Recently in Television and New Media Category
"The user is more important than the advertiser, more important than the developer, more important than anyone else. At the end of the day, it's the user who's going to drive the advertising dollars."
Old media turns combative against new media | Technology | Internet | Reuters Annotated
"At a panel discussion on the second day of the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference, top executives said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown."
"You'll see more acquisitions," Chernin said. "This is a world where the big get bigger. You'll see increased consolidation."
Variety.com - AOL uploads slate of TV-style shows Annotated
AOL is now officially a TV network.
In a network-style upfront presentation Tuesday, the Web giant announced a slate of programming with a full lineup of content from Hollywood vets.
The slate announcement, coming at the start of the upfront season for ad buyers, is meant to position AOL as an ad player along the lines of a TV outlet.
Slate will include projects from reality giant Endemol USA, production shingle Telepictures and a continued relationship with Mark Burnett Prods., which produced AOL's "Gold Rush" skein.
Many of the programs skirt the line between interactive gaming and nonscripted programming; they can be categorized as either reality television with consumer participation or an online game with video components.
AOL believes it can sell spots within the programming as well as peddle extensive product placement.Though studies show most online viewers gravitate to programming and services more than corporate brands, Wilson said he believed programming would funnel users to Moviefone and other AOL services.
I will not have access to the Internet between November 4th and the 18th, because I will be traveling on a sail boat from Grenada to Antigua. Please excuse the blog interruption.
I leave you for the time being with my undigested thoughts on the broad and relevant topic “the evolving nature and aesthetics of creative content”.
First, it covers the evolving structures of storytelling via new media. Examples of new media structures are foureyedmonsters.com and lonelygirl15.com; and interactive television content that is created on the web to supplement traditional shows. Reality TV is obviously interactive but LOST is the best original dramatic example of this interactivity; and then of course, their is the growth of user generated content from channels like YouTube and CNN): What do these new storytelling structures look like? How are these structures similar and different to their predecessors?
Television, can have a relationship with the internet that film cannot. I imagine that the nature of going to the movies will still demand High Imaging that allows for suspension of disbelief...but there is a degrading of image quality and techniques that lower-end digital technologies have supplanted into the aesthetic psyche of many younger viewers – just look at the ads created and aimed at the under 30 demographic. Old tricks. Why is that? Perhaps because they are expert consumers of electronic stories and know it’s manufactured.... They are deconstructing the image.
Another thought, I think of Mark Chiolis’ (Grass Valley) remark to me in my interview with him:
"Today there are a number of thought provoking questions that are being asked. What happens when there is a true RGB 4k (there isn't one today) sensor that rivals, if not exceeds, that of today's film stock? One of the arguments for film is that people like the "look" which includes the grain and movement through the gate. What happens when the "game-boy" generation takes over? Having grown up with "video" is this the "look" they want to see? Will they have a different set of standards to compare to?"
Film (theatrical features) is (are) different. I think they will demand even more heighten realism and I suspect that Digital 3D will become increasingly popular in that format in the years to come (an outgrowth of the gamers demand for a heightened experience).
What are the fundamental relationships that the younger generation seem to be exploring via this new media content and traditional content? Some may say the subject matter is generally solipsistic, passive - an outgrowth perhaps of the individuals solitary communion with the anonymous web or with media itself...but look at the bleeding edge technology and science of virtual reality. Look at the studies of the psycho-physical effects of these media tools on users in medical and defense research. Passive is not the right word to describe this relationship. Interactive is better. But with what (media) and whom (other players)?
I say one cannot understand this generation unless they have a MySpace page and love it. Why? There is a freedom of movement in the field of archetype and symbol that enables both artist and audience to observe without disclosure, absorb without acquisition, and create without the demand for conclusion. The repetition of archetypical representation uncovers both artist's and audience's collective mythologies, thereby revealing: The anonymous is personal.
Renowned urban planer Richard Florida notes that the fundamental social and economic changes that underpin the Creative Economy, demonstrate that in “virtually every aspect of life, weak ties have replaced the stronger bonds that once gave structure to society. Rather than live in one town for decades, we now move about. Instead of communities defined by close associations and deep commitments to family, friends, and organizations, we seek places where we can make friends and acquaintances easily and live quasi-anonymous lives. The decline in the strength of our ties to people and institutions is a product of the increasing number of ties we have.”
