There is no weekly that the media sector as a whole is looking and feeling sick going by all indicators. Most media outfits are competing for the same story with very little specialization noticed in any outlet.

The media workers are some of the worst off white collar professionals in town and nobody would pay attention to them anyway if it wasn't for social media. In fact many media stars make it on social media first and then try to gather leverage in their own work space. Mixed with TV talk shows, many media pros are much less known for their professional reports or columns but by their social media post reach and responses as well as talk show viral comments.

The most popular and most read media form is no longer the newspaper page which died years back anyway but the news card, a large designed piece of a digital cardboard holding an image and a few lines meant to draw attention. . The purpose is clear. Draw attention with minimum news, maximum attention seeking quotes and gather the highest impact.

In just one or two years, Bangladesh media has gone through a radical transformation where the scales have tilted towards the short , intense burst , very attuned to the moment and its mood and is quickly over and the audience moves on to the next one.

That is the reality people who are the owners, policy makers and leaders of the media world must learn quickly if they want to stay alive in the race. Many are aware of this new media so the onus is on the old media to learn the new way things are bought and sold in this market called the new media.

From many to one

While the media has many expressions, the fact of reach is universal to all. The media must reach the consumer and in ways far more difficult than ever before because the number of players is far more compared with the past, having far more choices than ever before, maybe just last month or week.

Everyday new outlets emerge funded by sources one never gets to know and if one does it's not just business groups as before who wanted to be players in the crony capitalism game. This is because in Bangladesh the nature of cronies have also changed as multiple chess masters play the board and no one is sure of who needs and does what. The crones are not limited to the Board game players' only but stretch far and beyond.

However, despite their influence the absolute band of monarchs in the media world of Bangladesh are social media users. Every day a Facebook account is opened, a player is announced, a crony steps in looking for more of his kind and with care and help can soon be as influential as a host of super media movers and shakers.

This is because the need to have a corporate entity and institution is over. The individual is as powerful as the group. And since it's a zero investment game, none of these players are about to retire or shut down office and announce layoffs. Almost suddenly, the individual as a media outlet is as powerful as a concept as an office full of crowded workers not paid for months or regularly but poorly paid.

What holds them together?

What holds them together is their presence in the social media which also now has profound economic implications too. More money is earned from online advertising than other formats by many. Smart management of digital marketing allows for high income as advertisement is also smart, going where the viewer lives.

Thus an online present is more important than the original media presence format, be it print or electronic media. The divider between professional corporate media and the individual as a media unit is less. It's only the frequency of broadcasting/uploading that distinguishes.

This may well mean higher investment in R and D for the bigger players who will need to develop new platforms or skills to use existing platforms as competition from a much less invested unit is high as they are profitable not in scale but proportion. Hence the justification for higher direct media investment may be less unless units are also in the media infrastructure.

Hence the world of media units is crisscrossed by many realities. And the challenges are not the same for all.

Multiple playing fields

At an immediate glance, it's the small players who stand to gain the most and the digital influencers show that whether on FB or Tik-Tok. As technology grows including AI, media units will reduce in size and redundancies will be more and many of these will join new outfits or become new units themselves. The bigger ones will have to increase their investment or develop more smart strategies to cope with the new reality of a changing media scene.

Nothing is certain except that nothing will be.