Stars of the Future

By Sandra Carter President Sandra Carter Global USA

"User generated content" creates the stars of the future.

Once upon a time, you could only become a star through the "Hollywood Star System". Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, and Katherine Hepburn were all groomed, dressed, and programmed. Now anyone can become a star on Myspace or on YouTube and, if popular enough, can attract advertising dollars. "User generated content" opens up a breadth of creative effort which then competes with traditional media and media sources. Much of this creative effort is positive. Conversely, much of it can be irresponsible, unguided, and many times, just plain untrue. This brings us to the importance of global branding. Faced with the onslaught of this massive amount of entertainment and information, the viewing public feels most comfortable with known brands. They can trust these familiar brands to give them truthful information and reliable content.

We have seen this with our own major brands: "The Hollywood Reporter", "Billboard", and "Shop the World". With these brands, we are taking advantage of all aspects of the media landscape: television, mobile, website, radio, out of home advertising including trains, busses, airlines, airports, and subway stations. Programming must be packaged in different shapes & sizes, and in different lengths & visual aspects to conform to the new markets. Therefore, we produce The Hollywood Reporter in half hour weekly shows for television, vignettes for websites and mobile, vignettes for radio, and a monthly half hour show for airlines. This same modular aspect holds true for music programming. Now you can download a song or download an album from iTunes and other websites. You can buy a DVD or a CD. Everything has to be modular in order to fit. Our new Billboard Channel will first be a television channel, then a producer of programs, a supplier of music content in various forms, as well as a producer of CDs and DVDs. It will also be a distributor of Billboard vignettes focusing on the music business. In other words, the Billboard Channel will morph into every aspect of entertainment and information about the music business, including mobile interactive programming. What happens is based on the multiplication of all of these marketplaces. It is essential that the producer and the distributor work together to create properties that take advantage of this expanding audience.

The future is exciting. We just have to keep up with it.