Summit Notebook

from MediaFile:

GlobalMedia-China’s shouts of “You suck!” music to executives’ ears

Big splashy action movies from the U.S. usually play well abroad. It should come then as no surprise that World Wrestling Entertainment, known for hulky dudes and toned ladies who act out soap opera scenarios both in and out of the ring,  manages to find fans well beyond these borders.

So, naturally, international expansion is something on the mind of Donna Goldsmith, the chief operating officer of WWE, who ticked off countries including Russia, India and Brazil where it’s seeking to introduce characters like Sheamus, Triple H and John Cena.

As a way to illustrate the global appeal of wrestling, Goldsmith relayed how talent is perceived in China, a country where WWE is available in 90 million households.

The worst thing that could happen in wrestling-vile, according to Goldsmith during Reuters Global Media Summit, is stone cold silence. Thus she knew things were going well for WWE when wrestlers showed up in Shanghai and the audience yelled “You suck!”

“It was great!” Goldsmith said. “They knew the bad guys from the good guys.”

Talent is what the WWE is all about, according to Goldsmith, who also worked for the National Basketball Association.

"Our talent is so wonderful and so articulate, to bring them to a Wal-Mart managers meeting is something we do often. They understand the business side of things, which is so different to any NBA player, I wouldn't bring the twelfth guy on the bench with me to Wal-Mart because I wouldn't know what would come out of that."

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.

Intel, HP: TVs should get smarter

Intel, Sony and Google are expected to unveil on Thursday a “smart TV”: an Internet-ready, super content machine that — if the hype is to be believed — will let viewers watch Celebrity Apprentice, tweet, and respond to emails at the same time. On Wednesday, Intel’s sales and marketing chief — while keeping his cards close to the vest — couldn’t resist a little plug for the general concept of Internet TVs.

“The smart TV category is going to take off.  It just makes all the sense in the world,” Thomas Kilroy told the Reuters Global Technology Summit. “Why would you want to compromise when you’ve got a nice big screen, you’re watching TV and you want to access information and keep that program on instead of bringing in another device. ”

“It’s our belief that there’s going to be a fundmental shift that happens every 30 to 40 years or more…and it’s about to happen with televisions,” he added. “I actually remember the black and white days. I remember in my house when we went from black and white to color and my gosh, what an experience.”

It remains to be seen if Google TV — tech blogs have already dubbed the product Smart TV — will transform the media consumption landscape. But the idea is sure getting traction.

HP’s imaging and printing division chief later jumped in – unprompted — to outline the very same vision of having multiple screens on one Internet-connected TV, much like the holographic displays dreamed up in Tom Cruise’s “Minority Report”.

“We’re dumbing down the TV — it should be a content device,” HP’s Vyomesh Joshi argued.

EPIX CEO: Kids are media omnivores, industry must adapt

Remember when the “good” TV in the house only received 7 or 8 channels?

Most young people today cannot, and in many ways they could not care less. Even more, they probably think that it is just as odd that we “old folks” don’t understand their ability juggle multiple devices and inputs. Therein lies a critical challenge for broadcasters using old media models to reach younger audiences, Mark Greenberg, president of cable channel EPIX said speaking at the Reuters Global Media Summit.

Hey, even Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group,  had to force her college-bound kid to take an actual TV to school.

Greenberg’s EPIX offers a “screening room” service that allows subscribers to order a movie on EPIX’s web site and share it with friends who are watching at the same time in other locations. In the meantime you can chat with each other about the film — that’s “chat”, like, commenting about the star’s clothing by typing “I want to buy those shoes” into a little box, not “chat” as in “dude, pass the nachos.”

Greenberg explains that that is the world young folks, like his teenage son, live in:

I look at my 17 year old — we tease him and refer to his bedroom as “the hole”, because he has got his big screen TV, it is hooked up to a DVR, he’s got his other TV set set up to his Xbox, his got laptop and his cell phone and he doing his homework. and by the way — he’s a great student, so i can’t complain.

But this generation multitasks in a totally different way and what we have to do as programmers is start thinking about how we are making content available on their terms and not my terms.

That’s the mistake the music industry made. They said you have to listen to a CD and spend $14.99, and you have to go to HMV to buy it. This generation, for better for worse, this group has a different behavior.  If we want to build this, this is where we need to go. This is the way the world is now evolving.

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.