The more consequential issue, said Daumann, was not money but copyright protection-protection against what he referred to as “theft.” YouTube was taking Viacom’s content, he continued, “not as an experiment, not con-sensually, but rather they just take it and say, ‘Why don’t you watch what happens!”’ Google said it was the legal responsibility of old media to tell them what should be yanked from YouTube and said it would immediately comply. Old media disputed this interpretation of the law, insisting that the responsibility, and the expense, of policing belonged to YouTube. Jeff Bewkes, the CEO of Time Warner, echoed Daumann’s concern. The problem is that once Time Warner’s content appears on YouTube, he said, “it gets redistributed to five other places-MySpace, Gorilla, whatever. Those people are now the new sources of the thing.” He added that Google maintained they were not responsible if another site lifted Time Warner’s content from YouTube, giving them “deniability in the event of theft.”
The third issue, trust, was in some ways the most vexing. Daumann was insulted when Google tried to assure him of the promotional value of YouTube. “I don’t need somebody else to say, ‘It’s good for you!’ Let me decide what’s good for me. Maybe I’m totally wrong. Maybe I’m totally stupid, and maybe it would be better for me to put all of my shows on YouTube immediately. Maybe I’m just an idiot. But it’s my right to be the idiot. I think YouTube is an effective promotional tool. We put trailers all over the Internet. We don’t run a walled garden here. We have deals with just about everyone-except YouTube.” He held a hardening conviction that Google was a pirate. Google held a hardening conviction that traditional media wanted to halt progress and slip their paws into Google’s pocket.
Bewkes, unlike Daumann, was willing to believe that Google “was well intentioned,” blaming engineers who are thinking not of his copyright concerns but of solving the “engineering problem of getting it out there.” Asked what a company like Time Warner wanted from YouTube, he conceded, “It’s difficult to figure out.” Like his peers, he wants “what we have wanted for seventy-five years, for our copyrights not to be stolen and used by other commercial enterprises who get paid and we don‘t, and they choose the time it is exhibited without ever contacting us.” But in this new world where every media company gropes for a way out of the tunnel, he said, “There is a question of the best way to do that.” Web programmers like Albie Hecht thought old media was stuck in denial. “You either find a way to make your product available to the public in the right way, or they’re going to get it anyway,” he said. “So you can either create another generation of video as opposed to audio pirates, or you can do the smart thing and give it to them,” and figure out a way to monetize it.
The chasm between new and old was as wide as the gap between Mel Karmazin’s view of how to sell advertising and Google’s view. They each spoke of piracy, but old media thinks it is preventable and new media says it wants to try but is dubious that absolute prevention is possible. They each spoke of content, but by content they meant different things. For traditional media companies, it is usually defined as full-length, professionally produced TV programs or movies. For YouTube, it is shorter-form clips, mostly user generated. In many ways, the debate is pointless since both user-generated and slickly produced content commands attention. “Content is where people spend their time,” said Herbert Allen III, the forty-one-year-old investment banker who is president of Allen amp; Company. “Content is not just what’s on Comedy Central. Content is Facebook too. Content is how the consumer chooses to spend time.”
What is really at stake, Allen suggested, is control of the thriving distribution platform that is the Internet, a platform “of endless choice and immediate fulfillment. Media companies are used to the exact opposite. They have thrived on the pricing power that comes from complete control of distribution. Since the consumer has already voted in favor of the Internet, media companies will have to find a new economic proposition for their content. Media companies have to embrace the fact that the consumer is now firmly in control.”
IRATE AND ANXIOUS as they may have been, as 2006 drew to a close, the TV companies were scrambling to find Internet platforms. Some, like the local broadcast stations that formed the backbone of the networks, were largely bereft of an Internet strategy. Other media companies made a genuine effort not to resign themselves to their fate. Among the most active suitors of the new media was Robert Iger, who became CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 2005. He purchased Pixar, the groundbreaking digital animation studio, from Steve Jobs in early 2006. Iger’s predecessor at Disney, Michael Eisner, was mistrustful of Jobs, and Iger was warned to keep him at arm’s length. Instead, he invited Jobs, now his largest shareholder, to serve on the Disney board. “I figured that if things go well for Disney, they’d go well for him,” Iger said. “If things didn’t go well for Disney, I’d have more than Steve Jobs to worry about. And to have someone like that in the boardroom when we’re discussing technology was great. I love working with him.” Iger felt he was building into the company’s DNA a digital, user-first perspective. He remembered asking Jobs how often he visited Apple’s design lab or technology center, thinking he’d say once a week. Jobs told him he visited three or four times a day. Iger said that now “I try to spend one hour a day surfing the Internet. I just surf and look.”
But at least one inspiration came from old media. “The first thing I did after becoming CEO was read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,” said Iger, referring to the five stages of grief described in her book On Death and Dying. “First came the denial phase. Then the anger phase. Then the bargaining phase. Then depression. Then acceptance. That’s what the music industry did. They listened to a cacophony of voices and let those voices drown out the most critical audience, which was its customers.” Determined not to repeat the mistake of the music companies, he became the first network and studio owner to license his shows and movies on Apple’s iTunes. ABC station managers and movie theaters protested. He was not swayed, insisting that ABC and Disney were in the content business, not the network or movie theater business, and reminding critics that the average age of those who streamed shows on computers or handheld devices was only twenty-nine. To be relevant to young people, he said Disney had to break old habits. In the first year on iTunes, he said, Disney streamed a hundred million shows and movies. Although iTunes represented just 1 percent of Disney’s revenues, it generated $44 million in revenues in 2006, a figure analysts projected would mushroom to over $320 million in 2008.
Murdoch and others made moves. Seeking to bring fresh storytelling to the Web, Murdoch signed seasoned Hollywood producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick to create a slickly produced series called Quarterlife, for MySpace. NBC Universal’s corporate parent, General Electric, announced that it was placing $250 million in an equity fund to invest in digital companies with robust growth prospects, including Albie Hecht’s Worldwide Biggies. Comcast, which has more subscribers than any cable company, would launch Fancast.com, an ad-supported cable Web site that hoped to attract full-length content from all suppliers. Viacom and CBS joined others in investing $45 million in Joost.com, a YouTube rival that chose not to display user-generated content but instead to offer full-length programs from MTV, Comedy Central, and CBS, sharing ad revenues in exchange. The TV giants discussed forming their own Internet platform to compete with YouTube. Although many participated in the discussions, only two initially joined: News Corporation, which as the new owner of MySpace saw YouTube as a direct competitor, and NBC Universal. The new platform was named Hulu, and it would look very much like television on the Internet, with full-length programs from the two networks interrupted by commercials in the old-fashioned way.