Recently in Web Clips - Consumer Generated Media Category
I recommend Frontline's latest four-part piece on the subject, viewable unabridged on line, here.
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.
Excerpts from Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Whose content is it anyway?:
"Media executives are embracing user-generated sites, encouraging amateur talent to upload photos and videos. But, asks Kate Bulkley, who should own the copyright?
Advertising Age - Microsoft Soft-Launches Soapbox to Compete Against YouTube
- Officially in test mode, Soapbox is entering what many see as a supersaturated market, at present led by YouTube, which drew a staggering 34 million visitors in August.
Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Cingular Invades YouTube With Underground Contest
- In what is perhaps YouTube's biggest sponsorship deal to date, Cingular Wireless has agreed to back a search for the site's most talented unsigned bands. The promotion strikes at the core of rival MySpace, which was founded on the premise of exposing unsigned artists to large audiences online.
Excerpts:
"News Corporation and VeriSign announced a joint venture to form the world's largest provider of mobile entertainment. News Corp. will pay approximately $188 million for a controlling interest in VeriSign’s wholly-owned Jamba subsidiary and will combine it with Fox Mobile Entertainment assets.
The new company will merge the most technologically advanced platform in the category with market-leading mobile content production and delivery capabilities and will serve 30 territories with a potential reach of more than a billion mobile subscribers. The new company intends to retain the Jamster brand in the U.S. and the Jamba brand worldwide.
"This is an important step in News Corp.'s strategy of becoming the world’s leading digital media company," said Peter Chernin, News Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer. "We're the most powerful media company on the web with Fox Interactive Media, our aggressive digital content deals have given consumers access to News Corp. programming on every conceivable platform and we have already demonstrated innovation in this emerging space with the Mobisode and Mobizzo.
Under the agreement, Jamba will soon release its first products and offerings as a new entity, following the close of the transaction, including:
The transaction is expected to be finalized by the end of 2006. Transaction is subject to the completion of definitive agreements as well as the receipt of obtaining all required regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of all other customary conditions."
YouTube talking to record labels on music videos | Entertainment | Industry | Reuters.com
Excerpts:
"YouTube Inc. said on Tuesday it is talking with record labels to post thousands of music videos online, aiming to move beyond being a site for sharing home videos to a provider of mainstream entertainment like Yahoo and others."
"YouTube, which sprung out of nowhere a year ago to now claim over 100 millions views a day, is negotiating for rights to post current and archive music videos on its site, and said any commercial model it decides on will offer the videos free."
"'What we really want to do is in six to 12 months, maybe 18 months, to have every music video ever created up on YouTube,"'co-founder Steve Chen told Reuters. 'We're trying to bring in as much of this content as we can on to the site.'"
"[Chen] said YouTube intends to differentiate itself from pay-to-view or download services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Music, or others like Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Music, which is supported by an advertising revenue share model with record labels."
"Its business model is being developed in tandem with all the major record labels, YouTube said, but did not give any names. Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI confirmed to Reuters that they have been in discussions with YouTube."
"Getting the record labels to agree to a business model is crucial as YouTube has run into trouble in the past when users posted copyrighted videos from television shows."
"'Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube,'" Chen added.
"Warner Music and EMI said they are each trying to work out a business model with YouTube. Other major record companies including Universal Music and Sony BMG could not be reached for immediate comment."
The development of lonelygirl15 is more electric than all other examples of the changing nature of content, because role playing and interactivity are critical to understanding the zeitgeist of the game generation. Beck and Wade, authors of Got Game have already illustrated how the dot.com bubble manifested from video games effect on the game generation’s attitudes towards business.
Interactive content is not just about participation, control, and new media distribution. If content producers ever hope to grab the attention the game generation they have to offer a heightened experience that suspends our disbelief and captivates our imagination. 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."
So yes, reality TV is certainly one manifestation of how entertainment software and digital media are transforming content, but for the last two years critical mass has been building around content that takes interactivity and role playing to another level. A good example of this is the ABC hit LOST and its manufactured relationship with "fake" websites and internet clues...now lonelygirl15.
Mystery Fuels Huge Popularity of Web's Lonelygirl15 - Los Angeles Times
Excerpts:
Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself "Bree," and is she in some sort of danger — or, worse, the tool of some giant marketing machine?
Three lonelygirl15-obsessed amateur Web sleuths set up a sting using tracking software that appears to show that e-mails sent from a lonelygirl15 account came from inside the offices of the Beverly Hills-based talent agency Creative Artists Agency.
The apparent CAA link takes its place alongside other tantalizing pieces of evidence that lonelygirl15 is not who she claims to be: a copyright for the name obtained by an Encino lawyer, and a plot line that, leading speculation suggests, will turn out to be the lead-in to a horror movie's marketing campaign.
CAA spokesman Michael Mand said he "could neither confirm nor deny" that the agency is representing whoever is behind the 27 video posts.
As to horror film rumors, calls made to several studios found no such plans — but plenty of fascination for the way in which a Hollywood-ready cultural phenomenon has been built from a grass-roots Web platform. Lonelygirl15, many say, is the next-generation "Blair Witch Project," using interactive forms of storytelling that, like the 1999 hit, tries to trick an audience into thinking it's true.
"I like the community aspect of the mystery — getting together and trying to figure it out," Giammarco said in a phone interview. "Though I would still watch if there weren't a mystery, the videos wouldn't appeal to me as much."
Over the next three months, two dozen more videos hit the Web, spaced out every few days. Bree dangled hints about her life, revealing that she had spent her youth in New Zealand, was treated for "lazy eye" and had an obsession with physicist Richard Feynman. Oblique references popped up to "my religion," which was never named but which forbade things such as attending Daniel's high school graduation party.
In late August, fans discovered that the Web address for lonelygirl15.com had been purchased before the first video even appeared, with efforts made to shield the identity of the buyer.
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.
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.
Excerpts and Highlights:
Questions had been swirling for months about whether the upstart, which now dishes up 100 million daily videos, was crossing copyright boundaries by letting its members upload videos with little oversight. What was surprising was that it was an individual who fired the first shot -- Robert Tur, an independent photographer famous for filming the 1992 Los Angeles riots -- instead of a big Hollywood studio or major music label.
Thanks to Cinematech I came across this audio file from a March panel presented by the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco entitled: "The Digital Revolution".
The panel included "Richard Chuang [PDI/DreamWorks], Jeff Fino, [Wild Brain], John Knoll, visual effects [ILM], and Stu Maschwitz, [The Orphanage].
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:
Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Digitas Brings in Digital VP From Roo
AdAge interviews Greg Verdino as the new Digital VP at Digitas about new media marketing. The segmentation or 'narrowcasting' of cable and internet audiences works for marketing brands like Home Depot or Big Pharma with websites, channels, and specialized social networking sites.
Excerpts:
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.