How have television and new media influenced the sensibility and subject matter of creative content. I see the primary relationship that the younger generation is exploring, is with the media itself (I am not talking about the news media, I am talking about media itself). You may critiqued the passivity of video games...but, perhaps that passivity masks an exploration with identity that is not understood by non-participants and therefore disregarded as irrelevant. I say this exploration is powerful and emergent in movies like Adaptation and I Heart Huckabees. This relationship between identity and media is increasingly portrayed as mystical, interactive, and “high touch”. Their is a propensity for role playing, a desire for authenticity coupled with a disdain of truthiness and even traditional ideology. For dramatic content and docu-reality, they create satire and even sarcasm (the mass may also create cynicism, but I would never characterize this generation as cynical. They know the line of complicity runs through each of them).
In some respects, “reality shows” seem like an outgrowth of this propensity for role-playing, a study of the dramas of personality. In deconstructing the “sit com” and “documentary” and even the “commercial brand”, there appears to be an investigation of topics like truth and being.
Regarding lonelygirl15.com. As one writer I spoke with remarked, “Entertainment is always flirting with reality. It seems that things that don't aim to be thought of as real do a much better job. Verisimilitude, it's what it's all about."
Is there a common thread in the subject and structures explored by newer creative content, a post-post modern sensibility? See the NYT’s article, “Brand Underground”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/magazine/30brand.html?ex=1311912000&en=82edb890b1d6c977&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
There are several larger forces manifesting in the recent development of MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach for example. One of them is the evolution of brand: how the concept has extended itself into the realm of branded communities in the digital age. Gamers (the generation under age 35 and including generations X and Y) have grown up in a world saturated by brand so that the phenomenon is now a vehicle for personal expression and identity beyond the ostensible confines of a corporate mandate (well, except their own). Commentators like Rob Walker (The Brand Underground, NYT) have elucidated the social phenomena well, however, they tend to look at the expression as another failed modernist attempt to beat the system. Hand me the cyanide, the revolution is over and we lost!
Boomers are wired to view creativity as a choice between “selling out” or “sticking it to the man” and the quest for the great society as a dogmatic battle between the mediocrity of relativism and the virtue of absolutes. To use former bohemian terminology, today’s generation does not have that hang up. “They have relatively little generational consciousness,” writes David Brooks, “because this generation is for the most part not fighting to emancipate itself from the past.” The suggestion is provocative considering that while “the baby boom included the largest U.S. birth cohort to date, the game generation will ultimately outdo the baby boom in size, in scope, and presumably in influence,” notes John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade in their study of the game generation’s influence on organizational values in business. “The total size of the game generation is already greater than the baby boom ever was,” and the whole generation of gamers, “including X and Y and letters to be named later-simply approach the world differently than their predecessors.”
I am a broken record, but like dissident antipoliticians from the former Czechoslovakia, who used satire and absurdity to highlight the fact that in a postmodern consumer society the “line of complicity runs through each of us," this new American generation distrusts political grandstanding and even traditional forms of organized politics. Hence, the popularity of so-called no brow satires like South Park, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show.
The playwright Heiner Mueller once remarked that the potency of theater in his native East Germany was based on the absence of other ways of getting messages across to people. "As a result," Mueller says, "Theater here has taken over the function of other media in the West," before now. While the never ending surface chatter of talking points and double speak on both the left and the right continue to erode the value of words, they also inflate the space between the lines.
None of this mentions how the game generation take globalization for granted and the growing crossover of cultural content from other traditions, “bollywood”, Japanese Anime et cetera.
TV viewership hits record high: report | Entertainment | Television | Reuters.com
"'These results demonstrate that television still holds its position as the most popular entertainment platform,' said Patricia McDonough, senior vp planning policy and analysis at Nielsen. 'At this point, consumption of emerging forms of entertainment, including Internet television and video on personal devices, seems not to be making an impact on traditional television viewing.'"
Advertising Age - Digital - Warner Bros. Creates Short-Form Digital Ad Content Division
Excerpts:
Aimed at satisfying advertisers' growing thirst for original content and digital platforms, the division, dubbed Studio 2.0, will integrate brands and develop programming specifically for ad sponsorship.
