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TOWARDS CROSS-PLATFORMVALUE CREATIONAnja Bechmann aa Information and Media Studies , Aarhus University ,Helsingforsgade 14, Aarhus , 8200 , DenmarkPublished online: 27 Apr 2012.

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Anja Bechmann

TOWARDS CROSS-PLATFORM VALUE

CREATION

Four patterns of circulation and control

Old media companies are being challenged by new structures of relating content toother ‘value’ creators, both within the controlled channels of the company andoutside the companies’ own channels. On the basis of two ethnographic casestudies of cross-platform production at a commercial regional newspaper (nowmedia house) and a non-commercial public service broadcaster, the article identifiesfour main content flow structures that form part of the strategic challenges of thecompanies: Create and Play, in which the company maintains control and ownershipover the content; Discover and Link, in which the company releases the content fromits context, but retains ownership; Fetch and Distribute, in which the company isdeprived of control and ownership over the content; and finally Open and Play,in which the users, in various ways, produce the content and the communicationsframework. The content flow structures constitute a common basis for cross-platformstrategic analysis across non-commercial and commercial old media companies, andvarious understandings of ‘value’ and change related to these structures are discussedin the article.

Keywords computer-mediated communication; media studies;economics; organizational studies; social networking

(Received 10 November 2011; final version received 22 March 2012)

Introduction and overview

Professionally created content has been the key element in the business models ofold media companies, under which users either bought content by the piece,through subscriptions, advertising or (public) license fees. However, due todigital content flow structures, these patterns, while they still exist, are beingseriously challenged by free digital content, either created by new competitors,professional amateurs (Bruns 2012), or illegally hijacked from the old

Information, Communication & Society Vol. 15, No. 6, August 2012, pp. 888–908

ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online # 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.680483

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companies, which, due to the mashup character and network structure of theInternet, may be fighting a battle against this ‘theft’ that cannot be won(Lessig 2008). Perhaps the biggest challenge has been that the fear of these struc-tures, which resulted in the old media companies entering the Internet market,has led to digital expectations of free (professional) content and the ability to shutoff advertising on websites and in mobile solutions.

In order to maintain a central position in this extended media networkencompassing Internet platforms, and to transform the tensions between oldand new media, between payment markets and free product markets andbetween producers and users, the main solution chosen by the old media com-panies has been to deliver content across media platforms. In industry terms, thisradical innovation (Moe & Syvertsen 2007; Castells & Arsenault 2008; Bech-mann 2009) took off as a COPE strategy: Create Once, Publish/Play Every-where (see e.g. Huntsberger 2008). The idea behind COPE was that bycirculating the same items of content, users could freely choose how, whenand where they wanted the content. Journalists and media producers criticizedthe strategy for being a matter of staff downsizing by ‘doing more with lesspeople’ (Deuze 2004) and for compromising journalistic integrity by failing totake the specific media characteristics into consideration (Singer 2004; Huanget al. 2006; Aviles & Carvajal 2008). They claimed that the strategy was associ-ated with cloning (Dailey et al. 2005), and so-called ‘shovelware’ (Pavlik 1996;Boczkowski 2004), rather than being medium-sensitive. Content is the primaryor sole component of the product in this critique, not considering the interface(functions) and material characteristics of the media as an important part,shaping and framing what the users can or cannot do with the content. Onthe other hand, use of different interface functions and material characteristicsin cross-platform circulation has been the primary focus in film and entertain-ment studies. As described by Jenkins (2006, p. 19), the idea was to extendthe delivery systems, create synergy through ownership and control of the newdelivery systems, and brand and market the content under these new integratedcircumstances ( franchise). The focus here is on free circulation as a way of boost-ing user traffic or retaining users in the entertainment universe, and therebycreating business value.

Due to the pressure on old media companies to find new business models,this article intends to shift the focus from conceptualising COPE in terms of jour-nalistic workflow and corporate problems such as downsizing and journalisticintegrity to the challenges and tensions involved in creating business valuefrom free circulation. The aim of the article is to present a shared frameworkfor cross-platform strategic analysis across old commercial and non-commercialmedia companies, and to analyse and discuss the challenges in creating cross-platform business models. In contrast to most typologies of cross-media and con-vergence (such as Dailey et al. 2005; Aviles & Carvajal 2008; Bechmann 2009;Erdal 2009), the framework presented in this article is not focusing on how the

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content is produced in various types of converged workflows. To avoid reducingthe actual content flow to ‘various forms of repackaging’ (Aviles & Carvajal2008, p. 235), the article instead focuses on how the cross-media companies stra-tegically view the users as collaborate target groups in the content flow struc-tures. Cross-platform strategy thereby refers to how products are combinedacross platforms, how content bits are circulated and how users are engagingwith the content bits in different distribution channels.

