Part of Salmi's job is to grow the company's digital
business outside of Google's influence, while breaking down walls between its TV and digital properties and finding new distribution channels. A tough task, since millions of Web users are accustomed
to finding video clips from their favorite TV shows--including Viacom's--on Google's YouTube.
Right now, a Viacom-YouTube partnership is out of the question. Salmi says he hopes a
licensing deal can be worked out, though he's confident that MTV Networks and Viacom would be fine if that never happened. The future, he says, belongs to niches, not big "portal sites" like MySpace
and YouTube.
He adds that niche content has been Viacom's offline specialty, so his plan is to create content, communities and virtual worlds out of popular Viacom brands like "South Park" and "The Colbert Report." It's an interesting idea, but do consumers really want more fragmented media fragmented? Aren't we trending toward greater media consolidation through personalization?