Editorial:
2012 is just around the corner
By Dom Serafini
Have
you set your agenda for 2012 yet? What do you mean “what’s the rush” ?
2012 is only eight years away. Do you remember MIPCOM in 1996? Isn’t
it like it just happened yesterday? It was only eight years ago when
the Riviera wing was introduced; paranormal show X-Files style invaded
the Palais; MIPCOM gave up on The Man of the Year Award; in France the
book “La Tele: 10 Ans d’Histoires Secretes” was all the rage;
the rush to digitalize was on worldwide; in the U.K., Greg Dyke at Pearson
shelled out $264 million for Grundy and Silvio Berlusconi was up and
running in politics...
The year 2012 will be a busy one and it will be here even before you realize
it and then, again, you’ll be scrambling for the dates to take that vacation
you’ve been planning since 1996.
Just imagine: The XXX Olympiad could be held in Paris, New York, Moscow, London
or Madrid. Also in sports, there will be the European Soccer Championship.
In 2012 Rupert Murdoch will be a young 81, Kirk Kerkorian 95 and Sumner Redstone
only 89, but that will not matter at all because, according to the Mayan Calendar,
the world will end on December 21, 2012 due to the Izapa and the galactic alignment.
But, it could be on the 22, because 2012 will be a bit longer than other years
since it’s a leap year.
On the other hand, I really don’t know how accurate this Mayan Calendar
is, considering that it also predicts that a “sixth world” will begin in 2012 and includes
the following changes: “The world will have gone beyond technology as we
know it and beyond time and money,” and that “our DNA will be reprogrammed,” with
the undoubted grin on messieurs Murdoch, Kerkorian and Redstone’s faces.
However, 2012 will bring the increasingly blurred distinction between
politics and Hollywood to the next level. HBO is launching a new reality
series entitled Candidate 2012, which will follow a young American
on his/her path to the 2012 presidential election. California already
has its Governator…
The year could also mark the time when Senator Hillary Clinton will be elected
as the first female President of the United States of America. Then, we can all
look forward to limits on media ownership being slowly restored, thus new companies
will be popping up everywhere; broadband will have achieved parity with cable-TV;
terrestrial TV will be fully digital and digital tuners will have replaced a
good number of set-top boxes. It’s when digital technology will really reduce
production costs, and fighting piracy will finally target duplicating shops and
bootleg distribution, and no longer just Internet downloading. With DTV, analog
frequencies will be relocated to WiFi that, used with a special chip, can hop
from channel to channel and will render bandwidth capacity irrelevant.
By 2012, the Six Sigma management tool will improve its 3.4 mistakes-per-million
opportunity (a 99.999666 percent accuracy) to be widely used outside General
Electric (GE used Six Sigma especially to make sure its satellite use was being
maximized).
It is predicted that, by 2012, prediction markets will fully develop all their
potential. Even today, prediction markets produce advance forecasts that outperform
the natural alternative to polls. Prediction markets are used to make predictions
about specific future events. For example, since 1988, the Iowa Electronic Market
(www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem) has been running markets designed to predict the outcome
of elections, box-office receipts and earnings reports.
But the real question is whether or not predicting the weather is part
of the prediction market’s realm? Then will the “weather weenies” (as
the Weather Channel fans are called) have another source for more reliable
data?
Unfortunately 2012 will not bring good news to Oprah Winfrey’s fans, since Oprah
is renewed only up to the 2011 TV season. Finally, on a cautionary note, 2012
is when batteries on the market today will expire.
Dom Serafini
