The ability to create new business pursuits and models from whole digital interactive cloth is a lifesaving imperative. Media-related companies have a unique opportunity to mitigate risk and stimulate growth. They can do this by integrating and using digital technology to better monetize their existing assets and mine new ways to connect consumers, content and commerce.

As powerful corporations with big problems and little recourse are plummeting from grace, it's only natural to think about newer powerhouses, such as Google, hell-bent on controlling the world and all its information. There are fine lines between delusions of grandeur allowed to rise or fall in a free market and the forces of regulation that can make or break fortunes.

Broadcast and newspapers with enterprising local Web sites are sitting on beachfront property. It will be their ticket out of the economic recession and the decline in their traditional core business.

The historic restructuring of debt and financial players on Wall Street will continue to have an arresting impact on Main Street, as well as on media-related companies dependent on advertiser and consumer spending in a troubled economy.

Who thought Bill Gates had the comic genius to be a consummate straight man for Jerry Seinfeld and the right stuff to be an online video star? Emerging digital content and advertising will never be the same!

There is no transformation more important at this moment than the transformation of leadership and the ability to constructively guide people, organizations and nations. It requires those who can improve long-term growth prospects, while risking their reputation or poor quarterly reports in the process.

It remains to be seen whether so-called new media or more traditional media stands to gain more from the arrangement, which essentially opens the floodgates on more proactive marketing and transacting with target consumers -- but it may encourage Google to take on Mad Ave agencies.

At the dawn of a new interactive age in which empowered consumers are reliably connected through nearly every electronic device but their TV sets, America's mass-media pastime is barely keeping up. Digital TV--intended to open the door on interactive commerce and content--is a transition in name only.

Why isn't there a device that will liberate the television experience the same way Apple's iPod revolutionized recorded music for consumers? The introduction of a true so-called TV iPod--just like the original music iPod--would be dazzling enough to be an instant hit with consumers.

Although the popularity of Internet video is booming on all devices, content producers and aggregators are anxious to unlock the secrets of monetization. That may become increasingly more difficult as many marketers consider double-digit reductions in campaign media budgets and ad production for next year.