Media Curmudgeon

« August 2005 | Main | October 2005 »

September 28, 2005

No Awards For This Kane

“Citizen Kane,” which most critics and lists of great films rank as the best movie ever made, won only one Academy Award, for Best Original Screenplay, when it came out in 1941. Last week CBS named Tom Kane president and chief operating officer of the Viacom Television Stations Group and he will oversee CBS’s 40 local television stations, but this Kane will not win many awards either, I’m afraid.

Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, promoted Kane up from VP of sales for the CBS station group, a traditional CBS move—up the ladder in sales to top management. On the surface this move makes sense in an environment in which TV station ad revenue is declining, as evidenced by a headline in a Media Post story by Wayne Friedman the same day Kane’s appointment was announced, “Ad Demand Dives For Local TV, Station Sales Drop 6 Percent.”

However, CBS promoted Kane a month after Rupert Murdoch promoted Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, to head up the 37 local Fox TV stations and Twentieth Television. Industry pundits filled the blogesphere and the press with predictions such as that of Jack Myers in the Jack Myers Business Report: “The elevation of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to chairman of Fox Television Stations is sending storm warnings to local news chiefs at competitive television stations. Just as Fox News Channel has radically altered the network news business, Ailes can be expected to bring fresh new faces and strategies to the news programming at local Fox stations. With access to local stations, Ailes will have a testing ground for new personalities and new formats. Local newscasts have been declining in ratings for years and formats are stagnant. Switch from one station to the other and both newscasters and formats are virtually interchangeable. Rupert Murdoch's decision to give Ailes additional authority will prove to be just the spark local television news, programming and promotion needs to rejuvenate the business.”

If I were Moonves, I’d be worried about what Ailes, the master positioner and promoter, is going to do, because Fox competes with CBS in many of CBS’s markets and a majority of the top markets, where the money is. Maybe someone with a programming, news, or promotion background would be better than someone with a sales background. Salespeople in television sell strictly by the numbers—low ratings, low sales; high ratings, high sales. So Murdoch got it right, get the ratings and revenue will increase. Alies knows how to get ratings.

And the Fox stations didn’t wait long after the Ailes appointment to make some unexpected changes. First, the Fox TV stations announced last Thursday, September 22, that they were replacing the half-hour syndicated program “Current Affairs” with “Geraldo at Large” starting in November. According to a story in Media Post, Bob Cook, president and COO of Twentieth Television, said, "”Geraldo at Large” will take our news programming strategy to an entirely new level. Viewers are demanding more topical coverage and stronger investigative reporting in their news." So it looks as though Jack Myers’s prediction that “Ailes will have a testing ground for new personalities and new formats” was right on. What better personality than Geraldo to start with after all the publicity he’s been getting for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

The New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley claimed in a September 5, story that Geraldo had “nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety.” Everyone who read Stanley’s article probably assumed it was accurate because of Geraldo’s justified reputation as a shameless grandstander (remember his drawing a map in the sand to show were he was embedded with soldiers in Iraq?) But Geraldo reacted with outrage at the Times story and the paper’s Public Editor, Byron Calame, wrote a column on September 25, titled, “Even Geraldo Deserves a Fair Shake,” a headline that reinforced the perception of Geraldo as a shameless grandstander, but even he deserved better because, after viewing the video tape of the incident a dozen times (you wonder what he must have done to deserve such punishment), Calame determined that, in fact, Geraldo had nudged no one out of the way.

Well, you know that Ailes, all the people at Fox, Twentieth Television, and Geraldo were grinning from ear to ear with all this publicity. So, Fox quickly decided to cash in on the ink and put Geraldo’s show on the Fox stations. The notion that Geraldo will provide viewers “stronger investigative reporting” is a great positioning statement, but has as much truth in it as the Fox News channel’s slogan, “We report, you decide—fair and balanced news.” Television viewers, especially those who watch Fox News and the Fox TV stations don’t want “strong investigative reporting” or even a solid news product; they want outrageous, edgy, pushy (maybe not nudgey) personalities.

Promoting over and over again the framing of Fox News as fair and balanced makes it so in the minds of sensation-seeking, shallow viewers (and that includes Dick Cheney), and promoting over and over again the framing of Geraldo as a strong investigative reporter will make it so in their minds, too. Alies will beat the pants off Tom Kane and the CBS TV stations, because Ailes moves fast, makes smart strategic decisions, and knows how to give the viewing public what it wants. On the other hand, CBS News still hasn’t made any moves to replace Dan Rather with a viable ratings getter because the cliff dwellers at CBS can’t make a decision (this summer it had interns brainstorm and make suggestions, thus admitting that management had no idea whatsoever what to do with the “Evening News”). Alies knows what to do. He’s not hung up on news credibility or quality, and he knows how to get ratings.

