Across the board, media companies are gearing up for the assault by News Corp. (NWS-A) toward the rest of the media industry. It's not only in America where concerns are rising, but in various places across the world.
The response by competitors like CNBC (GE), Bloomberg, The New York Times (NYT) and the Financial Times in London shows it's going to be a fun battle to watch.
Another important idea is it also reveals that there has been a lot of complacency in the ranks of the various companies. Now they're starting to sound alarms and react to the upcoming battle. If they had been urgent through the years, rather than trying to salvage their existing business models, they'd have been better prepared for the fight.
It also shows there's been a stanglehold on certain ways of thinking by these companies, i.e. ideologies, that are about to be undermined and diminished.
As far as CNBC goes, it has grown to be a pretty strong network recently, but even so many of the regular workers are concerned and had a number of questions they asked CNBC head Mark Hoffman and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker about the upcoming Fox Business Network in a town-hall meeting for the network last week.
Hoffman responded saying they needed "to be confident but not arrogant." He added they needed to stay focused. "CNBC is a network for those who are wealthy and those who want to be wealthy, and that's what we stay focused on every day."
In the beginning of this battle, the Fox Business Network will will reach 30 million homes, only a third of what CNBC reaches at this time, but that probably won't last long.
There has isn't any love lost between Fox and CNBC since Murdoch brought Roger Ailes over from CNBC, who headed up the network in its early years, while recruting a lot of the networks workers over to Fox.
Ailes played on that lately saying that CNBC workers are again "burning up his phone line seeking to jump ship."
For the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has said he has plans to expand it both in content an geographical reach. He plans on extending the reach of the Journal to parts of Asia, Europe and India.
The number of initiatives that are about to be released by News Corp. really won't be able to be kept up with or measured at this time. The properties of the company as they reach across airwaves, countries and the Internet are forcing any company that competes with them to adapt their strategies.
The media landscape is about to change possibly more than it has at any time in history.
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Tracked on: August 13, 2007 5:10 PM | Permalink to Trackback