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7/28/2019 Viacom CEO Edward Horowitz
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/viacom-ceo-edward-horowitz 1/5
tlItllll$
ilillllAilil IIONOIIIITZ
llloalli]lu of
rhannels
ly lmnfi lnuene
Ihe [t0
nf l/iacnm
Brnadcasting
talks candidly
ahrut the
500
t's not often you get inside the office
of someone in charge of television.
Not television programming, not tele-
vision business, not even television
technology-just television. There is,
after all, but a relative handful of people occu-
pying a position to say, "This is what it's gonna
look like," and then steer the programming
people, the business people and the technology
people in that direction
Edward D. Horowitz is one
of that handful. As chairman
and CEO of Viacom Broad-
casting-one of the four divi-
sions of the conglomerate Via-
com International that owns
Paramount Pictures, Show-
time, MTV, Nickelodeon and
much else-Horowitz, 46, is
in charge of making sure the
company keeps up with
changes in society. From who's
watching Rcn €t Stinrpl, 10
how we read CD-ROM man-
uals, to the reasons why we
channel-surf, Horowitz has to
anticipate the curve and react,
or risk his company's obsoles-
cence. As Viacom prepares a living experimentin California's Castro Valley-site of an interac-
tive cable-TV/computer field test-that means
walking a minefield strewn with the bodies of
eight-track tape and Cartrivision-format VCRs.
It also means-despite his Columbia Univer-
sity MBA and a respected, 20-year career in
cable and broadcasting-that Horowitz has to
be both a visionary and a carnival barker. A
salesperson, first and foremost, he unapologet-
ically espouses the gospel of giving customers
what they want, or thlnk they want, or can be
convinced they need. Refreshingly candid, he'll
probably be proved right with his plans and pre-
dictions of upcoming neat gadgets and gosh-
wow capabilities. Of course, for every one of
those gadgets and capabilities, a price is paid,
either on a monthly bill or in terms of civil lib-
erties. Once your private-channel choices are
made public to marketers and others with lists
of what you download from the cable-company
computer, your TV may be transformed into a
ntt'trtitor of your viewing and
shopping activities.
Audio Video Interiors:
With tlrc rcccrtt prtrchasc o.l'
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largast ert.tet'tain.ment cort-
glonrcratcs. Wtcre doas Via-
com BrrtadcastingJit in, arrd
what are you workirrg orr
teclnologically?
Ed Horowitz: \We clearly
are a programming and entertainment companyfirst. \We develop content. I use the word "con-
tent" versus programming because in the world
we're migrating into, which is the computer
environment, programming means something
different. The same with "software." So we cre-
ate one-hour and 30-minute content for tradi-
tional television distribution, or we stack prod-
uct togethqr along with other people's product
and create a network like MTV or Nickelodeon.
Ve are now looking at changing the
paradigmof programming. The first iteration of
? 6 Auoro VroEo lNTERroRs
7/28/2019 Viacom CEO Edward Horowitz
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/viacom-ceo-edward-horowitz 2/5
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that is the development of games. Ve're taking
content and characters that have been devel-
oped on our networks and shows, and using that
as the basis to create spinoffs like the Rocko
game fbased on the Nickelodeon animated
series Rorkot Modem Life).
AYI: Acnally, that doesn't sound uery reuolu-
tionary. People have bcen making games out of
pLtp-culture characters since Li'l Orphan Annie.
EH: No, I would say it is probably not
revolutionary. I mean, television isn't revo-lutionary, but then MTV came along and
changed television. So there's an element
of, "Are you doing something radical in tech-
nology" or, "Are you doing something
radical in content?"
AYh Okay, thereCastrtt Valley: Arc yttrtdoirrg sonrctling radical in techrroktgy, ()r are y()tr
doing something radical in content?
EH: Castro Valley is a community south, and
a little bit east of San Francisco. It's a pretty
good reflection of the overall U.S. demo-
graphic, and it has a cable system we've rebuiltfrom scratch over the last two years. Ve've
applied the latest in communication technol-
"lt/llUrame along
and rhanged
televisirn "
7/28/2019 Viacom CEO Edward Horowitz
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/viacom-ceo-edward-horowitz 3/5
"lhgletms
'interafiiue
teleuisinn' and
hew media' haue
lmt all tneattittg"
EH: No, it's not pay-per-view. You'll pay for
themovies as you view them, but pay-per-view
typically is Imovies starting at] prescheduled
ftimes]. Video-on-demand is at 3 in the morn-
ing, or 2'47 in the morning, or 11'16 at night.
You can pick any title out of a library, and it'llstart at the press of a button. You will have
VCR functionality, so you can start it, fast-for-
ward it, rewind it, until you're done watching
it, and then it goes off.
AVI: I gather consumers don't like the term
"pay-per-uiew"?
EH: It's probably not a great term to use. lt's
not a very consumer-friendly category, and part
of it's in the name.
AVI So you're calling it "uideo-on-demand"?
EH: Ve're going to call it something else.
I don't know what yet. One other issue is,
"Vhat bill does it appear on?" Because ifyou're already paying $:o to $+o for a cable
bill and then see another $25 worth of on-
demand-content bills, how are you going to
feel about that? Probably not too good. So
we're taking a look at allowing consumers to
use their fcredit or charge] cards and have itautomatically go to the card account.