So, just as “Citizen Kane” didn’t win any acting Oscars, Tom Kane won’t win any awards for not acting. Alies and Geraldo will eat Kane’s lunch and steal his audience while Kane’s still figuring out how to sell the lousy numbers on his stations.

The other move that Murdoch and Ailes will make is that they will sell many of the Fox TV stations that are in markets outside the top 25. On September 26, Broadcasting and Cable columnist John Higgins broke the story that Murdoch’s News Corp. was thinking of selling as much as a quarter of the Fox’s station portfolio for as much as $800 million because smaller- and mid-sized-market TV stations are not the high-margin, high-reach businesses that Murdoch likes. What will Fox do with the money from selling TV stations? Do what it has done in the past, invest in programming and promotion.

Would you like to have Tom Kane’s job? If you are that nuts, apply now because it’ll be available within a year.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

September 25, 2005

Reading Motivations

When you read a business story in the press (I'm including the online news media and blogs in the press), you have to consider the motivations of everyone involved. You have to consider the motives of the reporters who write the story, the editors who edit, place, and approve the story, and the owners/stockholders of the media that run the story. When business leaders are quoted in the press, you also have to consider the motives of the businesses the stories are about: The CEO, the company PR people, stockholders (often dissident stockholders), and other stakeholders.

A raft of items appeared this past week about the hottest business story of the last three months--Time Warner considering selling all or part of AOL to Microsoft (or Google or Yahoo or, as one dope suggested, Comcast). The New York Post ran a story on Thursday, September 15, in its typically breathless style titled “AOL’s Time Is Up.” Reporter Tim Arango wrote, “In a deal that would unite two of America’s corporate giants as partners in the Internet business, Time Warner is in advanced discussions to sell a state in America Online to Microsoft, The Post has learned.”

You have to ask what was The Post’s motivation in running the story? Apparently the talks had been going on for some time, which means that the odds are that The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times knew about them. So why didn’t those two newspapers run the story? I suggested in my 9/16 blog that Time Warner leaked the story to serve its negotiating interests. I think The Post figured, “let’s go with the story and if a deal is done soon we will have scooped the story and gained some credibility and if the deal doesn’t get done, so what, people will say, ‘That’s just The Post.’” Nothing to lose.

As if not to sound scooped or out it, the next day, Friday, September 16, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both ran stories about the TW-Microsoft talks, but with different angles on the story. Saul Hansell in his New York Times story wrote the two companies “…have explored a variety of possible combinations…according to several people involved in the talks.” He also wrote, “Those talks, however, are in suspension as Microsoft considers its strategic position…” In other words, the motivation of The Times was to look like it wasn’t scooped, that it knew about the talks, that it knew the talks were stalled--all meant to marginalize The Post’s story. It was pursuing its best interests, not necessarily the story.

Julia Angwin and Robert Guth’s story in the Wall Street Journal took a different angle. The two reporters wrote in their lead, “Demonstrating its growing concern about Google, Inc. Microsoft has entered talks with Time Warner Inc. about taking a substantial stake in the media giant’s America Online unit…” And further on in the story, “The talks, which were described as preliminary…” The WSJ also wanted to marginalize The Post’s story and act like it knew more than anyone about the talks and the reasons for them. It was pursuing its best interests, not the necessarily the story.

The Post said the discussions were “advanced,” The Times said the talks were “stalled,” and The Journal said the talks were “preliminary,” which means none of them knew what was going on. They were faking it. Or, The Post, The Times, and The Journal all talked to their sources at Time Warner and their sources didn’t know what was going on and were guessing. All the time, TW CEO Dick Parsons was smiling because it was in his best interests that Microsoft thought he was talking to Google and Yahoo.