[S]aid Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group. "Since advertisers were intimately involved in the early days of television, it makes sense for them to be involved in this arena, too."
"The goal is to create stand-alone content that speaks to the audience. It's not about creating something that looks like a commercial."
News Corp.'s Fox TV Studios also intends to create original content with marketers in mind, aligning with branding guru Peter Arnell in a nonexclusive pact to create content across platforms.
Ad agencies are increasingly creating their own content for clients, and marketers such as Anheuser-Busch are showing they want to own and even produce their own entertainment content. Commercial production houses are creating more of their own content as well.
Advertising Age - Q&A With the NFL's Lisa Baird: How to Market the Biggest Reality Show
Excerpt:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Lisa Baird joined the National Football League from IBM Corp. last year at a time of transition: the extension of TV deals with CBS, Fox and DirecTV; a new pact with NBC; and the shifting of Monday Night Football to ESPN -- not to mention a new commissioner who took over on Sept. 1.
Ms. Baird, now senior VP-marketing, took over the top marketing spot after the departure of ex- General Motors Corp. executive Phil Guarascio. As the NFL's big kickoff weekend begins, Ms. Baird took time to talk about matters including the league's future in a digital world.
The NFL is the ultimate reality show: It's unscripted and unpredictable, played out in front of the biggest TV audience each Sunday and Monday night. Mark Burnett couldn't come up with "reality" like the next 21 weeks of our season.
Changing demographics and emerging technologies continue to mystify those companies that are five to 10 years down the road. We're also in a unique brand position with the NFL and the 32 clubs having such massive audiences. We continually need to protect our brand from companies that look to redefine the NFL image to their own advantage.
We've talked a lot about better understanding how our most important constituency -- our fans -- interacts with the NFL, consume media and spend their time and money, particularly given changes in American demographics.
We hold the keys to some of the world's most valuable content -- NFL games. We need to keep finding compelling ways to deliver our content, while protecting our network packages which have been the underpinning of our league and what makes us unique.
MySpace cowboys - September 4, 2006
Excerpts:
With Murdoch's backing, the site has an astonishing number of projects underway: a Google pact to sell text ads on the site; a MySpace Records label; a VoIP feature to let users call one another; international sites in Britain, Australia, France - with nine other countries in Europe and Asia coming soon. DeWolfe counts 20 new products in the development pipeline. "We think we can extend MySpace around the world and it can be a major force globally," says Murdoch, whose Internet ambitions have helped drive News Corp.'s stock up 18% this year.
PC Pro: News: Google wants its MTV
Google and MTV have begun a flirtation by signing a deal to distribute MTV clips through the Google network. The Official Google blog says that clips from MTV and its associated channels such as VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central will start appearing on a site near you that is part of Google's AdSense programme. It is only a toe in the water but may be the prelude to a much bigger alliance.
It is only recently that MTV has woken up to the threat posed by YouTube. It was widely expected that the new 'Flux' web site would be a rival to YouTube. However, at the moment Flux is merely a shop for selling ringtones and pictures. By teaming with Google, MTV may be hoping to use the Internet giant's muscle to challenge YouTube's encroachment into music video.
Business Week writer Catherine Holahan elucidated the pitfalls of brands like Viacom's MTV in a digital age with its lower barriers to market entry. The big question is if and how MTV will maintain its hegemony over the younger demographic, especially with increasing competition from the likes of online content distributors like YouTube and MySpace.
Excerpts and Highlights:
Major Internet players—from search engine Yahoo! (YHOO) to startup video site YouTube—are striking deals to broadcast music videos over broadband. Their hope: The same strategy that won Viacom's (VIA) MTV Networks cult-like control of the 12- to 34-year-old audience two decades ago will prove just as successful today on the Web.
Advertising Age - CBS to Stream Prime-time Shows Through Innertube
Excerpts:
Just weeks after ABC touted the success of its online rebroadcasts of first-run shows, CBS has followed suit and will offer several of its top prime-time shows online, through the network's broadband channel, Innertube. The network will offer up "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "CSI: NY," "NCIS," "Survivor" and "Numb3rs," along with newcomer "Jericho."
