Comcast CEO Brian Roberts reiterated this morning his stance that if the Internet becomes a video distribution medium that bypasses cable’s traditional role as content aggregator, the cable industry will be just fine. Speaking at a Sanford C. Bernstein conference, Roberts suggested that although Comcast doesn’t want to be just a distributor of bits, it can leverage its role as a broadband provider to make money selling capacity.
“If someone wants to consume something a different way, it’s a unique experience, and they want to pay more for it, I think that’s a good place for this industry to be,” he said. Regarding the irony that cable’s broadband pipes are responsible for the rise of a new video competitor, Roberts said “if it’s going to happen, better that it should be from us.”
Despite accepting the idea that the Internet might supplant cable TV, Roberts doesn’t think it actually will happen. For one thing, linear live TV channels would overwhelm the Internet. “It swamps the internet by a factor of many, many thousands,” Roberts said. For another, traditional TV over the web doesn’t fit with the business models of traditional TV programmers, which are still premised on mass distribution of content to everyone simultaneously.
Comcast is, however, embracing web video in a big way with its upcoming web video service powered by recently acquired Fandango. But web-based video is a different creature from traditional TV video. “We do think web 2.0 is much more video centric. I don’t think it’s live television-centric,” Roberts said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:14 AM | Print | Comments (0)
(Toronto, Canada) The intractable crisis in the newspaper business reflects “generally a failure to evolve” on the part of the publishers, phenomenally successful top blogger Mike Arrington of TechCrunch said today here at the Mesh conference. It’s pointless to blame Google and other content aggregators and bots on the net; to the contrary, Google actually drives traffic to the newspapers’ web sites, Arrington pointed out.
If any trend can be fingered as the cause of the newspaper industry’s downward spiral it’s blogging. “Where they’re getting their lunch eaten is the blogs,” Arrington said. Arrington’s solution to the newspaper industry’s problem is to turn all journalists into bloggers. When asked what advice he might offer to The New York Times, for example, Arrington said the company should let all the journalists go off and do their own thing.
Actually, his full answer was to tell the Times to first return all capital to shareholders and then set all the journalists free. It’s clear, however, that Arrington really believes that talented journalists can get richer on their own. “The journalists should go out and do their own thing. The best journalists can make far more money on their own,” he said. “Start writing on the side, start delivering your own brand.”
As extreme as that prospect sounds, I have to admit that I’ve often thought the same thing. If the advent of blogging proves anything, it proves that strong individual voices are capable of generating a lot of attention. I suspect that most newsrooms are chock-filled with nothing but strong individual voices.
In any event, the entertaining Arrington (“if I say outrageous things that are more controversial, I make more money”) offered up several other pearls of wisdom:
—On the future of MySpace: “No one over there understands how new media works. If MySpace really screws up there’s a chance they’ll really implode.”
—On a Pay Per Post Attendee in the Audience: “He is the most evil person in this room.” (Arrington thinks the service, which pays bloggers to write sponsor reviews, sometimes without acknowledgement of that fact and sometimes under contractual obligations that the review be positive, does a disservice to society.)
Arrington warned, however, that folks shouldn’t take what he says too seriously. His posture when speaking at conferences such as Mesh is to answer wide-ranging questions tossed his way. But he also warns listeners that he’s not an expert on everything having to do with the Internet, media or technology. “Here’s my opinion, but I’m an idiot,” he said.
Update: More on Arrington’s Mesh talk here and, of course, at the official Mesh blog.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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