BusinessWeek played into Parson’s hand in a story by Catherine Yang, who has been covering AOL and Time Warner for years, with a sub-head that read, “An MSN-AOL linkup could benefit both sides. But Gates & Co., eager to catch Net giant Google, may the most to gain from teaming up.” Parsons’ smile must have widened, because if Microsoft believed it had the most to gain, then it would be willing to pay even more for AOL. Later in the story, Yang writes, “If Microsoft needs AOL more than the reverse, it’s up to Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons to command a princely sum for his division or take a pass. Indeed, Parsons is the wild card. While he has professed confidence in AOL’s new Web strategy, he may ultimately decide that spinning out a part of the troublesome online unit may jack up a stock price that has been languishing ever since AOL merged with Time Warner in 2001.” BusinessWeek was pursuing its best interests of being a reliable source for business news, and, therefore, seems to me to have done the best analysis.

On Thursday, September 22, Parsons told the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference, according to the New York Times, that “”…the big growth opportunity---big value acceleration opportunity for us—is in AOL.” He then announced AOL’s numbers--$2.1 billion in revenue in the second quarter ended June 30, about a fifth of TW’s revenue, and $550 million in earnings, about 22 percent of TW’s earnings. What was Parsons’s motivation in making this announcement? I think BusinessWeek’s Catherine Yang had it right,--“to command a princely sum” for AOL.

The Silicon Valley blog, Paid Content (a good blog that I read) wrote, “We believe it is entirely possible that Google could consider making a bid for AOL.” Paid Content’s motivation for running taking this tack? I believe that with AOL, Silicon Valley has always had an us-versus-them attitude of deep hate and resentment ever since AOL bought the Valley darling Netscape. The Valley would love it and consider it sweet revenge if a Valley firm, its newest darling, Google, bought AOL.

This is wishful thinking. Google plans “to expand free WiFi access…” according to a Media Post posting on September 21. That rumor has been around for a while—that Google will roll out a free WiFi service on a city-by-city basis—a brilliant move if they can pull it off and provide free WiFi for the country. Philadelphia has been considering providing free WiFi Internet access and I’m sure Philly, along with a lot of other cities, would cooperate and share part of the cost with Google. If Google wants to provide free WiFi access, why would it pay a “princely sum” for AOL, when a major (80 percent) share of its revenue comes from being an ISP? If Google’s plan comes to fruition, it would virtually wipe out AOL and MSN’s dial-up business and make AOL worth a lot less. Google doesn’t need or want to bother with AOL.

A cable television blog, Broadbandconnections.com ran an entry titled, “Why Comcast Should Acquire AOL.” What would be its motivation? Probably false and silly pride in wanting a cable company to move into the big time on the Web—pure fantasizing. Fat chance; Brian Roberts isn’t that dumb.

What, then, is going to happen? Who should we believe? What medium has the most credibility and insight into this story? I think the most important clue to the possible TW-Microsoft partnership on AOL was in a story that wasn’t about the TW-Microsoft talks, but an item in The New York Times on September 13. At the end of a story by Richard Siklos headlined, “Icahn Group Steps Up Time WarnerProxy Fight,” there was a small item in mice type titled, “Web Sites Combining,” attributed to the Associated Press, that read, “CNN and Time, both units of Time Warner, said yesterday they would combine their business and financial Web sites and restart them next January under a single banner. The new site will keep the name cunnmoney.com.”

If Time Warner were planning to keep AOL for the long term (let alone force cooperation among divisions, which continues to be a huge bugaboo), don’t you think it would rather provide CNN and Money magazine content to AOL rather than try to brand the two separately? I think TW is trying to build its brands apart from AOL and build traffic to these sites rather than to the AOL portal. TW will sell part of AOL to Microsoft after the first of the year for a princely sum. The talks are probably on hold now while Microsoft completes its current restructuring, which it announced last week. Its strategy has changed to focus more on customer service and competing with Google, so, because “structure follows strategy,” Microsoft has restructured.

Who should you believe? Believe common sense—the Microsoft-AOL combination makes sense for both companies, and most important, for the stock prices of both companies, which is why it will eventually happen.

Posted by Charles Warner at 8:35 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at September 26, 2005 1:38 PM writes:

---

Media Curmudgeon at September 26, 2005 12:59 PM writes:

---

Media Curmudgeon at September 26, 2005 12:33 PM writes:

---

September 21, 2005

FEMA and WEMA

I rarely read John Tierney's column in the New York Times because his political bent is not mine, but today I did read his column “From FEMA to WEMA,” slammed my hand to my forehead, and uttered, “Oh my God, I wish I’d written that!” He made a brilliant case for why President Bush should turn the bumbling FEMA’s role in responding to emergencies over to Wal-Mart.

