Thursday, February 20, 2003

Get your PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2002-2006 Executive Summary for free here.  The complete report cost $995. Opening Paragraphs: PricewaterhouseCoopers envisions an entertainment and media world trundling inexorably along a path toward momentous change that, by 2006, will not yet have arrived.  This path will transport the industry to a highly digitized future in which niche and customized content are the norm.  In this future, new entrants from within and outside the industry will play a significant role, and incumbents will need to devise new business models to succeed.  We have named this future scenario GREAT EXPECTATIONS for the scale of impending change in the industry's future. However, by 2006, we will have barely entered this revolutionary territory.  Delivery deployment-the rollout and adoption of advanced networks and devices-will advance at a greater rate than content innovation, but still slower than its many proponents suggest.  Key delivery technologies, including broadband, wireless Internet and home networking, will begin to achieve "critical mass" in the installed base and start changing the way consumers experience entertainment and media. Industry consolidation is likely to continue apace, particularly as ownership rules ease on a global basis.  Although a select group of major players will dominate the entertainment and media landscape, they will need new business models to remain successful beyond 2006.  New players, particularly from technology-related industries, will begin to make their presence felt, foreshadowing more frenetic merger activity in the post-2006 world. Interesting stuff. 10:12:20 PM