Some economics of new media content production and consumption, and strategic implication for media companies

This paper discuss the economic condition of the content production for new digital platforms. I consider both entertainment and informative contents and the possible relationship with traditional media. News are an obvious centre of interest since the whole society benefit from the dissemination activity of the media. On the economic side, in the market the benefit of the competition requires that every agent has access costless to relevant information, to prevent information rent for more informed part. On the same wave in democratic system only informed voters can monitor and eventually sanction politicians at the election. Technological innovations and redefinition of media landscape enable new entrants to unbundle traditional media contents and to offer specific information component to selected targets or general public. Therefore traditional cross-subsidisation patterns collapse and media organization need to evolve quickly in order to remain in the market. Declining production costs that characterize many information market reduce scale economies especially in new production organization making possible more flexible way to create and aggregate information contents.