Yesterday, I posed (with Ike Elliott’s help) the question of whether Content is the King of the Network. To explain my views, I need to travel back in time to the year 1991. I was working at Ameritech Development at the times, alongside names that will be familiar with many bearonbusiness.com readers: Lynn Refer, Mitch Moore, Jason Weller, Jason Lee, Dan Foreman, Jeff White, and Mike Callaghan. Though I enjoyed working with these individuals, I am eternally thankful to Kevin O’Hara for rescuing me from what could have been a 20 year career in the Bell system.
One of my last projects at Ameritech was participating in a review of video strategy. Should Ameritech invest billions in fiber to the home/node? Should it use Cable TV’s fiber/coax approach? Would xDSL suffice? Should it buy CATV companies and, if so, in region or out-of-region?
The team was divided. Not equally though. In fact, the vote was about 8 to 2. I’ll give you one guess which side of the vote I was on.
The point of contension was the importance of content. The Ameritech team was convinced content was the key to value creation. HBO, CNN, and ESPN–these are eons more important than the network.
I postulated a different view. I agreed that HBO, CNN, and ESPN were extremely valuable franchises in their own right. The question in my mind is why were these brands owned by cable TV companies? Was it coincidence? Was there a cause and effect? If so, what was the cause and what was the effect?
What do you think? I will complete the story tomorrow.
Leave a response (0 so far)
Subscribe via RSS
