Nice preview on speaker Michael Jackson...

New job, new medium, same fundamentals

Michael Jackson says US TV giants have stifled creativity - but the internet will free it

Dan Milmo, media business editor
Thursday April 6, 2006

Guardian

Michael Jackson, the former head of Channel 4 turned US media executive, has predicted a leading role for the internet in plugging a "creative deficit" in American broadcasting.

In his new role role as president of programming at Barry Diller's $9bn (£5bn) web empire, InterActiveCorp, Jackson is charged with finding text and video content to sit alongside IAC websites, which include the Ask.com search service, dating portal match.com and Ticketmaster.

Jackson said the US TV industry had suffered from the dominance of media conglomerates such as Disney and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, but the sector was entering a new era as the web undermined the advertising-based business model.

A new generation of content makers is emerging, he said, able to screen shows on the web, bypassing Comcast's cable system or DirecTV's satellites. "Broadband will enable content to get around the old aggregators. That to me is the most exciting thing. In the US you cannot launch a TV show without Brian Roberts [chairman of Comcast] or Rupert Murdoch [owner of DirecTV] on your side."

In an interview with the Guardian at the MipTV programme market in Cannes this week, the former chief executive of Channel 4 said creativity had been stifled by media conglomerates that own broadcast networks as well as producing films and programmes, such as Disney, which owns ABC, or News Corp, owner of Fox. This was why independent production was not thriving. "In the US TV market there are no American independent producers, so we have ended up with a few vertically integrated players. That has been the single greatest reason behind the success of independent production from outside the US. Vertical integration has led to a creative deficit."

Jackson said growth in broadband, which is now in two-thirds of web-enabled American homes, had the potential to do for content makers what Channel 4 did for independent producers in Britain: create a new market and bypass monopolies. "If you create the conditions, people will invent new ways of working. This moment reminds me very much of the Channel 4 launch."

Although IAC's new programming venture has yet to make a statement of intent with a site launch or acquisition, its benchmarks are the Huffington blog - Huffingtonpost.com, which has become a lightning rod for liberal debate in the US within a year of its launch as a collection of contributions from people such as Warren Beatty and Tina Brown - and the blog empire Gawker Media, created by former journalist Nick Denton and described by Jackson as a "Web2.0 version" of the Condé Nast magazine group.

"There is going to be potential for new channels, new programming and new creative ideas," Jackson said.

Appointed to his new role in January having previously run Diller's USA Entertainment business, Jackson would not be drawn on IAC's programming plans. However, IAC is keen on comedy sites and has held talks with a number of companies about launching or acquiring ventures with comedy content. He added that it would not make a big acquisition along the lines of Viacom's recent $600m (£340m) takeover of iVillage, or News Corp's $580m deal for MySpace: "IAC has been very entrepreneurial but realistic. It has avoided the big mistake."

Having made his name as a TV executive, Jackson said IAC's programme content would not be radically different from what TV viewers were used to, and would concentrate on genres such as news, comedy and fashion. It would be content that "gets shared and talked about" but without the conventional network marketing budget.

"The fundamental needs of what people are looking for are the same. American Idol is a 1930s radio talent show with some new features, like the meanness of the judges and the audience voting," he said. "That's what I am doing now. It's about doing the things I already know about, such as narrative and storytelling, and adding to it those functionalities and tools that enable users to get to what they want with remarkable speed and precision."

Backstory

Michael Jackson began his career in independent production in the 1980s before the BBC poached him in 1988 to edit The Late Show. In the 1990s he became controller of BBC1 and BBC2, then director of television. In 1998 Channel 4 recruited him as chief executive before he joined Barry Diller's USA Entertainment, owner of the SciFi channel, as chief executive in 2001. A year later he became chairman of Universal Television after the merger of Mr Diller's TV interests with Vivendi Universal Entertainment. At Universal, Mr Jackson commissioned Monk and Dead Zone.