Content, Once King, Becomes A Pauper

Up until very recently, perhaps as recently as six months ago, the prevailing wisdom among analysts who covered the media industry was that "content is king." It is an inexact way of looking at what editors, photographers, actors, producers, and reporters create. But content is rapidly being devalued. The first people to press that case are accountants. They have insisted that companies write-down tens of billions of dollars in assets. Part of the problem with content value is tied directly to the recession. Accountants should take it easy when they lean on that too hard. The best assets bounce back when the economy recovers. But, by forcing companies to write-down their content assets so extremely they are saying that the firms can never go home again. Their TV shows, movies, magazines, and newspapers will never recover all of their value. No one knows to what extent content will be "re-valued" as the economy improves.