media 2006 - happy new year?
Every New Year brings with it the obligatory look over the shoulder at the old year and predictions for the new. Here at the Moose our focus in 2006 will be on media and especially how music, movie and the dead tree print companies deal with the inevitable explosion in their consumers digital experimentation.
“We can’t rely solely on traditional routes (for distributing media content) any more. They are no longer the only ones out there,” says Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger in today’s Wall St Journal. With deals in place for Apple to sell TV shows formatted for the iPod he predicts that movies will soon be made available and he forecasts an “explosion” in the ways people watch TV. Given that consumers have readily embraced the new video iPod it’s easy to predict that demand will increase significantly in ‘06 for content; and that content does not have to be purchased solely through iTunes. LimeWire for instance is chock full of videos and movie clips waiting to be downloaded. And anyone who can click a mouse can easily format the content for their iPod using iSquint software, which is a free download. In other words very soon the media companies will no longer be able to charge hefty advertising fees once their viewers have complete control of the content that they want to view
And the predictions are?
