I suppose that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani has had every possible perspective on The Cable Game. Way back when, in his '89 mayoral race, challenger Giuliani's media consultant was Roger Ailes, then still a Republican media consultant. A decade later, Mayor Giuliani performed the marriage service for Ailes, who, by then, of course, was the chief of Fox News. Since then, Giuliani has been a candidate and a talking head and maybe even a contributor for a time. (And in TCG's opinion, Rudy has done well at all his roles, except for presidential candidate.)
In any case, now he is writing for CNN. Interesting. TCG figures that it's only a matter of time before every op-ed online offers a choice to the viewer: he or she will be free to read it, the old-fashioned way, but he or she will also be free to listen to it, or even view it somehow, perhaps animated with an avatar. How to do that, exactly? Well TCG doesn't know tech stuff very well, but she knows that voice technology is taking off--TCG just got Vlingo on her iPhone, and that was free, and it works great. Which is to say, Silicon Valley whizkids can do just about anything now. The key point is that if it's digital, then it's digitizable, and can be made agnostic across platforms, as they say. And the same will be true of op-eds. All will be one, in a Converged Cable Game--really, the Digital Game.
Now this particular op-ed, mulling who would be a good Senator for NY, is not a great piece of journalism or punditry. But that's not really the point: It's from Giuliani, and he's a player. Kudos to CNN for grabbing him. As noted, it's only a matter of time before an op-ed from Giuliani becomes a Net TV show from Giuliani. Or from anybody else who can attract eyeballs.
By this reckoning, the real question is the "get." That is, who can get the best talent to be on his/her site, as opposed to the rival's site. And this get-struggle will take interesting forms in the years ahead, as media players circle more intensely over available dollars. For example, this fascinating piece in The New York Times/IHT reports that Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, and other glamour rags, has set up its own in-house advertising unit. Why not? Conde-Nast has a great rolodex (e-version thereof) of possible endorsers and pitch-people; so if a company needs pulling together a wow-name, why not go right to the experts at Conde-Nast, as opposed to some ad agency? This is tricky territory, of course; CAA tried to do the same thing years ago, and it didn't really work. But maybe Conde Nast has fewer crazed cokeheads and all-around louts than CAA had back then.
In any case, the real point here is that CNN has successfully wrangled Giuliani for its website. And that's one reason why CNN continues to lead online.
UPDATE: Cybersage John Battelle adds to the ad-agency convergence point here, as one of his predictions for digital 2009:
Agencies will increasingly see their role as that of publishers. Publishers will increasingly see their role as that of agencies. Both can win at this, but only by understanding how to truly add value to real communities - not flash crowds driven by one time events. I don't see a conflict here, long term. As opposed to simply being creators of media, media companies have realized (or will soon) that their job is to create platforms for communities to make media. Publishers are agents for communities, agencies are agents for brands. They need each other. It takes both agents to get good media made.