I had CNN on this afternoon to check on the progress of hurricane Rita, and discussion of Tierney’s column was prevalent. Commentator Jack Cafferty praised Tierney’s idea as did viewers in response to the “Question of the Day”—they sent numerous e-mails supporting the idea.

Now, under normal blogging etiquette I would have linked to the Tierney column and strongly recommended that you read it. However, starting this week the NY Times has put its op-ed columnists behind a firewall and you have to subscribe to TimesSelect to get the op-ed columnists, David Brooks (small loss if you don’t subscribe), Thomas Friedman (huge loss), Bob Herbert (loss), Nicolas Kristoff, (loss), Paul Krugman (huge loss), Frank Rich (huge loss), and John Tierney (small loss). Maureen Dowd is also available through TimesSelect, but she didn’t appear in the TimesSelect list of columnists (maybe she didn’t want to do the introductory video that’s available to TimesSelect subscribers). Because you have to subscribe, I didn’t link to the Tierney column.

Also, subscribers get free access to the Times archives, which in the past cost $2.95 for articles over 30 days old.

Subscriptions to TimesSelect on the Web costs $49.95 a year for non-subscribers to the daily NY Times. Subscribers have to register by entering their subscription number, ZIP code, e-mail address, and a password—a one time pain in the ass, but worth it for Friedman and Krugman addicts like me.

There has been a lot of comment in the blogesphere about the NY Times decision to charge and we know that the grey lady has been pondering a move to paid content for some time, but the question I have to ask is, is it good strategy?

I think the Times is doing it because of pressure from the circulation department, that feels that giving away the valuable Times content free on the Web hurts paid circulation which not only affects subscription revenue, but even worse, ad revenue. And, of course the ad sales department would also like to do anything to stem any circulation loss and, thus, potential ad revenue losses.

I think the Times editorial people would like their content to be free and widely circulated and linked to into order to increase the Times readership and credibility and enhance its brand image. So, I’ll bet the tug of war between the two factions ended in the current compromise to charge $49.95 for the op-ed columnists and archives access. By the way, $49.95 yearly is what the Wall Street Journal charges subscribers for access to the print edition on the Web, and $129 for non-subscribers. The WSJ has been extremely successful with this subscription model, but the Times is coming to it a couple of years too late, I believe.

It’s too early to predict if the Times subscription model will be successful—will stem the circulation loss and bring in substantial subscription revenue. However, it does point out the dilemma that the Times and all newspapers face in how to move their content to Web, something that is inevitable. The newspaper industry is groping, stumbling, and experimenting for an answer.

But I do find it fascinating that this week the Orlando Sentinel announced it was launching a free weekly newspaper. This launch is in keeping with a trend in the newspaper industry to give away free copies, as do the NY Metro and the Boston Metro (which is now owned by the NY Times). So the trend in the hard, dead-tree version of a newspaper is to give it away free and the trend on the Web seems to be to charge for content. Hmmmm? “Is a puzzlement.”

In the midst of this pricing and strategic confusion, maybe the newspaper industry ought to take the advice John Tierney gave to the US Government—outsource the problem to Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart can figure out how to respond to emergencies, maybe it can figure out how to charge for newspaper and Web content. The answer, to the chagrin of the NY Times, would probably be “Always low prices.”

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:09 AM | Comments (1) | Print |

jim at September 21, 2005 5:36 PM writes:

---

September 16, 2005

Microsoft and Time Warner in Talks About Selling AOL

I didn't blog yesterday when the New York Post scooped the rest of the business press with a story that Microsoft and Time Warner were in secret talks about doing a joint venture on AOL because my arm was too sore from patting myself vigorously on the back.

Here's what I wrote on November 17, 2004, in a blog titled "Silos, Silos Everywhere:"

"But whatever the reasons for non-cooperation (which was what the AOL-Time Warner merger was supposed to be about), it is clear that most of the Time Warner silos aren't going to cooperate with AOL, which is another reason I believe that Time Warner would love to sell AOL as soon as the outstanding lawsuits and investigations are settled. The pre-merger Time Warner people's lingering loathing of AOL will never go away.

But who will buy AOL? Who has the money to pay 10 or 11 times earnings for an asset that is in irreversible decline? Microsoft, that's who. Microsoft has the money and could reduce AOL's workforce by about a half by combining AOL's programming, connectivity, marketing, and sales operation with its own. The other reason that Microsoft will be the buyer is a personal one.

