"Your Highness, the sales of The Independent have picked up after serializing Downton Abbey. We are currently preparing to launch a small-format newspaper..."
After leaving the apartment, Barron first came to Canary Wharf. In the office of The Independent, he met the newspaper's manager Bob and talked to him about the redesign of The Independent.
Since the young duke took over The Independent, the first of his "three tricks", adding a fiction column, has indeed played a very good role. The sales of The Independent have gradually increased from the initial 150,000 copies to around 185,000 copies now.
It can be said that this is the biggest short-term increase in sales of The Independent in the past decade. Before that, their sales had been gradually declining.
The emergence of this situation naturally gave hope to everyone at the Independent Newspaper Company, especially the company's manager Bob and editor-in-chief Whitney.
According to the agreement signed between Barron and INM Group when acquiring The Independent, 1 million pounds of the 5 million pounds to be paid within half a year has already been received. Barron used all of this money on the revamp of The Independent. After all, whether it is launching a small edition of the newspaper at the same time or printing the entire newspaper in color, it requires funds to complete.
In the early stages, The Independent will try to launch some small-edition newspapers into the market. If the response satisfies them, they will gradually convert the publication of The Independent from large-edition newspapers to small-edition newspapers.
"In addition, for the electronic version of the newspaper, we have begun recruiting relevant technical personnel and editors to build our official website."
"The design of the official website must be outstanding, and we must consider the readers' perspective and try our best to give them the best reading experience…"
Based on his experience with the digitization of successful newspapers in his previous life, Baron said to Bob:
"In addition, in the electronic version, we use more pictures and colloquial language to fill in the articles. Our electronic version is mainly for young people, who are the main users of the Internet. Their reading habits are that they don't like texts that are too long or too formal, so this needs to be taken into consideration."
Barron is not too worried about The Independent's ability in layout design, because among all the newspapers in the UK, the front page design of The Independent can be said to be the most unique one, which often gives people a bright feeling. This is because they have a dedicated team that focuses on designing the front page layout to achieve the effect of grabbing the most user attention.
Baron knew that if the emergence of the Internet had only caused a certain impact on traditional paper newspapers - in fact, this kind of impact was not the first time. After the emergence of radio and television, everyone was worried that these new ways of disseminating information would destroy the future of paper newspapers. However, in the end, although these had more or less impact on the sales of paper newspapers, they were not as serious as originally expected.
But the Internet is different. The current Internet is still limited to the PC side. Therefore, the prerequisite for surfing the Internet is that you need to have a computer at home. This itself affects the scope of Internet users. The mainstream Internet users are still young people. Relatively speaking, they are not the main users of paper newspapers.
But things will be different after the emergence of smartphones in the future. When mobile phones can be used to access the Internet conveniently, in addition to the mobile Internet taking up more and more of everyone's time, the Internet user group will also begin to develop widely, and the elderly will be able to access the Internet more conveniently. At that time, it will be the most difficult time for paper media.
But no matter what, even after the great development of self-media, users still have a great demand for authoritative and in-depth reporting and interpretation. The Independent still has enough time to transform itself from a traditional paper media to a serious content producer in the Internet era.
…
In Wang Wanting's eyes, her boss Barron Cavendish was nothing like the "aristocratic lord" she had previously imagined. He was even very different from the playboy who frequented nightclubs as rumored.
He is full of energy every day, with a packed schedule. Not only does he shuttle between various industries in London, he even takes out a lot of time to attend some parties and charity events...
It can be said that the British aristocrats of the past rarely engaged in direct business - perhaps the most they did was planning their own estates. As for investments in other areas, they would hire specialized talents to help with management.
It's not that Barron doesn't want to do this, but the problem is that his current industries, whether they are investments in securities or media and real estate, all require him to devote a certain amount of energy to management in order to get them on the right track - then again, with the funds he has at this time, he simply cannot buy those well-run industries, and he can only rely on himself to turn the situation around.
What's interesting is that the traditional family industries - manors, hotels, etc. - are more stable and do not require too much interference from him. After all, after hundreds and decades of operation by the family, these industries have their own systems. He only needs to keep them on the right track at certain times.
"Our country was one of the first to propose the concept of digital television, especially terrestrial digital television, which was the first in the world. However, as you know, due to the current predicament of ITV Digital, there is currently no viable terrestrial digital television option. Murdoch's BSkyB Satellite Broadcasting Company, which is committed to satellite digitization, is now the main operator of digital television in the UK..."
After Barron arrived at DS Capital, Amber Sheehan, manager of the industrial investment department, reported to him on the current situation of British television.
Cable television was the first technology to be developed in Britain. As early as 1932, a company called Rediffusion began to provide cable television (then called Pipe TV) services to solve the problem of poor television signals.
During World War II, the development of cable television in the UK almost stopped. After World War II, Britain resumed cable television services. By the late 1970s, there were about 2.5 million digital television service users in the UK.
After several mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations, by the end of the 20th century, British cable TV operators were basically controlled by two companies, NTL and Telewest.
In 1999, NTL and Telewest (the second largest cable TV operator in the UK at the time) began to provide digital cable TV services.
In 2000, NTL merged with CWC to become the largest cable TV company. In the same year, Telewest merged with Flextech.
Therefore, the cable TV market had basically been divided up at this time, and relatively speaking, developing cable TV in the UK was not a good choice - if it had not appeared earlier.
The main reason that hinders the development of cable TV is the complex and changeable terrain of the British Isles!
Britain is an island country consisting of the Great Britain Island, the northeastern part of Ireland Island and many nearby islands. The entire territory of England covers an area of 130,000 square kilometers, accounting for most of the Great Britain Island. It is composed of plains, highlands, basins and hills; Wales is mountainous and rugged; Scotland and many small islands around it are all mountainous areas.
Laying down a cable TV network itself requires high costs, and in such a complex terrain, the cost of laying cables is even higher, so cable networks are generally only laid in urban areas, but this only accounts for a small part of the British population after all.
Since the market share of cable TV is only about 12%, far lower than that of satellite TV and terrestrial TV, once cable users move, many users can only choose satellite TV or terrestrial TV signals, so the development of cable TV is relatively slow.