Summary
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is the 2009 Media Person of the Year. He says that traditional media can no longer succeed by replicating their print content online. If you want to reach consumers online, "static content won't cut it." That's why the old approaches are doomed to fail.
Analysis
There's a reason why Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is the Media Person of the Year at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes. Unlike traditional media executives he's not looking in the rear-view mirror, he's looking at the road ahead. (Or maybe he keeps Bill Gates' old book of that title on his bedside table.)
"All content consumed will be digital, we can [only] debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years," he says. "There won't be [only traditional] newspapers, magazines and TV programmes. There won't be [only] personal, social communications offline and separate. In 10 years it will all be online. Static content won't cut it in the future."
In other words, while newspapers are still trying to figure out how to get readers to pay for written articles, Ballmer sees a world where the old approach of replicating articles online is not just inadequate, it's doomed to fail.
