Two Items Worth Reading

First, a story of content and distribution written by Ty Ahmad-Taylor and published on Paid Content.  He is a former executive at Viacom and Comcast and makes the case against limited channel/pay firewall distribution.  It's a good read and the comments that follow are thought provoking as well.  This topic is not new to us in radio, but I found his perspective interesting and worthy of recommending.  

He states: Distributing across multiple channels in real-time—and cannibalizing existing lines of business—isn’t just the right thing to do. History will reflect that this is the only thing to do. Here’s the key fact for media companies to remember: The value of a customer who doesn’t watch a TV show or a movie is $0.

Read the entire article here

Second, is a front page story from the Sunday New York Times profiling Fox News Channel's Roger Ailes.  I think the man is a media genius.  You can love or despise his politics.  You can love or despise his channel.  But there is no debate about how successful he and the FNC brand are.  He's a nobody from the Midwest who has razor sharp instincts and smarts with the guts to bring them to life.  It's an amazing story of building something from the ground up to achieve grand success. 

From the New York Times:At a time when the broadcast networks are struggling with diminishing audiences and profits in news, he has built Fox News into the profit engine of the News Corporation. Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN, MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined. The division is on track to achieve $700 million in operating profit this year, according to analyst estimates that Mr. Ailes does not dispute.

That article is here

2 Things...

First...I want to share with you an interview I watched last night on Charlie Rose. It's with Peter Chernin, COO of News Corp. He is a very bright person and has some very engaging and interesting things to say. He talks about the value of content and how important it is to have the creative people in important positions within a company. He goes on to say if the creative is right the money portion of the business will ultimately be good. He talks about the most expensive studio green-lighted movie of all time--Titanic and how it cost double by the time they were done. He talks about the TV shows the Simpsons and 24. He talks about technology platforms and distribution channels including My Space and hulu.com. Let me boil it down to this: beware of the accountants and content content content. Highly recommended.

Now, #2: In past posts in which I was recommending a piece of video I would have gone to Red Lasso and edited a clip of what I thought was the most important part of the piece. Then I would have simply linked to the entire piece for those who were interested and wanted more. As of a couple of weeks ago Red Lasso ceased their video clipping service for the blogs and the web. Oddly enough it was News Corp that was one of the companies behind the C&D. The disagreement comes down to who's going to control content--the originators or an aggregator like Red Lasso. This is a tricky situation. According to Red Lasso they are trying to come to some agreement with the providers so they can resume their service. Time will tell.