Citigroup EMT Conference: News Corp Digital Revenues; IAC Content; Blockbuster Online

As if CES and Macworld together was not crazy enough, Citigroup thought it was best to do its annual Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference this week as well. And in Vegas. Not much news coming out of there, but worth pointing out nonetheless:
– News Corp: Peter Chernin expects his company to exceed its goal of $500 million in digital revenue for the current fiscal and that online video advertising has the potential to be “the single best (business) story” for media companies in 2007. He also said the digital operations will be profitable for the fiscal year even when including the cost for management retention and amortization. He said user-gen content has little business value as tough to monetize. TV show episodes on MySpace and its TV stations’ sites have garnered about 4 million downloads already with good CPMs, according to Chernin.
– IAC: Barry Diller said the company will launch new content services in the next few months. “If I ever could think about when there is a better time to start the program business of the Internet, it is literally this second,” he said. “Two other, I think, dominoes will fall in the next 60 to 90 days….Now is the perfect time to invest and purchase things you think are interesting,” Diller said. Does that mean his company will buy two more content plays?
– Blockbuster: CEO John Antioco said Blockbuster.com will become more useful, allowing all customers to build queues and get recommendations as well as check the inventory in their local store and even have a movie not stocked be delivered to their store or home. By year-end ’07, Antioco said he expects the site to generate ad revenue.