We know that celebrities hate the paparazzi. Hell, I hate the paparazzi. In my personal, but not professional opinion, they are one of the lowest forms of scum on the planet. But, they exist because publications like OK!, US Weekly, and TMZ exist. We can safely assume that the public has an interest in celebrities. You need only look at the check out aisles of grocery stores to know that’s a safe bet.

Ok…lately we’ve seen a lot of talk about access to content. From Murdoch cutting off Google’s access to Chris Anderson’s great post and book Free we’re all talking about the value of content.  There’s a reason we’re all talking about the value of content.  Once you assign a value to the content, we can determine it’s worth and how much we should charge for it.  More importantly, once we know how much it’s worth, people, rich people, will start to determine how much they’ll pay to own the source and distribution of the content.

With the recent sale of BusinessWeek to Bloomberg for ONLY $5,000,000.00 I got to thinking…which can be a dangerous proposition mind you. Let’s look at the dots we have:

1. Celebs loath the paparazzi
2. The paparazzi exist because publications pay them for content
3. Consumers by purchasing this content are directly (e.g. magazine purchase/subscription) or indirectly (e.g. visit to a website that is selling ad space) funding the existence of the paparazzi
4. Print media usage and the value of print media companies is declining dramatically
5. Celebrities are rich and have a common enemy (see #1)

If BusinessWeek sold for $5 million, how much do you think OK!, US Weekly, Star, and the like are worth collectively? Well, for argument’s sake let’s assume they are collectively worth $500 million. I realize it’s an absurd number, but let’s roll with it for now. If the top 10 richest celebrities pooled their money they’d be able to purchase these publications dozens of times over and then shut them down completely. With all the publications gone, who’s going to pay the paparazzi? With no one to pay the paparazzi, they’d have to turn to other meaningful, less scummy ways, of making a living.

I contemplated the concept of simply paying off the paparazzi not to act like leaches; kind of like a reverse IZEA scheme, but I quickly realized there are too many of them to pay off, too many who could pop up and want to be paid off, and more importantly they were a symptom, not the problem.  The publishers are the problem.  If you cut them out, everything else falls apart.

I ran this concept by my wife to make sure I wasn’t completely nuts.  After all, if this was so simple why hasn’t someone else thought about it?  She asked, “well, wouldn’t someone just create another site like TMZ or create their own new magazine?”  Hmm, well it’s possible.  Hell, it’s likely.  But, here’s the problem I see with it.  In this kind of game it would be too difficult and too expensive to go from start up to success ASAP.  Think about it.  You’re the editor at OK! Magazine.  You get bought out by this celeb conglomerate.  They fire you and dissolve the company.  So you say to yourself, “I’ve got connections, I know people, I know this business, I’ll create my own publication and stick it to them.”  Hmm.  Well, sure, you could bootstrap a tiny operation, work out of your basement, and put together a great concept.  But, you’d need cash to pay the paparazzi for the content.  You’d need cash to advertise your existence.  You’d need cash for distribution and printing (assuming you decided to go magazine style).  That’s a lot of cash and the reality is they celebs can outspend you left and right.  If this were a pay-per-click game, you’d get eaten alive.  And guess what, you’re going to need PPC to make a dent, because your company would have ZERO awareness.

Crazy? Sure. Totally possible? You bet. Would it work? I have no idea, but when you consider Nicholas Cage spends $250,000 on dinosaur skulls, it’s not like it’s not worth a shot.

Hmm…maybe all that thinking I was doing, wasn’t so crazy after all.