The article approaches this research interest by studying two cases of oldmedia companies, and inductively presents a shared framework by analysing indetail their cross-platform content flow structures and strategic attempts totransform business challenges into business value. The study shows that thegreatest challenges or tensions involved in moving away from single-standingmedia platforms (mono-media) and towards cross-platform business modelsare in grasping the opportunities represented by free-product markets (Anderson2009), as well as viral structures and user production possibilities as culturalphenomena (von Hippel 2005; Boyd 2008). Erdal (2009) and Westlund(2012) among others also focus on the producer–user nexus and tensionsbetween old and new work albeit from a work routine perspective. In thisstudy, both companies focused strategically (in their marketing or politicallogic) on the distinction between channels owned and controlled by thecompany, and channels outside the control of the company (e.g. Google andFacebook). Accordingly, COPE is inadequate to fully describe the businessmodel(s) of cross-platform production and the market and political logics thataccompany this form of production. However, the idea of COPE can be usedto illustrate various strategies relating to the content flow structures that formthe shared analytical framework. The framework becomes supplementary toexisting typologies of new business models such as presented by Berman et al.(2007). They distinguish between traditional media (professional content in con-ditional access environments), walled communities (user content in conditionalaccess environments), content hyper-syndication (professional content in openchannels), and new platform aggregation (user content in open channels).Despite a common focus on free circulation and user contributions, Bermanet al.’s typology does not solely focus on old media companies, as is the casewith the typology presented in this article. Furthermore, open channels suchas social networking sites play a more profound role in the strategic frameworkof this article than in Berman et al.’s typology.

The notion ‘business model’ is widely used but poorly understood (Oster-walder et al. 2005) and therefore needs further clarification here. In this articleinspired by Osterwalder et al. (2005) and Hawkins (2010), business models areunderstood as the way in which media companies seek to create ‘value’ (e.g.economic, political and loyalty) by combining channels and platforms. A businessmodel can be described through value proposition of the product, user interface(target group, distribution channels and relationship between company and

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user), infrastructure management and financial aspects (Osterwalder et al. 2005,p. 18). In this article, the description of business models will focus on the userinterface and financial aspects. Strategies are implemented, whereas businessmodels can exist on a purely conceptual level (Osterwalder et al. 2005).Content flow structures are per se neither business models nor strategies, butthey invite discussions on related business models and can be subject to strategicactions.

The aim and contribution of the article are to address the tension betweenold and new product strategies by outlining content flow patterns as new stra-tegic structures for the companies. Following a presentation of methodology,the article will present four content flow patterns from the case studies, anddiscuss case-specific considerations of business models relating to each pattern.Last but not least, the limitations of the approach to analysing business modelson the basis of content flow structures will be discussed.

Methodology

To obtain in-depth knowledge of the relationship between content flow struc-tures, strategies and business models the data set of this article is based on aDanish ethnographic study from 2005 to 2009 of two dissimilar old mediaorganizations: Nordjyske Medier (referred to as NM throughout the article) isa commercial regional news production company which has a cross-mediamarket reach of over 90 per cent in northern Denmark. The company hasa history in newspaper production, but has merged with other media plat-forms (Table 1). As the first media company in Europe, the production forall platforms was physically united in the former newspaper building in

TABLE 1 Parameters for the case sample of the study.

Parameters NM DR

Financial

basis

Commercial Public service

History Newspaper Radio/TV

Platform

portfolio

Morning newspaper, free newspapers,

two radio channels, a 24-hour news

TV channel, mobile phone services,

tele-text, online newspaper,

communities and other web

services, Facebook sites

Five TV channels, four FM station

and a wide selection of digital

radio channels, websites and

web-only TV channels, products

for portable devices (mobile,

tablets and pods) and social

network sites

Market Regional National

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2003. Danish Broadcasting Corporation (referred to as DR throughout thearticle) has a history in radio and TV production. With a market share of27.4 per cent (2010), it is the second strongest TV channel in Denmark.DR moved in 2006 to new multimedia facilities, but produced for online plat-forms as early as 1996.

NM and DR have mainly been chosen, as they represent two types of oldmedia companies (former broadcast and newspaper organizations) and as theirincome models are very different. NM is a commercial company with arevenue stream based on advertising, subscriptions, retail distribution, publicdistribution support and tax reduction. DR, on the other hand, is an almostfully license-funded organization for whom value is a question of legitimizationrather than of sale.1 However, in both companies growing market logics(Jacubowicz 2004, p. 279; Moe 2008) are making value a question of usertime and traffic, to be sold or to legitimize the existence of the organization,respectively.

Like other Nordic countries, Denmark has a strong public service broad-casting and newspaper market (Hallin & Manchini 2004). DR and especiallyNM are international pioneers within cross-media production (Aviles &Carvajal 2008) and similar cross-media environments have been establishedamong others such as Financial Times in UK and Die WELT in Germany(Schantin 2010). The pioneer status of DR and NM could be seen in thelight of a high degree of ICT diffusion in Denmark with Internet broadbandpenetration of 86.1 per cent (June 2010) compared to 77.3 per cent in theUnited States.2 Hence, the challenges and tensions that Danish mediacompanies are facing due to viral structures, user production and freemarkets are shared with companies in similar western countries.Consequently, references to existing (international) studies and theories willbe made throughout the analysis to secure analytical and theoreticalgeneralization.

