Scale Still Scales

Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson are wrong. Scale still scales. Especially in media. And it always will. More on that in a moment. First, their comments. Jeff says this:

The old days of big players in the economy collecting consumers, audience, distribution, manufacturing efficiency, buying power, or capital in the grip of centralized control are waning. That used to be the way to find efficiency and size. That used to be the way to scale.

But they are being foiled by our new distributed world. And they are being replaced by a more efficient means of finding size and efficiency.

Aggregation is the new scale.

Fred agrees, and adds his own take:

We all look for scale because scale is what generates returns. In the old world anyway. As Jeff Jarvis points out in a great post, scale doesn't mean what it used to anymore. You cannot collect all the pieces of a marketplace in a centralized way and control all of it. The technology won't allow that to happen. You can't "get to scale" that way.

Smart guys, both, but clearly not fans of professional golf. Because this is a media verity: Tiger scales. Old media, new media, slightly damp media, short tail media, long tail media. Tiger scales big-time. Tiger doesn't require aggregation, or citizens media, or RSS feeds, or a new path. A simple network television contract with the very old-school CBS Sports will do just fine.

The Masters final round this Sunday past was about the best sports spectacle since the Red Sox made their amazing comeback. (The Red Sox also scale, fellas). Stunning, mesmerizing, fascinating. Yeah, the hushed voices of the reverent CBS hack voices are annoying, as is Hootie Johnson's mens club, but the competition itself was sublime. So was the audience, up 41 percent over last year.

And it wasn't aggregated; it was a single buy. Sure, I'm a fan of the widening landscape of digital media. This blog is proof of that. But I reject the notion that the digital Bastille is anywhere in sight, that Sumner Redstone's head will be set on a pike on West 57th Street. The big media boys aren't going anywhere. We still love spectacle, and celebrity, and the shared experience. And Tiger Woods still scales - big-time.

UPDATE: The Daily Peg has an interesting reaction to the debate, taking more of a middle ground, and arguing there are fewer instances of media that scale well. I'm not sure I agree; the scale may be smaller but it's there. Certainly revenue growth is there for the big companies. Anyway, here's Peg:

This touches on a sticky wicket for media today -- I would argue that far fewer things scale. Pre-cable, when there were only four things to watch, a championship event scaled. Heck, even a regular-season game scaled. But those truly common experiences are fewer and further between.

Remember Roots? Heck, remember The Day After? They were common media experiences that everyone shared. I doubt the same can be said of Revelations. Sure, a lot of people may watch, but you can't be sure that everyone around the water cooler will even know it aired.

So you get scale three, maybe four times a year with championships and mega-stories. That reminds me of my early days in the city magazine business when we'd pull big, "scalable" special editions out of our hats to stay afloat. That's a risky way to live. Sooner or later you have to make money day in and out.

Also, Pamela Parker offers some perspective on Tiger and his amazing shot on the 16th green.

UPDATE II: Jarvis admits he doesn't like sports. Maybe that explains it.

Comments

[Duneview]

As I said somewhere else before - this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Demise of Network TV - the annual prediction of advertisers (as a negotiation ploy) and "other media" functionaries trying to cop some of TV’s shine.

Tiger scales, as did “Roots,” as a national shared experience because the networks have the greatest distribution system ever devised. Nothing else even comes close. I’m not even sure TV’s reach (somewhere north of 93% of all households) can be duplicated by other media - at least in the foreseeable future.

The notion that the networks are dead is preposterous. As you noted, name the tail – it’s on it. Scale, schmale.

At last – I think we agree on something.