Nothing irks me more than to see a Time Warner pitchman come on my TV to talk about all the money they’re “saving” me over satellite. Please. I’m currently spending more than $150 a month on my cable service, and that doesn’t count the $120 a month I pay for business class Internet service from Warner Cable.

The New York Times described my dilemma exactly when  it interviewed a 27-year-old actor who’s using a new service called Boxee that allows users to bypass the cable company and get the channels they want through a direct Internet connection to their TV. “Most people my age would like to just pay for the channels they want, but cable refuses to give us that option,” he told the reporter.

Not just his age. Us 49-year-olds balk just as much.

Once you unchain TV shows from the cable gatekeeper, you’re opening Pandora’s box — just as you are when you allow studios to sell directly to cell phone users and bypass the carriers. Don’t be surprised if cable companies try to sue Boxee and others like them out of existence to maintain their lucrative oligopoly.

But in the long run, hopefully those efforts will fall short. Content, as they say, wants to be free. And as somebody who pays through the nose for a product controlled by those cable and satellite oligopolies, it can’t come a moment too soon.

Posted under Michael's Blog

As I was reading about CBS’ $1.8 billion purchase of CNET on MarketWatch.com, I couldn’t help but remember when CBS purchased MarketWatch.

Today, MarketWatch is owned by Dow Jones. And Dow Jones, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Meanwhile, you have Norman Pearlstine (previously head a top honcho at Time Inc. and the Wall Street Journal) hired by Bloomberg, another online powerhouse.

The common denominator: Online is where many, if not most, people are getting their news.

This implies several things:

1) The continued deterioration of newspapers, and possibly soon, of magazines.

2) An acceleration of the massive shift of advertising from traditional media to the Web.

3) A growing recognition by TV powerhouses like CBS that the Internet is no longer just a vanity play or a way to promote their shows. It’s a major piece of their future revenue as viewers fly from TV to the Web.

See Also

• CBS to Buy Web Publisher CNET for $1.8 Billion

Posted under Uncategorized

Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! is as much about its software business as its Internet business.

 

Microsoft is ill-prepared to counteract Google’s assault on its Office monopoly.. Instead of fighting Microsoft in the PC software market, Google has taken word processing, spreadsheets and calendars to the web – creating a free, ad-supported, collaborative service-as-software  business that threatens Microsoft’s  bread-and-butter.

 

At the same time, Google’s search strategy has essentially made it the Internet’s operating system. You go to Google to search. But you stay for the other cool applications. Just like you get all kinds of great extras like Internet Explorer and Media Player when you install Windows.

 

Google’s software-as-service approach – nascent as it is – bears an ironic similarity to Microsoft’s own clandestine assault on IBM, DEC and other big iron companies in the 1980s.  The giants were slow to retool their seemingly dominant  mainframe businesses to account for the rising profile of PCs. IBM virtually handed Microsoft a monopoly for MS-DOS and paved the way for cheap PC clones that threatened its survival.

 

Now Microsoft is watching from the sidelines while Google pulls a similar ploy.  As broadband penetrates everywhere, Google is betting that consumers will favor options that reflect the  ethos of the Web – free and community-based. Why install Office if you can get the same functionality from an always-on, super-fast connection that lets you collaborate with your friends and colleagues?

 

Microsoft’s own attempts to cash in on the Internet have been relatively feeble thus far. Its search business only commands a roughly 6% market share, compared  with about 77% for Google and 17% for Yahoo. Small wonder that it’s bidding for Yahoo!  It has little choice.

 

The software-as-service  business model has interesting implications for the entertainment business. What are DVDs , CDs and games if not software?  As consumers become more comfortable with low or no-cost server-based applications, might they become more open to video-on-demand and streaming music? It’s a question that has important implications for Time Warner, which which faces the specter of growing irrelevance for AOL in a search universe dominated by Google and Microsoft.

 

Microsoft  still has plenty of life. Profits are bountiful. No software competitors seriously threaten Office’s dominance. But then, IBM dominated computers in the 1980s, too.

 

 

 

See Also

• Ballmer Makes Big Bet to Get to ‘Next Level’

Posted under Uncategorized

When I first started iHollywood Forum with my wife six years ago, my Uncle Irv from Castro Valley was skeptical about the idea of public conversations about digitized Hollywood content.

“Hollywood just makes crap for TV and movies,” he groused, showing a proper Bay Area disdain for all things L.A. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We’re not really talking about what’s in the programming,” I protested. “We’re talking about the new technologies for distributing and monetizing it: the Internet, cellphones and so forth.”

Technology, after all, makes Silicon Valley run, so Irv was satisfied. And so was I, going on to produce dozens of seminars and conferences about distributing and monetizing content.

But, coming off a 10-day meditation retreat, I find the content issue niggling at me. Here we have all this media consolidation happening: with News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500) bidding $5 billion for Dow Jones (Charts); Thomson chasing Reuters in a possible $17.5 billion merger; and Clear Channel Communications, Cablevision and Tribune in private equity firms’ crosshairs. These guys all want to put exabytes of TV shows, movies, games, newspapers, video footage, newspapers and other content on the Web, cellphones, XBoxes, home networks, portable DVRs, and every other imaginable platform and monetize it every conceivable way.

The problem is that the vast majority of the stuff is junk. At the risk of alienating my core audience (and my kids): most of the material on TV is mindless; most movies are designed to maximize studio cash flow, not enlighten audiences;  most cellphone games are inane (bowling, anyone?); most news outlets toady to their readers’ basest leanings — to say nothing of gambling, sex and more dangerous “content” accompanying it all.

If this content is king, let me out of the kingdom.

Admittedly, there’s plenty of great content out there, too. I love what’s happening with music, although — ironically, from the column’s standpoint — it’s being monetized the worst. There’s news on the Internet from great outlets like the Wall Street Journal (at least until you-know-who buys it), the New York Times and Reuters. And some TV shows, chat rooms, games (the massively social networking kind), virtual worlds,  movies and other content deserve to be on as many platforms as possible.

But if this is all about catering, as we do today, to the lowest common denominator to maximize cash flow on as many platforms as possible, what are we creating? What does constant exposure to junk and worse do to the minds of our children and our communities? What legacy are we leaving the world? Do we really aspire to make lots of money and nothing more of our lives?

For years, I’ve dreamed about doing a conference exploring these issues. The problem is, no one would come. There’s no money to be made.

See Also

• The return of media merger madness
• My recent musings about media

Posted under Uncategorized