World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

Industrial convergence driven by the Internet has been making the market boundaries among industries such as the telecommunications, radio and television, publishing, film gradually fading away. Different industries become to supply substitute content products and services for the same target market and enter each other market. The competition of substitute goods is becoming more intensively. The operation patterns of these industries are experiencing disruptive change. The two-sided market relationship (audience maker: product/service provider → consumer + advertiser) of the traditional television media are quietly undergoing changes. With the diversity of information provided by China's TV media as well as the connection groups, TV media has become a brand-new platform with the characteristics of market maker, audience maker, and demand coordinator. This study explores and analyzes the platform characteristics of the television media transformation from the perspectives of platform positioning, agents’ connected, platform structure and network effect. In order to set up well-functioning platform, TV media should improve the direct network effect through deepening the integration of cable television network, improving product differentiation and expanding sub platform construction. TV media should start from the concept establishment of platform users, and form themselves from the single platform leader to hybrid platform leader, and work out effective incentive mechanism for the stakeholders of platform to enhance the indirect network effect. The construction of the platform is to promote the TV media operations from the original content supply caused by the attention economy to focus on the information service of the data economy.