Jon Friedman: 'Anything AOL Time Warner Does is a Huge Story'
The media editor of CBS MarketWatch.com says that today's biggest media story is AOL Time Warner, a behemoth whose activities "impact the entire industry."

I Want Media, 07/12/01

Jon Friedman is the media editor of CBS MarketWatch.com and author of the site's weekly "Media Web" column, a somewhat irreverent take on activities in media. Prior to joining the financial news site in 1999, Friedman covered the investment community for Bloomberg News. Friedman spoke with I Want Media about media company CEOs, his working relationship with CBS and the need for creativity in online news.

I Want Media: A lot of reporters are on the media beat nowadays. How is your approach to media different from the others?

Jon Friedman: I look at the beat through the eyes of the shareholder. I write about companies, people and news and how they might affect stocks. And these companies are made of flesh-and-blood people, so I try to insert some personality and irreverence when appropriate.

IWM: What are some examples of your irreverence?

Friedman: You'll find a bit in the "Media Web" column every Friday. For example, Jerry Levin, when he was the chairman of Time Warner, told reporters one day over lunch that one of the company's movies, "Pay It Forward," had personal meaning to him. I wrote a column asking, can Jerry Levin "pay it forward" with stockholders? Can he give the stockholders some relief?

IWM: What's the biggest media story right now?

Friedman: AOL Time Warner. It's the biggest company so it's the biggest story. Anything AOL Time Warner does is a huge story, because it's not only going to affect that company, it's going to impact the entire media industry. They're so large and so widespread.

Who knows, maybe Disney and Yahoo! will be involved in a deal at some point, all as a result of AOL and Time Warner. If AOL had not bought Time Warner it would have bought Disney, in an either/or kind of situation. AOL desperately wanted to get involved in the media business. It has great management and its future looks bright. This company is really where it's at for investors, too.

IWM: So, it's good to invest in AOL?

Friedman: I would never give investment advice to anybody. I'm not a broker. But I think the company is headed for great things.

IWM: How can traditional media can make the Web work for them?

Friedman: You've got to be much more creative online. You've got to be willing to take some chances and make [your work] really entertaining. People want to be informed, but they want more than that. CBS MarketWatch tries hard to set a balance of being informative and fun to read, too.

IWM: Speaking of being creative online, you recently did an interview with Sumner Redstone, Viacom's chairman and CEO, which included streaming video of your conversation. Do you do a lot of streaming-video interviews?

Friedman: We try to do as many as possible. I think it helps the reader get a better picture literally and figuratively of the subject of the story. It's an attempt to make the story more vivid so the reader doesn't just have words on a page.

IWM: Viacom, through its ownership of CBS, is a major investor of MarketWatch.com. Did that affiliation help you gain access to Sumner Redstone?

Friedman: No. As you may know, he has a new book out about his life, and we were part of the book tour in New York. He's the CEO of a very large media company, so he's an important person to our readers.

IWM: What's Sumner Redstone like?

Friedman: He's an extremely impressive person. You can tell he's a really tough negotiator. He's extremely, extremely self-confident in what he's trying to accomplish. And he's a great strategist. It's no a secret why he's a great CEO for Viacom.

IWM: What did you learn from talking with him, or from his book?

Friedman: I learned a lot, actually, about how he approaches negotiations and how he sizes up people when he hires them. He looks to hire people who are very self-confident and can think on their feet. It wasn't anything brand new to me, but it crystallized a lot of my thinking about how someone as important and successful as he is approaches the world.

IWM: Have you done similar interviews with other top media CEOs?

Friedman: I did a one-on-one with [AOL Time Warner's] Jerry Levin. Every quarter Levin used to have a lunch and invite 15 to 20 reporters to sit down around a conference table with him and sometimes Bob Pittman and usually Dick Parsons as well. And he would open up the floor for questions for an hour or so. Anybody could fire questions, and it was great. He's no longer doing that now that the merger is complete, I'm sorry to say. But when [the merger] was going on for that year or so, it was a great benefit for all of us to see him in action.

IWM: As a writer for "CBS" MarketWatch.com, do you ever have trepidation when covering stories about the broadcast television networks?

Friedman: Nope. In a word. I'm a journalist. We put the disclaimer in every story that Viacom and/or CBS is a significant investor in CBS MarketWatch.com, and we call 'em like we see 'em.

IWM: Has anyone from CBS ever called you to comment on your stories?

Friedman: No. I've never changed anything in a story because anybody from CBS called about it. You know, as their reporter, you'd be a fool to make a point of trying to show how tough you are and knock CBS. They're doing phenomenally well. "Survivor" has been a huge success. Dan Rather won the weekly ratings for the first time in a while recently, too. "Letterman" is doing better. The morning show is doing better. Anybody who wants to throw stones at CBS now looks kind of foolish.

IWM: What do you see as the next big media story?

Friedman: Disney is going to be an interesting case. I think [Disney chairman and CEO] Michael Eisner may have the biggest challenge of his career right now. Disney seems kind of sluggish in a lot of key areas. The theme parks aren't knocking the house down. "Pearl Harbor" has been disappointing in some ways. ABC is taking its lumps. Even ESPN's growth may be slowing down. And the retail stores have been a big problem.

IWM: So, you see a lot of challenges ahead for Disney?

Friedman: Challenge is a very kind word.



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