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The changing face of media and news

Marty Pompadur knows a thing or two about the media. He also knows more than most about world events - commenting on the global economic downturn, he says: “What really concerns me is that the people who I thought were smart, turned out not to be.”

Since the sixties, Pompadur’s media career has flourished, from 17 years at American Broadcast Companies Inc (ABC) to Chairman of News Corp Europe in 2000. Now into his seventies, Pompadur shows no sign of slowing down. Not only is he a board member of RP Coffee Ventures, Nexstar and Seatwave, but his passion for exploring investment opportunities in emerging markets has led him to be involved in several new projects, including Chairman of Metan Development Group - a company engaged in various television activities in China, Russia and other international markets. He is also a senior adviser to News Corporation and Oliver Wyman.

With Metan, the premise is to acquire existing TV product that has never been seen in China and to produce original TV content that the company’s Chinese partner deems attractive for the Chinese audience. Syndicated on some of the 3,500 TV stations in China, the first show Hello Hollywood, produced in conjunction with The Hollywood Reporter, will hit Chinese audiences this September.

“Everybody wants to be in China at the moment,” says Pompadur. “But the advertising is more sophisticated than many people realise. They all want the triple play of TV, internet and mobile, and are very interested in product integration. You must have everything thought through, from station line-up to signed contracts.”

Pompadur will be talking more about his experiences in China - from dealing with censorship to the need to have the right business partner - during the conference session Predicting patterns of the future: the changing face of media and news (Monday, 14 September from 09:00 in The Forum).

But it’s not just China that interests Pompadur. As someone who spends 80% of his time travelling, global adventures have taken him from the US to Europe, and to Russia. He has always been inquisitive of global developments and passionate about exploring emerging markets, not just what is going on inside America. And this has driven him on a direct course into business with Rupert Murdoch.

“Rupert is extremely knowledgeable and curious about what’s happening elsewhere in the world,” says Pompadur. “It’s a shared passion that has led us to work together on a number of projects.”

In the mid-nineties, Murdoch approached Pompadur about doing business together in Russia. The two continued to work on a series of arrangements for more than ten years, including setting up a company that made media investments in emerging Europe. This connection gave Pompadur the reputation as Murdoch’s closest lieutenant.

As well as assessing the risks of doing business in other countries, Pompadur’s address will look at the changing landscape of traditional media; he cites the example of his 20-year-old daughter when he asserts that the newspaper industry is going out of business in its current format. “She understands what’s going on in the world, more than I do, and yet she never picks up a newspaper,” he says. “Why? Because by the time it gets to her in print, it’s old news.”

So what will the emerging business model for online news look like – and what will happen if newspapers disappear?

“We’ve been spoiled by free content, and it will continue to be so,” he says. “It remains to be seen what works best, whether advertising alone can make it profitable, or whether a hybrid is better - if you want more in-depth content, you pay for it.”

Pompadur remains sceptical about user-generated content too. He believes UGC will continue to grow apace, but questions how many people think about where the information is coming from and how objective that source is. “Is the research really objective, or is it just expressing an opinion?” he says. “Newspapers, at least, are held accountable to their readership if they are not remaining objective, and of course they have to worry about libel and slander. But with online blogs from random citizen journalists, this can be a problem.

“The hope is that people will pay for content in the future, because investigative reporting needs to continue to be funded. Would there have been a Watergate if not for newspapers investing in quality, investigative journalism?”

The solution is not going to be simple. In the short term, it is difficult to see who is going to have the money to investigate the next big scandal. But is the cost to society greater if the next Watergate or Guantanamo cannot be exposed because there are simply no reporters or institutions with enough funding to be able to take them on?

It has been said that the best method for predicting the patterns of the future is to plumb the depths of the past. Marty Pompadur has almost half a century to draw on, making him rather well-placed to play soothsayer. Join him for what will surely be a stimulating discussion.

Predicting patterns of the future: the changing face of media and news takes place on Monday, 14 September from 09:00 in The Forum.

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