• by Mike Bloxham , Op-Ed Contributor, June 18, 2008

It goes without saying that media times are changing -- drastically and rapidly.

Digital technology continues to impact the media industries in new ways, influencing everything from how content is produced and distributed, protected and paid for to how it is consumed, interacted with and leveraged by marketers. (Be they advertisers, sponsors, direct marketers or any other manifestation of the communications matrix.)

Which area is of greatest importance depends upon your perspective and --perhaps most importantly -- how you make your money. The chances are though, that some of the challenges you face with regard to your particular interest in the TV and broader media business relates to the issues arising from the emergence of cross-platform distribution and consumption of content.

When you consider how far things have come in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of where and how we can be exposed to video, it is hardly surprising we are still in catch-up mode in determining how to measure consumption, define optimal advertising and marketing formats, protect Intellectual property, build consistent incremental audiences and achieve satisfactory return on investment / objectives.

Mostly, we need to think, act and measure across all relevant communications platforms in a creative and cost-efficient way. And this -- to my mind -- is possibly the greatest challenge of all as it. This, after all, is about organizational management and change as it relates to media and communications, whether within media owners, advertisers or agencies, where silos still rule the day. Even where companies have made strides away from legacy-based structures and processes that no longer reflect how media function and inter-relate, there are still major operational and cultural challenges to be met.

Many are determined by accounting practices more than by anything that reflects the operational realities of the media environments in which resources are allocated. Others are rooted elsewhere, deep in the organizational mind-set and at least some of these have their roots beyond the organization and into the education system.

It has, of course, always been a criticism from some that universities don't produce "workplace-ready" graduates; that too many students are educated to norms established in the past and that courses cannot possibly teach the latest and most relevant topics of the day.

Perhaps the most valid answer to this criticism is that the real role of the university is to enable graduates to respond to creatively, analytically and intelligently to the demands of the workplace. Since industry environments change rapidly, they will always be ahead of what universities can readily incorporate into curricula. To expect graduates to be fully conversant with the latest intricacies of the job is simply unrealistic.

After all, most full-time execs find it hard, if not impossible, to keep up. What hope is there for a newbie whose first practical task in a new job is to comprehend the enormity of what they don't know -- but maybe thought they did.

This is not to say that the best and brightest students do not immerse themselves in their area of choice before graduating. Nor that many schools don't keep current in what they are teaching.

The point here is that if the media industries have trouble keeping up with developments and in determining new solutions, then even the best-resourced and most pro-active universities with the most gifted faculty will find it even harder.

The net effect is that those playing a major role as consumers in shaping our media futures -- and who have a valuable and innate perspective on media that anyone just 10 years older cannot lay claim to -- are not generally being in the cross-silo analytical skills and practices needed to overcome the attendant challenges they present.

OK, so maybe they can pick them up on the job, but where from?

Once in the work environment, the time dedicated to actual learning is limited. The solution is surely for a more integrated relationship between industry and academia around the adoption of emerging media so that graduates will have had more exposure to the practical issues faced by their prospective employers. They will be better equipped to bring their "digital native" mind-sets to their new posts.

Admittedly, not all universities are open to close collaboration, but even a guest lecture or two can go a long way to bringing the real world of the media business into focus; I've never encountered bright students who benefit from such interactions. These young people are likely to be the ones that crack some of the most perplexing of our current challenges -- whether about cross-platform measurement and research, the protection of IP or optimal advertising formats. It would pay the industry to have as much to do with their education as possible, rather than waiting until they are on the payroll.

Of course, even if we do see closer relations between universities and the media industry, advertising and media agencies still face the self-imposed handicap of the derisory remuneration they offer graduate recruits. Is it any wonder that smart graduates increasingly choose decent salaries and benefits to do interesting work over the chance to carry on living like students while working four times as hard in expensive cities all for the joy of a "glamorous" job? Agencies are behind the times here, and they do themselves no good by signaling how little they value bright young minds.

As a result, some of those bright minds will end up as clients on the other side of the table. Others will end up in consultancies snagging some of the work that agencies like to think of as theirs. More will decide that the media business is a mug's game - at least on the agency side.