Today I took the Delta shuttle down from Boston to NYC to spend a day in a room off Central Park with about 150 of the digital media’s decision makers – not so much about programing but those that have their eye on the future of digital media – from newspaper realms to networks to cable operators to those that shape the telecommunications agenda in this country -all nicely tucked away for a day courtesy of the Argyle Executive Forums.
I think that sometimes we, as consumers, don’t normally think about where our next digital fix is coming from – and as one charming ABC executive told me today -in the new world order where user generated content is everywhere mixed in with traditional content there are divers, swimmers and floaters. His theory made sense – divers are those folks out there who make the content- bloggers, YouTube creators – the floaters are those that are happy to take whats out there, what’s “pushed” to them and the swimmers are those that distribute- circulate that content – either from the broadcaster or the content creater to the universe of consumers. As it turns out, this man that I spent most of my day with was the brain behind ABC’s move to interactive on their Website allowing viewers to watch shows as soon as they were aired and creating a pretty cool player. I was stunned because as a anti-TV owner and view of traditional TV via the TV set, I had become hooked on the show Lost via the Internet – via ABC’s web site (and of course site I won’t reference for catch up on on all those Season 1 and 2 episodes)
But to sum up my day – and I will post more tomorrow- here are the people that I had the great pleasure of talking with and listen to about the future of online v. traditional media and where the world is headed.
David Watson, the aforementioned ABC executive and all around Digital Media wizard; Phil Kent, CEO, Turner Broadcasting, the uber charismatic and insightful Ali Velshi from CNN, the dynamic and former President of CBS News, Andrew Heyward; my idol Ms. Sian Kevill – editorial director of BBC News; the venerable Lincoln Millhouse, SVP, Digital Media, Hearst Publications; Maryam Banikarim, CMO of Univision who showed us that if you don’t understand your market, you won’t get ahead in this new world order; Kyle McSlarrow, President and CEO of the National Cable and Trade Association – the eloquent mouthpiece for telecommunications issues in the US today; Trace Harris, Senior VP, Vivendi and the amazing, genius mind of Strauss Zelnick, Founder of Zelnick Media – not to mention Chris Ahearn, Reuters President, and Rafat Ali, PaidContent.org plus all the private equity gurus -(but I am not referencing them since they are grabbing headlines and every second of each new day) What were some things I learned today?
- private equity firms are riding high and will continue to do so for the next 5 years (but you who knows what the future will bring)
- Lot of kick ass female executives are behind the success and future of Digital Media (I will discuss this tomorrow)
- Colombia Music gets 10% of its revenues from digital distribution (hmm, wonder if they need technology that can grow that number)
- Web 2.0 is a catch phrase we should be more careful how we throw that around
- the Internet is not a business
- Quality is not the same as value (Andew Heyward)
- The center can not hold (AH)
- User Generated ConTEXT is king – humans are the new channels, networks are conduits to those channels
- Go deep and go wide – corporates must flaten their heirarchy and innovate and inspire in order to make change
- We must see the world as our customers see it (many to one) Consumers create their world from multiple sources and then form their picture and then spread it around
- The media industry has been trying to build front doors to get to new media, but the internet is about back and side doors
- Do we really need 2,000 journalist converging on Beijing to wire back stories back on events 36 hours after the fact?
It was a GREAT day.
