GlobalMedia-iPad cautionary tale: What not to watch, up close
Media executives love to go on about their love of the Apple’s iPad. But the tablet isn’t suited for everything. Walt Disney’s Anne Sweeney relayed her recent experience catching up on an ABC TV show using the popular tablet.
Sweeney missed the season finale Grey’s Anatomy and, while traveling, decided to watch the show in her hotel room. The episode was particularly gory — several characters were picked off by a aggrieved man who held the hospital at gunpoint.
“It was a massacre,” Sweeney said at the Reuters Global Media Summit. “There’s nothing like seeing that on your pillow. There are some things you might not want to watch that close on your iPad.”
(Photo: Reuters)
GlobalMedia-ABC News in talks with Bloomberg
The news divisions at the big networks have been in a world of hurt lately as advertisers seek out younger consumers and viewers. This has lead to big cutbacks in staffing and resources over the years as the networks strive to keep profit margins from deteroirating even further.
ABC is certainly no expectation and has experienced managment upheaval when ABC News president David Westin announced in September his departure partly due to the financial situation and the pressure to increase profit margins.
Speculation has persisted that ABC News parent company, Walt Disney, has been seeking to untie itself from the division– rumors that similary dog CBS.
Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, flatly denied that the company was looking to offload the news or TV divisions but also confirmed that ABC News has been in talks with Bloomberg in forming a partnership. “We’ve had a lot of conversatoins with Bloomberg over the past couple of years,” she said during Reuters Media Global Summit.
Sweeney also said they are currently searching for Westin’s replacement though she was coy on when and who that might be. “We certainly have a lot of talent in ABC,” she said.
from Summit Notebook:
ABC: Don’t you know that I’m still in love with news?
I asked ABC TV chief Anne Sweeney at our Global Media Summit on Monday whether the nightly news broadcast will go away someday soon. Everyone who follows the broadcast TV business has wondered this at some time or another, particularly as fewer people tune in.
Here's a bit of that conversation, where I got Sweeney to firmly say... not much. If you're in a rush, the general message appears to be:
- News is changing along with the changing times
- We believe in our news operation
- Budgets may change (likely for the worse), but news is worth paying for
- We're more than our evening news broadcast (where Charles Gibson is ceding the anchor slot to Diane Sawyer), but we're not going to say one way or the other whether we'll keep it going.
- Me: News operation is often a big cost. Some say that evening news is losing its relevance as people get their news elsewhere. Is it possible that ABC would get rid of its evening newscast?
Sweeney: I think world news is not just about 6:30. I think World News is about being ready to provide the news whenever it happens. It's not just limited to that half hour. It's actually on all day. The ABC broadcast day opens, the network day opens with Good Morning America. ... So we always have the ability to come in with breaking news. ... And then shows like 20/20 provide us with an opportunity to go a bit broader. And then of course there's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which gives us the Washington beat, which again can appear in the other shows throughout the week. So it's really a manner of managing the assets rather than focusing on (the 6:30 news)
Me: How much will you preserve ABC's news budget when the returns in this fragmenting news media landscape are lesser than ever?
Sweeney: The budgets are always going to change, just as they have in the other parts and certainly in our other businesses.
Me: I take it the budgets are going to keep shrinking.
from Summit Notebook:
ABC TV chief to daughter: You *will* watch television
When I went to college in 1991, I begged my parents to buy me a small television for my dorm room (They wouldn't let me work during my first year of college, so I had no money). How things have changed in 18 years!
I learned how much they changed at the first day of the Reuters Global Media Summit. Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, was talking to us about how quickly the Internet and mobile technology are changing the way that we look at news and entertainment. That led to her divertimento into campus life:
You come to realize very quickly that all these platforms are very different. Sometimes they're being used or accessed by different demographics.
The way my 19-year-old daughter accesses televisions... We had quite a discussion about why she didn't want to take a television to college with her. She said, "Mom, you don't understand I don't need it." I said "You're going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall. You have to have one." She said, "If I want to see shows, I can go abc.com, I can go to Hulu."
This is how a 19-year-old lives. And I think it's important to understand not only that piece of the demo, but also kids who are growing up today who have more devices than she had, if that's even possible, growing up. We're going to have to be serving them, so it's a learning process. As platforms surface, we assess their viability, both from a technological and from a business model perspective.
New media may be new media, but when you're the daughter of the ABC TV chief, it's not just a TV -- it's a family obligation.
Live blog from the Reuters Global Media Summit
Reuters reporters will be sending live updates from interviews with guests including Disney’s Anne Sweeney, IAC’s Barry Diller, WPP’s Martin Sorrell, Sirius XM’s Mel Karmazin and more.
Wow… is this what we call professional journalism?