We’re really concerned about closed architecture in set-top boxes and in telephone-delivery systems. If you design the system and you control access, you really control the keys to the market.
Predictor: Horowitz, Ed
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, managing editor John Batelle interviews Frank Biondi CEO of Viacom Inc., and Ed Horowitz, head of Viacom Interactive Media. In the 1980s, the two were executives trying to establish a little company called Home Box Office. In the ’90s, they were working to bring Viacom into a new media age. Batelle writes: ”Focusing on the content keeps Viacom away from the front line of today’s raging infrastructure battles, but it doesn’t keep Biondi and company from having very distinct opinions on how that infrastructure should develop … Viacom has become a force for open systems in the new media marketplace. ‘We’re really concerned about closed architecture in set-top boxes and in telephone-delivery systems,’ Biondi says, his emphasis resting on the word ‘closed.’ In the future, a consumer’s access to content may well be funneled through a proprietary set-top box owned and operated by companies like TCI or Microsoft. Biondi is understandably anxious about how content providers like Viacom fit into that particular game plan. ‘If you design the system and you control access, you really control the keys to the market,’ Biondi says. This is a familiar pattern to a company that has competed in the trench warfare of cable television.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Open Access
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Viacom Doesn’t Suck: How Viacom is Leveraging its Brand Strength to Create the First 21st Century (New) Media Company
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.04/viacom_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney