Multi-platform media and the miracle of the loaves and fishes

Abstract

Drawing on findings from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project which investigates how media companies have made the journey from being single sector to digital multi-platform suppliers of content, this article identifies some of the key managerial and economic challenges and opportunities involved in making that transition. It argues that the current migration towards multi-platform has altered not just media industry processes and output but, more fundamentally, it has re-configured the ways in which content is now being conceptualised by media managers. Multi-platform strategies have encouraged a vast expansion in the volumes of media content supplied and made available to media audiences at a time when, generally, the production budgets of media organisations have been tightly constrained. This article considers critically the question of how the transition to a multi-platform environment has facilitated such abundance in output and an apparently miraculous increase in levels of productivity across the media industry. It questions the implications for content and for policy of an ever-growing commitment to multi-platform strategies.

Keywords:

• multi-platform
• convergence
• content production
• content diversity
• factor reallocation

Acknowledgements

With grateful thanks to all interviewees who participated in this research. This article draws on a three-year research project entitled “Multi-platform Media and the Digital Challenge: Strategy, Distribution and Policy” funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J011606/1).

Notes

1. This is a UK Economic and Social Research Council-funded project (ES/J011606/1) entitled “Multi-platform Media and the Digital Challenge: Strategy, Distribution and Policy”. Principal Investigator: Professor Gillian Doyle; Co-Investigator: Professor Philip Schlesinger; Research Associate: Dr Katherine Champion.

2. While complexities and inconsistencies in how differing organisations record staff activities make analysis based purely on reported raw data about employees impossible, use of “staff effort” – a term that denotes an amalgam of the functional resource which is “employees” – has provided a useful basis for comparative analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gillian Doyle

Gillian Doyle is Professor of Media Economics and Director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR) at the University of Glasgow where she directs Glasgow’s MSc in Media Management. She is lead investigator on a number of projects examining the impact of changing technology on organisational strategies in the media and related questions for public policy. Gillian is former President of the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI).