The MPAA and NATO are panicking because they don’t know how to replace revenues lost not to piracy, but to newer legitimate commercial content platforms, like Netflix, or ad-supported platforms like YouTube. This is, I believe, a better explanation for the brinksmanship between Old Media and New Media companies over the now-tabled SOPA/PIPA legislation.
Sadly for old media, while we all understand how tough it is to turn a supertanker around, Disney, Comcast and News Corp selling their stakes in Hulu is exactly the wrong move at the wrong time.
We all have a front row seat at the bar-room brawl that is the media business in 2011. In one corner, the barons of Old Media – the Ruperts, Sumners, the feisty Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner, and the (for now) low-profile but deadly Brian Roberts of Comcast. In the other corner: Netflix’s Founder/CEO Reed Hastings, Larry and Sergey from Google, patriarch Steve Jobs, and the other new gen entrepreneurs who are not afraid of where the business is going, including (in a fascinating case of the puppy taking a bite out of its master(s)) Jason Kilar at Hulu.
