Multi-platform media and the miracle of the loaves and fishes

Drawing on findings from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project which investigates how media companies have made the journey from being single sector to digital multi-platform suppliers of content, this article identifies some of the key managerial and economic challenges and opportunities involved in making that transition. It argues that the current migration towards multi-platform has altered not just media industry processes and output but, more fundamentally, it has re-configured the ways in which content is now being conceptualised by media managers. Multi-platform strategies have encouraged a vast expansion in the volumes of media content supplied and made available to media audiences at a time when, generally, the production budgets of media organisations have been tightly constrained. This article considers critically the question of how the transition to a multi-platform environment has facilitated such abundance in output and an apparently miraculous increase in levels of productivity across the media industry. It questions the implications for content and for policy of an ever-growing commitment to multi-platform strategies.