News, TV Execs: License Everything and Now, Says Kessler

Author Andy Kessler has some advice for newspaper publishers, in today's Wall Street Journal.  The end may be coming, but newspapers still have time to create a valuable new role for themselves:

"Last I checked, the Star Trek Holodeck is still fiction... I really believe that the copy protection mechanism for newspapers is their consumer interface, in the form of ink spurted on newsprint.

"In the meantime, rather than just charge for content, I'd be licensing every type of newfangled software and Web service until I could come up with a tight community of interest around my newspaper, local or national. Don't just start the discussion, keep it."

Television is next in the doomsday machine, says Kessler, with cable-TV the first service to "get flushed": "Technology is making things even more difficult for television and video as well. As technology advances, broadcast pipes leak like a sieve."

Kessler is a far-sighted guy with an ability to see trends as they are. But what's the solution? Experimenting with new content and licensing is a step. But I am not convinced that traditional media has the luxury of time on its side if you consider that traditional advertisers like Johnston & Johnston are pulling away.

My take is that if media executives focus on some of the following ideas, they can create new value:

• Make current content more accessible and more convenient for consumers. Here's an example that shows this does not have to be about technology.
• Blast through the cost structures that restrict access or  make niche audiences non-economic. Here's a micro-niche and perhaps a more bizarre example.
• Help consumers solve their information problems. Here's an example and another.
• Create new forms of entertainment. Here's an example.
• Create new levels of interaction with consumers using technology like this or this.

**Other Information**
The Wall Street Journal also looks at how traditional advertising mechanisms are being disrupted by new media such as email and paid search. We've looked at this trend as it hits TV.

Doc Searls lists ways to save newspapers.

Newsome.org says it's already too late.

We did a Q&A with Andy Kessler last year when he published his latest book, The End of Medicine (Book excerpts.)