groveChuck
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From the Miami Herald:
Departing Zucker has rosier view of TV industry
Jeff Zucker, broadcast television's most infamous prophet of business doom, is turning optimistic about the industry -- just five days before he leaves it.
``I feel better about broadcasting today than I have in a long time,'' Zucker -- who leaves his post as president and chief executive officer of NBC Universal on Friday -- told an audience at the National Association of Television Program Executives convention that kicked off Monday in North Miami.
Zucker, who grew up in Miami Beach during the 1980s before leaving first for Harvard and then a 24-year career at NBC, has warned repeatedly that new digital technology is siphoning off broadcast television's audience and eroding its advertising revenue. He coined the catchphrase ``digital dimes for analog dollars'' to describe the industry's declining revenues, and even predicted a few years ago that declining income would soon force broadcast networks to abandon their affiliate stations and ship their programs to viewers directly via the Internet.
But he said Monday that changes in broadcast TV's business model over the past six years have brought an infusion of healing cash. The new willingness of cable companies to pay broadcast stations so-called retransmission fees for carrying their content -- and the agreement of broadcast affiliate stations to share that money with the networks -- have rescued the ailing industry, Zucker said: ``The model feels a little better.''
It will feel even better soon, he added, because broadcast TV's share of the billion-dollar retransmission pie is only going to rise.
``Broadcast audiences perhaps aren't what they were,'' he said. ``But they still dwarf cable.''
Zucker will lose his job Friday when cable giant Comcast acquires NBC Universal, a deal finally approved last week by the FCC after 14 months of hearings and delays. Zucker wouldn't discuss the Comcast-Universal deal except to say that he thinks the industry is headed for a new round of mergers and acquisitions. He was even less willing to discuss what was probably the last big story of his NBC tenure, last week's muted and unexplained announcement that acerbic liberal host Keith Olbermann is leaving MSNBC, the company's cable-news network.
He would only say that MSNBC will have no trouble surviving the departure of Olbermann, its most popular host. ``MSNBC is in an incredibly strong position, stronger than it has ever been,'' Zucker said.
His half-hour session at the NATPE convention was mostly devoted to mapping out the rapid changes in broadcasting wrought by the Internet and digital-video recorders, which undermine advertising revenues because they allow viewers to zap past commercials. Zucker said one of his proudest achievements was helping to create Hulu.com, a website that carries programs from NBC and Fox. Some of the shows can only be viewed for a fee, and they all carry commercials that viewers cannot fast-forward past.
``When we founded Hulu, people were stealing our content and building businesses on the back of that,'' Zucker said. ``If we don't make it available [on the Internet], piracy will rear its head, as it did in the music business.''
Likewise, he added, broadcast television must make peace with iPads, cellphones and other digital devices on which younger viewers like to watch TV shows. ``You cannot change progress,'' Zucker said. ``You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. . . .
At the end of the day, content is what matters.
How we get paid for that is really the question for next three to five years.''
Departing Zucker has rosier view of TV industry
Jeff Zucker, broadcast television's most infamous prophet of business doom, is turning optimistic about the industry -- just five days before he leaves it.
``I feel better about broadcasting today than I have in a long time,'' Zucker -- who leaves his post as president and chief executive officer of NBC Universal on Friday -- told an audience at the National Association of Television Program Executives convention that kicked off Monday in North Miami.
Zucker, who grew up in Miami Beach during the 1980s before leaving first for Harvard and then a 24-year career at NBC, has warned repeatedly that new digital technology is siphoning off broadcast television's audience and eroding its advertising revenue. He coined the catchphrase ``digital dimes for analog dollars'' to describe the industry's declining revenues, and even predicted a few years ago that declining income would soon force broadcast networks to abandon their affiliate stations and ship their programs to viewers directly via the Internet.
But he said Monday that changes in broadcast TV's business model over the past six years have brought an infusion of healing cash. The new willingness of cable companies to pay broadcast stations so-called retransmission fees for carrying their content -- and the agreement of broadcast affiliate stations to share that money with the networks -- have rescued the ailing industry, Zucker said: ``The model feels a little better.''
It will feel even better soon, he added, because broadcast TV's share of the billion-dollar retransmission pie is only going to rise.
``Broadcast audiences perhaps aren't what they were,'' he said. ``But they still dwarf cable.''
Zucker will lose his job Friday when cable giant Comcast acquires NBC Universal, a deal finally approved last week by the FCC after 14 months of hearings and delays. Zucker wouldn't discuss the Comcast-Universal deal except to say that he thinks the industry is headed for a new round of mergers and acquisitions. He was even less willing to discuss what was probably the last big story of his NBC tenure, last week's muted and unexplained announcement that acerbic liberal host Keith Olbermann is leaving MSNBC, the company's cable-news network.
He would only say that MSNBC will have no trouble surviving the departure of Olbermann, its most popular host. ``MSNBC is in an incredibly strong position, stronger than it has ever been,'' Zucker said.
His half-hour session at the NATPE convention was mostly devoted to mapping out the rapid changes in broadcasting wrought by the Internet and digital-video recorders, which undermine advertising revenues because they allow viewers to zap past commercials. Zucker said one of his proudest achievements was helping to create Hulu.com, a website that carries programs from NBC and Fox. Some of the shows can only be viewed for a fee, and they all carry commercials that viewers cannot fast-forward past.
``When we founded Hulu, people were stealing our content and building businesses on the back of that,'' Zucker said. ``If we don't make it available [on the Internet], piracy will rear its head, as it did in the music business.''
Likewise, he added, broadcast television must make peace with iPads, cellphones and other digital devices on which younger viewers like to watch TV shows. ``You cannot change progress,'' Zucker said. ``You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. . . .
At the end of the day, content is what matters.
How we get paid for that is really the question for next three to five years.''
