The New Entertainment & Media Free For All - Increased Competition Means New Consumer Benefits - Steve Blacker

1. Amazon vs. Apple's iTune store. Amazon's new "Cloud Player" allows you to now listen to anything in your music collection on an Android phone. No copying or syncing of music is ever required; all your songs are always available everywhere; and they don't hog any storage on the phone itself. Instead of your music collection sitting on your computer, it will sit on-line allowing you to listen to your tunes from any computer - at home, at work, at a friend's just by logging into Amazon Cloud.

2. With Apple's iTunes your music library is messily scattered. When you buy a new song at home, you can't listen to it at work, at least not without copying it manually. If you own a song on your phone, it won't be on your computer until you do a sync. And if your music library is big, you can fit only a portion of it onto your phone. Apple is already working on a similar system, though; and so is Google. All this means even more consumer benefits in the future. The big challenge is totally and fully understanding what if any downsides there may or could be as no new technology comes blemish free.

3. In home viewing of big new movie releases vs. traditional in theatre viewing. Four major movie studios ( Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal & Warner Brothers) plan to let some of their biggest new films play in living rooms just two months after their theatrical debuts. The new option would be offered through DirecTV as early as the end of April. The service, according to Variety would charge $30 for a two or three day viewing. Currently theatres get an exclusive period of four months or more to show new movies.

4. Aside from saving an average pop corn and soda charge of $10 or more per person this new availability gives more people an opportunity to see movies they might not go to a theatre to see only because it's more convenient for them to watch a new movie at home i.e. married couples with very young children. Couple that with the growing number of acoustically enhanced media rooms in the country and time pressured consumers wanting to control their leisure schedules rather than be tied to a movie schedule ---this is a definite plus for consumers.

5. Movie theatres should not suffer as the majority of movie goers - young teens - enjoy the theatre viewing experience a great deal. It's both social bonding and an opportunity to go out. Movie theatres are being very pro-active in offering special live performances of operas, symphony orchestras and other highly target topics to attract new customers. The real challenge for movie theatre owners is turning the dead periods i.e. early mornings, certain week day nights into revenue generating new profit centers.

6. Given the growth of the Hispanic market and Telemundo and Univision winning prime time sweeps at night on certain weeks why not show case a day of "Novellas" say from Telemundo or championship soccer that could run in the middle of the night. Make it a festive and special event and people will come to watch on the big screen in a movie theatre.

7. A-list stars are now invading digital space. Kiefer Sutherland will be going straight to Hulu and Kevin Spacey straight to Netflix. Sutherland as a hit man in a serial called "The Confession" which has already started. Spacey in a remake of the British mini-series "House of Cards" starting next year. This represents a new stage in the growing power struggle among television networks, technology companies and streaming-video purveyors. Big name producers such as David Fincher are trying to figure out how to replicate television and its profit margins, on the Internet. Whatever the outcome; this too means more consumer viewing benefits. The biggest challenge will be making consumers aware of all the new opportunities that are emerging. If ever we needed a new era TV Entertainment, Technology & Media Viewers Guide it is certainly now. Who knows maybe Jack Kliger and TV Guide will come up with the answer.

Steve's new book You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-Inventing Yourself and Your Career chronicles his 50 year career working for over 25 different companies with 189 lessons learned and insider tips from Gayle King, Cathie Black, Chuck Townsend and 28 others; Blacker is still going strong today as a partner in Frankfurt & Blacker Solutions, LLC. His web site is blacker-reinventions.com and e-mail address is blackersolutions@aol.com

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