AS03: Media barons' influence wanes

Unless you're Greg Dyke or a 12-year-old Steven Spielberg…

Last year it looked like what you do with technology rather than the technology itself was what made someone an Agenda Setter. Tony Hallett asks why this time round the experts weren't all chanting "Content is king".

Trivia question: Can you name the bosses of Vivendi Universal and Bertelsmann? How about AOL Time Warner or, as we should now say, plain old Time Warner?

Alright, so you may know Richard Parsons as CEO of TW but the professional managers now at the helms of France and Germany's most influential media conglomerates just aren't Agenda Setters.

In silicon.com's last poll the chief executives of Vivendi and Bertelsmann, the controversial Jean-Marie Messier and Thomas Middelhoff, placed at 4 and 7 respectively.

AOL legend Steve Case was at 2 (albeit down from the top spot a year earlier) and the Dirty Digger himself, Rupert Murdoch, looked down on the rest from the top spot. The BBC's DG Greg Dyke also demonstrated the apparent triumph of content, in at 9, and that made it five media bosses in the top 10. Impressive stuff.

How times have changed. It was a good year for the BBC chief, in common with a number of other characters in the public sector. His rise to the dizzy heights of 3 wasn't on the back of having money to spend, nor even the implications of the ongoing Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly, but rather on the back of pushing the envelope on digital production and distribution. As the broadcaster and journalist Kate Bulkley said on this year's panel, he's in charge of an organisation that has "money, time and space to make innovations".

But Dyke aside, what went wrong? Murdoch fell 10 places, down from 1 to 11. There were question marks against the criterion of longevity, with some panellists then wondering Which Murdoch should we choose? Three children bearing his feared name, all with ambitions in the sector, could well end up influential - just not yet. James Murdoch, who has turned around Star in China and is tipped for the BSkyB CEO post, seemed the most likely to impress.

One of the considerations for being an Agenda Setter is what would happen if a person left the company or body they're at? Could they make it all over again? Steve Jobs - at the top this year not least for Apple's iTunes initiative and all that means for the sale of music - and Bill Gates - whose Microsoft is more and more influential in terms of how we consume media - certainly have that box ticked. So too would Murdoch, was the feeling, but not so Steve Case.

"He's been burnt very badly," said IDG Ventures Europe VC Ajay Chowdhury.

Media journalist Kate Bulkley agreed. "He's an entrepreneurial guy and he was personally hurt. He was inserted into an organisation where it was all about the bottom line. I'm not sure he will come back," she said.

One of the most interesting media figures to figure fairly high up isn't a company boss at all. Stephen Carter, ex of NTL and with time before that as an ad man, is the new chief exec of Ofcom. The UK is leading the way in setting up a regulator for a world where telecoms, media and the internet are converging and, as with a number of other Britons on the poll heading essentially parochial organisations, the justification was that the whole world is watching - like London's congestion charging scheme only for TMT.

"God be with him because it's going to be tough," one panellist said. Carter is at 18.

And, while this may skip over a lot of the influence of Dyke's actions worldwide, both at public service broadcasters and in the commercial world beyond, that's about it for media this time out.

In the past, those involved with MP3 made a showing. From the student sensation that was Napster founder Shaun Fanning, to those fortysomething German academics who invented MP3, they flew that flag.

Now the attention is turning to business models for selling digitally (Apple et al) and technologies and people interested in staying in control of distribution, from Microsoft and its Palladium platform to Russia's Dmitri Skylarov. He was the cause celebre of a high-profile case last year after being arrested and held for merely inventing technology for circumventing Adobe eBooks read-only software.

Maybe media will always play its part in any assessment of where high-tech is going but it won't necessarily be the big companies' bosses who are deemed the movers and shakers.

silicon.com is waiting for the day a 12-year-old wins an Oscar for a film shot, edited, distributed and sold using a PC and digital AV equipment worth under £5,000. We can't give you a name yet but that boy or girl will be an Agenda Setter.