Disney CEO Robert Iger just wrapped up the morning keynote in conversation with Business Week’s John Byrne at the McGraw Hill Media Summit. Iger said Disney will generate a billion dollars in digital revenue this year, and spoke in depth about the use of new media to reach consumers more effectively.

On The role of technology:

• Technology does two things: It enables you to make your content experience better and enables you to distribute more broadly and more effectively.
• Being on the cutting edge of technology…being on a new platform like iTunes really improves relevance.
• Consumers are using technology…it’s about embracing consumers, you have to use technology to do that.

On Old vs. New Media

• Figuring out how to move content onto new media platforms…is probably the most important thing we can do.
• Having [Steve Jobs] kind of expertise, we’re very very fortunate…He and I have had a lot of really important discussions on the future of technology”
• First instinct is [new media will] make our business more difficult… fragment, erode the audience. Is it going to be a challenge? Sure there’s always going to be a challenge…we’re going to use technology to make our product better.
• Television is still a very powerful medium, you denigrate it by calling it old but you watch in HD that’s not an old media, that’s a new media experience. My five year old son doesn’t look at it as old media and new media, it’s all media to him.
• Introduce [content] to the world on a more traditional platform and then use new media to add more dimension to it. Watching on the iPhne is not as good an experience as watching on a 50 inch screen TV, but more content in more places where they can engage is a good thing.
• Over 4 million movies sold online in a year and a half, pales in comparison to the number of DVD sales. 40-50 million episodes sold, pales in comparison to the number streamed online.
• I think over the long run there will be some shift especially when it comes to filmed entertainment…you’re not going to see hard goods go away,…but electronic distribution will grow. Convergence will spur more adoption, more consumption.

On Social Networking:

• “Can’t think of social media as a gen x or a gen y phenomenon. Kids are using…broadband enabled computers for entertainment much more than the generation before them.”
• The computer will become a primary source of entertainment: they go online to be entertained.
• “I have a facebook page and I have two friends…good luck finding me, I have a variety of aliases”
• Investment in Club Penguin a virtual world for kids, working on a virtual world for Cars.
• “I think it’s important for executives to experience some of this, we spend a lot of time engaging with each other on new platforms because that’s what the consumer’s doing, it’s a lot of fun too.”