Bill Gates is known to be one of the most competitive people on the face of the earth (in addition to being one of the smartest). So you know that he is still smarting from when AOL rubbed his nose in the dirt over a remark that Gates reportedly made to Steve Case that Microsoft would either buy AOL "or bury it." AOL people loved to quote this remark and gloat when AOL's stock was at its height, with its over-inflated, bubble evaluation. You know Gates would love to buy AOL now and gloat back. Revenge really is sweet, especially to fierce competitors like Bill Gates."

Then on May 26, 2005, I wrote in a blog titled "AOL Is Googled:"

"The newly designed AOL portal may be terrific and may include cool functionality and great content, but it's doing it too late--five years too late, which in Internet time in which things change at light speed, makes it eons too late. Google's move makes it even more unlikely that AOL's portal strategy will work (and don't you think Google knows that) and, therefore, more likely that Parsons will make good on his threat to spin off or sell AOL.

The next question is obvious, who will buy the stock of a shrinking company with a failed portal strategy? It's more likely that Parsons will have to sell AOL outright. But to whom? I've said all along that Microsoft is the most logical buyer, but now could the most logical buyer be Google? Are the strategists at Google smart enough (I think they might be) to realize that Google's move to become a portal will hurt AOL, thus lowering its value, thus making Parsons lower his asking price so Google can buy AOL?

Google's stock is at an all-time high of $260 a share, which means it's got lots of wampum (paper money/equity)--the same kind of wampum AOL used to buy Time Warner in the biggest and most disastrous corporate merger is history. Wouldn't it be a marvelous irony if Google did to AOL what AOL did to Time Warner, buy it with inflated stock?

Such a purchase would make sense for Google because it doesn't have an ISP component like MSN and Yahoo (DSL with SBC) have, and it would be better to buy an ISP than try to set one up from scratch. And it would also make sense for Google to try to lower the value of an ISP it wanted to acquire. I think in baseball the maneuver is called a double steal."

At 3:00 p.m. today Google stock was down $1.87 to $300.75, but still inflated enough to make a purchase of all or half of AOL a wampum-based bargain. In Tim Arango's NY Post article yesterday (I'm not linking to it because you have to purchase the article a day after it runs, which sucks) he writes, "According to two sources familiar with the matter, Time Warner is in talks with Microsoft about selling the stake in AOL and them combining it with Microsoft's Web unit MSN." Later in the article Arango writes, "Talks are the most advanced with Microsoft, Time Warner management's preferred partner, but the media giant has also had discussion with both Yahoo! and Google over a sale or venture with AOL, according to a source close to Time Warner."

Now why did Tim Arango of the NY Post get the huge media story before the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal (which both featured the story today)? Think about it. Time Warner and AOL, before it was part of TW (Bob Pittman, who was president of AOL came from Time Warner, via Century 21), are masterful at controlling and manipulating press coverage.

These talks with Microsoft have obviously been going on for some time, so why did the leak occur this week? It's my guess that Time Warner leaked the story intentionally (those people know exactly what they're doing) because Google's $4.0 billion IPO was completed this week and Carl Icahan is pressuring Parsons to raise TW's stock price.

Wall Street, CNBC, and the business press were asking, "Why does Google need $4 billion?" and "Is Google on the hunt to acquire something?" So Time Warner leaks that it is talking to Microsoft, who is the "preferred partner," a nicely crafted phrase that Time Warner would use, and that it is also talking to Yahoo! and Google.

What this leak does is to take advantage of the buzz about Microsoft's new arch enemy, Google, being on the hunt with a wad of cash and thus scaring Microsoft. If Microsoft is afraid of losing a deal for AOL, the price for AOL will go up. If there are two other bidders, Yahoo! and Google, the price goes up even more.

Time Warner knows Bill Gates is worried silly about Google. Google is stealing Microsoft's people (see BusinessWeek's cover story this week) and stealing its MSN customers. Gates will pay more for a piece of AOL than it's worth in order to keep it away from Yahoo! and, especially, Google. And Time Warner knows it, which is why the NY Post story smells so much like a TW plant.

Will the leak kill the deal? No. Time Warner was smart enough to call Microsoft the preferred partner, which it clearly is, but just wanted to speed up the negotiations and get a higher price, which will please TW stockholders and may even hold off Carl Icahn’s pursuit of TW board seats and calls split the company up in order raise the stock price, as reported in the New York Times on Tuesday, September 13. The pressure from the Icahn group I'm sure was another reason for TW leaking the story about its talks with Microsoft.

