WHERE WOULD ANDY CHECK IF HIS NAME IS IN THE PAPER TODAY

- According to Mark Cuban, the online space is in for a shakeout, and newspapers' best option is to declare bankruptcy.
"The Internet has matured. It's not where all the excitement will happen over the next five years," he said Monday during a panel entitled "The Future of Media" that kicked off the fifth annual Advertising Week in New York. Asked where he is putting his money these days, Cuban said: "In the bank. This is where you save for the rainy day."As the Web continues to become more mainstream, the HDNet chairman expects some hot online properties to begin running into trouble as their lack of money-making potential becomes apparent.Cuban bets that one future growth area of entertainment will be a face-to-face evolution of online networking: big sports and other events shown on giant screens to large audiences. He also signaled that he will keep an eye on mobile opportunities.Cuban also recommended that newspaper owners declare bankruptcy, arguing that soon they won't reach enough people.Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff also took a bearish view on traditional media, suggesting that their content sometimes actually loses value in the digital age."These brands look more and more ridiculous," he said, pointing to what he called "the obsolescence of weekly news magazines." He also argued that people who only read the New York Times these days are simply "old people."

-Hollywood Reporter
Sept 22 2008