Media and technology companies cozied up to each other at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, touting their collaborations on stage and flaunting their friendships at private parties all along the Las Vegas Strip.
Talks progressed on a number of potential deals. News Corp 's 20th Century Fox continued talks with hardware makers, including Samsung Electronics Co., to license a slate of Fox TV shows to tablet computers and the application stores on Internet-connected TVs, said people familiar with the situation.
The deals would allow consumers to either download or stream some Fox shows, which include the "Family Guy" and "The Cleveland Show." Samsung declined to comment.
But media and technology executives who met behind closed doors this week encountered a range of issues that are still keeping both camps apart. They suggest that even as media companies experiment with more distribution models, they are going to continue to be cautious about striking deals with technology companies as they sort out the impact of rapid technology changes on their businesses.
In the red-hot tablet world, media companies say that talks with technology companies have grown more complicated because of the range of partners involved in launching new products, including telecom providers, hardware makers and software makers like Google Inc.
In some instances, media companies say it is difficult to work out each company's agenda and who is ultimately responsible for making sure the content gets to consumers.
Both sides also still disagree on whether certain technologies, such as televisions that display content from the Web, are ready for prime time. One media executive whose company has been talking to hardware makers about providing content for their Internet-connected television services says the company hasn't struck a deal with players like Samsung and Vizio Inc. because it believes their software isn't sufficiently sophisticated.
Kevin Lee, vice president of Smart TV partnerships at Samsung, said in a briefing with reporters that content partners are eager to partner with Samsung. "There is no big issue."
Vizio CEO William Wang declined to comment in an interview Friday.
Most of all, media companies say they still want more money.
"The media is worried about business models," said Marni Walden, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. The company was at the conference seeking video and other content to distribute on tablets and phones.
Ms. Walden said Verizon is seeking deals for tablets, such as the Motorola Xoom, that in some cases resemble the four-year $720 million deal it recently struck for exclusive rights to NFL video content on smartphones.
TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in an interview Friday that media companies, upbeat about the fact that the ad market is strong, aren't embracing new ad opportunities created by devices that port the Internet to television. "Media companies are not really getting ahead of it," he said.
But the partnerships between content and tech companies have come a long way as the lines between the industries have blurred. Years ago, the big media CEOs who occasionally walked the floor of CES were misfits. This week, they were part of the action.
In a Thursday morning keynote, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeffrey Bewkes appeared on stage with Verizon Communications Inc. CEO Ivan Seidenberg, sketching out a vision of "TV Everywhere" in which video content would be freed from the TV and distributed to smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices over speedy and protected wireless iInternet connections.
Behind the scenes, potential partners had a lot to work through. Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, said one challenge is deciding which of the numerous device makers—and which of the different aggregators that build apps for lots of different devices—to strike deals with.
The problem is particularly acute across the Android ecosystem, he said, citing the variety of manufacturers, carriers and Google itself. "Who am I to deal with for different aspects of what we create?" Mr. Miller asked. "A big thing for us is to really get that map in place."
While a lot of the action this week involved tech companies courting media companies, the wooing is going both ways. In meetings in his hotel suite, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch demonstrated the company's soon-to-be-launched newspaper for tablets, called the Daily, for a variety of executives, including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to people familiar with the matter.
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