Rogers NHL Deal is a Bellwether for Those Who are Paying Attention

What does Dr. McLuhan, Roger's Communication, NHL and CBC have to do with the future of business? 

I think history will show quite a lot. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog for InfoStream pointing to the Rogers/NHL/CBC deal as an indicator of things to come. 

Dr. McLuhan once said 'the medium is the message' but he died in 1980 before the emergence of the internet. Now there is clear evidence that backs up his early thinking. 

The Internet facilitates disruptive innovation that has caused several stages of market evolution. The first stage involved the consolidation of demand in the market which allowed profits to build initially as the weak were gobbled up by the strong. The second stage involved the aggregation of supply lines which sustained profits by making the market more efficient for buyers and sellers with centralized portals. Now we are clearly entering into a third stage of disruption in which deconstruction of the modern media and delivery channels will take place. The lines between the medium and the message will be forever blurred.

The evidence is in this deal and it is all around us. Whereas consumers were forced to buy bundled content (cable, newspapers, etc) which allowed media to construct monopolies and harvest advertiser dollars, they can now deconstruct these bundles and structure their environment in ways that best suit their purpose or desire. Advertising agencies, brands and media are only now beginning to realize how disruptive this will be.

Witness the recent history of the New York Times. This long established newspaper was almost bankrupt, but now makes more revenue from its 700,000 subscribers than it does from advertisers. It has withstood severe disruption to the model and cash flow, reinvented itself and now has a billion dollars of cash in the bank. Furthermore, this cycle of fall, reinvent and rise again has all taken place in past six years. When our children tell their children about content delivery by way of rolls of newsprint thrown toward the front door each morning by the girls and boys of the newspaper delivery team, they are likely to find the story incredulous. 

Here's the InfoStream blog I wrote 

I'm just a farm boy from Crossfield but I find the pace and persistence of disruption, innovation and deconstruction to be fascinating. I hope these words will help the reader understand why I think those who own the PetLynx utility will be rewarded for their patient development of media, channel and message to serve the largest group of citizens who live in modern urban municipalities.