Media Predictions 2009: What Won't Happen

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Jim Cameron Won't Have a 3D Titanic on His Hands

Hollywood's most aggressive big-bet artist, the 54-year-old director of Titanic and The Terminator, is hard at work putting the final touches on a megaproject called Avatar, which is expected to wow folks and usher in the era of 3D films in America. At a budget approaching $200 million (some say much higher), it reminds folks of his big-budget bet on Leonardo and that sinking cruise liner. But that bonanza won't happen this time. The intergalactic sci-fi battle movie is being made using "capture animation," which makes human actors look cartoonish (anyone remember Beowulf?). The age of commercial 3D may be upon us, but it won't be Cameron bringing it to the fore. My money is on DreamWorks Animation's (DWA) Monsters vs. Aliens, which comes out in March, months before Avatar's Dec. 18 release. I've seen parts of it, and "real" 3D cartoons are where the action is gonna be.

Tom Cruise Won't Be an Action Star Anymore

The marketing mavens at MGM turned a minor miracle and converted the onetime Scientologist bad boy into a squeaky-clean, smiling cherub for Matt Lauer and David Letterman. That, plus a hefty $60 million in marketing expenses, was enough to propel his latest flick, the Nazi assassination film Valkyrie, into a $30 million opening over the Christmas weekend, about twice what some in Hollywood had predicted. Still, whether Valkyrie turns a profit is still up in the air. And his next film is a comedy. Can you see anyone ever trusting this guy with a $150 million movie again?

Yahoo! Won't Get Sold

Lord knows it should. The online media company, whose net income fell by a humiliating two-thirds from 2005 to 2007, is looking for new leadership. It also has itchy investor Carl Icahn, who hiked his stake to 5.5% in November. Icahn pushed Yahoo (YHOO) to sell itself to Microsoft (MSFT) earlier this year. But after Google (GOOG) backed out of an advertising deal with Yahoo two months back, that told wise investors that something wasn't right at Yahoo. Microsoft might still bid, and there are recurring rumors that Time Warner (TWX) could merge its equally ailing AOL with Yahoo. Meanwhile, a team of Yahoo heavyweights, former Northwest Airlines (NWA) Chairman Gary Wilson and former Viacom President Frank Biondi, are looking for a CEO who can turn this mess around. I figure Icahn wants the new guy to make some serious changes before pushing for a sale.

Rupert Won't Sit on the Sidelines

It's been way too long since Rupert Murdoch last bought something. He plunked down $5.6 billion two years back for Dow Jones, and is now busily turning its flagship Wall Street Journal into a worthy competitor to The New York Times. But he's sitting on some $12 billion in cash and receivables, and has made gentle noises of late about seeing the current market as one with buying opportunities. Of course, News Corp. (NWS) stock is at a woeful $9 a share—his Dow Jones deal has sent the stock down to about one-third of where it traded a year ago. For mere mortals, that means hold. For Murdoch, that means everything else is underpriced, too. How about a bid for MGM, which has a giant library of old movies that he could shove through News Corp.'s muscular network of satellite and cable channels?

TV Networks Won't Disappear

A lot of pundits say one or more of the four major TV networks will cease to exist in the next 12 months. One often-mentioned loser: CBS. Huh? CBS's ratings are actually up this year, albeit by a scant 1%, while the other three networks' ratings are down. (Among the 18- to 49-year-old age group that advertisers love, they're all down, and overall the networks have lost some 1 million viewers this year.) Still, there are plenty more folks fleeing newspapers and magazines. Advertisers are sticking with TV networks, even as they flee local TV stations. So why would one of the Big Four have to fold? One won't. Not in 2009, at least.

The Online Video Winner Won't Be YouTube

Sure, the Google unit has tons of traffic and has been doing its best to find a way to generate revenues from the consumer-generated video that continues to be its mainstay. It's struck deals with several companies, which create their own video channels as well. But the online video winner just might be Hulu, the year-old joint venture between NBC and Fox that is generating north of 24 million monthly viewers. That's a fraction of YouTube's traffic, but Hulu's ad sales are fast-growing and folks are watching 10 or so TV-length shows each month. CBS CEO Moonves speculated recently that his network might just give its shows to Hulu as well, after resisting from the outset—as long as Hulu's sponsors send their shows to CBS's TV.com site. That will happen eventually, and the big boys will start to take serious market share from YouTube.

Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek.