Bill,
I just don't get how they expect the creative director, who has spent his entire life thinking about TV, to be able to run a website. It makes no sense to me and if NBC and ABC don't figure that one out I am sure that Murdoch, Turner, or Bertelsmann will. They would be better off putting their 17 year old kids in charge.
I would expect them to take the online game seriously though and to watch the eyeball rating games online very carefully. I don't think they have to go out and buy Infoseek to learn how to do it, even though it would be chump change to them.
So far it seems that the more creative ones have jumped ship and started their own new media companies, e.g., the CNN group who started the eyeball counting firm whose name I forgot, or serve on the board of companies like DCLK, as Murphy does.
As for the "appetite to extend themselves beyond the familiar", with the Nielsen reports staring them in the face that TV is losing eyeballs to the Web, how long do you think they can bury themselves in the sands of denial? Even Buffett, as technophobic as he is, wont stand for that. No, they will learn. But it will take time...
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