Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Manny Pangilinan's Dream--Be The Country's No. 1 Media Mogul

Manny Pangilinan is positioning himself as the penultimate media mogul of the Philippines. Pangilinan, according to news sources, has offered 52 billion pesos to the majority owners of GMA Channel 7. Pangilinan sees GMA 7 as the second acquisition of a media entity in just three years. Should he finally buy the country's second biggest TV network, Pangilinan will become the country's no. 1 media mogul. 


Pangilinan has a ten percent stake at the Philippine Daily Inquirer and an unknown number of shares in Philippine Star. Basically, Pangilinan owns more than sixty five percent of the local media environment. With the acquisition of GMA, this will increase to seventy five percent. 


Seems like the convergence dream of Pangilinan is taking concrete shape. He will dominate the platforms, and hope to also dominate the content realm. Pangilinan should recognize that what sells are not platforms but content. People talk about content. It is content that sells.


In an era where platforms are being created independently of business interests, where the Internet is slowly being mined for newer applications that lead to consumers' empowerment, there will come a time where dominance in the traditional platforms would just be treated as a mere company acquisition than anything else. Surely, public opinions are slowly being shaped by information coming from newer, cheaper and even cost-free channels. 


Competition in the media sphere will eventually be dictated by consumers and users themselves. Fact is, right now, consumers and users of content are dictating the pace of the media revolution, and singular dominance will eventually be frowned upon even of consumers of traditional media. 


With free information now slowly permeating the farthest corners of the media realm, the possibility of a "dictatorship" of a few thru platform dominance is going faster South than North. The shift is inevitable, as platforms become more and more cheaper and user-friendly. Attempts at creating a singular platform of views and opinions will not anymore be possible in the traditional-sense; rather, the creation of a collective view will naturally spring from the cacophony of voices expressed online than thru the boob tube or paper. This is the liberation of the consumer from the commercialized content seen thru traditional media. 



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