It's a tough time to be an independent production company. In fact, it's always a tough time to be an independent production company, especially a small one. Here's the Editor of Broadcast magazine writing online: "Almost half the respondents (44%) are letting staff go and almost two-thirds (62%) are cutting the number of production staff. Some 76% believe the repercussions are already visible on screen while a massive 95% believe the impact will be clearly visible within the next 12 months."
But the reality is that it's never been a better time to be in video production. The demand for video is going through the roof as it becomes a much more mainstream mode of communication. The problem is that in the new video world the clients are corporate and they need something more than the ability to produce video and tell stories; they need marketing skills and the ability to target and analyse audiences.
In fact, probably the single biggest step independent production companies need to take is to get in touch with their audiences. Indeed, the future security of indies will depend on their ability to build direct audiences and then deliver these to marketeers, broadcasters or service operators.
It's not very different to the effect that blogs have had on the publishing world where the traditional arbitrators have been disintermediated.
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