The consumer is never wrong, it's just that distributors have been faced with a challenge so they're whining about having to come up with a solution.
Here's an idea: why not find a way of getting an income from the consumer that utilizes piracy? It's the fastest, cheapest way of getting HQ content directly to the audience, it's a blessing that's been lynched.

I also personally think that most teen users on twitter are early adopters and influencers. Although we may only directly hit 3% of the teen population by marketing on twitter, those 3% are more likely to spread the message to the other 97%.

But I'm totally in mourning today because JUSTIN BIEBER QUIT TWITTER! I hope it doesn't last because it's so interesting to watch how Bieber fandom keeps pushing the boundaries.

I've been known to write pieces along the way just along the lines you're describing. What can marketers learn from pro wrestling or Mr. Rogers. The metaphors can be helpful to catch people a little off-guard and then point to some lessons they might learn that really have to do with their own strategy. So I don't have a problem with the "what can you learn from XXXX" numbered list genre. The problem, as you say, is the all-encompassing nature of some of them, that reduce it down to "you can be Bieber." Or "it's as simple as this."

It's not as simple as anything. There are some general rules/philosophies that hold true of almost any company. I have no gripes with a world where "transparency" and "authenticity" and "listening" and "participation" and "engagement" and so on are the buzzwords, if there have to be buzzwords. But these are all concepts that are big, and vague, and that have to be brought down to how that applies and what that means for your company, your audience, your way of doing business.

I don't want Justin Bieber as my insurance agent; my pilot; my doctor; or my plumber...It's like that old sitcom where you go to a town and suddenly one guy is the mayor, the store clerk, the lawyer, and every other role in town. It's ultimately the hard truth that, while it's good to look at "best practices" everywhere, there's no silver bullet in social media. Your strategy ultimately has to be yours and no others. Learn a lesson or two along the way from other places, sure, but follow some cookie-cutter way of thinking and you'll never be using social media as part of a larger strategy and in a meaningful way for your business, your employees, or your audience.

Thanks for the post!

Thanks for the comment! When I was conceptualizing the rubric, I considered influence instead of "finances" because influence, as you say, does include non-monetary elements. The square assumes, of course, a distinct width between creativity and money (which is not always the case and might be a very controversial statement on my part).

Alex

thanks for a very thoughtful post that I very much agree with. One question - are you defining 'influence' as a largely commercial phenomenon? I might want to push back on that...

I would also add artists as likely producers of truly rich, layered transmedia content. This may mean that we see smaller scale projects that are not produced at the level of studio/network productions, but that are stretching and innovating in terms of how stories can be told & played with, and extended - by fans & core creators. I intentionally use the category 'artist' broadly, as I think we're going to see artists from all media shifting into exploring the potential of the web & digital media

Still, TV and Internet delivery are converging. I think that we're getting really close to the point where both kinds of content will be delivered using the same protocols. It's just an issue of bandwidth and hardware. Once that happens, it's going to be much harder for MVPDs and programmers to restrict access to any kind of connected device.

Instead of trying to restrict content to these devices, I think networks and MVPDs need to play in the space, figure out what works, and get some first mover advantage.

Networks have done other things to get people to watch live like SMS based quizzes and contests and live-tweeting. I don't think any of it's been too successful to date.

Since networks are still making more money from selling ads on linear TV than they are from selling ads online, it makes sense that they want to drive viewers to watch on TV sets. This probably won't be an effective long-term strategy because it does create a lot of piracy, but for the time being Event TV is one of the only sure revenue streams networks have left.