Viacom the next Olivetti - Lawsuit Business Model

Olivetti once ruled the office terrain until IBM and Microsoft arrived. The once mighty typewriter company has been reduced to a manufacture of compact discs and printer drives for Microsoft. Disc are dead and Microsoft is in trouble. Viacom the owner of MTV and other TV brands is going through hard times and even more hard times await the company's future. TV audiences are shifting to the internet, Tivo, cable and other mediums. Following the TV audiences are advertisers. Today, production costs have dropped so much that major studio backing is not necessary to produce professional quality movies or music.

However, distribution is as important as ever and YouTube is distribution without the expensive overhead. Also, content creators no longer need to get into restrictive licensing and ownership agreements with the studios in the hopes of getting distribution. YouTube provides them control over their content and efficient ways to monetize it.

The lawsuit by Viacom against YouTube's parent Google is a desperate attempt by dying company to stay alive. Also, going forward you will see more as the old studios and networks adopt lawsuits as a key piece of their business model, claiming that shows and recordings that are not being watched on TV or listened to on the radio are being consumed on the internet. Get with the program.

New media getting more ad money

According to a study from the American Advertising Federation, as much as 73% of online marketers are reserving 20% of their ad budgets for new and emerging media. About 12% of those marketers say they reserve between 21% and 40% of their marketing budgets for new media.

Advertisers are betting on new mediums like television programs viewed over the internet, text messaging and social networking to be among the top categories. The study also indicates that marketers want new ways to use traditional media (78%), a balance of traditional and non-traditional media (75.5%) and increasing awareness of new media properties (57.7%) in order to remain competitive.

One surprising result from the study is that many of those polled believe traditional mediums are in need of a make-over. The respondents indicated that newspapers (51.4%), network television (34.5%), radio (33.8%) all needed to be overhauled to remain competitive with new media like social networking sites, online video and other consumer generated media.

Magazines are not exempt from the overhaul message that marketers are sending. According to the categories of business magazines (46%), women's service (25%), fashion and beauty (18.8%) and men's (17%) magazines are all in need of a make-over to remain competitive in today's market.

The WebGuild event on Feb 15, 2007 held at Google Headquarters examine Online Video: Revolutionizing Advertising & Marketing. The panelists will be;
YouTube Jordan Hoffner, Director, Worldwide Web Syndication, YouTube
AOL Timothy Tuttle, Vice President, AOL Video, AOL
Fox Todd Murtha, VP, Business Fox Interactive Media, Inc.
NBC John Saroff, Content Acquisition Leader, NBC
Moderated by
Daya Baran. Chief Gruuve, GRUUVE