Meeting the Readers Through a Digital Transition. Lessons from the Entertainment

English Abstract: In this work, carried out at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Management of Enterprise Media, Entertainment, and Sports (Memes), we suggest that there is hope and reason for media companies to expect a recovery from the current crisis. As journalists and researchers in communication, we are concerned about newspapers’ sustainability, and we refuse to consider a future scenario without the press. According to this objective we focus on the entertainment industry with the goal of learning from it how to survive and even grow despite freely available content on the Web. We consider the unstoppable growth in users and revenue experienced by Netflix, Amazon and iTunes, and pull from it lessons learned that might help newspapers to navigate the digital landscape. Our hypothesis is that digital newspapers can find new readers in the segment of digital consumers who already “pay” for digital content including streaming movies and television shows. Sales, subscriptions, and online rentals experienced significant growth in 2013, bringing them closer to the sales figures of hardware such as DVDs and blu-ray discs. And, although piracy is an issue in the entertainment industry, there remains room for revenue growth. Spanish Abstract: En este trabajo realizado en el MEMES de UCLA, sugerimos que hay esperanza y razones para que las empresas periodisticas se recuperen. Como periodistas e investigadores en Comunicacion, nos preocupa la sostenibilidad de los periodicos, y no queremos ni pensar en un futuro escenario sin prensa. De acuerdo con este objetivo nos hemos centrado en la industria del entretenimiento con la idea de aprender de ella como sobrevivir o incluso crecer a pesar de que muchos contenidos esten disponibles gratuitamente en la red. Considerando el imparable crecimiento experimentado por Netflix, Amazon o iTunes, tanto en numero usuarios como de ingresos durante este mismo periodo de tiempo, si los periodicos pueden imaginar el modo de navegar en el indiscutido panorama digital, hay razones para ser optimistas. Buscando nuevos lectores en el segmento de consumidores digitales Las ventas y el streaming online de cine ha subido notablemente en 2013, tanto que se esta acercando a las cifras de venta de DVDs y Blu-Ray disc. Por otro lado la pirateria no ha terminado con la industria cinematografica, pese a que persiste un elevado numero de descargas ilegales.