Home » » Welcome to The Cable Game, Huffington Post. And welcome BACK to The Cable Game, Willow Bay! (And what else does this portend for Huffpo and ABC and/or Bloomberg?)

Welcome to The Cable Game, Huffington Post. And welcome BACK to The Cable Game, Willow Bay! (And what else does this portend for Huffpo and ABC and/or Bloomberg?)

Written By mista sense on Sunday, September 19, 2010 | 2:37 PM


The Cable Gamer always checks out The Huffington Post, because, well, it's bright and jazzy, as well as lefty.  And so TCG was intrigued to see Willow Bay is now a reporter/contributor to "Huffpo."

Huffpo, well financed by limousine liberals, positioned on the high-tech West Coast, is also leading-indicator-y.  That is, if Huffpo is up to something, then it's probably the beginning of a media trend.  Since 2005, for example, Huffpo has brilliantly led the way in aggregating content, in curating content, and in what be called mass-blogging--just about anybody can be a blogger on Huffpo, even if means that nobody but the blogger himself or herself sees the blog-post.  But that's OK with everyone concerned; if everyone in the country were to blog for Huffpo, that would mean 300 million blog posts, and it would also mean 300 million pairs of eyeballs on the site, as each American gazes with admiration on his or her own post--and then, that number of eyeballs would soar as bloggers started forwarding their piece around to their friends.   And so mass-blogging is a proven formula for generating lotsa hits! 

Today TCG saw yet more evidence of Huffpo cutting-edgeness, as well as more signs of the coming Convergence between TV and the Internet  In the screengrab above, we see that TV veteran Bay is now generating video content for Huffpo, interviewing, in this case, Bill Clinton.

Bay, of course, is a familiar face to Cable Gamers; she is a veteran of ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN.   She's pretty (a Ford model) and smart (a graduate of Penn and NYU), albeit as a TV personality she is a bit on the colorless side. But she is married to Disney/ABC president Bob Iger, and so that probably doesn't hurt her career prospects anywhere in the industry--what channel wouldn't wish to do at least consider the wife of a genuine media big cheese?   And Arianna Huffington, well known for trading favors of various kinds, is a natural to pull Bay in, knowing that in doing so, she will be pulling Iger in, too.   The same with Bloomberg News; if Bay is also a contributor to Bloomberg TV, then there's a natural bridge, now, between Bloomberg and ABC.   Both Bloomberg and ABC have broadcast and cable carriage, even if they are boring.  By contrast, Huffpo has plenty of lively content, but no TV outlet.    And while online video is growing rapidly, from a revenue point of view, it's not much.  A state-of-the-art 21st century media outlet will have it all--TV, online video, plus print (online, that is, who cares about hard copy?). 

And of course, with the departure of ABC News president David Westin, the ABC-niks are going to be thinking to themselves about how they can survive in the New-Media environment.  That was Westin's problem: He simply wasn't smart enough to figure out the new environment, and so he had to go.  Westin's successor, whoever it might be, will be thinking hard about every possible new opportunity to extend the ABC News brand--or to co-brand with other brands.  Including, quite possibly, Huffpo and Bloomberg.  Once again, thank you, Willow! 

The Cable Gamer will wager that in the years to come, Huffpo and ABC, and maybe also Bloomberg and ABC, stirke some sort of arrangement.  Most obviously, content-sharing of some kind would be a possibility.  Convergence is coming, we all know that.  But convergence between Huffpo and ABC and Bloomberg is also coming--we know that now, too.

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