When interviewing major media executives,
New York Times reporter Richard Siklos says they often turn the tables on him, asking: 'So who do you think has got this Internet thing figured out?'
His answer: no one, but each of the biggies get a certain number of brownie points here and there. Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation deserve big points for getting MySpace and its 80 million users,
but now they need to figure out what to do with it, because MySpace still makes a pithy contribution to the conglomerates' bottom line. Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company get points for being the
first major network holder to make TV shows available online, both for purchase through iTunes and as ad-supported streams. Time Warner gets points (sort of) for not dispensing with AOL, although how
they plan to turn around the lumbering Web portal is anybody's guess. Viacom has made several savvy acquisitions of late, including the Pokemon-like Web phenomenon Neopets, iFilm, and online gaming
site Xfire. Siklos also highlights newspaper industry standards The Washington Post Company, Dow Jones--and, yes, The New York Times Company--for the most progressive online strategy among newspaper
companies. Fine, media companies are trying to move--but as Siklos points out, "given how much the Internet has already transformed the media and society, it's surprising how little money traditional
media companies make directly from it." You won't see separately broken-out figures for Internet profits on the financial statements of Disney, Viacom, or Time Warner (AOL aside). At each, the Web is
still a blip on the radar. For the future, Siklos says there are two views: the optimist would say that the spoils from Internet revenue are still very much up for grabs. The pessimist might say
aggregators, file sharers, pirates, and other competitive disruptors will eat away at the value these companies could gain from their online efforts. That said, if $51.6 billion is expected to be
spent on Web advertising globally in the next five years, to the victors go a share of the spoils.
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