Outspoken Vice Media CEO Shane Smith predicts, “A bloodbath in the next 12 months of digital, mobile and terrestrial (media).” Smith was interviewed by Hearst Magazine’s digital media president Troy Young as part of Hearst’s Master Class interview series, according to Digiday.
Smith said he expects Viacom to “implode” and something similar will happen at other media companies, like Time Warner and Fox.”
Some other interesting nuggets from the interview:
– But how do we take it to the next level? How do we take on CNN? How do we take on BBC? And Josh (is that guy. Josh (Tyrangiel) is a fucking angry young man who wants to shove it in their asses.
– We have the number one, out of all networks in America, the most highly educated demo, the most affluent demo, now the fastest “younging down of a network.” It’s true, we’re bring millennials back to TV.
– You have to be on all screens, at all times.
– There’s a whole generation that came up with no advertising but yet ads paid for everything, so there’s this whole disruption happening…
– When you really get into VR, you see it’s the future.
And then Smith slammed publishers reliance on Facebook:
This is the biggest problem of the world: Facebook has bought two-thirds of the new media companies out there without spending a dime because they own a majority of their mobile. That’s great for Facebook, but bad for their platform. That’s why we’re trying to get on all platforms because we can monetize on all platforms then we can get away from the patrimony of Facebook.
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