: is a lot of television in Germany.

00:39:50: If you put that show on ZDF, it's going to get one audience.

00:39:53: If you put that same show on YouTube, it's going to get a very different audience, mostly generationally different, right?

00:40:02: They're younger, they have a different mindset.

00:40:05: Will a different show with a younger host do better on YouTube than it does on television?

00:40:09: Maybe, but... know this, the same show will get dramatically different audiences on the different platforms.

00:40:16: So know who your audience is, know where they watch stuff, know what they like, but also understand that the platform where you distribute will definitely dictate.

00:40:26: Who you're reaching.

00:40:27: Yeah,

00:40:27: that's true.

00:40:28: And we're talking a lot about platforms here at Media and Target too, about TikTok, about Instagram, about many others.

00:40:35: And one platform you mentioned in your creator, EcoSphere, I find very interesting because we don't talk about it at all in German media industry.

00:40:47: It's Reddit.

00:40:48: It's a huge discussion platform, a huge community platform.

00:40:54: What is the importance of Reddit for this creative economy?

00:40:58: I think almost every important and seminal conversation on the internet starts on Reddit.

00:41:07: If you're talking about it, chances are it started on Reddit at some point, but the fandom groups there are growing.

00:41:14: You're talking about millions of people who congregate around topics.

00:41:18: And, you know, individual shows have massive followings.

00:41:22: Individual films have massive followings.

00:41:24: Individual creators and artists have massive followings on Reddit.

00:41:28: And so it's one, it's a place where producers and creators of content can really have an in-depth conversation as opposed to just the comment section of YouTube or on Twitter or something like that.

00:41:40: This is a back and forth.

00:41:42: This is a dialogue.

00:41:44: And then, secondarily, as I said, the fandom there, it may not be the biggest block of your fans, but it will be the hardest core block of your fans.

00:41:54: If you have a fandom, go to Reddit and you will find the hardest core fans there.

00:42:00: And what they say really matters.

00:42:03: It really does.

00:42:05: There are showrunners and the producers who are basically changing their shows based on Reddit.

00:42:11: commentary.

00:42:13: And it works.

00:42:15: Fans really love it.

00:42:16: Media

00:42:16: companies do need a Reddit strategy.

00:42:18: I

00:42:19: think so.

00:42:20: I think crucially, media companies need a Gen Z strategy.

00:42:25: They need a generational strategy.

00:42:28: I think the key elements here, like everything I know about Reddit, I learned from somebody who works for me who's in Generation Z. It's not mine.

00:42:36: I don't go there.

00:42:37: Yeah, me neither.

00:42:39: But I know about it, right?

00:42:41: And I think that's really crucial is if you want to succeed and thrive in the next twenty five years in media, hire people who are twenty five now and give them authority, not all the authority, but give them the opportunity to test and learn, let them experiment with different things.

00:43:03: The worst thing will happen is that it won't work and you'll take it down.

00:43:07: But when you read about how the New York Times transformed themselves from a paper product delivered by diesel trucks into a gaming company with a massive podcasting business and one of the best digital subscription products on the planet Earth, one of the key things they did was hire twenty and thirty year olds and allow them to run free.

00:43:30: The same thing with Angel Studios.

00:43:31: When you look at the innovations that they make on their platforms, very often it's some twenty-five, thirty-year-old engineer testing something out on the platform without permission.

00:43:41: And if it works, great.

00:43:43: If it doesn't, we learn from it.

00:43:45: That test and learn, learn as you go, take it down if it doesn't work.

00:43:51: That's a whole new mindset that a lot of Gen Xers and Boomers are just not comfortable with.

00:43:56: Too bad.

00:43:57: To bad that's true.

00:43:59: so to come to an end Evan.

00:44:00: so when there is one thing you can say to the German media industry because.

00:44:09: I heard the I hear the voices that said yeah we need rules in this great economy.

00:44:14: we need standards so that we can become a part of it because we are a traditional media company and we have to work.

00:44:20: with these rules and these standards, what would you say to that?

00:44:24: What's your message for the German media industry who puts things like that?

00:44:30: and we need, first we need rules and then we can play with the creative economy?

00:44:34: That's a great question.

00:44:37: Well, first of all, you know, the European Union is great at regulating things.

00:44:42: Probably the best on the planet Earth.

00:44:44: And I think, you know, the entire reason the kids businesses in an interesting spot is because the regulations that the EU put around advertising in kids.

00:44:55: So I do think there are rules in place.

00:44:58: And I think the EU is getting better.

00:45:00: I think they're way out ahead of the US with regards to regulating big tech and social platforms and things like that.

00:45:07: So I think it's a misperception to say that there are no rules.

00:45:11: There are rules.

00:45:11: And then on top of that, I think really crucially, for outlets, that are mainstream media outlets like the Procebens and the Skies, but especially the public service media outlets, create your own rules.

00:45:26: Dictate the rules of your engagement with your audience.

00:45:30: We will never do this.

00:45:31: We will always do this.

00:45:34: Then your followers and your constituents and your fans will understand what the rules are.

00:45:40: The problem with the state of the world right now is that the mainstream publishers and the powers that be in media have resisted contributing and participating in the creator economy and playing by the creator economy rules.

00:45:55: And so what's happened is they've ceded the entire ecosystem here to random individuals.

00:46:03: And now they're like, well, why would we go here?

00:46:06: It's all random individuals.

00:46:07: Well, it's only random individuals because you let it be random individuals.

00:46:11: If you leaned into this ecosphere, you would dominate.

00:46:16: You make more content.

00:46:17: You make better content.

00:46:19: You're more consistent.

00:46:20: You have rules.

00:46:21: You have economics.

00:46:23: You're going to dominate, but you have to agree.

00:46:25: you're going to run this race.

00:46:27: And so the rules exist and you can help invent them.

00:46:31: But if you're going to sit it out, You're gonna lose.

00:46:35: So just go out and create your own rules.

00:46:38: Evan Shapiro, thank you for being here.

00:46:40: We are all very happy at meeting Tiger München and that you're being with us the third time in a row.

00:46:46: Thank you.

00:46:47: So that's a good sign, I would assume.

00:46:49: I hope

00:46:50: so.

00:46:50: I guess you guys like me.

00:46:51: Yeah, yes, yes, we do.

00:46:52: Yes, we do.

00:46:53: Thank you for being here and yeah, I'm looking forward to your talks on stage today later on.

00:46:57: Thanks so much.

00:46:58: Thank you.

00:47:04: Vielen Dank, Avenger Pyro.

00:47:06: An dieser Stelle nochmal.

00:47:07: Das war's von mir für den ersten Tag der Medientage.

00:47:10: Ich hoffe, ich konnte euch einen kleinen Eindruck vermitteln, was heute so los war und welche Themen besprochen wurden bei den Medientagen.

00:47:17: Ich pack's jetzt hier zusammen, gehe vielleicht noch zu nach der Medien oder auch nicht.

00:47:22: Mal sehen, entscheide ich spontan, wenn ich jetzt hier gleich rausgepfickt werde aus dem House of Communication.

00:47:28: Und dann mach ich am Ende der Medientage nochmal eine kleine Rap-Abfolge mit weiteren Themen.

00:47:34: Among other things, artificial intelligence.

00:47:36: I told you.

00:47:38: So, that's it for me at

00:47:42: this point.

00:47:45: Take care,

00:47:45: stay stable and

00:47:47: see you next time.