Will new media segmentation and broadcast 'narrowcasting' end U.S. media dominance?
There are roughly 130 million television households in Western Europe. In the United there are roughly 99 million. However, Western Europe is not a unified market, while the U.S. is. U.S. broadcasters can benefit from the economies of scale and therefore the U.S. dominates cultural copyright exports to Europe with its sizable trade surplus.
Will the growing segmentation and narrowcasting of television and the Internet erode this dominance? How will the intermix of television and the internet contribute to this? I ask myself these questions.
I believe U.S. media and entertainment are undervalued assets in the American economy. It trendy to say that American films are of poor quality and that our media is valueless. Certainly, the media may deserve criticism for becoming in some respects the "un-ratified fourth branch" of American government. However, outside the context of THAT discussion, U.S. media and entertainment industries are the only U.S. sectors that boast a surplus balance of trade with nearly every nation in the world. That deserves some attention, consideration, and respect.
Creative copyright industries will always engender debate as to their cultural and social effect. Since these industries are at the core of the emerging global creative economy we can expect these discussions to become more heated as time goes on: whether the topic be American movies, Disneyland, or cloning. The point I want to make is this: These debates about cultural effect can also overpower our discussions about these sectors' legitimate economic benefit. Many countries may also use these debates as smoke screens to cover up their protectionist policies.
Media heir wants 'Airbus of the web' - Financial Times - MSNBC.com
Excerpts:
Will the growing segmentation and narrowcasting of television and the Internet erode this dominance? How will the intermix of television and the internet contribute to this? I ask myself these questions.
I believe U.S. media and entertainment are undervalued assets in the American economy. It trendy to say that American films are of poor quality and that our media is valueless. Certainly, the media may deserve criticism for becoming in some respects the "un-ratified fourth branch" of American government. However, outside the context of THAT discussion, U.S. media and entertainment industries are the only U.S. sectors that boast a surplus balance of trade with nearly every nation in the world. That deserves some attention, consideration, and respect.
Creative copyright industries will always engender debate as to their cultural and social effect. Since these industries are at the core of the emerging global creative economy we can expect these discussions to become more heated as time goes on: whether the topic be American movies, Disneyland, or cloning. The point I want to make is this: These debates about cultural effect can also overpower our discussions about these sectors' legitimate economic benefit. Many countries may also use these debates as smoke screens to cover up their protectionist policies.
Media heir wants 'Airbus of the web' - Financial Times - MSNBC.com
Excerpts:
Christoph Mohn, the heir to the Bertelsmann media empire, has called for Europe to create an Airbus of the internet, to compete with US giants such as Google and Ebay.
"So far, we have not built up a sizeable internet company in Europe," he said. "It's not good for the European Union. Nano-technology, biotechnology and the internet are the growth industries but in most of these the position is not good for Europe."
Mr Mohn endorsed the controversial Franco-German plan to build a state-funded European search engine called Quaero, saying: "It's a little bit like Airbus Industries. I don't think it requires consolidation [of Eur-ope's internet industry] but it needs co-ordination."
Quaero was launched this year with initial funding of €1.7bn ($2.2bn) to develop voice-based and picture-based search technologies. "[Quaero] is not just about 'let's beat Google'," Mr Mohn said. "It's 'let's build up a competitive internet industry'." Bertelsmann and Lycos Europe are members of the Quaero consortium, which includes Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Thomson and France Telecom.
