• by Tom Hespos , February 7, 2006

The value equation that many in the content business have used for decades, sometimes referred to as "the implied contract," has been almost completely annihilated.

It used to go like this. If I'm a content publisher, I give you something you want. In exchange, I give you something you don't want while I've got a moment of your attention. Now, a purer marketplace for content has emerged, and many of us no longer evaluate the equation this way. The purity of the marketplace is maintained by our ability to unshackle content from time, place and manner restrictions.

For instance, we can watch "Battlestar Galactica" or "Desperate Housewives" at home, sitting in front of our televisions. We may or may not watch the commercials. Should we believe it to be a better experience, we can watch these shows on our way home from work, commercial-free, on a portable device. The assets are digital, and for the most part, once they're digital, we can do with them what we please, in spite of all the expectations of Big Media, the DRM restrictions and the law. (Please note I'm not advocating breaking the law. I'm simply observing what people do in their everyday lives.)

We now value content according to how entertaining and/or information-rich it is, on a granular level. This leads to our picking and choosing the elements of the experience we wish to preserve, and what we wish to remove. People surf the Web commercial-free using pop-up blockers and ad strippers. They skip commercials on television, or have commercial-free content by virtue of subscription-model content offerings. There are very few shared moments in media anymore. The only things that resemble a shared moment are broadcast's big events--the Super Bowl is the lone standout, and even The Big Game is showing signs of fatigue as a media event.

Not only does Big Media no longer control the content, they no longer control the packaging of said content. No, I'm not talking about the pretty box a CD or DVD comes in. I'm talking about the notion of forcing people to take the bad with the good. Since the implied contract is no longer a contract, people simply don't put up with bad content anymore. Many of them would rather pay a premium for the good in exchange for avoiding the bad.

Last week, The New York Times had an article about the rebirth of singles sales in the record business and the questionable future of things like "Greatest Hits" collections. The central theme of the piece was that the 17-song "Best of..." collections can't be propped up by one or two good songs. I was reminded of this while going through my girlfriend's CD collection this weekend and spotting some things that made me shudder--"Best of..." collections from music artists who have no business putting out a "Best of..." collection.

Such things are dead, dead, dead. You can't prop up a crappy collection of 20 songs with two, three or four hits anymore. People pick and choose what they want, and there's no longer any need to pay for 15 songs that suck to get to five that rock.

Sure, the world is still adjusting to the new model, and there still are opportunities to interject lame commercial messages while somebody's attention is being held by something else. But it often produces a negative experience for the brand still operating under the implied contract. Many people no longer care that your broadcast ads support the content they love. In fact, they look at your commercial message as the thing standing between them and what they really want. Yes, I know that's irrational. I'm not sure that it matters.

The media business no longer controls the packaging. People are taking only the rich little bits they find compelling, and they're leaving the rest on the digital cutting room floor. Thus, every bit of content, commercial or otherwise, needs to be able to stand on its own from the standpoint of its value proposition. If it can't, it's dead in the water.