- Facebook's Biggest-Ever Holiday Shopping Season
- Facebook's New Dual Class Structure - Slow Steps to an IPO
- Can Murdoch Help Bing Challenge Google and Shift the Content Equation?
- Twilight, Inc., A Worldwide Craze
- Oprah to Leave Syndication in 2011
- Sony's E-Reader Shortage and the Digital Book Battle
- Salesforce.com Brings Facebook and Twitter's Social Capabilities to Businesses
- Sumner Redstone's Companies Face Off Yet Again
- Can YouTube Revolutionize Citizen Journalism?
- What MGM's Sale Could Say About Value of Content
More Videos
- Facebook's Biggest-Ever Holiday Shopping Season
- Facebook's New Dual Class Structure - Slow Steps to an IPO
- Can Murdoch Help Bing Challenge Google and Shift the Content Equation?
- Twilight, Inc., A Worldwide Craze
- Oprah to Leave Syndication in 2011
- Sony's E-Reader Shortage and the Digital Book Battle
- Salesforce.com Brings Facebook and Twitter's Social Capabilities to Businesses
- Sumner Redstone's Companies Face Off Yet Again
- Can YouTube Revolutionize Citizen Journalism?
- What MGM's Sale Could Say About Value of Content
RSS FEED
MOST SHARED
- Garlic Price Rises Surpass Gold, Stocks in China
- New-Home Sales Jump 6.2% To Highest Level in Over Year
- S&P Stocks Trading at New 52-Week Highs
- Where Do Pardoned Turkeys Go?
- Judge Erases Couple's $525,000 Mortgage Payment
- The Executive Job Search
- US Mint to Suspend American Eagle Gold 1-Ounce Coins
- Salvation Army's Kettles Now Credit Card-Ready
- US Plans to Reduce Emissions By 17% Within Next Ten Years
- Consumer Mood Improves, But Anxiety Over Personal Finances
- 4 Thanksgiving Week Buys For Your Portfolio: Market Pros
- There's a 'Great Chance' For a Double-Dip Recession: Strategist
- Revenge of the Gangsta Nerds
- Will TCU See The "Flutie Effect?"
- Retail Earnings and Sales to Improve in Q4: Analyst
- Consumers Catching the Holiday Spirit
- It's Beginning To Look A Lot More Riskless
- Crescenzi: Claims Level Suggests End to Job Losses
- Hedge Funds Take Early Lead in Warren Buffett's 'Big Bet'
- AIG, Ex-CEO Greenberg Reach Pact to Settle Disputes
- Bank of America CEO Search May Extend Into 2010
- Steepest Black Friday Discounts, Revealed
- 'Cancer of Fraud' Permeates Health Care System: Critics
- US Mint to Suspend American Eagle Gold 1-Ounce Coins
- Judge Erases Couple's $525,000 Mortgage Payment
- For Many in US, It Will Be a Scaled-Down Holiday Season
- Where Do Pardoned Turkeys Go?
- Jobless Claims Below 500,000, Durable Orders Slip
Media Money
Text Size 
Media faces a perfect storm in 2009—transitioning to a challenging new digital world and a very weak economy. Media giants will continue to move from traditional content distribution models to anytime, anywhere, content-on demand. While building new digital revenue streams they face a dramatic pullback in consumer spending, which means advertising threatens to fall off a cliff. Can entertainment prove recession resistant?
Here are my nine predictions for 2009:
1. The media landscape faces mega shifts.
The media conglomerates are on the brink of serious change. General Electric [GE
Loading...
()
], CNBC's parent company, says it's interested in purchasing media assets. News Corp [NWS
Loading...
()
] points to its "war chest" of cash, hinting at the opportunities its five billion dollars could afford. Meanwhile CBS [CBS
Loading...
()
] and Viacom [VIA
Loading...
()
] Chairman Sumner Redstone is struggling with mounting debt which could very well force him to sell all or part of CBS.
