Traditional media execs jumping to lead online media firms

This past week has seen surprising leadership changes at AOL (more on that later) and Fox Interactive Media. Discovery completed its CEO search. New heads for online arms of Viacom & CBS were also named recently.

While it's understandable for traditional media execs to move to online media, the undoubted future growth driver for the entire sector, it remains to be seen how well these folks will fare at their new jobs. Online and wireless are fundamentally different distribution platforms. If I have to pick one single criterion for success, it will be how quickly these guys adopt new technologies and keep pace with fast-evolving user behavior as they maneuver these giant ships in unchartered waters that includes new competition.

Traditionally, big media firms, thru their compelling content, filled the role of aggregating audiences for advertisers. This value chain has been broken on digital platforms, and nimble technology firms like Google have entered the fold. Secondly, the emergence of social media, that has democratized content creation and consumption process, is threatening the sustainability of big media's competitive advantage they have historically enjoyed on marketing and distribution. This poses enormous challenge for traditional media firms and execs coming out of them on how to creatively plan and garner their fare share of the value being created in this new paradigm.

I'm back

Past six weeks have been terribly busy at work. New job, especially in this huge media empire, can take a while to understand the organization and get the ducts in row. I'm also in the process of building my product development team. Once right folks are on the ground, I hope to have more time to blog.

Talking about jobs in my team, I have an immediate opening for Director, Prod Dev role. Interested candidates can apply online at gecareers.com (job #: 554816).

Internet's true potential as an entertainment distribution platform

While I welcome the emergence of social media, I believe in the long run it'll co-exist with traditional media, as opposed to sidelining/obliterating it. The challenge of monetizing today's user-generated content, the essence of this new breed, would not be the only reason for the survival of traditional media.

Traditional media firms were slow in adopting Internet as a distribution platform, but they're catching up and increasing their share of the online ad market.

To reach Internet's true potential as a mass distribution platform for entertainment, we'll need to make the process of watching Internet-delivered long-form content in user's living room at least as easy as it is for them to consume this content today thru satellite/terrestrial platforms.

While big hitters like Microsoft and HP have had limited success in removing pain points for an average consumer to download long-form content on their PC and seamlessly watch it on their big screen TV, Apple's recent public announcement of their living room strategy should be a big boost. We hope Apple can do an "iPOD" with its iTV set top box scheduled for early 2007.

More new entrants like WYPLAY to fulfill this promise of a simple-form, all-in-one device that can replace today's living room stack of cable/satellite box, DVD player and music system, the better. I can't wait to come home in the evening to dozens of automatically downloaded "24" style dramas (predicted based on my past downloads) that I can choose from to enjoy on my 50 inch plasma.

Google to buy YouTube?

We've heard this story before. Almost every possible acquisition candidate, from tradional media firms to large online media players, has been rumored to acquire YouTube. Though there are strong arguments behind such stories, execution challenges, most importantly the copyright issues with YouTube's content, are real challenges that remain to be resolved. Mark Cuban has a good argument on why Google should not buy YouTube.