When Networks Collide

Joshua Cho

The convergence of media was likened to a car crash at last week's National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Television Internet Conference 2000 in New York.

Aptly titled "When Networks Collide," the conference at the Marriott Marquis touched on everything from making money in cyberspace to digital music and MP3 downloads, as well as an exhaustively complete grappling of where traditional television will fit into the coming broadband era.

Saving the best for last, the Power Panel featured a gathering of top executives from cable networks and programmers and Internet company entrepreneurs.

Moderator Don West opened the panel by talking about television's "third dimension," meaning the onslaught of digital television.

"Satellite television is going to flourish, growing to one-third of the nation's homes and more overseas," West said. "Then, DSL in succeeding years will gain traction."

He also said that cable is in the "catbird seat" because it "owns the connection to the home."

Josh Sapan, president/CEO of Rainbow Media Holdings, came out of the lineup to say that cable television needs to embrace broadband.

Sapan outlined Rainbow's strategy by citing the four C's: Content, he said, is very important and is the driver behind the Time Warner Inc. - America Online Inc. mega-merger. Context, he said, needs to be focused on because "in a world of infinite choice, you go to places that organize information and entertainment for you." Community is important because people want to interact, Sapan said. And finally, competition would take on new meanings.

"People we used to think of as enemies we need to embrace," Sapan proclaimed.

Sapan brought up the American Movie Classics' American Pop broadband site on the Internet which features animation and video clips as something that represented the beginnings of true broadband programming. Sapan said American Pop flips the sequence of first being on cable then migrating to the Web.

That model was further given credence by another panelist, Rob Burgess, chairman/CEO of Macromedia and Shockwave.com. Burgess said Shockwave was currently signing deals with the "best story tellers" today to create content that will originate on the Web and then branch out to other media. Ken Lee, the creator of Spiderman, is creating a new generation of super heroes for the company, Burgess said, as are the creators of the super popular animation series South Park.

"What we're able to do is show pictures on a computer with animated content, the same that you'd see on Saturday morning cartoons," Burgess said.

Henry Schleiff, chairman/CEO of CourtTV said with the array of companies on the Internet offering both entertainment and information, company leaders would do well to define what business they're in.

"CourtTV made the decision of being in the entertainment business," Schleiff said.