Peter Chernin talks content ubiquity

Studio brass taking broad way to distribution

By DIANE GARRETT

Media titans used to obsess about piracy. Nowadays, they are more likely to fixate on ubiquity.

News Corp. prexy-chief operating officer Peter Chernin repeatedly invoked the need to distribute content as widely as possible during Wednesday afternoon's Milken Institute panel on the consequences of the digital revolution. Fellow panelists Terry Semel, studio chief-turned-digital convert, and BBC director general Mark Thompson picked up the theme during the sesh.

"We're consistently on the march to distribute content as ubiquitously as possible," Chernin said, citing the desire to allow consumers to access it any time, any way and any place they desire.

The key, Chernin said, is making sure the content is available for a reasonable price. That way, there's less incentive for piracy.

"I don't think anyone's not paying attention to fraud," Semel said, "but the bulk of time is being devoted to where we're going."

He said the open distribution strategy being embraced by more content providers reps a major shift from the time the music biz went digital and execs sat around in meetings figuring out who they should sue for piracy.

"All the focus was on 'How can we stop this virus from spreading,' " Semel wryly recalled.

Thompson was similarly bullish about cross-distribution strategies, noting that the BBC has provided YouTube with massive amounts of content to no ill effect. His view: Short video clips on sites like YouTube are "a way of marketing longform content and drawing people to it."

The panelists, who also included Activision chair-CEO Bobby Kotick, argued that enabling viral distribution provides content owners with greater pop and potential ad coin.

The key, Thompson said, is to treat interactive media and more traditional passive entertainment as parallel businesses that can each flourish. And Chernin cautioned that digital distribution -- be it over the Internet or mobile phones -- should not necessarily be considered a replacement for traditional media but "mildly additive."

He conceded, however, that he and News Corp. chieftain Rupert Murdoch spend more time thinking about Hulu and other new-media businesses than about the traditional ones. Chernin said film execs who concentrated on DVD a few years ago now "spend a lot of time talking to Apple and spend a lot of time thinking about VOD." And TV execs "spend a lot of time thinking about streaming shows on the Internet."