• Globe and Mail (Free registration required), Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11 AM

The Globe and Mail of Toronto carries a good piece that mimics what we've been hearing for months now: it's about the Internet, stupid. Old-line media companies--newspapers and broadcast operations--are discovering that Web sites can be a powerful strategic ally in the fight for eyeballs--and advertisers.  Which explains Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace and NBC's recent acquisition of iVillage.  Both sites operate as a portal for fairly large audiences (teens for MySpace, women for iVillage). By bringing these Internet properties into their tents, Murdoch and NBC have assured themselves of Web traffic that will also drive eyeballs back to their TV, cable, and satellite properties.  For Murdoch, who's been in the business a long time, the leap into the Net space represented a fundamental paradigm shift. "Up until a few years ago, even Mr. Murdoch, arguably one of the most powerful people in media, swore off the Internet," says the Globe and Mail. Why? “He didn't feel it was ready," Todd Chanko, a media analyst at Jupiter Research says; but “now he's leading the charge,” according to the Globe and Mail. Papers everywhere this week reported Murdoch as telling an industry group that they had better "adapt" to the Net era "or die."  He and his compatriots in old media are suddenly gung-ho on Net properties; the trend is nicely captured in this newspaper piece.

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