We need an unambiguous rule - a law - that nobody will step between the publisher and the consumer, full stop.
Facebook's the real deal. Nobody can buy Facebook now. Everybody has taken an angle at it. But Facebook may be the place that organizes everybody's personal information. It's got a very good chance of being that.
I've not conducted my life in the service of smallness.
I am a contrarian.
What's happened to broadcasting is that broadcasting really used to be... it used to have a very clear public service quotient. And it's more or less now. And it's been lost.
My opinion, young people go to the Internet. To the Internet distribution system right now, you put it up there and it's accessed by the world.
What we need to do is replace the entire tax code. I do not think it makes sense to say, 'Let's just grab money from, quote, the wealthy'... The issue is the tax code's rotten and we should start truly over with a simple code that is fair and transparent.
Broadcasting began, essentially, in the hands of very, very few players - actually two - and when television came along, there were two networks, then three. Rules began to get formulated that essentially protected that concentrated group.
Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.
Now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet.
Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It's gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it's natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it's how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period.
I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law.
I like businesses in transition, first of all. If ever there were a business in transition, it is publishing.
Napster has pointed the way for a new direction for music distribution, and we believe it will form the basis of important and exciting new business models for the future of the music industry.
Urbanspoon is a nice, little application and it's perfect, of course, for CitySearch because of the reviews it contains and the ability for CitySearch to use that content.
The directories businesses still make nothing but money. They're overleveraged, they're bankrupt entities, but they still are the largest. This is all going to move online over time. Why Citysearch and Service Magic are so important to us, is because nobody has really colonized it yet completely.
The business model for content is to be paid for it. You can be paid for it either though advertising or subscriptions or some new invention, but right now what we've got is advertising revenue and subscription revenue as the only way to be paid for content.
Ticketmaster does not set prices. Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set ticket prices.
Hollywood is a community that's so inbred, it's a wonder the children have any teeth.
Who ever knows what will happen with the economy, and will it affect the Internet? There's so much pouring into the Internet; I would doubt it, but I'm not the greatest predictor. But more than any media sector, I think the Internet will hold up.
