Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC strive to understand the Web

I had a brief conversation with my Dad on this topic last night.

Old media companies, which are also called broadcast media, traditional, old media, and one way media companies just realized the impact that the internet is having on their viewership. They are going to form an ‘alliance’. PUH-LEASE!

They realize a web strategy is important as the eyes are moving to the web. My younger sister in law and friends don’t even watch TV, she LISTENS to it. The computer is in the foreground and the TV just happens to be there.

Challenges for the Network Allegiance:

1. Broadcast media companies don’t get Social Media, user created content, and community.
2. Fox, Viacom, CBS, and NBC will not agree on many things, take too long to craft contracts, and will be too slow, too big, and too late. The fact that they are binding together now AFTER the fact is too late.
3. They still will be bickering over their own industry specific issues and problems, never able to unite as a team.
4. They should seek IPTV rather than trying to play a pure play web strategy. Do what they are good at, creating content for one way broadcasts.

In the end, a marriage between broadcast and social media will create a new medium, some will survive and some won’t. The TV companies that figure out how to embrace community, leverage social interaction may have a chance of surviving, building a web version of TV only on the internet is not going to work. I’ve some additional thoughts on IPTV in this category search.

Update: I’m not the only one who found his amusing

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 4:28 am and is filed under Video, Web Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.