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November 26, 2006

Taming The Digital Future

Richard Siklos of the New York Times has an article today (Sunday, November 26, 2006) in the Media Frenzy column in the Weekly Review titled "Seeking Executive to Tame the Digital Future." I'm sorry, but I'm not available.

Here's a fake he wrote about the job qualitficaions:

"WANTED Digital media genius to guide a nimble — or at least we like to think we are — media giant through transformation from analog to digital in all its gory glory.

JOB DESCRIPTION To take all the stuff we produce for other formats, like TV or print or film, and figure out how to shovel it onto the Internet in a way that makes money.

QUALIFICATIONS The ideal candidate might also have ideas for ways to make a few dollars online that don’t directly stem from our so-called traditional media businesses. (You know — like that whole user-generated thing that the kids are doing. P.S., loved the video clips about how Mentos and Diet Coke mixed together create a chemical reaction — maybe we can turn it into a prime-time special or a theme park ride financed by these brands?)

COMPENSATION Pretty sweet for as long as you last.

RETIREMENT BENEFITS Well, don’t plan on it.

THE want ad above is a goof, of course, but it roughly sums up the state of play among big media companies’ digital operations."

Siklos has the right concept: Find someone old enough to navigate the politics of a big media company, but young enough to understand the current state of the Internet, and smart enough to turn the business into a money machine. Well, the envelopes are in... and the ideal candidates are: Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Murdoch, Redstone, Moonves, Parsons, and, yes, Semel are all too old to get the Internet, and they never will, no matter how many people they fire or hire. Real Internet entrepreneurs, like Page and Brin, want to work for themselves and reap the rewards themselves. These young, Internet-savvy entrepreneurs might work for a big media conglomerate for while as a tweener move until they can find the ideal, small, company where they won't have to put up with the bureaucracy and wait and wait and wait for decisions from bean counters..

The new entrepreneurs will be young and smart enough to be close to their customers, because they were the customers just a few weeks ago. Their consumers are the young people who populate the Internet in search of celebrity gossip and childish videos. Or they will be really smart geeks who know algorithms and platforms and stuff like that—who know how to know how to make the technology work.

What words Siklos left out of his ad were “young”, and “very, very smart technically”, and “geeky.” Being “geeky” does mean dull, or not a nice guy, but it does mean that you have to spend at least five hours a day online.

In other words, if you have trouble with email, like I do...fuggetaboutit.

Posted by Charles Warner at November 26, 2006 05:16 PM

Comments

Bruce Braun [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 27, 2006 01:20 PM writes:

Mega-media companies never do anything original or innovative. In the world of the News Corp's and Viacom's, being derivative or just plain copy-catting is seen as innovation.

When was the last time any of these companies had a division or even a budget that was true research and development? Remember the old Bell Labs? Think about the thousands of products we use today that had their technology birth within Bell Labs. At its peak, Bell Labs was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C programming language. Let's not forget long distance television transmission, fax transmissions (in 1926!)and the TDMA and CDMA mobile networks. In 1990, WaveLAN, the first wireless local area network (LAN) was developed at Bell Labs. Wireless network technology would not become popular until the late 1990s and was first demonstrated in 1995. In 1991, the 56K modem technology was patented There have been 6 Nobel Prizes awarded for work done at Bell Labs.

Big Pharma is about the only industry sector that still does true R&D. GE could be included here as well. Instead of doing true R&D for existing businesses or product lines the mega corps hire investment bankers to look for any "hot" company in businesses they think will be potentially lucrative. Who would turn down multi-millions for their early stage company that has minimal revenues and zero profits? Not many.

The pattern is the same with all of these early stage technology companies. They come up with an innovative concept or idea, generate a lot of buzz,get sucked up by a News Corp and then the key founders leave after the employment contracts run out. The innovation and technological development stops and the growth stagnates.

My tenth grade 16 year-old observed that "My Space was really cool when my friends and I were in middle school but now all we use it for is to do postings instead of emails so our parents can't see what we are writing to each other."

These big companies miss the whole idea behind the cool factor of new technology products. The iPod is cool because it just is. The Zune will never be cool because Microsoft feels compelled to tell us their copy-cat product is cool.

Nurturing innovation is lost when the main thought in Murdoch's and Redstone's mind every day is first and foremost the price of their stock.


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