Frank Aigbogun, the guest lecturer at the MTN Nigeria Media Innovation Programme (MTN-MIP2), currently running at Pan-African University (PAU), Lagos, has said that Nigeria’s media industry needs to innovate to survive in the digital era.
Aigbogun who is the publisher of BusinessDay Newspapers stated that the rate of change in the media landscape is exponential that either the media innovate or die.
According to him, media publishers/owners must migrate from the AD revenue model to the reader’s revenue model if they must survive.
The reader revenue model is a business model in which some or all revenue comes from the direct financial support of readers. It can be in the form of subscriptions, contributions, memberships, donations, and micro-payments.
He pointed out that a reader revenue model of at least 40 per cent would mean that the media business is stable adding that anything less than that is bad.
Quoting Clayton Christensen Aigbogun said that in the media’s case, the basis of competition is changing rapidly because of technological shifts, “innovating our products won’t help, we just have to innovate the business model.”
He pointed out that the latest Financial Times Sustainability Report finds that Africa is lagging behind and is facing the greatest risk and threats to its sustainability than anywhere else in the world. Africa failed the most on product scores as well as other rankings.
“If the media knows that it should be running every day it wakes up, we will be at a better place by today,” Aigbogun said.
“In the past Nigerian media was able to determine what their audience should read, hence they wield the power and made money in the process. Print newspaper circulation in the past was as high as over 1 million copies and many readers queued to read the news but today technology has changed everything”, the publisher said.
He added that the media publishers don’t need to hold on too tightly to a particular strategy if it’s not working but keep on experimenting until the desired result is achieved.
“Make your products intelligible and tell great stories in a unique way. You must believe in the worth of your product,” he said.