The production study was conducted as a mix of methods. Observationstudies were conducted in 2005 and again in 2006 following selected productions(youth entertainment programme, football production, local news productionand news event production) in periods ranging from a couple of days (localnews) to a month of continuous observation. In total, 52 face-to-face semi-struc-tured interviews were made with journalists, editors and managers at NM(logged) and production team, media editors and managers at DR (recorded).Furthermore, textual registrations of the content flow structures of the selectedcross-media productions were made and strategic documents were collected. Asa product of this study, I have sought to define patterns that sum up the strategicchallenges and tensions going from ‘old’ to ‘new’ product markets andstructures. This article analyses the material in order to find shared strategicconsiderations and patterns, as well as to account for differences in the weightof these patterns.

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Findings: four patterns of circulation and control

On the basis of the data collected, four distinct circulation patterns were constructedto summarize the strategic challenges going from old to new (digital) markets,instead of the single COPE pattern. In this article, these patterns will be referredto as Create and Play, Discover and Link, Fetch and Distribute and Open andPlay. These patterns illustrate that the companies circulate their content across plat-forms and channels according to four different strategies towards the inclusion orexclusion of user production/engagement and external channels.

The most important aspect when addressing cross-platform strategies forthe companies is whether or not they have ownership and control of the channelsand traffic generated by the content. This is therefore the main focus of the fourcontent flow structures outlined here and is illustrated with the distinctionbetween controlled and open circulation on the horizontal axis in Table 2.The distinction between remixed and professional content on the vertical axisindicates that the study shows a profound interest in the possibilities and tensionsof rethinking the relationship between users and producers. This axis should notbe interpreted as strictly as the horizontal axis because users can deliver contentbites in communities and annotations to professional content as well (in Createand Play & Fetch and Distribute).

Create and Play

Create and Play represents the classic COPE pattern, in which the contentremains within the companies’ own channels, both created and played, but

TABLE 2 Four patterns of cross-platform circulation and control.

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not necessarily created only once. The business models associated with this typeof content flow are based on the possibility of spreading among target groups,double and triple coverage3 and increased capacity to present several aspectsof a concept universe or story, which can thereby, potentially, attract more users.

Target groups versus content capacity. For the commercial company NM, it is pri-marily the spread among target groups which is of interest in the cross-platformbusiness model, since this is more attractive in terms of advertising sales thandouble coverage:

The fewer double users we have, the better. After all, we created thesevarious media in order to get hold of as many different people as possible. . . right now we’re thinking about lowering the target age for 10 Minutter[‘10 Minutes’ - free newspaper, ed.] to further down in the young age group,because in reality there are too many old people who receive it, and we arenot interested in having them here, as we have them in [the newspaper]Nordjyske Stiftstidende. (Interview, NM management 2006)

This is a strategic pattern that supports the idea of ‘create once, publisheverywhere’, as users are assumed not to wish to merely receive the samecontent on a different channel. Nonetheless, NM does not wish to follow thiscloning strategy because they are afraid of losing newspaper subscriptions(which, according to interviews with the management, represented one-thirdof overall revenues in 2009), and which, together with TV subscriptions, com-prise NM’s ‘walled gardens’ (Storsul & Sundet 2007) In the case of a COPEbusiness model, subscribers pay for the same content that other users obtainfree of charge via the free media website, the radio channels and the free news-paper, contributing to the fear of replacement (Westlund & Fardigh 2011).Accordingly, NM creates various versions of the content, with the most detailedof these appearing in the paid media: television and the morning newspaper andtheir digital (pay-walled) equivalents (Nel 2010). Although according to the2008 statistics4 triple coverage is limited, observations of the daily editorialwork at NM show that cross-promotion is viewed as desirable by the editors.They would be happy to see greater integration of the stories and a creativeuse of the capacity to reveal other angles of the stories on the website thanthose that can be presented in the newspaper.

For the public service organization DR, the spread of media consumption inthe cross-platform approach has considerable value as justification for the licensefee, in which broad contact, historically, has become ever more important(Sepstrup 1994, p. 341). DR thus argues in its 2006 annual report (DR 2006,p. 124) that it has ‘the most comprehensive user reach in the Danish mediaworld’ across platforms. In addition to exploiting the fact that the variousmedia platforms have different audience profiles, double coverage is also of

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value to DR as a public service organization, because it allows DR to retain itsusers over time in cross-platform universes (DR Media Research 2004). This isattractive because it allows DR to point to a greater degree of contact with differ-ent target groups (diversity), and can help to create greater brand awareness,which contributes to underlining the importance of its public service task (inter-view, DR management 2005).

