Earnings Recap: Traditional Media Companies Offer Some New Details On Digital
This story was written by Rory Maher.
Traditional media companies aren't known for being forthcoming when it comes to sharing details about their digital operationsas of just a few quarters ago, Disney (NYSE: DIS) didn't even break out its digital results separately. But this week, several companies provided a few new insights into their digital strategies.
Here's what they revealed:
News Corporation: CEO Rupert Murdoch said he saw the potential in e-readers like the Kindle, but is looking for alternatives to the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) device even though the WSJ has been available on it since launch. wouldn't allow the WSJ.com to be made available on it. "We will not be ceding our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle," he said. He didn't, however, rule out investing in a company aiming to make a Kindle competitor.
Disney: CEO Robert Iger said the entertainment giant chose to go with Hulu over YouTube to stream its content online in part because Hulu is more focused on longer videos (versus short clips), but mostly because Disney was able to take an equity stake in the rapidly growing online-video company.
EW Scripps: One of the larger newspaper companies, Scripps said online ad revenue was down about 27 percent, but said the decrease was mostly due to online ads sold as part of print buys. In an interesting juxtaposition, the company said pure online ad buys were up an impressive 30 percent for the quarter.
By Rory Maher