Big Media Gambles That Content Will Rule

The media's painful transition to the digital age remains far from resolved, but the industry's titans are coalescing around a risky gamble on the old adage, "content is king." Having slashed their cost structures and recovered some of their losses in equity value from the global financial meltdown, major media conglomerates such as Time Warner, News Corp and Walt Disney hope to return to growth in the new year as they face easy year-over-year comparisons and signs of recovery in advertising. Their overriding strategy is to produce premium media content in a bet that consumers are ready to pay for it online, despite the continued proliferation of free media on the Web. (12/30)