The Television King

Kalanithi Maran is one of the richest men in the world. He’s ranked 342nd on Forbes’ list this year, but unless you’re from Bangalore or Chennai, you’ve probably never heard of him.

In India, Maran is known as the Television King. At 46 years old, he runs Sun TV, the most profitable broadcasting network in Asia. The Sun Network also runs newspapers, magazines, 46 radio stations, a film production company, and a satellite television network. Through these various channels, Maran’s empire reaches 95 million households every single day.

Flying the friendly skies

Maran’s properties are unbelievably successful — worth more than $4.2 billion — yet he reaches only eight percent of the entire Indian population.

A few months ago, Maran made an interesting move: he took majority control of an airline. Spicejet is a regional, low-cost Indian airline with 21 planes and 37 more on order from Boeing. Every year, Spicejet carries about 3.9 million passengers between destinations all over India.

Why would a calculating businessman who understands the media landscape (and admittedly knows nothing about air travel) suddenly buy an airline? The answer can be found by comparing the reach of Maran’s media empire with Spicejet’s regional destinations:

A captive audience

Remember, the Television King only reaches eight percent of more than a billion people in India. Most of Maran’s existing audience lives in southern India (Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi…). But Maran wants to expand his media network’s reach to Delhi and Jaipur in the north.

With the purchase of Spicejet, the Television King isn’t just buying a bunch of airplanes. He’s buying a captive audience. On a flight from Kochi to Jaipur (with a short layover in Mumbai), passengers have eight hours to consume content. That’s about 32 million hours of captive audience a year.

Every one of these passengers has a seatback pocket in front of them and every seatback pocket contains at least one of Maran’s magazines. These publications are not fighting for attention on a magazine rack at an airport bookstore or a corner vendor. They’ve got a reader strapped into their seat, desperate to find a compelling way to pass the time. It’s genius.

Photo by balajijegan via flickr

Expanding media opportunities

It won’t be long before we see the Television King install screens on every seat to pipe programming directly to each one of his new content consumers. It’s all been done before.

In 1984, Richard Branson expanded his media empire to the skies with Virgin Atlantic airlines and today he’s turned every plane into a flying media room. Virgin distributes movies on demand, music programming, Web series, games, and an inflight magazine on every flight. Why fight for your audience’s attention when you can own it?

Your audience is out there, find it

For those of you in the media business or looking to market your wares, find your captive audience. You don’t have to be a billionaire to buy your customers. You just have to know when and where you can own their attention.

They might be in a restaurant or a doctor’s office. They may be sitting on a bus or riding the rails. They may even be sitting in a hotel room or attending a conference.

The Television King and the Rebel Billionaire found their seatback pocket. Where’s yours?

©istockphoto.com/Gary Cookson

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the famous phrase, “the medium is the message.” McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man hypothesizes that any specific medium — a book or a film, for example — conveys information in very different ways than any other medium, and that the choice of medium for specific content is just as important as the content itself.

McLuhan’s original concept essentially covered every technology, from light bulbs to the spoken word and even to roads and airplanes.

Redefining Media

I know what you’re thinking — “The light bulb is a medium?” Yes. In fact, anything with a social effect can be considered a medium. The light bulb allowed people to engage with content in the dark of the night. It had profound social effects.

Social media fit right into this picture. Brian Solis constantly revises his “Conversation Prism” graphic to reflect the ever-evolving Internet landscape of digital content creation and distribution platforms.

New channels (media) are created, launched, and tested every day. There are platforms to share video, deliver e-documents, share slide presentations, and distribute just about anything else.

There are live video platforms, audio platforms, and a wide variety of chat tools. Websites create social networks, groups within groups, and networks of groups within networks. It’s dizzying.

Now digital media can be dissected infinitely. For example, there’s blogging, then live blogging, then life streams, video blogging, status updates, micro-blogging, and on and on.

Understanding Any Social Medium – McLuhan’s Way

McLuhan was ahead of his time when he redefined media. In our social media age, we must pay just as much attention, if not more, to the medium as to the content.

And each medium is different to different people.To a 55-year-old CEO, Facebook is where his daughter chats with friends. To a 25-year-old marketing associate, it’s five thousand brand advocates. That’s proof of McLuhan’s theory that different societies – even different age groups – are affected in different ways by the same medium. That’s true of any new medium, regardless of content.

Shoes and Politics: Two Quick Examples

The folks at Zappos pride themselves on customer service, and their adoption of GetSatisfaction.com is another example of the medium as the message: We care about your customer experience so much that we’ll interact with you where you interact already.

But the medium itself has run into problems as more and more people participate on Get Satisfaction and interact with Zappos. It’s hard to find a specific issue and difficult to thread similar issues. And it’s impossible to navigate all the issues. The medium itself is now creating customer experience concerns for Zappos and is reflecting badly on the Zappos brand.

On the other hand, the Obama administration’s use of media like Twitter, YouTube and Flickr underscores their desire to be perceived as more open and transparent than previous administrations.

McLuhan’s Advice

In the context of today’s online experience, McLuhan would advise you to understand what development stage any new medium has reached in its social and cultural evolution. He’d want you to study the medium and its social effects even before you consider content.

As McLuhan argued, technologies are to the surrounding culture as words are to a poem: the former derive their meaning from the context formed by the latter.