2005 the year of convergence for digital products

• Nielsen Waits On Digital Weights Nielsen Media Research has decided to delay a controversial plan to weight the results of its national people meter sample based on the penetration of digital cable TV services.
• Disney-ABC Names TV Marketing Czar Eleo Hensleigh, executive vice president for worldwide brand strategy at Disney-ABC Cable Networks Group, has been promoted to the newly created position of chief marketing officer and executive vice president for marketing & brand strategies at the Disney-ABC Television Group.
• The move comes just weeks after Viacom elevated CBS marketing chief George Schweitzer to head of a new centralized Viacom TV marketing unit, signaling that a new network marketing war may be afoot.
• CES: "Convergence" Coming; Cell Phones To Talk To TVs In the world of digital media, the notion of "convergence" has proven elusive.
• But at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, declared that in 2005, "Convergence is now real."
• At the show, Shapiro, Microsoft Chair Bill Gates, and Intel CEO Craig Barrett demonstrated how consumers will soon be able to move content seamlessly from one media device to another.
• The "Entertainment PC" could be the set top box on a high-definition television, for example, that allows users to store movies, music, photos, or home videos.
• It also has personal video recorder functionality, letting users record and store movies and programming for later use, as well as real-time messaging.
• For example, users can instantly access their home security system when they hear the doorbell ring.
• The Consumer Electronics Association's Shapiro acknowledged that all this consumer control is threatening to "less agile industries," most notably the cable and broadcast sectors, which depend on advertising revenue.