The online advertising market has placed the hand of slumbering traditional media into a bowl of warm water; now the likes of Viacom and Time Warner are wide awake.
This morning’s foray into “media finally gets it online” comes to us from an elegant roundup in the Wall Street Journal of big-time traditional outlets reentering the Internet market with acquisitions and initiatives.
“There is an awakening occurring at the traditional media companies,” the Journal quotes Larry Kramer, president of Viacom unit CBS Digital Media. Viacom has been on a spending spree this year.
Sumner Redstone’s company picked up NeoPets this year. Viacom made a deal with Yahoo to feature its search and advertising on sites like Nick.com. They also made a play for gaming site group IGN.
News Corp ended up with IGN, as Rupert Murdoch’s new Los Angeles-based Internet unit has made a few Internet purchases. They reportedly bid $3 billion on VoIP outfit Skype, but Meg Whitman and eBay swooped in after talks ended to make a $4.1 billion winning bid for Skype instead.
After Friday, News Corp should own MySpace parent Intermix, unless a dissident shareholder effort derails the purchase. And Mr. Murdoch isn’t finished buying yet.
Time Warner has pushed the clutch hard in making the biggest paradigm shift. Its $103.5 billion deal with AOL has been generally regarded as a bad move by former Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin.
Now new CEO Richard Parsons has stated developing AOL is a top priority for Time Warner. AOL has been shifted from a subscription-based to an audience-driven (ie, online advertising) model.
Efforts from Yahoo and Google have put the Fear into traditional media. Google took a small step into the content arena by making the premiere of UPN’s Chris Rock comedy vehicle “Everybody Hates Chris” available online.
Yahoo made a Hollywood insider, Terry Semel, its CEO, and he brought in ABC Television president Lloyd Braun in to helm Yahoo’s entertainment organization in Santa Monica.
These actions haven’t been ignored, as the Journal reports:
News Corp. President Peter Chernin says Yahoo’s actions last year were a wake-up call for him and his boss, Rupert Murdoch. “We’d been reading all these comments from Yahoo about getting into the content business,” Mr. Chernin recalls.
One last rumor, as dished by the Journal: NBC Universal may be working on a Web-based entertainment network of its own. Stay tuned.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