Another cross-platform value creator arises from the additional features ofdigital platforms, which can enhance the quality of the programme universes– another important element in the organization’s public service obligations.In the study, DR staff thus argues that digital platforms can create a moredirect dialogue with users, and thereby also function as a decentralized mouth-piece (interview, DR staff member 2005). In the study, the staff regarded con-cepts that included user-producers as an opportunity to create the ‘ultimate’public service, in which users would be given a ‘direct voice’ (interview, DRstaff member 2005), and through which the public service, via the cross-plat-form universe, would become ‘part of society’ to which ‘Danes can contribute’(interview, DR management 2005).

The need for public service broadcasting to guarantee broad appeal and culturaldiversity has often caused niche audiences to be banished from prime time slots(Nissen 2007). Consequently, the increased content capacity of the cross-platformuniverses is also of strategic value to DR. Cross-platform ventures can creategreater variety in the programme supply, while simultaneously increasing theaccess to broad offers in prime time on the various media (interviews, DR manage-ment 2005, 2006, 2008). However, this is not a viable business model for DR,because the license fees are not scaled up correspondingly (see e.g. interview,DR management 2006). This means that universes, which are primarily associatedwith the new media, are created only to a very limited extent or that these uni-verses exist on a very limited economic foundation, as low-budget productions.

Archived content versus digital rights management. In the Create and Play strat-egies, access to content over time is an increasingly important value creator forthe two companies. This conflicts with the formerly prevailing idea that pro-ductions should at most be rebroadcast/reprinted a couple of times. Userdemand for thematic cross-media universes at NM after the expiry of theactual event period is an example of one such pattern (interview, NM manage-ment 2006). Similarly, DR viewer figures for some programmes increased sig-nificantly over time at the website: ‘Our on-demand archives contributeperhaps 50 per cent of our listeners, viewers and users over time, in relationto the figures when we chose to broadcast it on our channel’ (interview, DRmanagement 2006).

During the study, however, only selected items and programmes were acces-sible via the digital archives. This was partly due to the need for maintenance andserver space at NM, for example, but also due to copyright issues at DR. Much

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of DR’s material is not self-produced, and during the study no precedent had asyet been set for negotiating platform-independent content contracts (interview,DR management 2006).

Discover and Link

For media companies, the Create and Play strategy within their own channelsand media platforms is under significant threat from the migration of usertraffic to international products such as Google and Facebook (conversation,NM management 2005; interview, DR management 2006; interview, DR man-agement 2008; interview, NM Management 2009). Neither the commercialcompany NM nor the public service company DR can maintain or scale theircentral place in media use without being externally present beyond their owndistribution channels. In the Discover and Link content flow structures, thecontent is released from the channels of the company giving the users an oppor-tunity to link to the content in social media networks. However, the links gostraight back to the company’s website and therefore the media organizationretains ownership of the content and the user traffic generated on (professional)content bites. For instance, Facebook referrals for BBC increased by 400 per centfrom 2009 to 2011 and Facebook only stands for 56 per cent of the British newsorganizations’ social media referrals (Newman 2011, p. 14–15).

For NM, fear of the cannibalization of their advertising base and hence amaintenance of the traditional circulation patterns, as Create and Play and‘walled garden’ business models, has had a self-reinforcing effect. While adver-tising revenues on the Internet are increasing, NM’s share of this is not largeenough to offset the decline in advertising revenue in the printed newspaper(Hansen 2007; interview, NM management 2009). By contrast, search termadvertising (of which Google’s share is over 90 per cent) has been estimatedto be worth USD 200 million in 2009 in Denmark, compared to advertisingrevenue of USD 296 million on the largest advertising-funded Danish TVchannel (Larsen 2009). A strategy that closes off around its own channels pro-gressively reduces the advertising foundation, and thereby turnover, by maintain-ing the same business models.

Public service radio and television stations occupy a large share of Danes’ mediaconsumption, and continue to do so with regard to the Internet, when we measureDanes’ consumption of Danish websites (FDIM (Association of Danish InternetMedia) in DR 2006; Bechmann 2009). If, on the other hand, we examine DR’s cov-erage by Danes in an international market, the position is considerably weaker. Inrelation to user retention as a cross-media strategy, the amount of time consumedper user is also relevant, but in this area DR’s website is not in the top 50. If wecompare providers in relation to total time consumption, the trend similarly indi-cates the declining central position of DR Online. On the basis of figures fromFDIM, we can draw up the comparison given in Table 3.

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While total time spent on the Internet rose sharply from 2008 to 2009, con-sumption at DR remained by and large unchanged. By contrast, the proportionof time spent on foreign sites rose from 35 per cent to 52 per cent.

One way in which both DR and NM attempted to counter this shift in thecompetitive situation during the period of the study was to allow users to sharecontent with their social networks by linking to content on external sites throughopen APIs. This applied especially to social media such as Facebook, MySpaceand Twitter. Here, traditional content such as TV spots, articles and radio pro-grammes can function on an equal footing with peer-to-peer communication tostrengthen the stability of the networks or the interconnectedness of theirmembers. In such networks, the business model is very much linked to therelationship or links between network units. The traditional content is foundto fall in commercial value (interview, NM management 2009). The same canbe said to apply to the search engines, in which it is the connection to thecontent that is essential. Nonetheless, as a business model, sharing via linkshas the advantage for traditional media organizations like NM and DR ofproviding links back to their own channels, and thereby allowing them totranslate user traffic in the content into advertising sales or a (measurable) legit-imising basis for public service. Similarly, DR and NM are able to transfer usertraffic to other content elements and retain the users in their own universes,rather than on the external social networks, where only bite-sized chunks ofcontent appear.

