CBS Corp’s CEO, Leslie Moonves, gave an insightful keynote at CES in Las Vegas in which he stated that there’s no such this as old or new media anymore…”There is just media.”
A great statement, but unfortunately there are still old and new media companies. Old media guys just don’t get the changes that are taking place around them at lightning speed and at some stage they’ll drop off the map and become defunct media companies, at which point we can truly drop the old/new media moniker.
In the meantime, CBS seems to have embraced all that it means to be at the media forefront. Firstly, they are taking a multi-faceted approach to playing in the digital space, developing some ideas entirely in house, and in other cases forming partnerships to bring ideas to life.
Secondly, CBS has formed some innovative relationships, including:
* with Electric Sheep, to build a Star Trek environment within Second Life
* with Sling Media, to develop a new app called Clip+Sling, which will allow audiences to share short segments of programming.
Leslie finished off by saying, “Anything is possible. Audiences know that, content people know that, and innovators in the digital space know that.”
Clip+Sling will give Slingbox owners the ability to clip and share content directly from either live or recorded television in a simple process via the SlingPlayer (desktop or mobile). They’ll then be able to share this content with friends, even if they aren’t Slingbox users. CBS will be participating in a beta trial to educate themselves on what their audiences want. Their take is that such new capabilities as Clip+Sling, as long as they are undertaken with due consideration for content owners, are worth pursuing.
