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Polymathica Refined.. Erudite.. Visionary © 2010 The Institute for Advanced
Social and Technological Analysis, LLC |
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The Polymathic
Pundits: Bloggers, Talkers,
etc. Polymaths,
over a lifetime, develop a base of skills and knowledge that uniquely prepares
them to advise others. Some Polymaths
will engage in consultancy to leaders of institutions of enterprise,
education and governance. Here,
however, we consider the emergence of a population of polymathic pundits
engaged in the presentation of news, analysis and commentary, via print,
radio and television. The emergence of
Internet radio and television will enable these activities to be profitable,
even for widely dispersed, relatively small groups, such as Polymathica. Polymathica is a global community of
refinement and erudition. However, it
is also intended to evolve into a website similar to Yahoo.com, To
fully understand the nature of this career opportunity, we will need to make
a short digression into some theoretical issues. Dr. Keith Simonton has demonstrated that
groups are most convinced by speakers whose IQ is 18 points higher than the
mean of the group. Dr. Leta Hollingworth
demonstrated that people with IQs 30 points apart are essentially incomprehensible
to one another. Dennisen concluded
that this establishes a range of mutual understanding. We tend to listen to pundits that we find
convincing. We therefore conclude that
a pundit will attract an audience with IQs between 30 and 6 points below
their own with a statistical mode at 18 points. All IQ references are based upon a 15 point
deviation scale. This allows us to
draw some general conclusions about the nature of the news media. It
would seem unreasonable that the mainstream news outlets, with their
unrelenting need to maximize ratings in order to survive, could have an
audience with a mean IQ much above 108.
This would suggest that the mainstream media is presented at an IQ
level of about 126 to an audience primarily between 96 and 120. The top of this range would actually be
most convinced by a pundit with an IQ of 138.
Consequently, we can conclude that the upper half of the audience with
IQs between 108 and 120 are susceptible to being stolen from the mainstream
media by a more intellectually sophisticated pundit. The probability of pundit switching would
be near zero at 108 IQ and near 100% at 120 IQ. We
assert that this audience is having its appetite for news satisfied by cable
news outlets and, in all likelihood, public television news. Audience maximization suggests that these
outlets are being being presented at an IQ of about 141 with an audience
range, with IQs primarily between 111 and 135 and an average of 123. We also conclude that there is a portion of
this market with IQs above 123 that is susceptible to news outlets, if they
existed, presented at an IQ level of 150 or above. This represents approximately 6% of the
population. However, it should be
pointed out, cable news will compete meaningfully with all but about 1.6% of
the population. The
emergence of Internet radio and television will allow pundits in the
intellectual range above 150 IQ to find audiences of profitable sizes. The unserved market is taken to be
approximately 3.2% of the population or approximately 20 million English
speakers. Pundits marketing through
Polymathica can be expected to garner a signficant portion of this market,
potentially as much as 8 to 10 million.
This is greater than the expected population of Polymathica because
Polymaths will make better pundits and this will be an ‘export’ industry for
Polymathica to other websites that cater to 123+ IQ groups. Because
people of remarkable intelligence also exhibit remarkable curiosity and intellectual
engagement, this market, especially that portion that acquires its content
through Polymathica, will consume substantially more than average in news,
analysis and commentary. They will
also define news much more broadly to more positively engage science,
technology, art, history, economics, etc.
We expect that Polymathica subscribers will consume substantially more
audio and video news magazine and documentary content. We anticipate annual revenue of
approximately $120 per capita from this market. This equates to a total market size of $120
X 20 million = $2.4 billion per year.
This is sufficient to support over five thousand pundits at an average
of $480K per year. However, we suspect
that this is more diversity of opinion and format than the market will
bear. Consequently, we consider it
more likely that the market will be comprised of approximnately thousand
pundits with average incomes in excess of two million dollars per year. Because
much of the revenue will be related to print and audio content, this is a
market that can be exploited immediately.
Internet radio is a developed technology that, with the emergence of
technologies that allow for delivery by cellular telephony, will replace broadcast
and satellite radio in the upper quartile income population within the next
five years,.
Because of the Information Age income explosion, the upper quartile
will be trending toward household incomes of $300K+ and an annual expense of
less than $300 will be considered inconsequential. Consequently, because Internet content can
be ‘metered’, we expect that this population will choose to dispense with
advertising in favor of a pay per use format.
In
order to understand a likely business model, one should consider contemporary
pundit websites such as http://rushlimbaugh.com
and http://bigeddieradio.com. These sites offer print and streaming or
downloaded .mp3 files to premium members.
Membership is typically between $55 and $90
per year. The website is typically
fronted by ad supported ‘free content.’
Many of the sites also offer branded products and the pundits books.
Traffic acquisition is almost entirely via their ad supported
broadcast radio shows. While most are
political commentary oriented, a few, such as Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money
Makeover” are beginning to emerge. As
Internet Radio expands the market, we expect a broad spectrum of formats to
become successful. They will range
from the traditional news and political talk to the sciences, history, arts,
lifestyle, health and wellness, home and garden, to name just a few. As
the number of offerings available via Internet delivery explodes, we expect
that print content will remain ad supported while audio and video content,
offered as a streaming signal in real-time streaming or 24/7 via download,
will continue to be offerred primarily as premium content purchased without
commercial interruption. Clearly, the
current practice of offering access to media solely on an unlimited basis at
a periodic rate limits the number of premium content sources an individual is
likely to acquire. Consequently, we
expect that it will, in large part, be replaced by pay per download through
various traffic aggregating sites, such as Polymathica. These sites will accumulate the charges for
downloads from any number of offerred pundits, along with other purchases
made on the site,
And either apply to a prepaid account or, based upon credit
approval, billed periodically. Pundits,
by offering premium content on multiple sites on a per download basis, will
maximize their exposure and, consequently, their revenue. Download fees are likely to be in the range
of $.25 per audio hour and $.50 per video hour. Polymathica will retain 20% for traffic
acquisition, billing and administration.
Consequently, a pundit that creates ten hours per week of audio
content and creates 20,000 downloads per segment, will have revenue of
$2,080,000 per year. Revenue from
website advertising, product sales, etc. may offset the actual expenses,
resulting in an income of $2.0 million per year. Another
alternative is for a pundit to become part of a news network in the form of a
bundled package. In other words, a
person may pay a monthly fee to receive unlimited access to print, audio and
video content that may include hard news of several varieties and opinion,
analysis, commentary, interviews and call-ins from a predetermined number of
pundits. The pundits may be
individually selected and their number vary based
upon the package cost. This will be a
cost effective option for those people who are inclined to consume large
amounts of news content. It is also
beneficial to the pundit by increasing their overall traffic. For
Fellows of Polymathica who wish to engage in punditry, the opportunities are
significant. We will begin with the
Polymathica Radio Work Group for Fellows who are interested in exploring this
opportunity. We have a
BlogTalkRadio.com account that will allow us to begin the process. However, once we have exceeded that
programming hour limitation of 21 hours per week, we will switch to a
Polymathica.com broadcast capability. |
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