What does PBL's new deal with Optus for NineMSN mean for the Australian media? CEO of PBL Convergent Media, Martin Dalgleish, puts a view.
As the CEO of PBL's Convergent Media, Martin Dalgleish assesses the impact of media "convergence" on the businesses where Australia's Publishing and Broadcasting (PBL) competes. Examples include the online portal NineMSN, the online employment site Seek, Crown Casino and, of course, the Nine Network. Dalgleish's target: to maintain PBL's leadership in the media consumption landscape.
In this wide ranging interview Dalgleish starts by talking about the NineMSN/Optus content sharing deal to bring NineMSN's content to a wider range of devices and platforms. He explains the opportunity for the telco and media models to converge and reach beyond broadband into the mobile world; and describes why he believes that is better than telco or media companies each expanding their own horizons. Its about giving the consumer a seamless, single user interface, he says. Under the deal, Optus will manage billing and NineMSN will deliver the content and applications. And in the new world of "presence" awareness, the alliance will take "presence" significantly beyond merely instant messenging.
Dalgleish also talks about the state of the terrestrial digital TV market and the effect of Austar's forthcoming new set top box (the Austar STB will be similar to the Foxtel IQ digital video recorder, but include a digital tuner as well). Perhaps surprisingly, he says he is not bullish about the future of consumer adoption of TV interactivity and explains why, additionally referring to new TV technologies such as the Microsoft Windows Media Centre. He also explains why the Nine Network is opposed to multi-channeling and why Nine has recommended to Minister Helen Coonan that it would not be wise to translate the UK multi-channel experience into the much smaller Australian marketplace. He also explains what kind of insights he hopes to obtain from the current DVB-H trial by Telstra and Bridge Networks (in which TV-style content will be sent to Nokia 7710 mobile handsets) and the impact of the Foxtel IQ box.
Finally, Dalgleish talks about how local Australian media brands can ward off competition from the big emergent global superbrands such as Google and Yahoo, especially on the new mobile battlefield and in the context of PBL properties such as online employment site, Seek. Dalgleish says broadband's steep upward uptake curve creates a much richer opportunity for media companies, and he explains how PBL intends to capitalise on that advantage (including with Crown Casino).
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