We know how handy Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone can be with a fax machine. But at the Dow Jones Media and Money conference, we learn why our IM messages and texts have gone unanswered:
I do not pretend to be a technology maven. I’m not an early adopter; in fact, I have reached the point in my life that I can best be described as a non-adopter… I don’t ping people with emails, I don’t blog or twitter and I won’t be texting any of you anytime soon.
… But I do know a thing or two about consumers … and what they seek in a media experience… and that has not changed … even as everything else around it has. The digital domain is upon us. And as Michael Eisner eloquently pointed out yesterday, content is still king.
Sumner also took a moment to thank an unexpected benefactor:
MTV’s Video Music Awards are a great example of multi-platform event-based marketing, something Viacom does better than anyone else. The VMAs were completely revamped this year to engage our audience on TV, online, and on mobile.
Relocated to Las Vegas and hosted in multiple venues, the event shattered every metric: tv ratings were up 23%, and we broke all records in the video streams downloaded from MTV.com and MTV Mobile the day after…
…Thanks Britney.
It wouldn’t be Sumner without a dig at the enemy:
Copyright compels creativity. It furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyrights, you stifle the expression of new ideas. Think about it. You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube. And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish.
(Photo: Reuters file)
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[...] unlike the big business models of Viacom(whose own Sumner Redstone claimed himself a “non-adopter“) or Apple who really seems to know how to build a better(?) iPod, is innovation and [...]
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