Citizens 143
newly resurgent Fox News.
71
Indeed, by 2002, rumours were circulating
that Microsoft was unhappy with the arrangement (primarily because
it had to subsidise the channel for $30 million each year regardless of
performance
72
). In 2005, the company effectively removed itself from
the television side, allowing NBC to purchase another 32 per cent share
of the company while it retained some involvement in the website msnbc.
com, although even this was then bought out in 2012.
73
In many ways, the 16-year experiment by Microsoft was the one that
had begun at the wrong time. As Chris Preimesberger remarked at the
time of the split in 2012, the idea of “two major powers in complementary businesses joining to create a sum larger than its parts” was probably a good one, but at root the failure to attract enough viewers – and
profits – doomed it to failure.
74
Preimesberger, like several other commentators, remarked that the increasingly liberal shift of MSNBC during
the Obama administration did not sit particularly well with Microsoft,
a big tech company that had come of age before the era of social media
and which, as with IBM, was not afraid to project a business-like conservative and Republican image. Yet more important than this, Microsoft
had decided to invest in cable at the time when, with hindsight, it was
about to become a medium in decline. Although the full effects of “cordcutting” would not become clearly visible for another six years, as when
Fortune magazine reported in 2018 that viewers were ditching cable for
online streaming services faster than anyone had expected,
75
developments in broadband technology, mobile platforms, and online systems
made television much less central than it had been. In 1996, Gates had
rightly considered the web unable to provide the kind of immersive news
and entertainment that viewers demanded but, unlike CNN which had
been launched in 1980, MSNBC no longer had the luxury of developing
in a format that many Americans considered essential.
In retrospect, a contributing factor to the successes of the current Big
Four tech companies was that they were not Microsoft in the 1990s.
Facebook did not exist, Google only gained a toehold at the end of the
decade, Amazon was a moderately successful start-up, and Apple faced
annihilation prior to Steve Jobs’ return. None of them had the luxury
to consider investing in wider media environments and so never had to
face up to the paucity of experience in online communications at the
time versus the more established media of the twentieth century. Furthermore, as Microsoft faced its own difficulties following the threatened antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice, leading to
what would be referred to as its “lost decade” by Kurt Eichenwald,
76
each of these companies was able to take advantage of massive developments in digital technologies without being shackled to older infrastructure and organisational structures. For Apple, the breakthrough
came with iTunes and its entry into music followed by apps; YouTube
and Facebook, while resisting being labelled as media companies as we
newly resurgent Fox News.
71
Indeed, by 2002, rumours were circulating
that Microsoft was unhappy with the arrangement (primarily because
it had to subsidise the channel for $30 million each year regardless of
performance
72
). In 2005, the company effectively removed itself from
the television side, allowing NBC to purchase another 32 per cent share
of the company while it retained some involvement in the website msnbc.
com, although even this was then bought out in 2012.
73
In many ways, the 16-year experiment by Microsoft was the one that
had begun at the wrong time. As Chris Preimesberger remarked at the
time of the split in 2012, the idea of “two major powers in complementary businesses joining to create a sum larger than its parts” was probably a good one, but at root the failure to attract enough viewers – and
profits – doomed it to failure.
74
Preimesberger, like several other commentators, remarked that the increasingly liberal shift of MSNBC during
the Obama administration did not sit particularly well with Microsoft,
a big tech company that had come of age before the era of social media
and which, as with IBM, was not afraid to project a business-like conservative and Republican image. Yet more important than this, Microsoft
had decided to invest in cable at the time when, with hindsight, it was
about to become a medium in decline. Although the full effects of “cordcutting” would not become clearly visible for another six years, as when
Fortune magazine reported in 2018 that viewers were ditching cable for
online streaming services faster than anyone had expected,
75
developments in broadband technology, mobile platforms, and online systems
made television much less central than it had been. In 1996, Gates had
rightly considered the web unable to provide the kind of immersive news
and entertainment that viewers demanded but, unlike CNN which had
been launched in 1980, MSNBC no longer had the luxury of developing
in a format that many Americans considered essential.
In retrospect, a contributing factor to the successes of the current Big
Four tech companies was that they were not Microsoft in the 1990s.
Facebook did not exist, Google only gained a toehold at the end of the
decade, Amazon was a moderately successful start-up, and Apple faced
annihilation prior to Steve Jobs’ return. None of them had the luxury
to consider investing in wider media environments and so never had to
face up to the paucity of experience in online communications at the
time versus the more established media of the twentieth century. Furthermore, as Microsoft faced its own difficulties following the threatened antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice, leading to
what would be referred to as its “lost decade” by Kurt Eichenwald,
76
each of these companies was able to take advantage of massive developments in digital technologies without being shackled to older infrastructure and organisational structures. For Apple, the breakthrough
came with iTunes and its entry into music followed by apps; YouTube
and Facebook, while resisting being labelled as media companies as we