JOURNALISM
Growing Audience Is Turning to Established News Media Online (NYT)
BROADBAND
The Possible Sale of AT&T Broadband Worries Content Providers,
Consumers (WSJ)
Narrow Audience Stalls Broadband (SJM)
Marketing First for Last Vampire (Wired)
JOURNALISM
GROWING AUDIENCE IS TURNING TO ESTABLISHED NEWS MEDIA ONLINE
Issue: Journalism
More and more people, particularly younger ones, are turning to the Web for
news. According to Jupiter Media Metrix, the audience for news and
information sites grew 14.7 percent over the past year. Those looking for
news online tend to visit the sites of large national new organizations like
the Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. "National sites will get
more and more of a share of the news audience and the smaller sites will get
less and less," predicted Vin Crosbie, president of the consulting firm
Digital Deliverance. Some local sites have gained audience as quickly as
have their large national counterparts, but other have stagnated. Recent
studies found that the Web has no supanted more traditional news outlets. A
survey of 4,917 people by Belden Associates, a consulting firm in Dallas,
showed 3% of online news readers said the Web site had prompted them to give
up the print newspaper, 6 percent said they had started a subscription to
the print newspaper after reading the online version.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Felicity Barringer]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/27/business/media/27WEB.html)
(requires registration)
BROADBAND
THE POSSIBLE SALE OF AT&T BROADBAND WORRIES CONTENT PROVIDERS, CONSUMERS
Issue: Cable
Today, six giant companies serve 80% of the nation's cable subscribers, and
soon there may be even fewer. When Comcast Corp. made an unsolicited $40
billion bid to acquire AT&T Corp.'s AT&T Broadband unit, it put the largest
U.S. cable operator in play. A sale of AT&T Broadband to one of the other
giants, such as Comcast or AOL Time Warner, would create an unprecedented
cable behemoth with as many as 22 million subscribers, or nearly one-third
of the 69.5 million cable subscribers in the U.S. today. Content providers
fear that larger cable operators could strong-arm them into offering better
terms. They also worry that cable operators have the ability to deny them
access to millions of homes, not only for their TV programming, but also for
their Internet and interactive TV offerings.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Bruce Orwall, Deborah Solomon and
Sally Beatty]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB998857726537275093.htm)
(requires subscription)
NARROW AUDIENCE STALLS BROADBAND
Issue: Broadband
The broadband revolution is slowing down. Major providers of cable modems
and digital subscriber lines -- the two main types of residential broadband
technology -- have raised their prices this year even while dozens of
Internet service providers and upstart phone companies have collapsed in
recent months. The sector, while still showing strong growth, has seen a
general decline when compared to last year. The number of U.S. subscribers
to cable modems increased 16% in the second quarter from the first quarter
-- down from a 28% growth rate a year earlier, according to Kinetic
Strategies, a Phoenix research firm. DSL uptake has fallen from a quarterly
growth rate of 45% to 12%. Many phone and cable companies have raised their
broadband prices and curtailed promotional discounting even as consumers are
cutting back on spending because of the faltering economy, said Michael
Harris, president of Kinetic Strategies. "It is a recipe for deceleration,"
he wrote in a recent report. Add price increases from the providers, a
general loss of price competition due to failing businesses, and the
traditional "last mile" rollout challenges, and you have a revolution
delayed. Finally, there is one other factor adding to the slowing of
broadband uptake: the lack of mass-market applications that require the
speed and capacity of broadband. "What the average person can do with it
hasn't been compelling," acknowledged AT&T President David Dorman last week.
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Joshua L. Kwan]
(http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/broad082701.htm)
MARKETING FIRST FOR LAST VAMPIRE
Issue: Broadband
Manga Entertainment president Marvin Gleicher is breaking the Hollywood
rules of film marketing: sell theater tickets first, then sell videos and
DVDs while negotiating TV and pay-per-view rights. Gleicher and Manga
Entertainment will stream their newest film, "Blood: The Last Vampire",
(www.bloodthemovie.com) on the Web simultaneous to its release in Los
Angeles and New York - AND at the same time begin selling the DVDs online
and at Suncoast Video. "If people thought it was great online, hopefully
they'll go and tell their friends who didn't see it," said Manga president
Marvin Gleicher. "We've always been underdogs," said Gleicher. "We've always
had to find niche ways to market films to compete with the likes of Disney
and Warners." Success is relative for Gleicher. An earlier film, "Ghost in
the Shell," made a million dollars in its theatrical run. But, it helped
inspire the Matrix. "A million dollars theatrically, to me that's big
money," Gleicher said. "I don't think another company would make money."
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Michael Stroud]
(http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,46312,00.html)
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