DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD : Facing the Virtual Reality That N.Y. Is a Pretender to the New-Media Throne
In the epic struggle among city-states over who gets to be the Multimedia Capital of the Universe, there emerged last week a new pretender to the throne.
New York.
Yes, New York, symbol of all that is traditional, conservative, Old World.
Disregarding all that, and armed with data from a new survey conducted by accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand, the Big Analog Apple has thrust itself into a rivalry that has thus far been safely contained on the West Coast.
“New York is ideally positioned to incubate [the] interactive computive business as it roars into the 21st century,” declared a New York Times editorial that cited the survey.
The survey, sponsored by the state’s economic development agency and the New York New Media Assn., counted a whopping 4,200 new-media firms in the New York metropolitan area that together generated $3.8 billion in revenue last year.
The reactions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the two most prominent pretenders for the title (along with the occasional sniper attack from Seattle), have ranged from disbelief to outrage.
“It’s such nonsense,” fumes Rohit Shukla of Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance. “The Los Angeles five-county region clobbers New York by any means of measurement. I don’t know where they’re getting these numbers from.”
“New York or L.A. may be stronger in one area,” insists Susan Worthman, executive director of the San Francisco Multimedia Development Group. “But when you look at all the elements that feed this industry, they’re clustered here in numbers that just aren’t reflected anywhere else.”
Such extremes of geographical partisanship may seem a bit silly, particularly when the subject is a fledgling industry whose salaries are low and profits often nonexistent.
And one of the more striking ironies of the digital geo-wars is the conviction on all sides that there ought to be a central location for a business whose whole premise rests on the ability to dispense with physical space.
But the fierceness of the battle for metro-multimedia dominance is rooted in the belief that the new businesses--and the entrepreneurs, programmers and artists who drive them--may be the biggest creators of wealth in the coming decade.
Thousands of jobs are at stake, and so are the very identities of three regions that have long been defined by the industries converging to create multimedia.
At a time when technology threatens to remake the worlds of publishing and entertainment, each area is seeking to stay rooted to the industry of its past by playing host to its future.
And that is done in part by building and preserving an image.
“We hope this will help establish New York’s dominant role as the new-media center of the world,” says Brian Horey, president of the New York New Media Assn. “To the extent that we weren’t on the map in new media, this will change people’s perceptions.”
“It’s important to counter these mythologies,” says economist Joel Kotkin. “It sends a signal to investors, and it means there may be some talented young people who are going to New York and thinking that it’s the center of this industry when it’s not.”
One problem in calling this territorial horse race is that there is no standard definition for the squishy term “multimedia” or its equally nebulous derivatives--”new media,” “interactive media,” “digital media,” whichever works for you.
Any product that encompasses a blend of technology, entertainment, information or telecommunications probably fits, but how much and which combos fit which data are often unclear.
A recent study by Shukla’s group found 4,200 multimedia firms in Southern California supporting 160,000 employees. But it included a wider range of pure technology companies than those in the New York study.
The most recent study of the Bay Area’s collection of World Wide Web site designers, CD-ROM developers and the like came up with 2,200 companies with a combined 62,000 employees. But that was in 1994, and it may also have spanned a broader range of firms.
“It’s hard when you try to measure something that’s never been measured before because you don’t have the usual benchmarks,” says Andrew Zimmerman of Coopers & Lybrand, which performed the analysis on a pro bono basis. “I think we came up with the best numbers we could under the circumstances. I think we were in the ballpark.”
Methodological questions aside, there are some common-sense reasons to believe New York may be gaining ground on Los Angeles in the multimedia milieu.
Two years ago, when CD-ROM start-ups were all the rage and interactive television was still supposedly right around the corner, Hollywood’s talent base of actors, directors, set designers and character animators seemed crucial to multimedia success.
But the explosive growth of the World Wide Web has shifted the focus of new media to the online world, where New York-based publishers, advertisers and telecommunications firms have had much more influence.
Many industry watchers believe the Web will in turn give way to yet another techno-media mix, and which region wins out may depend more on what emerges than anything else.
In the meantime, the West Coast digerati who have a hard time envisioning the locus of a cutting-edge industry in the midst of pinstriped suits and snowstorms may need to consider a virtual reality.
“Whether yours is bigger or mine is bigger, the fact of the matter is something rather dramatic has happened in New York over the last year or two,” says Mark Stahlman, president of New York-based New Media Associates. “This industry will form and it will likely have a geographical center and it is clear now that New York City has a shot at being that center.”
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Multiple Multimedia Capitals
Will the real multimedia capital please stand up? Confusing numbers on the trendy new industry offer little proof for competing claims of geographical leadership.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
According to a recent survey of the New York new media industry, the city boasts of 4,250 multimedia firms, most of which find the Big Apple a more attractive place to do business than any other city.
1. Attractiveness relative to other cities:
More attractive: 59%
About the same: 24%
Less attractive: 17%
2. Perceived change in attractiveness:
Increasing: 74%
Not changing much: 20%
Decreasing: 6%
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
But another study found only 76 multimedia firms in all of New York state, whereas there were 502 in California, with the southern part of the state edging out the north.
Southern California: 266
Northern California: 236
New York: 76
Texas: 51
Massachusetts: 42
Illinois: 36
Washington: 36
Pennsylvania: 22
Florida: 18
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Multimedia Partnership counts 2,200 multimedia companies with 62,000 employees in its nine-county region. According to yet another study, there are more people working in Los Angeles’ multimedia technology industry than its motion picture business.
Motion picture employment: 136,766
Multimedia technology employment: 159,571
* Sources: Response Analysis Corp., Coopers & Lybrand, Carronade Group, Multimedia Directory, Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance.
