Summit Notebook

from MediaFile:

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)

from MediaFile:

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.

Recession’s perfect storm speeds up change in ad industry

Why is it that the United States’ advertising as a proportion of marketing services is at its lowest point since 1977, maybe even lower than since the Second World War?

You may have guessed it it’s the recession.

But it will get better, Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising giant WPP, said.

“The recession is less worse,” Sorrell said, repeating a favourite phrase of late, and while it’s the biggest recession since 1929 it is also “a perfect storm” that has brought forward change. 

“The recession has accelerated structural changes that were already happening,” Sorrell said at the Reuters Global Media Summit.

Will advertising ever go back to where it was? Yes, if you are looking at new media advertising on Kindles and mobile.

Will the United States rebound? Western Europe? Yes, to both.

200MB? It’s only human nature to want more

Broadband subscribers want as much speed as they can get their hands on, even if it’s way beyond what’s needed by the most avid downloader of music, keen watcher of video or biggest Facebook addict, reckons cable operator Liberty Global’s CEO.

Maybe he would say that, but Mike Fries says today’s subscribers are signing up for speeds of 100-200 MB to be safe in the knowledge they won’t be left behind whatever the next stage of the Internet — a bit like owning a car with a top speed way beyond the limit.

“Intuitively, you would say: ‘What the heck does somebody need this for?’,” Fries told the Reuters Global Media Summit.

“But in the end we find that increasingly when you say to somebody for the price of a Volkwagen you can have a Porsche, generally they take the Porsche. It’s just human nature.

“Is it fully utilised today? No. Will it be? Absolutely.”

(Posted by Paul Sandle)

Is Rupert Murdoch toast?

Rupert Murdoch may have a sprawling empire and may be one the media industry’s last moguls but sometimes a small trust-owned outfit can show the big guys how it’s done. And what does that say about the future? Read for yourself. “The Guardian has been a fanastic innovator online, absolutely amazing innovator,” said David Levin, Chief Executive of United Business Media UBM at the Reuters Media Summit.”The big debate is how does Rupert Murdoch’s approach, saying I’m going to try and come off the search engines play, contrast with what the Guardian may or may not do. The Guardian is at the other end of the spectrum. So, you got people who are webcentric and those who say well, ooh, I don’t like that web thing, I will somehow go off line…they’re toast.” Rupert Murdoch take heed.

SEC’s Schapiro says journalist job cuts worrying

Mary Schapiro, America’s new top cop for the securities industry, said the current mass culling of journalists’ jobs is a concern because it could reduce the number of leads that regulators get as they seek to crack down on nefarious behavior.

“It’s an absolute worry for me because I think financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,” the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission told the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington on Tuesday.

“But for journalists having been dogged and determined and really pursuing some of these things, they might not be known to the regulators or they might not be known for a long time,” she said.

But Schapiro, who was speaking a day after Conde Nast announced the closure of its glossy business magazine Portfolio only about two years after it launched, held out some hope for the business reporting trade. She said that some journalists should consider applying for jobs at the SEC.

“Investigative journalism actually would be a pretty interesting skill set for us to have. We’ve talked about financial analysis, we’ve talked about forensic accounting being skill sets that we really need — understanding of complex trading, strategies and systems, but it’s one of the things the SEC has to do. It has to really broaden its horizons and bring in people who think about things a little differently than it has historically.”

But what would having Mr/Ms Investigative Journalist working there do for the SEC’s tarnished media image? And how would a hard-nosed investigative journalist respond to all those agreements to let some of the bad guys off with a rap over the knuckles and a small fine (those infamous “did not admit or deny” settlements)?

from MediaFile:

Dial M For MySpace mobile advertising

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe is bullish on the mobile advertising market, but says ad agencies and corporate sponsors haven't figured out to dial into it.

Speaking at the Reuters Media Summit, DeWolfe outlined MySpace's mobile efforts, such as its Blackberry application. He said the company was targeting more download applications for mobile devices. He said he saw big opportunities in the mobile-based advertising sector once there's some standardization.

We think the future of mobile is more advertising based. But the marketplace on the advertiser side has not quite caught up to the inventory out there... It's relatively undeveloped, but we think it's a market that will grow.

He said countries like Japan were ahead of the curve in mobile advertising, but that it will take the U.S. a couple of years to catch up.

We're generating revenues right now on the mobile side from advertising and will generate more next year. ... It's a function of whether the agencies and brands coming up with standardized ad units and are making investments to do that.

So far there's been enough inventory on the MySpace side, but not enough advertisers with creatives that have wanted to jump in or a critical mass of Web sites that they've wanted to reach. But we'll see more demand and its a function of educating the marketplace.