One of the main challenges for media firms in the Creative Economy is market retention. "The media content provider resembles a hunter gatherer in that for the creator of the media you start from scratch and need to capture or kill your prey each time, if you wish to prosper," says William Drury, Senior Marketing Consultant formerly with IBM EMEA, "You are only as good as your last effort. Quality, measured as you wish, is primary."
A thousand options fragment the audience for mainstream broadcaster and advertiser alike. What this means for mainstream broadcasters is that marketing television shows that appeal to broad audiences has also becomes more expensive. One of the growing trends in prime time television today is how TV shows with a broad demographic are marketed more like films. "The Premier means everything, says Megan Wolpert, executive VP of Spyglass Television, "just like it does in the film and the music industry. Today, television is starting to put much more stake into the premier of a show. So where it use to be the box office weekend would make or break how many screens you stay in over the next couple weeks in order to see if you can make more money. Today the same phenomenon is happening with television."
What this means for advertisers is that they are paying more to reach those broad audiences, while their effect is less potent. Companies that continue to capitalize on customer relations and experiential marketing are the real winners in this scenario. Market retention is the key to deriving sustainability in the disposable and immediate age of rapid product turnover and new media. Brand awareness or identity alone are no longer enough.
Advertising Age - McKinsey Study Predicts Continuing Decline in TV Selling Power
Excerpt:
"Should everybody shift 30% of their dollars to the web?" asked Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, senior practice knowledge specialist in McKinsey's San Francisco office. "No. There wouldn't be room today if everybody wanted to shift online. Last year [online media] was $12.5 billion, by end of 2007 digital advertising will be $18 to $25 billion. ... So we're seeing a lot of growth, but if you want to match up share of attention and share of dollars it couldn't happen for that reason." The TV ad industry is a $68 billion one.
Reality television is a result evolving market forces. Certainly, the rising cost of production and the demand for content with the worldwide proliferation of cable is one obvious driver. Reality television especially of the type that is integrated with the Internet or with direct viewer response is also part of the evolving trend towards interactive media with the younger demographic. Interactivity is also part of the gaming generation's fascination with role-playing. Sims in the world of traditional television content is found in the form of reality television. According to John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, in their study of the gaming generation's attitudes towards business, entertainment software has trained this generation to expect a heightened relationship based on immediate rewards or consequences with media and the world at large. I believe this ethos towards role-playing and interactivity is seen in the form of reality-based shows like "American Idol" and the "Apprentice".
With advertising in turmoil on broadcast TV, reality shows - like American Idol or even Tommy Hilfiger's less successful "The Cut" - take product placement well beyond a can of Coke enjoyed by our favorite television show's character. "Idol was simply a marketing tool for me to sell records," says Simon Cowell on "Larry King Live." "The show was one thing but it was actually my record label, which was the most important thing. So, my background is I run a record label, and I still run a record label and that's really my passion.
The real winner of "American Idol" is Cingular Wireless. Cingular has an exclusive deal with the show's producers that let customers text their votes instead of trying to call in on busy lines. In Season Four last year, 41.5-million text votes were sent in; Cingular charges between $19.99 per month for a text package with 2,500 messages included and 10 cents per message on a pay-as-you-go plan, meaning the company raked in as much as $4.15-million in text messaging fees from American Idol votes alone last year. When the Apprentice was at its peak, Ad Age writes, Yahoo's product placement was a solid success, "After the ice cream challenge during the second season, viewers were told to go search Yahoo, and “Within three hours of the end of the show, the term ‘Apprentice Ice Cream’ was the third-most-searched term on Yahoo that day. By 5 o’clock the next afternoon, the ice cream was sold out,” says Yahoo VP Jim Moloshok. And the results kept coming. After the Levis challenge, “[f]our days after that episode ran, viewers were still searching Yahoo avidly for ‘Apprentice Jeans’ to get a copy of the catalog. And "Apprentice Jeans" was still ranked No. 1 among Yahoo Web searches,” AdAge reports. Using secret tracking devices, Yahoo discovered that “The core demographic for the ice cream was 21 to 34 years old. For the jeans, it was 35 to 44.” Yahoo VP Moloshok says, “If you can complete the loop, product placements like Mark Burnett is doing are one of the most effective ways to get people engaged with a product.”
Now CNN like MTV Flux are taking "reality" one-step further implementing an infrastructure for user-based content.
Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Dell to Sponsor CNN's 'Citizen Journalism'
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- At a time when much of the digital media world's focus is on how to monetize user-generated content, CNN has signed Dell as a major sponsor of its foray into citizen journalism -- iReports and the CNN Exchange program.
Guardian Unlimited Business | | MTV hooks up with Google
MTV is to supply segments of its programmes to the thousands of websites and blogs affiliated with search giant Google.
MySpace a launch pad for next-gen media biz
Excerpts:
It's too soon to know the future of paid content downloads on MySpace, having recently launched its first offering: $1.99 downloads of the Fox series "24," sponsored by Burger King. However, paid search represents a considerable revenue-generating opportunity for MySpace and a search partner.
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - News Corp to sell films online
Excerpts:
News Corp’s internet properties, including MySpace.com, are to start selling Fox films and television content on a download-to-own basis in an effort to create a foothold in this potentially huge new digital market.
Advertising Age - MediaWorks - MTV Wants to Be Marketers' On-Ramp to the Web
Here are some exceprts:
Around the Google deal, it really is the first time where anybody in the content business can use video and create a new content economy on the internet by marrying a video to an advertisement and allowing smaller owners to place that on their sites. It promises to be a groundbreaking way for content to be distributed and monetized on the internet. We brought this idea to Google. Eric Schmidt and I negotiated the deal and it's the first of many [MTV will] be doing in the digital media space.
LONDON - MTV's college network mtvU has acquired Y2M, the largest interactive network of online college newspapers in the US.
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.
Ultimately, television can have a relationship with the internet that features cannot. “Features have been able to grab on to what internet can do for marketing and publicity,” says Megan Wolpert, executive vice president of Spyglass Television, when I interviewed her in January this year: “However, TV can do what movies can’t with that relationship, because they don’t need to add a step. They don’t need to say come see us. They just show it. You can show a memoir, a travelogue, a serialized anything on the internet. I think even if you just look at the act of watching a movie versus watching television, it’s more analogous to the act of watching a computer.”
Certainly, the popularity of Reality TV is the outcome of the game generation trend towards interactivity. What is happening more recently, however, is an extension of the relationship between television and internet with show like Lost and VH1 Webjunk. Now MTV introduces MTV Flux a combination social networking portal/television channel.
Excerpts:
CinemaTech: From AlwaysOn: `How Far Will Consumer-Generated Media Go?'
New York Times writer, Scott Kirsner, stopped in at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford and posted a report about the panel 'How Far Will Consumer-Generated Media Go". The panel featured YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, the CEO of MP3 Tunes, and execs from Yahoo and Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment.
While I do believe distribution becomes more fluid with the continued evolution of digital technology along all points of the media supply chain, I do not believe that digital technology will democratize film making. Multinational corporations and conglomerates have the scope and capital to market and distinguish their product from the glut of global competitors (whether that competition is created by Chinese manufacturing or American independent filmmakers). Certainly the segmentation or "narrow-casting" currently developing with the expansion of world-wide cable and the internet creates spaces for creative expression produced, say, less expensively with digital technology; however, outside of those exceptions eventually marketed to broader audiences, digital technology will not disturb media firms' control over the organs of distribution. The question ALWAYS remains: Who reaps the benefits of copyright? Is it the content creator or the media firm that owns the intellectual property that the content creator sold to the distributor for a profit?
Indeed, media firms may be held captive at choking points along the supply chain - a consequence of handing their brands over to stars or whomever - but media firms are more apt to forge strategic partnerships or acquire internet portals like Amazon et cetera, then wither away and die. In an economic environment starved for content, the power does shift to the content creator or more specifically, whoever owns the copyright, but corporations are the ones most likely to benefit from this paradigm; because they can exploit their natural economies of scale. The myth of democratizing filmmaking is techno-utopianism. The creative economy needs a mixture of small, medium, and large size creative industry firms.
Excerpts from CinemaTech:
Fox News Corp has a brand. Unlike their competitors, they haven't relinquished it to stars or shows et cetera. They are also the exception because they understand market retention. You may have a political bone to pick with Fox News, but only because you are aware of their brand. MySpace has market retention too, because, well frankly, it's quite addictive. It's the internet version of tobacco.