2. Movie studios will focus and streamline to ride out the financial downturn.
Movies have traditionally been recession proof, but this time around the theatrical experience is competing with piracy and the comfort and ease of watching DVDs at home. Add the fact that movie studios' overhead is massive, and these giants will only feel more pressure to invest in sure bets like sequels and comic book franchises. Expect film financing from Wall Street to dry up, a void overseas investors will rush to fill. But because financing will be much tighter, there won't be the glut of independent films we've seen in recent years. Which means the independent films that do get made, are likely to perform better.
 |
AP |
Movie theaters are bearing the weight of higher ticket and concession prices, while home theaters just get better and better. What's the solution? Digital 3-D: it can't be pirated or recreated at home, and remarkably, consumers are willing to pay more for it. Digital 3-D technology will hit a tipping point in 2009. At least a dozen major 3-D films are slated to hit the thousands of new digital 3-D theaters scheduled to be implemented. This technology will become so pervasive that studios like DreamWorks Animation will release exclusively in 3-D in 2009.
4. TV networks will fight to maintain their dominance.
The 30-second spot is still considered the best way to reach a mass audience. But broadcast TV networks are going to have a tough fight ahead. Sure, Americans will always watch television, in fact, they'll probably watch even more in this economic environment as people hunker down at home. But that doesn't mean ad prices will go up—slower consumer spending means TV networks face declining revenues. With DVR technology marketers will have no choice but diversify beyond the 30-second spot to subtle and unskippable product placement and show sponsorship. And the broadcast nets will find viewers continue to flip past the four major channels to the increasingly high-quality niche programming in cable.
5. You'll treat the internet like another TV set.
Hulu.com (co-owned by NBC Universal and News Corp) is offering more professional content—all free and ad-supported. It's a go-to destination for everything from clips from Saturday Night Live to full-length shows from NBC and Fox. With YouTube rushing to catch up with Hulu's library of content from the TV networks and movie studios, consumers are going to have more free, on-demand entertainment choices than ever before. Forget about homemade videos of sleeping cats and skateboarding bulldogs. Your web browser will increasingly become your next on-demand TV set.
6. The music industry will find a new model, with concert tours and megastars at its core.
While CD sales continue to decline and online downloads and subscriptions fail to fill that gap, musicians and the industry behind them will focus more on a model with concerts at the core. Both Ticketmaster Entertainment [TKTM
Loading...
()
] and Live Nation [LYV
Loading...
()
] have merged ticketing and talent management, setting the stage for high-stakes competition between the two companies: they'll wield exclusive talent deals as leverage to score venues and tour dates. Musicians' revenue streams—from album sales to concert tickets to merchandise—will be run as verticals by these two giants. And consumers may benefit from more competition in the arena of ticket sales, or at very least, clearer pricing.
7. The publishing industry will continue to suffer and will shift more online.
It's been a long hard road for newspaper and magazine publishers: advertising drying up and marketers shifting their dollars online. With the economy tanking, it's only going to get worse. Expect more publications to fold in 2009 as the dramatic drop in the likes of auto ads takes a real toll. There will be more consolidation as papers get snapped up at bargain-basement prices, and I wouldn't be surprised if more companies are taken private, as Sam Zell did with the Tribune Co. The solution will be online revenues, and parent companies will push to innovate and closely target ads to keep online ad dollars growing.
8. Social networks will start translating their members into advertising dollars
Social networks have yet to truly monetize their millions of loyal users, Facebook even saying its not focused on profitability. But expect the social networking giant to change its tune and give advertisers a new seat at the table. Facebook and News Corp's MySpace will continue to experiment and innovate on unobtrusive ways to reach users. These social networking giants face a careful balance. They must convince advertisers that they offer efficient, effective and targeted advertising. Yet they must avoid alienating users by mixing their personal information with marketing messages.
 |
9. Video games and Hollywood will become more intertwined.
Video games are still a hot commodity despite the economic downturn—a growth opportunity media conglomerates are seizing. Viacom will continue to invest in its video game division which is responsible for the hugely successful "Rock Band" franchise. And Disney [DIS
Loading...
()
] will continue to develop its media properties into video games. Meanwhile video game makers are sure to take more of their sophisticated story lines to the big screen, shopping video game concepts to studios. As television becomes more interactive and video games become more cinematic, the line between the two is blurring.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes