Media Curmudgeon

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May 30, 2004

Sunday, May 30, 2004. Honoring

Sunday, May 30, 2004. Honoring the The Dead.
It's Memorial Day weekend--a holiday in which Americans are supposed to honor the fallen in wars of the past. There is a huge gathering in Washington DC of World War II veterans on the mall at the WW II memorial honoring the dead of that war, a war that some hisorians are saying that was fought by the last "great generation."

The wars since WW II have not been draped with honor (the Korean War, Vietman, the Gulf War, and now Afganistan and Iraq), but have been shrouded often in doubts, defeat, and ambivalence, but those who died are no less heroes.

It is ironic that on this Memorial Day--the day of heroes--that the news that Pat Tillman died as a result of friendly fire. My first reaction was to blame the Bush administration for a waging a stupid war, but, after thinking about it, I realized I was too quick to blame and be judgmental in order to reinforce my own biases. Tillman was a hero, no matter how he died, as have been all those who have died in Afganistan and Iraq, no matter how they have died.

I also believe that the war in Afganistan that is trying to take out Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden is a good idea and for a just cause and that we should honor all those, including Tillman who have participated and died. The war in Iraq was not a good idea and is not a jsut war, in my view, but that does not mean that the over 700 who have died in Iraq are not heroes. It is ironic that they have been killed by Iraqi nationals who, we were told, would welcome them as liberators. So, they, too, in a sense have been killed by friendly fire.

The fact that the media is covering the tragic story of Tillman's death by friendly fire speaks well for the media, because it is not covering up the story or burying it. Maybe this coverage means that the media will start covering the war in a more balanced way and not be stenographers for the official government position and spin or be propaganda arms of the Bush administration. Maybe we'll get a more realistic picture of the war now.

Maybe something good will come out of reporting Tillman's tragic death--more honest coverage.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:28 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 28, 2004

Friday, May 28, 2004. Supersize

Friday, May 28, 2004. Supersize Yes.
I guess I wasn't the only one who criticized MTV for refusing to run a commercial for the documentary movie "Supersize Me" that criticizes MTV advertiser McDonald's. Today MTV agreed to run the commercial. Here's part of the story by Elaine Dutka from the Los Angeles Times:

"According to an e-mail provided by IDP Films, which is distributing the movie, an employee in MTV's ad clearance department said the network was rejecting the commercial because it was 'disparaging toward fast-food restaurants.'

For the ad to be approved, the employee told IDP, it would need to delete the phrase 'you'll die,' a comment on the alleged effect of the monthlong fast-food diet. The MTV employee said the commercial also could not air during a span in which a fast-food ad was airing and that a scene of the filmmaker about to vomit must be axed.

An MTV spokeswoman, Janet Hill, said that although revisions were initially requested by a 'junior-level employee,' the decision was overturned by a higher-up after he learned of the 'mistake.' Hill said the spot would air in a way that makes 'commercial sense.'

"We're thrilled they've come around and made this course correction," said RJ Millard, vice president of publicity and marketing for Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films, for which IDP is the distributor and marketing arm. 'Our objective was to have a showcase on MTV, an audience that's one of our primary target demographics.'

McDonald's, which advertises on MTV, says it has suffered no ill effects from "Super Size Me" and the film's dire message of weight gain and health decline. Company spokesman Bill Whitman said Spurlock, a comedian, 'has quite a bit of fun with a very serious issue. The movie has nothing to do with McDonald's — it could have been done in any kitchen in America — and it hasn't hurt our business at all.'"

McDonald's can spin a story as well as they make French fries. And MTV stole a play from the Bush administration playbook--the ultimate book of spinning--it blamed a lower-level employee for the abuse.

Well, I'm delighted everyone is happy: McDonald's for the publicity, MTV for getting the ad revenue, and MTV's young audience that will get to see a commercial for a movie that warns them of the fat-producing foods at McDonald's, even though the message comes from a comedian. Comedians may put a funny spin on a serious story, but this doesn't make the story less serious, less true.

Comedians have been telling the truth in a funny way since the times of court jesters. Shakespeare used jesters as truth tellers in many of his plays, and the tradition continues today with the likes of Mort Sahl, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jay Lenno. After all, in a New York Times editorial yesterday a Jay Lenno joke was used to illustrate a truth.

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 27, 2004

Thursday, May 27, 2004.

Thursday, May 27, 2004. Bill Grimes Responds.

In my view the very pompous NYT is focusing more on quantity than quality.

They lead the newspaper world in number of sections and words per day. Seemingly every month brings another new section of narrow interest content, which would be fine if they could manage to keep the quality of their prime, fundamental product, international news of consistent quality. It seems to me that the Editor is overwhelmed with overseeing too many functions, products and people. Clearly he is not paying enough attention to the international editor and the accuracy, depth, and relevancy of the stories that he is approving.

Another, perhaps relevant, point is that NYT is depending too much on their sources, as if they have the best, most credible, most informed, and most honest sources. They are, via their own admission, relying too much on some less-than well informed sources. In an excellent and highly critical review of Woodward's new book (forgot where) he was soundly criticized for depending far too much on one unnamed source, who the reviewer claimed was George Tenet, and being misled with lots of "disinformation." The reviewer argued that in Woodward's haste to get book published and in his over- confidence in Tenet he really got a lot of the story wrong, just the way Tenet intended. Maybe that's why Bush's Web site recommends the book!

The same desire to be "firstest with the mostest" combined with an overarching view of self-importance is likely what happened to "The Pink Lady." "Burying" the mea culpa on page 10 is proof of hubris and citing Jay Leno is proof of their diminishing content intellect.

Also, I'll bet you didn't know that Ed Koch has heartily endorsed Bush for re-election. Think "The Pink Lady" would report that?

Posted by Charles Warner at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Thursday, May 27, 2004. Supersize

Thursday, May 27, 2004. Supersize No.
Reuters in an online story today reported that "Cable network MTV refused to air advertisements for documentary 'Super Size Me,' a critical look at the health impact of a fast-food only diet, its distributors said on Wednesday."

In the movie, director Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but food from McDonald's over a 30-day period, and when asked if he wants the large, supersize meal, he always says yes. Spurlock gains about 40 pounds and his cholesterol rises to unsafe levels.

McDonald's is one of television's largest advertisers and is especially big on MTV because the network targets 12-24 year olds. In the Reuters story, MTV disputes the claim that it won't run the commercials because it disparages McDonald's. An MTV spokesperson said that the network was willing to run the commercials but the distributors turned it down.

Bullshit. MTV probably quintupeled the price so that no one, including Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn films, the distributors, could afford it. Of course MTV has no intention of running the commercials and pissing off one of its largetst advertisers. Who do they think they are kidding?

The ironic part of the this whole story is that "Supersize Me" doesn't need the MTV advertising. Last weekend it was #10 at the box office and raked in a per screen average of $6,759, just behind the #2 movie, "Troy," with $7,014, according to the Reuters story.

So, what are the implications? First, that a good movie will get an audience from strong word-of-mouth and without expensive network advertising, a scary thought for the networks. If MTV were smart, it would have run the commercials so it could have taken some credit for "Supersize Me's" success and say, "See, the movie is a hit because you ran on MTV." Second, if broadcast and cable networks adopt a policy (no matter what they deny) of not running commercials that piss off their big advertisers, then we'll probably never see commercials for Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won first prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and a movie that is highly critical of the shrub and his ties to the Bin Laden family.

If Moore's movie gets a distributor (and I'm sure it will), it might not need to run commercials to get a big audience. If just ten percent of all the people in the country who hate Bush see the movie, it will be a huge success.

But what if all the networks don't accept commercials that might upset their large advertisers. Might we see the nice folks at Budweiser asking the networks not to run ads for smaller breweries because their ads disparage the king of beers? Or might Viagra say not to run Cialis commercials because it's dangerous to Viagra's health (to say nothing about the medial danger of erections that last more than four hours).

It's indicative of where the network's priorities are--with pleasing their big advertisers and not being concerned with good taste or the public's interests.

Well, I say yes to "Supersize Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," I intend to get my senior-citizen discount to see both of them, so it wouldn't have mattered if MTV runs the commercials or not.

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Thursday, May 27, 2004.

Thursday, May 27, 2004. Expert Sources.
On Wednesday, May 26, the New York Times, on the bottom of page A10 published an item "From the Editors" titled "The Times and Iraq." It began:

"Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge."


This incredible and unprecedented apology goes on to admit that the Times believed Ahmad Chalabi and shouldn't have. However, the Times says about believing Chalabi and other unreliable sources, "So did many news organizations--in particular this one."

The New York Times mea culpa is long overdue and was embarrassingly uncontrite. The editors of the Times wimped out by saying that they were just doing what other news organizations were doing--a lame excuse for a paper that is supposed to be the official record of history, the paper that prints all the news that's fit to print, and the news organization that claims to be the guiding light for credible journalism. If we can't believe the New York Times, what news organization can we believe?

Not only was the Time's apology wimpy, it was buried on page 10 of the first section. It wasn't on the front page or on the editorial page. It certainly didn't seem like the Times was sorry enough for being a voice for the Bush administration's lies. It was performing a stenographic function for the Bush White House and the Pentagon, not doing a skeptical, thorough job of reporting. The Times admitted to believing the Republican administration's officials, experts, and agents (who we know now were double agents). Why didn't the Times know, as Maureen Dowd quoted Barbara Tuchman in her Times Column on May 16, that "'Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs.'" Dowd knew it, blogs around the world knew it, why didn't the Times know it?

On the very next day, Thursday, May 27, the New York Times did not lead with the story that NPR and other news organizations led with--Attorney-General John Ashcroft's press conference warning that there was a "credible intelligence" that Al Qaeda plans to attack the United States. The Times put a photo of the press conference at the bottom of page 1, with a slug line and a pointer to the story buried on page 16. The Times must have thought, as Newsweek online did, that Ashcroft's terrorism scare that came two days after Bush's prime-time speech on Iraq (carried live only by his propaganda arm, Fox News) was a political move to reinforce the message in the Bush speech in which he cried "terrorism" repeatedly, because polls show it's the only thing the bruised shrub has going for him.

Even though the Times buried the story of the Ashcroft warning, it didn't question its motives--more stenographic reporting of official sources. But what I found really knee-slapping funny was the editorial in the Times on the same day. The editorial was titled "Judicial Ethics Under Review." And what official, what expert did the Times refer to as a source for opinion in the editorial? The president, the Chief Justice? No, Jay Lenno. The editorial referred to Lenno's joke about how Supreme Court Justice Anonin Scalia fell out of Dick Cheney's pocket at a White House metal detector.

The New York Times made a lot of mistakes believing Bush, Rumsfeld, Wofolwitz, Chalabi, and its own reporter Judy Miller, so it finally went to a reliable source to quote: Jay Lenno. Don't you love it!

We've all known for years that if you wanted to know what was going on in the world, you'd listen to Lenno's opening monologue. Now we know that the editors of the stately and not-humble-enough New York Times are doing the same thing. It's about time they listened to an expert source.

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:17 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 25, 2004

Tuesday, May 25, 2004.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004. Cable Upfront Soars. Why?
In my first blog last October, 2003, I suggested that network television had reached a tipping point when a number of major advertisers, especially automotive advertisers, were opting out of their fourth quarter commitments--it didn't bode well for the 2004-2005 upfront, I thought.

The upfront market is in heat right now and the agencies and networks are trying to do each other. We'll know in a week or ten days how accurate the various predictions were. The consensus of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Advertising Age, and TV Week were that the upfront would be up about 3.5%. Jack Myers, in the Jack Myers Report, is the only prognosticator that predicted there would be a decline in this year's upfront--a 2.2% drop. Over the years, Jack has been as accurate as any media economic pronosticator, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a drop, which would indicate that this upfront is a tipping point--a negative one for the broadcast networks.

It has already been reported that the cable networks have had a booming upfront prior to the broadcast network upfront breaking full tilt. In the May 24 issue of Television Week, a front-page sidebar titled "Upfront Extravaganza" featured the headline "Cable Leaps on Early Money." The article's author, Jean Lafayette, wrote, "It's not yet clear how cable's jump start, estimated at about $1 billion, will affect the broadcast market, since buyers were still for the most part analyzing the new broadcast schedules. Overall, the consensus among buyers and sellers was that cable spending would be up, but not as much as the 20 percent some cable executives have been predicting."

So why is cable doing so well? There are many explanations: First, broadcast network ratings have been steadily declining and prices have been steadily increasing, so something eventually had to give. Second, cable's CPMs are lower than the broadcast networks' and their audiences are much more targeted on specific demos--clearly a better deal. Third, many advertisers are realizing that they have been spending way too much money on television, especially as broadcast TV's ratings have been declining, and that TV isn't as effective as it has been.

The lead story in the May 24 Advertising Age was headlined "TV Doesn't Sell Package Goods," with a subhead of "Study shows medium fails to deliver ROI for mature brands." Ooops. With research like this, many marketing directors don't want to look bad and continue to pour 80% of their ad budgets down the TV drain and are looking for alernatives like Interactive advertising, which is up 39 percent so far this year, according to MediaPost.

But are there other reasons for the switch out of broadcast and into less regulated media? Cable is currently unregulated by the FCC (although that might change, which I'll cover in the next paragraph) and, thus, can put on more provocative and edgier (dirtier) programming. With the networks being sanitized for fear of upsetting Michael Powell's FCC and congress in an election year, cable with its street language, tits and ass, violent dramatic and sports programming that appeals to today's younger steet-wise, trash-talking audiences is winning younger audiences. The broadcast networks can't compete on raunchiness and randiness, so they compete on obnoxiousness--not the best way to increase ratings in the long run.

However, Michael Powell of the FCC has just directed the agency's Media Bureau staff to draft a formal inquiry on television violence and its potential effects on children. This inquiry is in direct response to congressional pressure. The inquiry will take several months, but you can be sure that the broadcast networks will continue to soften violence and, thus, be less competitive and drive more audiences to cable.

Frankly, as a parent of a 13-year-old boy, I would rather he saw a lot less violence on television. He's heard George Carlin's seven dirty words you can't say on television and at least twenty more that are raunchier at school but he doesn't use them (at least not in front of me) nor do his two older brothers, who also went to the same middle school as he does. I think they know what words to use in polite company, and frankly, I'd rather they'd use a few dirty words than settle their differences with violent action or by shooting someone. Gratuitous swearing is a lot less troublesome and less harmful than gratuitous violence. But do I support the FCC's effort to cut back on TV violence? No, because I don't think it will work. How can a crusade against TV violence in entertainment programming be successful in the face of the unspeakable violence committed by Americans in Abu Ghraib and the beheading of Nicholas Berg in retaliation?

I think the US government should concentrate on cleaning up the morals of the chain of command in the Defense Department before it worries about violence in entertainment programming. Having the FCC launch an inquiry into TV violence sounds like a decoy to me so that congress and the public will blame TV for the violence in the Iraq war, which is on TV every day, and not blame the moral leadership and imperial, lawless attitude of the Defense Department and the current administration.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:24 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 19, 2004

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. Silos.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. Silos.
I mentioned that the problem with most cross-platform sales efforts by the major media companies has been silos--divisions that have their own revenue budgets and won't cooperate with cross-platform sales efforts.

Agencies have indicated that they are in favor of buying on a cross-platform basis from Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp, Disney/ABC, and, now, NBC Universal. However, there are also silos in the agencies. There are television buying and planning silos, magazine buying and planning silos, a few radio buying and planning silos, and a few, very few, online buying silos. Until the agencies do the same thing that the big media companies must do--appoint a czar with the authority to make all the silos cooperate--cross-platform buying and selling will not reach its huge potential.

I suspect that eventually it will be the advertisers that will force the agencies to eliminate their silos and the media companies' divisions to cooperate so big deals can get done.

Some industry organization ought to have a conference to address the issue of the best way to eliminate the silos and do big cross-platform deals. All sides will benefit.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:46 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Wednesday, May 19, 2004.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. MSN's Upfront Promotion.
According to MediaPost Microsoft's MSN is posting people dressed in MSN's butterfly garb outside locations where the broadcast networks are giving their upfront presentations. The MSN butterflies are distributing handouts that read, "Friendly reminder: Consumers view multiple screens. Don't spend it all in one place, and integrated marketing plan isn't integrated without advertising online."

The MSN butterflies are also "distributing a handout referring to an advertising accountability study statistic that cites Nestle and Kraft, which both saw 7.5-10 percent lifts in offline sales and 5-7 percent increases in key brand metrics when online media was added to the media mix," according to MediaPost.

What a great idea, plus it is the right way to sell Interactive or, in fact, any medium against another. It is a lesson that the magazine industry needs to learn--sell the medium against television, not negatively against other magazines. Cable, through the CAB, sells very effectively against broadcast television using research studies, and it is paying off with billions of dollars being shifted from broadcast television to cable. Radio, through the RAB, sells effectively against television and newspapers with somewhat less dramatic results because radio doesn't have pictures that move and agencies don't make as much money on radio as on TV.

MSN, an ISP with about one-third of the subscribers that AOL has, is leading the effort to sell the medium. MSN is way ahead of AOL and Yahoo in promoting online as the place to advertise and the place to create an effective branding message, and it's is doing an excellent job by using a sound strategy.

And where is AOL? Asleep at the switch, as usual. In a recent Jack Myers Report survey that ranked online sales organizations, AOL came out 22nd out of 22 listed in the report (ESPN was first, New York Times Digital was second). If any online organization should push the online medium, it's AOL. AOL used to be a dominant number one in ad revenue, garnering about 50 percent of all online ad revenue at one time. But AOL has lost its lead to Yahoo and Google and it needs to do something dramatic to reverse its slide, but it isn't.

MSN seems to be working hard like the little engine that could, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it get to the top eventually. MSN might never challenge Yahoo or Google for being tops in ad revenue, but with the intelligent strategic approach it's taking, its revenue will increase and the rising tide MSN is promoting will lift all online boats except AOL, which is still too cumbersome to do business with.

MSN is using a butterfly as its symbol. OK, it may not be exactly the best symbol or mascot or logo, but the butterfly, silly as it is sometimes, does no harm and confuses no one. I mean who else has a butterfly as a symbol?

AOL uses the little, golden, square-legged running man as its symbol. It confuses people. People see the running man on television as a symbol to promote high-speed broadband, which, of course, you have to pay for. But AOL also using the running man symbol in its Instant Message platform, which you don't have to pay for. So what does the running man stand for, high-speed broadband, Instant Message, or just AOL? I'll take the butterfly, a symbol of being able to go anywhere versus the stumpy running man which is a symbol of ...?

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. Shame

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. Shame on NBC.
NBC's "Dateline" began as a weekday prime time news program in the late 1980s that copied CBS's long-running and highly rated "60 Minutes." It got into trouble in 1993 when it aired a sequence about a General Motors truck blowing up. NBC News soon after sufffered a humiliating bout of confessions and soul-searching after admitting it rigged the crash-and-burn of the GM truck, and NBC News president Michael Gartner eventually resigned in the fallout from NBC's admission of rigging the news on "Dateline."

In 1993 NBC was protective of its reputation, so someone had to take the fall, just like the top editors of The New York Times and USA Today did recently for the sins of reporters Jason Blair and Jack Kelly, who both made up stories.

Eleven years after the exploding truck incident, "Dateline" has gone soft and promotional. During the week of the last program of "The Apprentice," Donald Trump's infomercial, "Dateline" ran a program promoting and hyping "The Apprentice" on a Wednesday night before the final Trump program appeared on Thursday. On Friday night, "Dateline" profiled the Donald, promoting the show once again.

The same thing happened before the last episode of "Friends." "Dateline" ran a special two-hour edition promoting and hyping the "Friends" final episode. Katie Kouric and Matt Lauer of "Today" interviewed members of the "Friends" cast. "Deateline" regular Stone Phillips wasn't considered good enough for the tough assignment; besides it was a great opportunity to cross promote "Today" and "Friends" on "Dateline"--cross promotion and integration at its best.

In 1988 GE bought RCA, which owned NBC, and told NBC News that it had to make a profit, a new concept to the news division and its president, Larry Grossman. Grossman was soon out because he resisted the concept of the news division being a profit center rather than NBC's main vehicle to fulfill its public service obligation and enhance NBC's credibilty with the public. CBS, which was purchased by bottom-feeding investor Larry Tisch that same year, also made a change in news division presidents for the same reason--Tisch ordered that CBS News had to make a profit.

Because CBS News produced "60 Minutes," it was closer to making a profit than NBC was in 1988, so NBC had to get access to prime time and, thus, invented "Dateline." That year, 1988, was the tipping point for the news divisions; they went from serving the needs of the public to serving the needs stockholders. ABC News soon followed the news-division-as-profit-center model when Disney bought ABC from CapCities, whose CEO and COO, Tom Murphy and Dan Burke, were responsible, long-time broadcasters.

NBC News has been further subverted to the needs of stockholders by pressure to get high ratings, especially now, just before the upfront market breaks. NBC has been bloviating about how "The Apprentice" will replace the ratings of "Friends" and "Frasier" on their powerful Thursday night lineup, trying to convince upfront buyers that they should continue to give NBC the highest share of their upfront business as they did last year (in 2003 NBC got 29.4% of the upfront dollars, according to the Jack Myers Report, versus CBS's 23.9%).

The reason the upfront is so important for the networks is not so much because of the money they receive, which is considerable ($9.2 billion last year), but because of the impact it has on investors and the stock market. If the upfront market demonstrates healthy increases over the previous year, the increases signal that the overall network television business is healthy, the stock market will react positively, and TV network stocks will go up. If one network can thump its chest and claim a higher increase than other networks, their stock generally goes up even more.

Therefore, in effect, "Dateline" is more concerned, at times, in promoting NBC's prime time programs and pumping up NBC's stock than it is with its news credibility. Shame on NBC.

Posted by Charles Warner at 6:45 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 18, 2004

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. NBC

Wednesday, May 19, 2004. NBC Universal Ad.
In Monday's edition of Advertising Age and Television Week, NBC Universal ran a huge eight-page fold-out ad (four pages on two sides). The ad featured white copy on a deep blue background, and the headline read, "America's #1 televison entity joins together with the world's premium entertainment studio to form the universe's most forward-thinking content creation company." The slug line underneath the big NBC Universal logo in the center of the ad in large letters read, "Imagine the possibilities."

What struck me most about the ad was the eerie similarity in the color scheme, layout, message, hubris, and hyperbole to ads that ran in the trade press at the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger. Both ad campaigns touted that the companies were "...the media company of the future." Well, we'll see. You might think that NBC should have learned something from the history of AOL Time Warner's overpromising and hope NBC wouldn't repeat those mistakes, but after seeing the NBC ad, I'm not sanguine.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Tuesday, May 18, 2004. Up

Tuesday, May 18, 2004. Up or Down, Good or Bad? It Depends on What Paper You Read.
On Monday, May 17, 2004, the Wall Street Journal ran a story by Suzanne Vranica in the Marketplace section titled "For Big Marketers Like Amex, TV Ads Lose Starring Role." The article indicates that large advertisers such as American Express and P&G are disenchanted with TV are are looking for less expensive and more effective alternatives, and that "despite all the noise surrounding the yearly (upfront) ritual, the growth rate for TV ad spending is beginning to slow...This year media buyers and network executives expect sales during the period to rise by just 3%."

The tone of the Wall Street Journal article is that television advertising is "no longer the engine that drives advertising and marketing" and that major advertisers are looking elsewhere--a trend the Media Curmudgeon has predicted for over six months.

On the same Monday, the New York Times's Stuart Elliot in his Advertising column featured the headline, "Despite drops in some ratings, the broadcast networks will probably be able to raise prices." Elliott reports that estimated revenue increases for the networks will be in the 3-5% range--not that different from the Wall Street Journal's 3% increase, but of course that extra 2% of $9.3 billion is an increase of $186 million -- not trivial. The tone of Elliott's article is positive for the upfront in spite of lower ratings and increased strength of cable. For example, he quotes a major buying agency executive as saying, "But I and my fellow buyers still see a great inherent value in broadcast television." And further in the column, Elliott writes, "Another reason for the forecasts of nice gains for the broadcasters is that the types of advertisers maintaining their budgets--or even increasing them--are those that tend to concentrate their spending on broadcast TV."

An editorial in the Monday, May 17, issue of Advertising Age was titled, "Upfront week, upfront weak," that read: "We're encouraged that the network prime-time upfront will grow by a meager 3% vs. last year's over-the-top gains." And later on, "But upfront dollar changes are a poor gauge of TV advertising. Actual network revenue offers a more accurate measure, and it shows network-TV growth is more muted than recent upfront tallies might suggest. Advertisers would do well to consider that network TV is a mature medium that shouldn't expect more than single-digit growth."

So who is closer to the reality of the upfront market, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or Advertising Age? It depends on sources and ideology. The Wall Street Journal's primary sources were large advertisers such as American Express and P&G--companies that are more than wiling to talk to the Wall Street Journal, especially if they think they can set the agenda for lower television prices. Thus, the slightly negative spin on the upfront.

The sources in Stuart Elliott's column were mostly large advertising agency buying organizations who have an agenda of keeping a majority of their client's dollars in television and seeing television prices rise, because television is the source of their largest profit margins. Thus, the slightly positive spin on the upfront.

Advertising Age's orientation is typically to the advertising side of the business, so its editorial postion could be expected to tilt a little to the agency point of view. But instead, Ad Age seems to be more on the low growth side than on the high side.

So, who is right? They all are in a sense, but I'd consider the sources sources and then do an average of the three and come up with an expected 3.7% increase for the upfront. It will be fascinating to see the results in a week or ten days. Of course, whatever the increase number is, both the agencies and the networks will declare victory.

NBC is taking no chances on the success of its upfront and is hyping its prize show with a full-page ad opposite Elliott's column in the New York Times for "The Apprentice," NBC's new anchor for its profitable Thursday night lineup that lost "Friends" and "Frasier" this year. In its upfront presentation, NBC is hyping "The Apprentice" as the program that will hold its rating lead for the season. We'll see if the ad helps.

Also in Monday's New York Times, this headline ran in The Arts section: "'Troy' Triumphs at Box Office, With $45.6 Million in Sales." The same day, this headline ran in the Wall Street Journal: "'Troy Comes Up Lame at Box Office" and uses the same $45.6 million figure. The same number, different interpretations--one based on results, one based on expectations, I guess. The Times gave "Troy" a somewhat positive review the previous Friday, and the WSJ gave it a less favorable review. Perhpas the headline writers read the reviews.

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:14 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 15, 2004

Saturday, May 15, 2004.

Saturday, May 15, 2004. Chris Responds.
My second son, Chris Warner, and father of my grandaughter, Ava, responded to my letter to my eight children as follows:

"Your blog pushed a button and got me riled up, so here is my tirade. As you know, I have been a Kerry guy all along. It is discouraging that middle America, or what I call "the red states" love Bush. They hate a man who lies about a mistress, even though his wife sticks with him. They love a man who initiates a war on Iraq to avenge an attack on his dad by lying about WMD. Although most people living in red states are in the middle class, they do not seem to mind that Bush would prefer to eliminate the middle class, so his cronies can rule us serfs. It may sound like words from a Massachusetts liberal, but that is what I am and why I choose to live in Massachusetts. I believe that government is for the people, and especially those in need of help. The upper class can fend for themselves without the help of the oval office. I feel that, his libido aside, Bill Clinton was one of the best Presidents in US history. One reason is that he was not from the ruling class. He actually likes and cares about people and equal rights. When Bush lost the election and Scalia gave it to him, I was disheartened that cronies control the Supreme Court. America is divided. Kerry will win Massachusetts. We have ideals of human rights, equality and environmental stewardship. We support the Kyoto protocal. W wants to take us back to the stone age of the cold war, which is his comfort zone. Go Kerry!!!"

I'm proud of you and your ideals, Chris.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:39 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 13, 2004

Thursday, May 13, 2004. Letter

Thursday, May 13, 2004. Letter to My Eight Children.
Dear Kids:

All of you, except Will, are old enough to vote, and I urge all of you not only to vote for John Kerry but also to volunteer to work for his campaign. It is absolutely imperative for the future of this country that Bush not be re-elected in November.

Your grandfather, Dyp Warner, served in World War I. He enlisted when he was younger than Sean (he was 19) and served in the front lines in the Signal Corps, stringing telephones lines between trenches. He was wounded in a French farmhouse during a German-launched mustard gas attack, but he managed to drag another soldier out the farmhouse with him, and both lived. The after-effects of the gas wounds were what caused his death at 57. He also volunteered for World War II when he was 44 and was an intelligence officer in the Pentagon.

It has always saddened me that he died before he knew any of you--he would have been very proud of you, as I am. Mustard gas was outlawed after WW II by the Geneva Convention because it was considered inhumane. If he hadn't been gassed, maybe he would have lived as long and your grandmother. If so, he would have gotten to know all of you. Mustard gas and other chemical weapons were not used in WW II, and there was some hope that they would never be seen again--some hope for humanity.

