Redstone: We Didn’t Miss The Boat
Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone’s interview with Hollywood Reporter has some good gems about his view on digital media. Asked about whether he company has missed the boat on digital media, he said: “We don’t miss boats. Other people miss boats, and they may have missed the Viacom boat. The fact of the matter is, without copyright protection, there is no entertainment business. And so we instructed YouTube to remove 100,000 pieces of video from their site. Why? Because they were using it without paying for it….make a deal with us that is commensurate with the value of our product…People who want to use it are going to pay us, or good-bye.”
And then on the relative importance of it: “We are going to make hundreds of millions of dollars this year from the digital world. And that is not a secret. We are moving as rapidly as anyone. Do you know that Viacom is the world leader in mobile content? Do you know that in Germany were are the only company that has four mobile TV channels, as young as we are here? We are developing our own Web sites in America and all over the world. So anyone who doesn’t see that just doesn’t get it…I think people do a lot of talking without realizing that, at the present time, its economic importance to a company like ours is relatively modest.”
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Comments (2)
Feb 14, 2007 6:57 PM
Redstone is the one that doesn’t get it. No one cares about Viacom. People want access to content from aggregators, not from content owners. YouTube may not be the right place for them, but something like a Veoh or Joost is surely the a better strategy.
BTW, I am pretty impressed with the new Veoh. That browser plugin is very cool.
Feb 15, 2007 7:22 PM
Milt: if he doesn’t get it, why is Viacom doing very well? I won’t disagree that people like content aggregators, so Redstone’s statement that the content is available to those aggregators if they are able to compensate the OWNER of that content appropriately is completely in line with what somebody would expect. Viacom isn’t in the business of spending money not to make money. If they’re going to produce original content that people want to consume, they have a right to get paid for it.
Don’t forget that if the content produced by companies like Viacom is removed from the content aggregators, those aggregators are a lot less appealing as destinations. YouTube is so popular because you can access a huge archive of content that YouTube doesn’t really own the rights to. Fewer people are visiting YouTube for the amateur video than they are for the Daily Show, music videos, etc.
The aggregators don’t seem to get the fact that if they can come up with a viable business model that compensates rights holders at an appropriate level, the rights holders are more often than not going to work with them and everybody can make money. What’s not to like about that? The owner and aggregator make money and the consumers get to access the content they want where they want and when they want. If it doesn’t happen, it’s because aggregators were more focused on achieving a YouTube-like acquisition than they were about creating a viable business model that feeds value to all parties in the food chain.