The leak was a smart, if manipulative, strategic negotiating tactic that probably pushed the price of AOL up $1 billion dollars.

Posted by Charles Warner at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

September 7, 2005

Bush Has an MBA

W is the only president in U.S. history with an MBA, which not only says a lot about Bush but also a lot about MBAs.

I try to keep this blog focused on management, business, and strategic issues in the media and be, well, a media curmudgeon. I’m interested primarily in media management, but I couldn’t help think of the type of media management we’ve seen by the Bush administration in the last five years and, especially, in the last week in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The Bush people are trying to manage the media the same way most large corporations try to manage the media—send out polished press releases that contort information in their favor, only talk in tightly scripted messages that put only the most positive spin on things, never take responsibility, and make excuses in convoluted, fact-filled language. It’s MBA Speak.

MBAs love spread sheets, numbers, and “facts.” Bush is notorious for wanting numbers and facts, and when he speaks he uses MBA Speak to spit out numbers (5.6 million meals, 65 million bottles of water, etc.). But the main stream media (MSM), blogs, reporters, and folks are wondering out loud why it took Bush and the federal government so long—several days—to respond to the New Orleans disaster. I think the answer is that Bush thought like the MBA he is. He probably said to himself, “Let’s gather all the facts and information we can so we can see how bad it is so we can respond with adequate resources but not over-respond and waste resources, especially money.” That’s what an MBA bean counter would have done, and that’s more than likely what Bush did.

I believe that this type of MBA risk-benefit analysis was behind the cutting of FEMA’s budget and not giving enough money to the Army Engineers to secure the levees near New Orleans for a Category 5 hurricane, just a Category 3 hurricane. I can hear the bean-counters now, “too expensive to prepare for a low-probability event.” These iceberg cynics, as Oscar Wilde said, know the price of everything, but the value of nothing, especially the value of human life (other than their own, on which they place an exorbitantly high value).

In one of my favorite books of the last several years, titled Managers Not MBAs, author Henry Mintzberg argues that the approach of most American graduate business schools to educating leaders, particularly Harvard, where Bush got his MBA, is “undermining our leadership, with dire economic and social consequences.“ Mintzberg believes graduate business schools teach that analysis is everything, make graduates into number crunching calculators, not people managers, teach them to be mercenaries, and teach them that with analysis and numbers they can manage any organization. He writes, “MBA graduates who believe they can manage anything are quite simply a menace to society.” It seems his criticism is valid when applied to Bush.

Another book I enjoyed about Bush was psychiatrist Justin Frank’s Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Frank writes about how Bush consistently downplays his previous problems as unimportant or harmless college pranks and writes, “And his denials might be less troubling if they didn’t fit so neatly into his lifelong pattern of implying that he has never done anything wrong.” It seems Frank’s analysis is valid when applied to Bush’s recent behavior in the aftermath of Katrina.

If we look at major media companies through the same MBA eyeglass as we look at the Bush administration, some interesting parallels become apparent. The Bush government is full of MBAs, lawyers, and ex-business people (mostly white males) who run the government by cold numbers and for the benefit of themselves and the rich (contributors). The major media companies are run by the same type of people, by the cold numbers, and for the benefit of themselves and the rich (stockholders). Bush and his henchmen run the government by pandering to voters, not serving them, so they can stay in power. Media moguls run their companies by pandering to their audience, not by serving them, so they can stay in power. In both cases, the motive is greed for power and money. The motive is not to serve the public, especially a poor, black public.

If you are poor and black (poor is probably worse than black), the MSM don’t want you because advertisers don’t want you. The Bush government doesn’t want you, and is cutting welfare, social security, and health benefits (“starving the best”) so you will disappear. If the right-wingers and Bush don’t want you, why in the world would they want to rescue you?

Mintzberg believes MBAs have no soul. We know MSM moguls have no soul (but many of their reporters we now know do). We have seen clear demonstration that the Bush government has no soul. But I believe the images on television this week and reports in the press and on the Web will wake up America to the absence of soul and compassion in many MBA-run media and in the Bush government. I believe this realization will translate into lack of support for the soulless and into support for returning soul to the city where the soul of America was put to music in America’s only original art form, jazz. Let’s hear it for more jazz and fewer MBAs.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:31 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at September 9, 2005 10:20 PM writes:

---

Miss Information at September 9, 2005 10:24 AM writes:

---

Lex at September 8, 2005 4:51 PM writes:

---