• Hollywood Reporter, Wednesday, January 4, 2006 10:15 AM

Hollywood Reporter media and technology columnist Diane Mermigas claims that after taking the media world by surprise in 2005, new media will actually take control in 2006. Traditional media companies struggled last year alongside their leaner and meaner Internet and new-media counterparts to make money from what was and will continue to be a painful--but necessary--transition for them. The difference: this year old-media companies know they have to change or become obsolete in a fast-changing brave new world. But company splits, rabid reshuffling and new partnership deals will not be enough, Mermigas says, because leadership in the new-media world has to come from those who have vision and understand it. In other words, out with the old and in with the new; marketers and ad agency folk would do well to heed that advice. Mermigas also touches on the growth areas in the new year, which of course include Internet advertising but also portable media devices--the media industry's most important new market, she says.

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