Veterans of new media are no doubt familiar with "attach rate," a back-of-the-dinner-napkin formula that purports to prove that for any branded online product, 10 to 20 percent of its viewers will seek out the same brand in another medium. Ostensibly, the other medium will be one that makes money. Used to cost-justify the most tenuous of Internet startups - 10 to 20 percent of millions of viewers is, let's see, a hell of a lot of CD-ROMs - attach rate is the black Magic Marker for business plans that would otherwise run red.
We assume that attach rate was a factor in Steven Brill's decision to pass on the opportunity to buy out Time Warner's stake in the online and print components of American Lawyer Media, which was founded in 1991 by Brill. Brill's memo to staff announcing his departure followed Time Warner's decision to retain its interest in Court TV, known affectionately by some as the O. J. Network. The sale of the cable channel was reportedly opposed by vice chairman Ted Turner, who is no stranger to tipping the scales based on attach rate. Late last year, Turner axed the money-losing Spiv, but retained the online presence for the television-enhanced and equally money-losing Rough Cut. We're told by friends of Flux close to the hand-wringing that, in addition to their legal troubles, the purveyors of that pull-media favorite, the SI Online Swimsuit Issue - known for leveraging more than just brands - have laid down the dictum that those member sites without a cross-media counterpart are free to seek outside ventures to which they can become attached - hopefully, at market rates.
Sometimes the problem isn't so much the rate of attachment as what comes attached. Such is the case with the recent AOL-led acquisition of John Borthwick's WP Studio, intended to put the America Online/Tribune Company joint-venture Digital Cities Studio project a skip and a jump ahead of Microsoft's New York Sidewalk. The total WP Studio package, however, delivers not only Total New York, but also the illustrious Spanker.com and ada 'web, the "digital foundry for experimental art." Spanker's eventual exit from the scene will be about as sorely felt as Spanq's. The recent selection of ada 'web for inclusion in the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art gives that loss leader a short-term reprieve, but may only prolong its pain.
According to those close to the situation, ada 'web has been given four months to find a sustaining source of revenue or convert to nonprofit status. The ever-helpful and newly rich Borthwick, now at the helm of Digital Cities Studio, has installed an executive producer to help make the transition. Her first task, apparently, was to draft non-competes for the remaining staff. Sometimes a good rate of attrition improves net cash-flow as effectively as a high-yield attach rate.
