Winning at news

As consumers, it's easy to forget that news is a business.  After all, we don't directly pay for news.  It comes free to us via television, radio, print or the web.  Thus, it's easy to forget that the providers rely on advertisers to foot the bill.  Of course, they attract advertisers by competing to get us consumers to watch, read or listen to their news programming.  So, you may not have noticed the change in competitors recently in national news - and the big difference this is having on some valuations.

Focusing on television, CNN was the first at making news into a stand-alone business.  For many years, CNN was practically uncontested.  But in the late 1980s Rupert Murdoch woke up to realize that any business with one player deserved some competition, and he launched Fox.  Using tools right out of The Phoenix Principle, he managed to unseat CNN and become #1:

• Fox looked into the future and predicted the market for news was likely to grow, even if the market for newspapers was not.  Thus, even though News Corporation had been a newspaper company up until that time, Murdoch invested the vast bulk of all money he could raise into creating a brand new, from scratch, television news company that would be on broadcast television as well as cable.  Many people thought he was nuts - but he quickly proved them wrong creating enormous profits.
• Fox obsessed about competition.  The new leaders studied what the competitors in broadcasting (NBC, CBS, ABC) did, and studied CNN.  They looked for what they could copy - and the weaknesses.
• Fox Disrupted.  Where everyone thought news had to be neutral, Fox chose to be non-neutral.  Recognizing that many advertisers were corporations that perceived news media were biased liberally politically, Fox news proposed to counter that bias by being biased conservatively politically.  Not only was this opportunity available, but Fox recognized there was no way to counter this position by the existing competitors.  What could they say they would do differently once Fox said they were going to be conservatively biased?  That they would be more neutral?  Fox found a way to change how viewers thought about news coverage and what they would watch.
• Fox used White Space to develop new programming.  News was not just reporting, but stealing an idea from Nightline people were hired to interpret the news.  Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and many others were hired to interpret the news for viewers, not merely report it.  While not all of these efforts succeeded, some were wildly successful drawing so many viewers Fox surpassed CNN as #1 in cable news.

Fox developed a Success Formula that grew revenues quickly.  The Lock-ins helped Fox attract viewers, and grow revenues and produce prodigous profits.  But, that's not the end of the story.

In the 1990s Microsoft joined with NBC investing in a new company to launch a cable channel and internet presence.  That company had wide berth, but was intended to provide news.  MSNBC faced the competitive marketplace that now had both powerhouses Fox News and CNN.  So, what did they do?

• Looking into the future, the leaders recognized that if there was a market for neutrality, and for political conservatism, there was probably a market for political liberalism.  So they identified a counterpoint to Fox and CNN.
• They studied what worked at CNN, Fox and cable news.  They identified weaknesses in them all.  They recognized that many of the programs on both stations had audiences that weren't growing, leaving time slots available for alternative programming.
• And they Disrupted.  MSNBC mixed general news coverage with "special investigation" programs into prisons and other locations with news interpretation programs that took a distinctly politically liberal bent.  Additionally, program hosts directly compared their programs to Fox and CNN, and even blatantly compared their competitive audience size ratings. 

• And there was plenty of White Space.  Programs were tried, added and dropped as fast as they could get them to market.  Some were produced fewer than 2 months.  Others were tried in multiple time slots.  And as programs were shown to have audiences, they were moved around to compete directly with similar programs on the other channels.  Newscasters from other NBC programming, such as CNBC or NBC news, were shared with MSNBC creating a different operating model than existed at either CNN or Fox News.  Links to MSNBC web programming were added to augment the television programs, offering multi-media capability for viewers.

As a result, MSNBC is now closely tied with Fox News and has a lead in many age groups and time slots (read Marketwatch article here.)  The valuation at News Corp. has fallen 67% in the last year (see chart here) - a staggering $10.5billion.   

In any market, no matter how strong the competition, the opportunity exists to attack competitor Lock-ins and introduce a new Success Formula which can grow.  Even if earlier competitors used The Phoenix Priniciple, if they change to Defending & Extending Lock-in on their Success Formula and do not keep applying the principles to remain evergreen new competitors can re-apply the principles to grow and take share.

Now, in this soft economy, the tendency is to focus on what you always did.  But it is during this kind of economy that weaknesses in competitors become more apparent.  Opportunities to change competition can become clearer.  Customers are more willing to try alternative solutions, giving new competitors a better chance of success.  Suppliers are willing to take greater risks to develop new business, making new business launch easier.  If you programmatically apply The Phoenix Principle, it is possible to tackle the new economic/customer requirements more quickly, and improve your competitive position.