MediaBizBuzz for March 17, 2008: You Just Don't Understand: Whoever Said That The "Old Guard" Would "Embrace" Change?

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What do former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, MPAA head Dan Glickman, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. all have in common? Apart from their recent statements landing with huge resounding thuds, the psychology of their perspectives has a rationale. Congresswoman Ferraro ascended to a presidential ticket at a time when women were still expected to get married rather than make partner. (Footnote: Les Moonves recently blamed Katie Couric's less than stellar ratings on men over 50 leaving her broadcast post-Schieffer.) Mr. Glickman can still recall a straightforward relationship between movies and their audience. Rev. Wright it must be noted, is from a generation where it was commonplace for an African-American man with a J.D. to get a job at the Post Office, as Thurgood Marshall did. It shouldn't be a shock then, that sociopolitical advances and disruptive technologies can be misinterpreted as insurgency. For that matter, aren't the campaigns of Barack Obama and Ron Paul examples of tapping into, not only fundraising, as Howard Dean did during the last election cycle, but of organizing from the bottom up? To be sure, in the homestead of Carville and Matalin, that's heresy.

It's The Economy, Stupid Certainly, Bear Stearns feels their pain. Last week, after it was made public that the Fed would bail the investment bank out, its stock tumbled 50% -- and the Dow itself fell 200 points. Today J.P. Morgan announced an acquisition at $2/share setting it back some $236.2 million. But we're hardly out of the woods. Just as Bernanke announces the next round of rate cuts tomorrow, the Sunday Telegraph reports that Goldman Sachs will take a $3 billion writedown on Tuesday. Not that all other deals came to a standstill. Google got the EU go ahead for DoubleClick, while continuing to dominate all other media properties (according to a study that Henry Blodget conducted over at Silicon Alley Insider). Even as AOL is rumored to be slashing half of its salesforce, it acquired social network Bebo for $860 million. Disney's Bob Iger built - and bought - an igloo on Club Penguin. Then there are the ongoing He Said, He Saids in Pellicano and Diller/Malone (watch the trial here). Later in the week Jack Myers will be parsing how economics will affect us from an Upfront perspective.

Traffic Cops:NewsCorp and NBC online video lovechild Hulu finally left beta. Our own Ed Martin hearts it, as does BusinessWeek. Even AdAge gushes that its ads are... engaging. Over at PaidContent the up-until-recently inaccessible Jason Kilar gives Stacy Kramer some face time. Sure: Hulu's gorgeous and clean, but its broader significance is that it brings us further closer to a debate about Web traffic. Right now the FCC is a-ruminating about "broadband network practices" thanks to Vuze's filing against Comcast. In parallel, the debate over Net Neutrality is heating up again, given more oxygen by Dan Glickman's recent remarks. (TechDirt takes the MPAA to task for this short-term thinking, while noting that the IFTA's pro-Net Neutrality; one poster's response to Glickman: "You are a buggy whip in an automobile age.")

P2P: Ready For Your Closeup?It does seem -- like DRM for music - that P2P (peer to peer file sharing) is being normed by mainstream media: Verizon partners with Pando, revealing that P2P has increased their download speeds by 60% or more, while lowering the cost overheads of traffic. BusinessWeek tracks down the elusive founder of YouTorrent, an index of 17 torrent Web sites, which at three months old has 10% of the iTunes store's traffic. Even The Economist is swept away -- illegal movie downloading site ZML leaves them breathless. The FCC's far from the calm center of this storm: While Congress has begun investigating the management practices of Kevin Martin, the independent GAO has its back, finding that the FCC ignores 80% of its complaints. Even Comcast is piling on, suing the FCC over an alleged anti-cable bias. In his interview with Silicon Alley Insider, BitTorrent's new CEO Doug Walker lets it drop that he's had a cordial relationship with Comcast CTO Tony Werner-- seems that one hand doesn't know that the other is forging packets...

Done Deals and Golden Parachutes: Clear Channel has finally consummated with Providence Equity Partners. The Weather Channel -- which put on one helluva an Upfront with Gnarls Barkley and remains in play -- is about to broadcast all HD, 24/7. Online TV video site Next New Networks raised $15 million for its 12 video networks from Velocity Interactive Group and... Goldman Sachs (hmmm). As Microsoft circles Yahoo! (and prepares to take its first meeting) it braces for the tsunami that will be GoogleClick by acquiring Rapt. Debbie Richman joins Lifetime as evp of ad sales. Sensing an opening Spotrunner poached Joanne Bradford from Microsoft, bringing some real credibility to its sales efforts. Saying their adieus are: HBO president Carolyn Strauss and MTV Networks' John Sykes. Even Second Life founder Phil Rosedale is stepping down in his role as CEO and looking for a successor who can given the virtual world broader appeal (and greater usability, one hopes). Private equity investors seem to think that it's time -- what with the omnipresence of Google and the economic downturn -- that we'll be seeing a consolidation among Web properties. Damn Chicago's VIX - nicknamed the Fear Index -- which rose 14.2% last week -- it's highest jump in five years. If we are to embrace disruptive technologies, Harvard Business School management practices professor Bill George opines in BusinessWeek that we must seek out disruptive CEOs, leaders who'll inspire innovation and entrepreneurship. Amen to that!

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