Fetch and Distribute

Although the Discover and Link content flow structure accommodates the users’wish to be able to use the media organizations’ content in networks, the Discoverand Link flow structure exists in parallel with Fetch and Distribute. For themedia organizations, this content flow structure is characterized by their userscopying content from the media organization channels and placing it on channelsbeyond the organizations’ control (e.g. YouTube), where the media organizationscannot benefit from the traffic in the form of advertising revenues or measurablelegitimization.

For both public service and commercial companies, this means that collect-ing royalties as a business model is impossible: ‘They just take it’ (Interview, NMmanagement 2009).

TABLE 3 Trends in website ratings from FDIM, 2008 – 2009 (Bechmann 2009).

Google.com YouTube Facebook DR

2008 10,299,719 (1) 1,753,927 (5) 2,408,062 (2) 1,286,613 (10)

2009 16,314,046 (2) 3,632,581 (3) 19,639,567 (1) 1,422,075 (10)

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Triple coverage versus vertical ownership structure. At the commercial companyNM, it is videos, in particular, that tend to be hijacked by users. These arethen mainly placed on YouTube without respecting copyright. Althoughseveral major media companies, including Mediaset and Viacom, have suedGoogle for the illegal use of content without copyright (Jensen 2008; Pedersen2008), commercial operators like NM receive no royalties from Google for dis-playing content, even though Google earns money on the traffic. The mashup andliberation of content online is thus in Google’s favour and, consequently, the freecirculation of content paradoxically promotes the centralization of traffic ‘own-ership’, as was the case with earlier distribution channels. For traditional mediaorganizations such as NM, this means that advertising is insecure as the primarycross-platform business model, as NM did not link the advertising closely enoughto the content bites during the period of the study to ensure that it travelled withthe content when hijacked. Conversely, triple coverage was in this respect inter-esting for NM, as such a comprehensive cross-platform business model could notbe offered by competitors such as Google, which operate solely on digital plat-forms. Towards the end of the study period, NM was experimenting with suchinitiatives as barcodes in the newspaper in order to support this business model.

At the same time, NM was working on various ways of using vertical co-ownership of media companies and other businesses in their media businessmodel by bundling the products closer together. This was mainly expressedvia a ‘plus’-subscription, through which members could obtain benefits whenusing products from companies owned by NM. Such vertical bundling businessmodels can however be problematic, and may result in an exodus of advertisingdue to a coincidence of interests (interview, NM management 2009). This was,for example, the case in the purchase of a telemarketing agency, which resultedin the loss of Denmark’s largest telecommunications distributor as a customer, asthey were competitors in NM’s Yellow Pages.

In general, the Fetch and Distribute flow structure comprises the greatestbusiness challenge for NM, who expressed great concern about the expensesincurred by traditional, commercial media organizations in both content prep-aration as well as operation and circulation via the costly newspaper and televi-sion media, while Google, for example, enjoys low-cost digital circulation andincurs no costs for content production. Accordingly, one of the main businessmodels for NM was to link other significant sources of revenue, besides thenews universe itself, to the news value chain.5

Content placement versus content control. At DR, content is copied by users on alarge scale to channels like YouTube which lie outside the DR domain, but DRitself also places content on YouTube, such as items from DR’s programmes foryoung people, and which refer to the full programme on their own site, as mar-keting, or as appetizers, like the Discover and Link flow structure, but in a longerformat. In contrast to other countries (Moe 2008), public service in Denmark is

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in principle channel- and platform-independent (Danish Ministry of Culture2011).

Accordingly, DR has a less problematic relationship with the Fetch and Dis-tribute flow structure than NM. Its economic base is not dependent on owner-ship of the user traffic, as long as the latter can be detected and measured, andsubsequently presented in its reporting on the extent to which its public serviceobligation has been fulfilled. It can thus be a direct advantage for DR if its usershijack content and place it where there is a lot of user traffic, as this means thatDR cannot be held liable for copyright infringement, but still obtains traffic. Itthus becomes relevant to speak of a greater or lesser degree of circulation (Hes-mondhalgh 2007) of public service broadcasting or ‘public service placement’(interview, DR Management 2006) beyond its own, controlled distribution chan-nels (which at the time of writing consists of its website, radio and televisionchannels, mobile broadcasts and podcasts). Following the conclusion of thestudy, DR opened various groups on Facebook which could serve as brandingor franchising (Jenkins 2006) for DR without directly linking back to the DRwebsite.