As you know, Julia and I are going to Spain for ten days in June, but after seeing the atrocities American soldiers committed on Iraqi prisoners I considered canceling the trip. I have fallen into depression for the first time in my life. I asked myself, "How could I face people in Spain? How could I apologize to them, to humanity, for the torture in Abu Ghraib? How could the country that my father fought and eventually died early for, that I was in the Army for during the Korean War (although not in Korea) commit such crimes, such torture? What has gone wrong?"

What has gone wrong is the Bush administration. Its arrogance of power, its conservative agenda to grab power from the military and to cut government at all costs, its uncaring, unresponsive attitude to middle class and working class people, and its compulsive lying--lying about everything--must stop. America's reputation in the world is the worst it's ever been. Bush is as hated around the world as much as Stalin and Hitler were. If America re-elects this Bush, America will be giving the message to the world that we approve of the torture in Abu Ghraib, that we don't care what the world thinks of us and that we have lost our honesty and our humanity.

Please don't let Bush be re-elected. Volunteer, work for Kerry's election. Don't let my grandchildren think you or America approves of lying, of torture, or enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else, and of increasing the defict and national debt to the highest in history. I want my grandchildren to believe in fairness, honesty, caring, and respect for others--not in torture, lying, and mortgaging their future.

I love you all. Now get to work. Here's a link to Kerry's Web site, where you can sign up, as I have.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Thursday, May 13, 2004. Bill

Thursday, May 13, 2004. Bill Grimes Elaborates on NBC's New Sales Structure.
For those readers who don't know who Bill Grimes is, he is the ex-CEO of ESPN, Univision, Multimedia, and Zentih Media (the media buying arm of Saatichi and Saatchi advertising) and a partner in B&G Media Investments. In other words, he knows what he's talking about.

"Good analysis of something I have thought about (in the past) quite a bit. At Zenith I wrote in 1996 how I thought the five large media companies could make multi-division sales, multi-media to advertisers. As you have suggested, I argued back then that one senior sales executive must have authority over all divisions so that cooperation and delivery of the promised inventory was assured, that the cost to the advertiser for the package had to be lower than if the advertiser bought each media separately (the package would be more profitable for the media company because of significantly reduced sales expenses (think if 10% of the ad sales staff of either Time Warner or Disney were eliminated), and that, and here is the catch, the company would have to have an autocratic CEO who totally believed in the concept.

I then argued that the company to approach (for Zenith clients) was News Corp because Murdoch controls far more of his company's stock than does Redstone, Eisner, and certainly Bob Wright. He was (and is) seen as autocratic, innovative, and decisive. My concept at Zenith never progressed beyond internal discussion ironically for the same reason. The agency heads had all the power in the organization and the company CEO was very weak and unimaginative. Support internally was not there. And, to your point, I doubt whether support for this good-for-all (media companies, ad agencies and clients) concept exists today. I do not know who Keith Turner is but he isn't big enough to create significant change of behavior for lots of people at NBC and certainly not advertisers and their agencies. He is just not an autocratic owner!"

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 12, 2004

Wednesday, May 12, 2004. NBC's

Wednesday, May 12, 2004. NBC's New Sales Structure
An article in Monday's Television Week had the headline "NBC Making One-Stop Shop." The article began, "In an unprecedented move, NBC is expected to merge the advertising sales operations for all of its broadcast and cable networks under one executive-Keith Turner, president of advertising sales for NBC, an executive close to NBC said.

Putting broadcast and cable ad sales under one executive is significant for several reasons. For one, the rivalry between the broadcast and cable sectors has grown increasingly intense as cable has begun demanding-and getting-more of the advertising pie, to the detriment of broadcast. The move means major forces on each side of the table-broadcaster NBC and general entertainment cable network USA Network-will now be working together. What's more, they'll be able to do so just in time for this year's upfront ad sales process.

With a week to go before the upfront process commences, NBC can package network and cable advertising deals, which, in theory, can improve the revenue potential and cost-per-thousand prices for its now major entertainment networks-USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel."

Further on in the article, author Wayne Friedman wrote, "This is a structure that will be unlike that of competing media companies The Walt Disney Co., Viacom and Fox. Those companies keep cable advertising sales teams separate from broadcast networks sales staff."

NBC's move is significant because it is the first attempt by a large media company to put sales of several divisions under one sales executive. Viacom, News Corp, Disney, and Time Warner all have cross-platform sales organizations that attempt to cobble together advertising deals, but they have to depend on getting the cooperation of various divisions' chief sales executive, which has proven to be extremely difficult.

CBS Plus, Viacom's cross-platform group made a $300 million deal with P&G several years ago, and the cross-platform sales promise seemed to be on the verge of fulfillment. However, since then there have been a few mega deals, but, for the most part, these cross-platform sales organizations have not lived up to expectations.

I think the problem is structural. There was not a single sales executive in charge of all sales, so there was no one who could force cooperation. In order to force cooperation among competing divisions (network television and network cable, for example) there must be a system of rewards and consequences for cooperating and there must be a single enforcer of those rewards and consequences.

We'll see if NBC's Keith Turner in his new position can be successful in forcing cooperation and making deals that include the NBC television network and NBC's cable properties: MSNBC, Bravo, Telemundo, USA network, and the Sci-Fi network. If Turner is successful, we might see other big media companies appoint sales czars.

But don't hold your breath. Viacom probably won't do it because Vicaom CEO Mel Karmazin believes in the media properties competing against each other. Disney won't do it because it seems to prefer complex structures that place Eisner loyalists in a matrix-like, confusing organizational designs and reporting relationships that diffuse authority and responsibility. Time Warner won't do it because of the power of various sales silos and their tradition of non-cooperation and nasty infighting. News Corp. might appoint a sales czar, because Fox generally has simple, straightforward, structures and gives strong, results-oriented executives the authority and responsibility to get the job done--there is a history of more cooperation and unity than the other media conglomerates have.

There is a lesson here: You get the performance you pay for. If a company gives bonuses to division top executives and sales chiefs for making their individual division's revenue budgets, they won't cooperate with a cross-platform sales organization that tries to get them to cooperate in putting together deals. Agencies and clients will do mega, cross-platform deals if they get a discount, but individual divisions are reluctant to go along for fear or not making their budgets or not getting a big enough share of the deal.

A sales czar that can hand out rewards and consequences can force cooperation and adjudicate share grabs: "This is the rate you'll charge and the share you'll get. If you like it, you'll be rewarded and if you don't, take a hike." And, most important, the rewards must be based on making an overall budget, not a divisional budget. In other words, you've got to pay people (usually a lot) to be selfless.

Posted by Charles Warner at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 7, 2004

Friday, May 7, 2004. Letter

Friday, May 7, 2004. Letter to Dubya
Dear Mr. President:

The polls aren't looking good. You'd better do something to appeal to a wider group of voters. I'm writing you because it's obvious Karl Rove has no idea how to spin the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Here are some suggestions:
1. Fire Rumsfeld and make Colin Powell Secretary of Defense--put the war in the hands of a general who knows how to wage war and cares for the soldiers. He is also the only person left in your administration people like. Give him the job on the condition that he hires his son, Michael, to head an investigation of the torture. Michael has been so obsessed with indecency lately at the FCC that he'd be the perfect person to look into the ultimate indecency--torture--which is a lot worse than saying fuck on the air.
2. You are falling way behind in the polls with 18-34 year olds, especially males, so replace Michael Powell with Howard Stern. Stern would lighten up the FCC's indecency rules and order Clear Channel to put his show back on the air, all of which would please men 18-34 and gain you votes there. Don't worry about Stern, he'll actually help your image.
3. Find a Muslim in the state department and make him, or, better, her Secretary of State--everyone but Sharon would love that. Don't worry about losing the Jewish vote; you've already lost it and won't get it back. If you can't find a Muslim, make Condi Secretary of State. She helped get you into this mess, so let's see if she can talk her way out of it. It would be nice for the women in the country to see a woman in an important job in your cabinet--someone soft, caring, and nurturing they could identify with.

I hope you don't take these suggestions the wrong way, but you must understand that you're in deep do-do and I'm just trying to help.

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 6, 2004

Thursday, May 6, 2004. Darts

Thursday, May 6, 2004. Darts and Laurels
The Columbia Journalism Review for years has given Darts and Laurels for examples of good and bad journalism. I think I'll give a few not only out of respect to CJR, but also because I can't come up with a better labels.

Laurel: To Seymour Hersh for his story "Torture at Abu Ghraib" in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker and to the New Yorker for running it. Hersh broke the toture story with a great piece of reporting. Hersh, who won a National Magazine Award this year should win another one for the Abu Ghraib story.
Dart: To all the rest of the press (except CBS News) for not running it or running it sooner. The corporate press seems to be dummy sitting on a knee of the administration. The press gave Bush a free pass in 2002, idolatry after 9/11, and has swallowed whole everything the administration has said, especially about the war in Iraq. No tough questions, no analysis, merely being stenographers for Bush administration propaganda.

The corporate press, with reporters housed in a posh hotel in a walled compound just a few miles from Abu Ghraib must have heard rumors about the torture--all the people in Iraq knew what was going on. Why did it take four months for the story to break, and then by a reporter from the New Yorker, not from CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, the NY Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune? The corporate media let us down.

Laurel: To CBS News for having the guts to run the story and put the pictures on television.

Dart: To O'Reilly, Rush, and all the rest of the right-wing apologists for the torture. Rush forgave it as "fraternity pranks." Why aren't these morons outraged?

Perhaps the lack of sensitivity over the torture and dehumanization of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib will finally cause the overly media dependent public to realize that O'Reilly and Rush are all simplistic, stupid, self-promoting cromagnons who are, worst of all, dead wrong and disgusting. Don't listen to them. Turn off TV and radio except for PBS, NPR, and Air America Radio.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:29 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Thursday, May 6, 2004.

Thursday, May 6, 2004. Thanks CBS News
When I was general manager of NBC-owned WNBC-AM radio (now WFAN) in 1978, I became a member of the New York City Radio Broadcasters Association. The general managers of the major New York radio stations were member and regularly attended the meetings: Mel Karmazin was GM of WNEW-FM, as I remember, and Rick Devlin was GM of WOR--I them both from the years that we were at CBS Radio together. One of the group's projects was to do a yearly salary survey of general manager's salaries. I remember a meeting at which we discussed the project. Several general managers indicated that their companies were reluctant to have them provide that information. Mel Karmizan was adamant and angry--he was an is always angry about something--that they survey be completed as soon as possible so that he could show WNEW-FM's owners that he was being underpaid. He seemed to have an obsession about being underpaid, and made the survey and GM's salaries the main topic of discussion. Other GMs at the meeting wanted to talk about a project for ascertaining the needs of the community. Not Mel.

A story in today's Wall Street Journal by Gregory Zuckerman and Joe FLintwas headlined, "Why Wall Street Snubs Viacom: Darling of Investors a Year Ago, Media Titan's Karmazin Feel Heat Over Radio Woes, Profit Concerns." The first paragraph read, "The love affair between Mel Karmazin and Wall Street is on the rocks. A year ago, investors held their collective breath as Mr. Karmazin, Viacom Inc.'s president, considered leaving the company. They viewed Mr. Karmazin as the most gifted manager in the media world, and fretted that his departure would send Viacom shares plummeting. Eventually, Sumner Redstone, Viacom's chairman and chief executive, bit the bullet, retaining Mr. Karmazin with a juicy contract on par with Mr. Redstone's hefty salary."