This idea of market retention is foreign to media firms in an age where most are hyper-focused on "capturing" markets. Media firms spend millions of dollars on marketing only to toss away their branding in a nano-second. All of this is applicable to Fox News Corp. and MySpace. News Corp's acquisition is on the digital ball. Viacom is not far off, but they are trying to build from scratch (with MTV's new social networking site Flux) what Murdoch had but to acquire. While other media firms are looking in their rear view mirror, Murdoch and Myspace are the perfect and timely diagonal expansion. More on that later. In the meantime...
Marketing on MySpace | ForBiddeN fruit | Economist.com
Excerpts:
"Advertising is in turmoil because of new technology," says Dave Morgan, CEO of Litton Entertainment when I interviewed the leading independent distributor in February this year. More than fragmenting audiences new media allow viewers to bypass advertising altogether.
Excerpts from "Amazon Readies Launch of Ad-Free Video Download Service":
A year in the works, the e-tailer's digital-video-download service is set for a mid-August launch and will feature a subscription service and a la carte movies and TV shows. Yes, folks, that's more ad-free TV for sale.
The service, which is referred to as Amazon Digital Video -- or Amazon "DV" -- has evolved over the past year from a music-themed offering to a video-centric one, according to production-studio and TV-network executives briefed on the plans. The reason? Apple, these executives said, already commands such a large share of digital-music sales that Amazon felt it would be too difficult to break into the market.
Amazon's reputation for ease of use could help it capture the video-download market, much as iTunes did with its simplicity in the music market. If that happens, it's sure to speed up consumers' comfort level with paying for ad-free TV content -- at a time when networks are trying to launch their own ad-supported video-on-demand plays. ABC, for example, has offered online versions of its shows that allow the advertisers to ride along and has plans for a more sophisticated offering in October.
Revenue from licensed digital-music distribution doubled in 2005 to $653 million, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which estimates that by 2010, digital music will be a $20.7 billion market. In contrast, the firm said consumers spent only $1.1 billion on online movie-rental subscriptions and $1 million on digital-streaming movies in 2005. Digital-streaming services are expected to outpace online rentals, by 2010 generating $400 billion in annual spending while online rentals will be a $3.2 billion business.
Amazon owns IMDb.com, the database of Hollywood information, and has been trying to get into the content creation business. Its first foray is a promotional program called "Fishbowl," a series of Bill Maher-hosted interviews, sponsored by UPS and Cingular. Mr. Maher's guests include moviemakers, actors and authors -- all of whose products can be bought on Amazon.
Murdoch surprised by MySpace growth | Tech&Sci | Internet | Reuters.com
The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of The News Corp.
Excerpt:
The Hollywood Reporter: DO YOU THINK THAT WILL BE A CHALLENGE GIVEN WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN UP AGAINST BEFORE?
Murdoch: Probably not. It will be a little bit different in each country. The English-speaking world will be easy. We will have to think about going with a slightly different model or architecture in Japan or Germany or some other countries. It will be driven by exactly the same principles. Young people are the same everywhere. They are curious. They want to take control of things. They want to live in their own world.
The Hollywood Reporter: THIS IS A REMARKABLE TIME. YOU HAVE CALLED THIS THE GOLDEN AGE OF MEDIA. WHAT WILL IT EVENTUALLY MEAN TO THE INDUSTRIES YOU ARE IN AND TO YOUR COMPANY?
Murdoch: There are new capital advantages to get things done. You go to these conventions and see all the new technologies being rolled out. But they are all meaningless unless they have content. There is going to be more and more demand for content, and there will be more ways for us to develop more content. And we've got to use these platforms to monetize all of our existing content.
Excerpts:
Beginning on Tuesday, March 21 in Las Vegas, the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) will host a technology booth at TelecomNEXT, featuring several companies who will display some of the latest online distribution platforms and filtering tools which could assist the telecommunications industry and play an important role in the emerging legitimate digital content distribution markets. This is the first time that the MPAA has had a presence at this event which is important in bringing business and technology of communications and entertainment together.
Representatives from Audible Magic, BitTorrent Inc., CacheLogic, Peer Impact, Red Swoosh and Thomson Content Security will be on hand to demonstrate methods their companies have developed to facilitate legal online movie distribution and to protect copyrights in a digital environment.