Syvertsen (2008, p. 223) describes the present as the ‘golden age for publicservice broadcasting’. However, Danish state-financed public service broadcast-ing contributes content which helps to maintain the commercial business foun-dation of major international players such as YouTube. Moe (2008) describeshow YouTube’s ‘walled garden’ and lock-in strategies impose compromises onthe kind of content that can be linked to. This makes DR vulnerable in the pol-itical debate on the issue of the allocation of state media support and license feefunding.

The position of the traditional media organizations in the network is beingchallenged by automated mashups such as news feeds and filtering through per-sonal networks, but it is at the time being reinforced by the fact that the tra-ditional media organizations are the primary source of content for YouTube,etc. (Burgess & Green 2009).

Open and Play

In addition to circulation patterns such as linking, sharing or copying user inno-vation and user-created content comprise a key strategic element at both DR andNM. In general, the phenomenon involves users creating content or undertakingproduct development on par with organized media producers (von Hippel 2005;Benkler 2006; Keen 2007). While the other content flow structures imply thatcompanies produce their own content, the Open and Play structure representsan acknowledgement by companies that they must include user productionpatterns as an integral part of their business model(s) (see also Bruns 2012;Loosen & Schmidt 2012).

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The companies worked with various models by which user production couldcreate value. Inspired by von Hippel’s (2005) description of user innovation asunique and context-sensitive contributions, Table 4 provides a general illustrationof how companies attempt to approach this integration with the users, either inactual product trials or simply on the idea level.

Overall, DR and NM worked with models that allowed users to respondwithin a framework that was set by the companies themselves – in otherwords, user production on invitation (reactive patterns). On the other hand,unsolicited input was also received from users, who on their own initiativeput forward their own proposals or developments (proactive patterns).

Reactive user-producer versus co-worker. In the reactive patterns, user productionwas incorporated into business models either as a way to create (free) nichecontent for DR or NM, or, at NM, in the form of comments and evaluationsof the company’s news (user-producer). Both of these approaches createvalue, either by filling a ‘hole’ in the content that it is difficult for companiesto fill by themselves or by increasing the sense of ownership and drawing atten-tion to previously produced content, which can potentially create more usertraffic. NM attempted in concrete terms to create a community for user-gener-ated news, with the best submissions subsequently printed in the free newspaper.To boost user production, selected items of news from the user production werealso posted to the website. User news became an integral part of the cross-plat-form universe, on the basis of the idea of users as free, context-sensitive content pro-viders. NM thereby attempted to incorporate the pattern of use that prevailed inthe blogs, and which might pose a threat to their usage traffic, and integrate thispattern of use into their own framework on the basis of the advertising-based

TABLE 4 User involvement in Open and Play content flow patterns (Bechmann

2010).

Production patterns Reactive Proactive

Unique and

context-

sensitive

solutions

User-producer (comments on,

reviews and produces niche

content)

User-developer/innovator

(develops conceptual designs,

programmes, functions and

products on the idea level)

Generic expert

solutions

Co-worker (double competence

in content production:

performance and aesthetics,

produces power law content,

researcher)

Potential competitor (double

competence: develops and

implements)

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business model. As a cross-platform business model, user-created content in thisconceptual universe made it possible to offer something that the other free news-papers did not have, namely, a unique, cross-platform product in this area (interview,NM management 2009). The link with the free newspaper was eventuallydropped, while the community, in March 2009, was the fastest-growing NMsite (interview, NM management 2009). At DR, an attempt was made to getusers to create content in the form of self-produced videos and file-sharing ofvideos created by other users. The editors wished to make use of the camerain the mobile phones of users, which could make recordings in personal situ-ations to which the editorial staff would not have access. The business modelhere was about legitimising the license basis by allowing ‘the public’ to havetheir say ‘on their own terms’ (interview, DR staff member 2005; interview,DR staff member 2006).

Within the reactive production pattern, NM and DR also worked with theidea of actual co-workers – users who would be able to provide generic expertsolutions free of charge. At NM, the community was administered by user jour-nalists for each local area, who administered the activities, passed on the news tothe newspaper, tidied up the posts and initiated discussions. In addition to‘normal users’, NM appointed citizen journalists, as a kind of ‘power users’,who committed themselves to activity for a particular locality. This is in linewith the longstanding use by NM and newspapers of local reporters called ‘strin-gers’ (interview, NM management 2009) in news coverage of outlying areas. DRwas particularly enthusiastic about the (few) submitted videos that lived up to theeditorial staff’s professional standards in terms of cutting rhythm, storytellingand aesthetics. According to user surveys, these also enjoyed the widestappeal on the TV screen, and could thus generate the most traffic (Bechmann2010).

Proactive user-innovator versus potential competitor. The user innovation model,in which the user, unsolicited, requests functional additions to the content of theuniverse, and comes up with suggestions for new categories of content or actualconcepts and frameworks for communication (including software), was also the-matized by the companies. Once again, one can distinguish between context-sen-sitive input and actual expert contributions on the basis of the open-source model(von Hippel 2005; Benkler 2006). One example of the users as user-innovatorswas the demand for more and different functionalities at a news event at NM.The digital solution was thereby to some extent developed using unsolicitedinput from users. The business model for NM was once again to build commit-ment and a sense of ownership, and thus potentially increase traffic, togetherwith a lock-in strategy to retain users through increased loyalty.