A year ago, it was about money for Karmazin, just as it was in 1978. Leopards don't change their spots. In both situations I can see Mel threatening to quit if he didn't make more money. The WSJ story went on to report that investors were frustrated that Viacom stock is down over 9% in the past year, and more than 13% so far this year, compared with a drop of just 1% in Dow Jones industrial average in 2003. It was also reported that short sellers had sold 41 million shares short as of April 12, "a significant increase from the 13 million a month earlier." The rest of the story detailed some of the problems Viacom is having, even though the CBS television network is battling NBC for the number-one spot with the desired 18-49 demo.

What the WSJ story doesn't examine is Karmazin's management style. When Viacom's profits were growing, his take-no-prisoners style was overlooked. Wall Street has always taken the position that it doesn't matter how you treat people or how you do it, as long as earnings continue to rise, Wall Street is blind to anything else (including ethical lapses). Karmazin is a horrible, nasty manager. It's no coincidence, in my opinion, that on the same day the WSJ story ran, Media Post reported that the CBS program executive responsible for landing "Survivor" has jumped ship to join NBC. Glen Maynard, senior vice president of alternative programming and creative strategies, will be the new executive vice president of primetime development at the NBC television network. I know many people who have left Infinity and CBS because they said, "It's a terrible place to work. Mel's terrible to work for."

Could it be that Wall Street is seeing that one of the main problems at Viacom is that top management is not as good as it thought and that Viacom has no succession plan. Redstone thinks he will live forever and wants to dump Karmazin when his contract is up next year, so Mel wouldn't think of hunting for a successor. He wants to threaten to quit if he doesn't get a big raise--same old trick. I suspect that the WSJ story might have been a plant from Redstone to set up giving Karmazin that bad news (no raise, no job), but I wonder who he has in mind? Moonves? His (Redstone's) daughter? Who do you think?

The problem is that whoever Redstone brings in will probably be a bottom-line oriented CEO who, like Karmazin (and I assume like Redstone), will not the least bit interested in serving the public--just maximizing profits. I suspect that the troops at CBS and, especially, CBS News know this and are depressed. I know morale at CBS is low, which is too bad, because it ought to be
sky high after "60 Minutes II" was the first television network to break the Abu Ghraib torture story. But does CBS News get any credit for runnig with the story? No, all it gets is a story about Viacom's flagging stick price. I'll bet the people at CBS News are pissed.

There is an enormous amount of talk about the torture story, but I haven't seen anyone say, "Good job, CBS." So, I'll say it. Thanks CBS. You had the guts to show the horrible Abu Ghraib pictures of torture--no abuse, disgusting torture. And I'll also say thank you to ABC News for letting Ted Koppel read the names of those killed in the war, even in the face of stupid, right-wing criticism from forces like the conservative Sinclair station group. Both were courageous decisions and show that the news divisions are not yet puppets for the conservative agenda, like Fox News is, or puppets of the corporate greed meisters. So there is some hope.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

May 2, 2004

Saturday, May 1, 2004. Hooray,

Saturday, May 1, 2004. Hooray, Hooray, It's the First of May!
Hooray, hooray, it's the first of May; Buffett endorses Kerry today! There was a story on Bloomberg.com today, May 1, that the world's second-richest person, investor Warren Buffett, has joined Democrat John Kerry's campaign as an advisor on economic policy.

Buffett, who heads the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. investment company, has criticized Bush's tax cuts as "welfare'' for the rich and has indicated that he feels Bush should not be re-elected. This is the second piece of bad news that hit greedy, arrogant Wall Street investment bankers this week, and the highly admired Buffett was involved directly or indirectly in both of them.

The first piece of bad news for Wall Street was that the world's most respected investor favored Kerry because Bush's budget-busting, deficit-ballooning tax cuts were clearly welfare for the rich Wall Streeters themselves. Oops, caught with their fingers in the cookie jar again.

The second piece of bad news for Wall Street was Google's proposal for its upcoming IPO. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's 30-something founders, wrote a "letter From the Founders," in which they lay out their anti-greed philosophy of not offering quarterly profit predictions and of not being pressured by short-term profit pressures and earnings growth. "A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour," Brin and Page wrote. Their letter was inspired by a similar type of annual letter that Warren Buffett writes to his stockholders (a share of stock in Berkshire Hathaway now costs over $93,000, so the stockholders aren't the feint of heart or the average investor).

If the Brin-Page letter wasn't bad enough to shove it to Wall Street, Google cut the traditional 7% fee for handling an IPO almost in half, giving another clear message to Wall Steet that its outrageous, boondoggle fees were absurd money wasters for companies going public.

Google also announced that it would hold a highly unusual Dutch auction for its IPO shares, a system that I'm sure the two lead investment bankers, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston, hated. A Dutch auction will limit the upside potential for this hot IPO and limit the number of shares that can be spun to rich, powerful, inside investors. The rules of a Dutch auction are quite complicated, so I won't go into them here, but this method for selling the inital offering will mean that small investors will have an opportunity to get in on the IPO. An April 30th story in the Wall Street Journal with the headline, "Auction Promises to Bid Adieu to Tradition," quoted a veteran money manager as saying, "It brings a little bit of socialism, and the threat of a drop in profitability, to the banking world. It's a shot across the bow."

Horrors! A little bit of socialism--doing something for the small investor--must scare the hell out of Wall Steet as do the possibility of lower fees, and perhaps, worst of all, the best investor in the world who thinks taxes are too low for the rich and thinks Kerry is better than Bush. Wall Streeters must go to sleep every night in their mattesses stuffed with $1000 bills shaking in terror that Kerry will be elected and name Elliott Spitzer to head the SEC. It's about time they shook in terror; maybe they will stop wearing gaudy suspenders and smoking noxious cigars, but that's probably too much to expect. They'd probably rather go to jail. That's where I'd rather have them, too.

Let's hear it for Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Warren Buffett!

Posted by Charles Warner at 3:12 PM | Comments (0) | Print |