AYlz What else do you haue at Castro Valley?
EH: Ve've built in functionality so that ifyou want to watch shows that are coming up
in the week and you're not going to be home,you just have to push a button fon the set-top
cable boxl, and it will inform your VCR to turn
on and record the event, assuming the VCR is
on and there's a tape in it.lilZe're also testing a "virtual VCR." Let's say
you're home and you want to watch something
that appeared over the last 72 hours. You should
be able to call it up. Vhat we're going to try
to come up with is a list of channels in which
we can get the rights-rights are the big issue-
to let the consumer dip in and watch what he
l/ITllllS
missed. Rlghts are going to be our biggest chal-
lenge in all of this. However, there are certainstations that lend themselves to this pretty
well, MTV and Nickelodeon, we own most of
the rights. Showtime is another one.
LYlz This sounds like a take on the "interac-
tiue teleuision" we'ue all heard so much about.
What do you think of the term?
EH: It's like "500 channels"-it doesn't
mean anything anymore. The terms "interac-
tive television" and "new media" have lost all
meaning. "lnformation superhighway" has
lost all meaning. In my view, the act of get-
ting information when you want it is interac-
tive television, that's one level. The second is
being able to order what you want when you
want to watch it-to go to a library of con-
tent. Or perhaps interactive TV is really per-
sonal TV where I generate content as opposed
to viewing content.
AYI; Cenerate content?
EH: Vhere there's a camera in my house and
I generate content and I send it to someone else
and we have a conversation. Just like you being
on a computer forum, where you get on and talk
to people by typing in your messages.
AYL In the recent movie VithHonors, a col-
lege student's thesis is based on the idea of "elea
tronic democracyi' where we'll uote and interact
with lawmakers uia computer and cable. Do you
see this ever happening?
EH: You have to ask, "does it offer the con-
sumer something he wants?" Right now, 900-
line numbers provide the ability to vote finpolls]. Clearly, the environment already sup-
ports that. But it does not offer an environment
where you can speak, nor does it offer an envi-
ronment where your opinion is typed in at
home and recorded that way. It still is very
much a Yes/No environment.
Also, up to now, these kinds of votes have
4 0 Auoro VrDEo INTERToRs
7/28/2019 Viacom CEO Edward Horowitz
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/viacom-ceo-edward-horowitz 4/5
"lfiink lllfls
as a tape
IlItW$
been interesting, but didn't have any defini-
tive effect or consequence. lf the consumer
could participate in his local city council
meeting and the council said, "Ve're gonna
vote based on the votes that come in," thenthere's a consequence. But I have a feeling that
won't happen. The council may say, "Look,
we understand what the majority of the pre-
sent viewing audience feels, but we don't
think that represents our constituency, and
we're voting on behalf of them and not the
views of our specific, moment-in-time view-ership." There's room for voter abuse, and for
a kind of immediate, emotional response that
may or may not be well thought-out.
AYlz With uideo-on-demand and uirtual
VCRs, are uideo stores going to be obsolete?
EH: No. First of all, it's going to take 15
years until the distribution networks have
rebuilt themselves to even consider offering
these services. And I think the market willexpand, as opposed to share-shift. There are
people who don't now Jro to video stores. In
fact, only 20 percent of U.S. households go tothe video store. \il/hen HBO was created, we
found that the audience that watched HBO
medium uuill he
fl]Ortld ftr another
lett years."
7/28/2019 Viacom CEO Edward Horowitz
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/viacom-ceo-edward-horowitz 5/5
Affi.ru
I li.
bA"*
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throw it away-they'll just use it for watch
ing home movies.
AYlz Recordable u;i deodiscs ?
EH: I think it's near-term, within the next
few years. It may not be a disc. $/hat we're
talking about is a digital storage environ-ment. You may not be pressing a disc, just stor-
ing Ipictures and sound] in RAM
IRandom Access Memory].
The biggest challenge we have is com-
ing up with a navigation system that
allows a consumer to look up what's on
and when it's on, and get to where he
wants to go, right now. The consumer no
longer has patience. The fax machine is
pervasive, there's no longer a day or two
for a letter to get to you. Between e-mailand the fax machine, the world has
become urgent. Cellular phones have
made contact with an individual virtually
ubiquitous. Phones in airplanes-rightnow it's [mostly] one-way, it's going to
evolve to two-way. The sense of
urgency-and the ability to respond to
that sense of urgency-will be the funda-
mental success factor of any business
going into the next century.
AVI: TTris all makes cttnsumers sttwtd
itfantile-"l want it and I waut it rtrtLtt."
Is that troubling?
EH: \7ho am I to judge what the con-
sumer wants? He's my customer. And lf
I'm going to succeed, I'm going to give
him what he wants.
AYI Well, "he" is us.
EH: And I have the same demands.
Vhen I turn on that light switch, I want
the lights to go on right now. Vhen I
pick up that phone, I want a dial tone
right now. And just as we have things
that have become what we term "utili-ties" Isuch as telephones], that's where
we're headed. Cable in the home, it used
to be a luxury, now it's a utility. Com-
puters, still a luxury, will evolve into a
utility. It's just a matter of time. $
4 4 Auoro vrDEo tNTERToRSSee RSVP card for more information