A significant break with existing business models lies in the openness thatuser innovation entails, to a greater or lesser degree, for traditional media organ-izations (Hesmondhalgh 2007). This applies all the way from the relinquishment

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of control over content production and the creative process in developing newprogrammes, features or concept ideas to the implementation of the ideas in soft-ware or productions through shared knowledge and common recording andediting facilities. The latter pattern of user production existed only on theidea level at DR and NM during the study, but comprised, and was in linewith, for example, Keen (2007), an apprehensive model based on fear of super-fluity among staff and management, rather than an opportunity for furtherengagement and thereby loyalty creation, as Jenkins (2006) proposes. Referencewas however made to newsfeeds from external companies, including Google, asone such threat, in which content drawn from the media companies wasbeing used in externally implemented solutions. After the conclusion of thestudy, various apps also appeared as just such externally produced softwaresolutions.

In the Open and Play flow structures, the tensions between new and old pro-ducts and user and producer roles are manifest in different ways. On the onehand, the companies seek to reduce costs through free user-created content.At the same time, they try to increase brand loyalty through the engagementof the users and embracing user innovation to create a market demand forthose particular products. On the other hand, companies are challenged bythe journalists’ fear of becoming obsolete as market demands shift towardsthese new products. The primary quality of these new products are the abilityto actively engage users in a community that carries a strong brand (Boyd2008), not to create the great story as a ‘generic expert solution’.

Discussion and limitations: ‘lock-out’ and innovation

This article has sought to categorize the work towards the development of cross-platform business models and the challenges that this poses for a commercialcompany and a public service company, respectively. Yet, there is one importantaspect that the article has not analysed, but which is very noticeable in the datafrom the study, namely, the absence of a business model (Nel 2010) when newcross-platform initiatives are launched, which will therefore be examined sub-sequently. At the commercial company NM, experiments or the directabsence of business models for new digital initiatives were greatly dominant,while DR has also attempted to highlight digital experiments as a publicservice obligation for the same reason.

The head of new media at NM (conversation, NM management 2008, inter-view 2009) explains that many initiatives arise because NM wishes to be a ‘firstmover’ (Lieberman & Montgomery 1988; Westlund 2011). This position isimportant, either as a lock-out strategy to shut others out of the market or asan attempt to create something unique that will attract attention in the viralnetwork because it stands out from the offerings of competitors:

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It’s the trial and error model . . . if you wait until the business model is clearbefore you do anything, it will be too late. You have to grab the chance anddo things before the market is sewn up, the market shares are allocated, andit becomes extremely difficult to win market share . . . On the net it is con-stantly the case that when there are new trends, you have to try to do sometrend-spotting, and then you try to focus on those areas that you think maygo well. Of course, it may happen that you end up making a bid for some-thing that turns out to be much ado about nothing . . . (Interview, NM man-agement 2009)

The user production community at NM represented an example of a lock-out strategy and an attempt to create a unique product by involving user journal-ists. Other examples of the lack of a business model in attempting to seize theopportunities of the new media included providing free sports text messagealerts and the launch of a Facebook application with a news summary. Such astrategy without a business model is only feasible when the marginal costs areclose to zero. Although the Facebook application (presumably) created significanttraffic to nordjyske.dk, this ceased when Facebook revamped its design in 2008(interview, NM management 2009). The lifetime of the development work wasvery brief, but lay outside the control of NM, even though many hours of workhad been invested in it. Innovation, as a value creator, seems to be partly a matterof image enhancement and partly to consist in the idea that a small percentage ofinnovations will pay for the many for which there does not appear to be any sig-nificant business model. At the same time, the Head of New Media explainedthat digital products often only acquire advertising when a certain volume oftraffic has been reached (interview 2009). The innovations in the digitaldomain can only assert themselves as a cross-platform business model becausethe old platforms secure an established revenue model, while new initiativeson digital platforms are tested on the basis of the ‘free model’. Consequently,the ‘cannibalization’ issue is very prevalent in the development of new servicesand the construction of cross-platform universes from a business perspective(interview, NM management 2009).

The public service organization DR also attempts to create a business modelfor innovations, which historically, in relation to DR’s legal framework, havebeen on the periphery of their public service obligations. Several researchers(Kung 2000; Born 2004; Søndergaard 2008; Syvertsen 2008) have describedhow DR and other public service institutions work proactively to secure theirpublic service role as a ‘locomotive’ (Søndergaard 2008) in digital and therebycross-platform development. Political work is being undertaken to incorporatethe actual innovator role as an important part of the public service obligation(Committee of Ministers 2007). DR can thereby legitimize itself on this basis,while at the same time the organization can participate in the (commercial)‘lock-out’ strategy through the degree of new, unique content.

