A couple of things extremely pertinent to the paid content debate in a ‘view from the top’ interview on FT.com.

It’s with Liberty Media chairman, John Malone, described by the FT’s Richard Milne as ‘one of the most powerful figures in the media world’. He controls a ‘sprawling empire of assets’ including  DirecTV, the Discovery Channel, QVC, the Atlanta Braves baseball team and a company focused on Cable TV, Liberty Global.

Two extracts from the interview:

“How bad is the outlook for the media industry right now?”

“The media has lots of different elements in it. Probably at the bottom would be local, because local advertising has been the most adversely affected. Newsprint is probably the most damaged media going forward. Cable television has been OK. It continues to grow, a little slower than we’d like. The broadcast networks are getting beaten up, but not as bad on their national side as on their local side (…)”

and:

“A big debate in media is: can you get consumers to pay for online content?

“There will be a transition to people paying for [the] internet. Unfortunately, a lot of the people promoting the internet have other monetisation theories, such as search, which is ‘free’ to the consumer. Believe me, it’s not free to the retailer. The real question is: can you get people to pay for content on the internet? That will happen over time. If you’re a newspaper publisher and you’re giving information free on the internet and charging a subscription fee [for the paper], I don’t understand the logic.”

Full interview at this link…

And this:

“Long or short? Newspapers? Short James Murdoch? Long Hedge fund regulation? Long Share prices? Neutral The European economy? Short Nicolas Sarkozy? Long Ben Bernanke? Long Barack Obama’s healthcare plan? Disaster – short Twitter? Neutral Barry Diller? Long.”

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“Al Jazeera English will begin its foray into the American market on July 1 after signing its first major US distribution deal with a cable TV company in the Washington DC area,” Arabian Business exclusively reports.

According to AB’s report, Al Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, said in an interview: “On July 1 we [AJE] are going to launch the first operation in cable distribution in the United States.”

Full story at this link…

(Hat tip: @amonck)

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Current TV, the peer-to-peer online news and information site, will later this month launch its investigative journalism program, Vanguard, on its cable TV channel in the UK.

(watch the trailer here…)

Vanguard is a youth-orientated weekly show focusing on behind-the-headlines stories from across the globe.

The show, which already runs on Current’s US cable TV channel and online, will feature reports from China on the trade in e-waste, the rise in organised attacks on migrants in Russia and the lawlessness of the oil-rich Niger Delta, when it launches.

“Lots of news organisations are scaling back their productions of international reports that go beyond the immediate headlines,” Laura Ling, vice president of Vanguard told Journalism.co.uk.

“I think that’s unfortunate. We are trying to look beyond the headlines, trying to be out in front of events so that we can have a better understanding of what’s going on [in the world].”

This latest move is an extension of the journalism already carried on the integrated web and TV platform. Last month, Guardian reporters began submitting vlog for broadcast on its TV channel.

The Vanguard launch precedes Current TV rolling out a bilingual version of the service in Italy, in May.

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User-generated video blogging platform Current is planning to hire journalists in the UK to contribute to short video news posts and edit other video contributions.

The platform aimed at an audience of young adults recently made an agreement with Salon and The Guardian to supply vlogs (video blogs) to its online peer-to-peer news network. Reporters for The Guardian started filing pieces last week.

The platform, which also runs a cable TV channel, this week placed ads on Journalism.co.uk and looking to hire a Newspod producer and a NewsPod preditor (essentially a journalist/video editor) in the UK to create news packages for its headline news service.

The newspod producer will be responsible for working video feeds selecting news stories, scripting and performing voice-overs for Current’s headline news service. The preditor will be responsible for producing and editing news packages.

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