NBC won’t charge for content: VP Mark Lukasiewicz

Canadian Mark Lukasiewicz, NBC’s VP of News Specials and Digital Media,
on the future of broadcast media, the technology trap and the future of
jobs in broadcast journalism.

Lukasiewicz was in Toronto for a forum hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. First read J-Source‘s live coverage, then read Bill Doskoch’s analysis of the evening.

Some excerpts from the talk:

“The good news for broadcasters: video search still sucks.”

“The microwave oven was a fantastic idea — manufacturers sold a vision that the microwave would replace everything in the kitchen. The smart people at the time were not the engineers, not the ones that understood how the device worked, but understood how the kitchen worked. At the end of the day, the microwave is for popcorn and leftovers. The people who focused on the technology, ended up losing. So what do we bring to the table as journalists? It’s when we take them into the lives of people, into history, making a policy human — that’s where we do our jobs best. that’s where television, particularly when portraying individuals and community, is so powerful.”

“Amazon has 200,000 reviews, but a retired librarian has written 23,000 of them. She claims she reads fast. If you only focus on the people posting, you’re missing the other part of the conversation. You shouldn’t do that any more than an assignment editor should run the newspaper based on letters to the editor.”

“Here’s an impressive number: 1.2 billion. It’s the number of times someone clicks something on MSNBC.com. That’s 1.2 billion conscious acts of content consumption.”