Talking About a Revolution: Who Controls Digital Media?

Content may still be king, but consumers are willful subjects, according to panelists at Digital Hollywood’s 2006 Media Summit, which gathered movers and shakers from movies, TV, cable and satellite, advertising and marketing and other corners of the industry in New York City yesterday and today. At a state-of-the-industry roundtable yesterday, a cross-section of industry executives considered the idea of where media is moving.

Addressing the much-hyped idea of convergence, moderator Kevin Roberts, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, suggested that the word itself is not suggestive of the real issue. “When you talk to consumers, you hear ‘divergence,’” he said, arguing that audiences are insisting on experiencing content on their own terms – on platforms they choose at the times they find most convenient. “We’re in the world of paradox. We are not in the land of either/or.”

Andrew Lippman, a senior research scientist at the MIT Media Lab – and the panel’s lone academic – agreed that technology is helping consumers wrest power from the hands of content owners. “CEOs will not be in control” of any coming media revolution, he declared, eliciting murmurs from the heavyweight crowd.

But MTV Networks President and COO Michael Wolf pointed repeatedly to increased ratings at the cable channels under the MTV umbrella and insisted that the rise of alternative channels, like cell phones, would not come at the exclusive expense of existing media. “My 12-and-a-half-year-old son is running his own IT department in his bedroom,” quipped Wolf, referring to a kid who burns DVDs, spends lots of quality time with his cell phone, and uses his PC to load content onto his PlayStation Portable. “At the same time, he’s watching a lot of TV. The more devices they have, the more experiences they want.”

Wolf floated the idea that, as viewing paradigms expand and transform, “daytime becomes prime time,” noting that even when people are in situations where they can’t sit in front of the TV, they may be able to use portable devices to access MTV’s streamed services. “We’ve created our own disruptions at MTV,” he said, explaining that the network has always tried to ask where its audience wants to be in the future. That meant that when MTV debuted its popular reality-based show Laguna Beach, it put it on TV, online, on cell phones, and on DVD. “TV is not the center of the universe.”

William Cella, the chairman and CEO of MAGNA Global Worldwide, agreed that new opportunities will build on, not replace, existing ones. “When outdoor becomes digitized globally, it’s going to be awesome,” he said, referring to the burgeoning digital signage business. “You will be able to connect your shows to the populace walking the streets.”

And Cella described advertising, to date, as a missed opportunity for the new platforms. “Once the opportunity for advertising happens with them, an opportunity to create a robust environment for advertising, there’s a lot of money going to be made.”

The Disney/Pixar merger cast a shadow over the entire conference, with its implications about a changing of the guard in the way traditional media companies are run. But MIT’s Lippman had his own ideas about the changing business landscape. “The deals that speak to me are eBay buying Skype, or Google threatening to wire all of San Francisco,” he said. “There are 300 million Skype users – two years after it was founded. Peer-to-peer communications on the Internet passed downloads in 2002 – in spite of what Verizon tries to do to block it.” Lippman then suggested that entities like Google and Yahoo are well on the way to becoming networks. Later, Cella nodded to the “astounding” amount of revenue Google has been generating.

In response to a question about the potential for developing markets for new content paradigms to “leapfrog” established ones, MTV’s Wolf noted the still-tentative position of the U.S. market in wireless content delivery. “We’re using our international presence [in wireless video content] as a laboratory for the U.S.,” he said. “This country is way behind in terms of infrastructure.”

And the clearest summary of where each panelist’s head was at may have come at the session’s end, when Roberts asked each of them to identify the person who was going to have the biggest impact on the future of media. BusinessWeek’s Dodge nodded toward Steve Jobs in his new role at Disney. MAGNA’s Cella picked Comcast honcho Brian Roberts, and MTV’s Wolf cited, once again, the audience. But Lippman, with an international twinkle in his eye, posited a revolution: “I doubt you’ll spell his name with the Roman alphabet.”