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Lock-out and innovation may in summary be regarded as a business strategywhich forms part of a larger cross-platform business model, financed by otheractivities on other platforms or by other parts of the ownership. Nonetheless,it is the same market trends that are responded to, which means that they arein strong competition with each other in the same areas (e.g. free newspapersand communities). One could debate whether this imitation does not in factlead to the opposite of what the organizations wish to achieve through innovationas a business strategy, because it is through uniqueness that advantages arise. Uni-formity would lead to a lack of attention, and would thereby become a ‘deathspiral’ for NM rather than a ‘growth spiral’. This must especially be the casein a small market such as Denmark, where the struggle for attention is particu-larly intense (interview, NM management 2009). Conversely, it is problematic tofinance major experiments with a high failure rate through declining sales onother platforms, which, in line with the analysis, leads to the conception of auser innovation ideal. In the case of DR, it is difficult to see how innovationcan end in a ‘death spiral’, but uniformity can be problematic for the legitimiza-tion and fulfilment of the demand for ‘locomotive status’.

Conclusion

This article has presented an analytical framework with four different content flowstructures, and has pointed to various business models and challenges within thesestructures: Create and Play, in which the company maintains control and owner-ship over the content; Discover and Link, in which the company releases thecontent from its context, but retains ownership; Fetch and Distribute, in whichthe company is deprived of control and ownership over the content; and finallyOpen and Play, in which the users, in various ways, produce the content andthe communications framework. These structures exist side by side, but each ofthem is associated with different business-related value assessments by the compa-nies. In contrast to existing models, this analytic framework takes into consider-ation the inscription of the user roles in content flow rather than the workflowof the media employees internally. Finally, the article has described innovation,as a business model or lack thereof, as a strong characteristic of the way inwhich the companies approached cross-platform strategies in their decision-making. Differentiation in the area of material or programme concepts, accordingto the organizations, is important in order to attract attention, but innovation canonly be achieved through earnings in other areas (horizontal or vertical owner-ships) or through the legitimization of the innovation process itself.

Analysing the strategies and ideas of business value related to the differentcontent flow structures has also pointed to different stronger or weaker tensionsbetween transforming users to prod-users (Bruns 2008, 2012) and old to newmedia structures. In particular, the article shows that embracing user production

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in remixed content and free circulation patterns forces the companies to makecompetitors such as Google and Facebook stronger in order to obtain a shareof the user traffic (Discover and Link & Fetch and Distribute). In otherwords, the commercial value of traditional content is declining in digitalmedia as long as advertising does not ‘travel’ along with the professionalcontent. The commercial company tries to fix this through cross-platform adver-tisement grouping and subscriptions. If the traditional business model is retained,the company will be forced away from those networks where users are increas-ingly present and into a ‘walled garden’ mind-set through a cross-platform can-nibalization concept. In the case of public service, free circulation and remixedcontent enhance the company’s ability to reach a bigger audience, but thisplaces limitations on the documentation of the public service performancethrough coverage figures and usage measurements across platforms.

The findings of this article including the four content flow patterns are basedon two in-depth case studies, but the pioneering status of the organizations studied,the many references to similar work internationally, and macro-theories of struc-tural changes throughout the article suggest that similar strategic and productstructures are also found in other traditional media organizations. The shift inthe producer–user nexus demands for a new understanding of product characterand quality that rely on unique context-sensitive solution as well as a higher degreeof flexibility and a shorter product life. It also requires a focus on user innovation asa way to create affective economics (Jenkins 2006) through the ‘spill-over’ of userattention to other platforms of the cross-platform universe. A cross-platformbusiness model provides old media companies, however, with a competitive advan-tage, as they produce for multiple platforms (as of now).

Notes

1 More information about the income basis of the companies and the fullaccounts for the economic figures and percentages in the companies’revenue models can be found in Bechmann (2009, pp. 113–118).

2 The numbers were retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/list2.htm on 4 January 2012.

3 Double and triple coverage figures show that the same user is reachedseveral times, which may be desirable for advertisers who wish toensure that their message sticks.

4 The figures are extracted from Index DK/Gallup Marketing 1H Soft-ware, November 2008.

5 This could be compared with content in the music industry, wheremusic may be given away in exchange for increased income fromconcert revenues and merchandise. The repetition, experience andidentity value of news may as yet be different.

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Anja Bechmann is an assistant professor at the Department of Information and

Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. She is a board member of the

Centre for Internet Research and the Council for Greater IT Security in

Denmark. She wrote her PhD thesis on the subject of cross-media as a digital

transition in established media organizations. Her current research project,

‘Around Me’, focuses on digital cross-channel and cross-platform strategies

for Internet companies, including behavioural targeting, open APIs, location-

based social networking and privacy. More information and recent publications

can be found at: http://person.au.dk/en/abp@hum.au.dk. Address: Information

and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Helsingforsgade 14, Aarhus 8200,

Denmark. [email: anjabechmann@gmail.com]

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