Litigation … sends a strong message in the insular and deal-driven media industry: don’t mess with Viacom’s right to get to market. Such a message may ultimately force competition away from the current cable and online model – in which companies compete to slice up and own segments of the market – to a model in which service providers all enjoy the same access to your living room, and compete purely on the quality of their offerings.
Predictor: Biondi, Frank
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: ”Viacom has aggressively employed litigation as a method of forcing competitors to back off. At the height of its battle for Paramount, Viacom sued TCI (which was backing Barry’s Diller’s bid for the movie studio), claiming Malone had a stranglehold on the cable industry that threatened to monopolize the information superhighway’s development. Biondi now claims that suit was a factor in the government’s current interest in open access. It certainly sends a strong message in the insular and deal-driven media industry: don’t mess with Viacom’s right to get to market. Such a message may ultimately force competition away from the current cable and online model – in which companies compete to slice up and own segments of the market – to a model in which service providers all enjoy the same access to your living room, and compete purely on the quality of their offerings.”
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