Media Curmudgeon

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January 31, 2006

The CW

The trade press and media pundits don't like the name for the new network that combines CBS-owned UPN and Time Warner's The WB television networks--The CW. I'd like to know what's wrong with it? My father's initials, my initials, and three of my sons' initials are CW. Naturally, I love name.

Of the four remaining terrestrial television networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, one is named after the beginning of the alphabet song and another after an animal. So, why can't the new network be named after a person? There's a trend in radio to call stations after a person's first name, such a Bob, or Alice, or, the newest one, Jack. I live in New York and bus signs promote the new CBS station, Jack-FM, which uses the slogan, "playing what we want."

As of today (1/31/06) there are 35 Jack-FM stations in the country. It's a licensed format that originally began in Canada, I believe (many of the current Jack-FM formatted stations are in Canada). The format is automated (no live announcers) and use the same weird graphic. I understand the format has been relatively successful in Los Angeles--understandable because LA is full of very weird people--but not so successful yet in New York, where I and far fewer weird people live. I checked the CBS Radio Web site to try to find what CBS stations were programming the Jack-FM format and found that about six percent of its 180 radio stations were using it and several of them were using the Alice format.

As a sidebar, I wonder how the august CBS feels about a request for feedback that its Los Angeles station, Jack-FM, has on its Web site. It's asking for listeners to vote on "What theme day would you like to see introduced at your work place?" The choices are: "Sexual Harassment Mondays," "No Underwear Tuesday," "Office Equipment Abuse Wednesdays," "Supply Theft Thursdays," and "Fried Chicken Fridays." I suppose people will vote only once for No Underwear Tuesday (my favorite) because it’s the only day that's singular, or maybe it's because (my suspicion) that radio program directors can't spell. At any rate, there are enough choices there to offend just about everyone. Perhaps The CW network will pick up on some of those themes and sink to new depths of television programming.

So if CBS Radio can use people's names for its some of its radio stations, why can't it use a person's name for its new television network? The CW could stand for Charles Warner (the Warner part makes perfect sense because that's half the name of the parent company), and it could be called Charlie. That would be cool; Charlie implies having a good time. But maybe Charlie is a little too long. So, how about just calling it Chas--shorter and hipper than Charlie? Thus, you'd have ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and Chas. Cool. Different. Unique. "See 'Veronica Mars' on Chas tonight at nine o'clock"--a youth oriented double entendre promo that would work, I think.

But aside from the brilliant initial naming of the network, was it a good idea to combine CBS's UPN with Time Warner's The WB? CBS's CEO Les Moonves and Warner Brothers' Barry Meyer, the chairman of Warner Brothers Entertainment, have been good pals for years and they were able to keep this deal amazingly quiet in Hollywood. They are also two very smart guys, so here's why I think they made the deal to combine UPN and the WB television networks.

1. It makes sense in terms of costs. Both UPN and The WB were losing money. Some analysts estimate the two have lost about $2 billion combined since they have launched (according to the Wall Street Journal 1/25/06), and The CW is projected to be profitable its first year. Costs will also be lower because many redundant administrative and development costs and high-salaried executives can be eliminated. So, Moonves and Meyer stopped the bleeding and reduced costs.

2. It makes sense in terms of revenue. There is not enough advertising to support six networks; therefore, by reducing total prime time inventory in the 2006 upfront, prices are likely to go up (the upfront will start this May and The CW will start programming in September). Also, by combining only the best programs from the two networks, the average ratings of The CW will be higher, which will also mean more dollars. Furthermore, because many former WB and UPN affiliates, which will now become independents, they will have a lot of prime time to fill, CBS's Paramount Television and Warner Brothers Television will be able to sell more syndicated programming.

3. It makes sense in terms of content. The CW will be able to program 13 hours of prime time more effectively than 26 hours, and development costs can be invested in projects that have a higher probability of success (there aren't enough star-quality performers, directors, and concepts to make hits on six networks).

4. It makes sense in terms of strategy. There are two ways to win a race--run faster than your competitors or make your competitors run slower. Fox is on the ascendancy and some experts are predicting it might even take the number-one spot from CBS. The Tribune company owns 22.5 percent of The WB, which it is giving up in return for carrying The CW on many of its stations (and paying The CW's fees) and, thus leaving several Fox-owned stations, such as WWOR in New York, without a network.

Therefore, this move potentially hurts the Fox stations and, thus, the Fox network and is a distraction for the Fox stations. Roger Ailes is in the process of re-positioning the Fox owned-TV stations, and The CW can only be a distraction for him. Any time competitors can distract the Ailes juggernaut, it's a good strategic move.

Ailes and Fox are positioning the situation as an opportunity, which it probably is in the long run, but an opportunity can push other projects off the track somewhat. Also, it is common knowledge that the Fox stations' "sibling division 20th Century Fox Television is developing a large slate of English-language soap operas modeled after Spanish-language telenovelas. The soaps were originally intended to run later at night or in the early evening, but it is now likely that News Corp. will slap them in prime time for fall," according to the 1/26/06 Wall Street Journal. Slapping them up early may hurt these telenovelas.

Of the four reasons why CBS and Warner Brothers made the deal, I think number one (cut costs) and number four (hurting Fox) might have weighed heavier on Moonves' thinking than reasons number two and three.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:34 AM | Comments (1) | Print |

Ted Doyle at February 4, 2006 10:17 AM writes:

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January 26, 2006

SpotRunner

After he read my post, "Suspension of Disbelief About Google," my friend and colleague, Mike Wheeler, asked me, "What do you think about Spot Runner?" So I went to its Web site and took a look.

I had read about Spot Runner on several media news Web sites and blogs and in Richard Siklos's excellent article titled "This Time, the Revolution Will Be Televised," in the Sunday Business section of the January 22, issue of the New York Times. Here's what Siklos wrote about Spot Runner: "Spot Runner proposes a way to buy spot advertising on local cable systems for as little as $500 per television marketing campaign - making it competitive not only with the likes of Yahoo's offerings but also with local newspapers and the Yellow Pages and similar directories.

"Perhaps most important, it takes the impetus to produce ads off of local cable companies and puts it on any small business with a Web hookup. Mimicking the way local ads are sold by services like Yahoo's Overture or Google's AdWords, small-business owners can go to www.spotrunner.com, type in what they want to spend, whom they want to reach and what they want to say.

"Spot Runner acts as ad agency and media buyer: it has an inventory of commercial templates for 4,000 types of small businesses, each with several choices of off-the-shelf video clips, and it can place them into blocks of local cable time it controls."

The Spot Runner Web site is clean, functional, and self-explanatory. The home page offers "30 second primetime TV ads. Available in Central California" on ESPN for $44, Bravo for $18, and AMC for $13. Why is it emphasizing Central California if it's a national service? Oh, well. So I clicked on "Create a smart TV schedule" and went to a page where I could choose a location. I chose California and then San Diego, then the Greater San Diego Broadcast Area. Then, from the "Select an Industry" link, I chose Business and Professional Services, then Office Services, then Business Centers. Whew!

I finally got to choose between four commercials, which I could play with Quick Time or Windows Media Player. The ad labeled "Precision" had the following description: "We use the metaphor of synchornized swimming to express the beauty and grace of disperate elements comming together to produce quality work."

Because my good friend Jesse Kornbluth admonishes me to write a draft of my blogs in Word before I post them so I can check my spelling (I'm a terrible speller), I cut and pasted the "Precision" ad description into my Word draft and the misspelled words were underlined in red--it looked like Jesse had bled on it. Three of the 22 words in the description were misspelled: "synchornized", "disperate," and "comming." Enough said about a commercial called "Precision"--how ironic.

However, I don't think this silly carelessness is necessarily reflective of the worthiness of Spot Runner's concept or execution. The description was probably written in haste by California high school interns. I watched five commercials and they were well conceived and had good production values--certainly much better than most small business could afford or most local cable systems could produce. Also, the prices seemed reasonable and competitive with local radio rates, assuming the ESPN $44 (Mon-Sun 6:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., hardly primetime as Spot Runner claimed in its home page--it has to be more careful about raising potential advertisers' expectations), Bravo $18, and AMC $13 rates are representative.

Spot Runner seems like a good idea that should make it easier for small businesses to use and afford local cable television if Spot Runner keeps its pricing at $350 for creating and placing advertising (in addition to the cost of the schedule, on which I'll bet in makes a little money). I think this a more viable business model than that of dMarc Broadcasting, the radio company Google bought for $100 million last week (see my previous blog). In fact, if Google were as clever as it thinks it is, it should buy Spot Runner immediately as its entry vehicle into selling local television advertising.

However, buying Spot Runner would mean Google would have to abandon its avowed philosophy of selling only advertising that is measurable (selling on a direct-marketing, cost-per-click basis) and using a fixed-price selling model rather than the online auction it currently does. Spot Runner's ads are clearly branding ads, which television does better than any medium. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is probably mature and flexible enough to understand that broadcast, cable, and magazines need a different selling and pricing model than online keywords do, but I'm not sure than Page and Brin are that mature or that flexible. I suspect that they have the attitude, "We're really smart and really rich. We obviously know how to do it." I saw this same attitude from many people, especially the programming people, when I was at AOL from 1998 to early 2002.

But if Page and Brin really are smart, they will buy Spot Runner (which I'll bet a month's wages is what Spot Runner is positioning itself for) and buy it soon while they can buy it cheap, before Spot Runner corrects all of its spelling errors and raises its asking price.

Posted by Charles Warner at 04:02 PM | Comments (2) | Print |

Judd at January 29, 2006 03:44 PM writes:

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JNCatlett at January 26, 2006 10:47 PM writes:

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January 22, 2006

Suspension of Disbelief About Google

In the Sunday 1/22 New York Times Week in Review section, columnist Frank Rich's column is titled "Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito." Rich gets the term truthiness from Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report." Rich writes (not linked to because it's behind the Times' stupid TimesSelect firewall): "What's remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Oz" - FEMA's heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance - we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It's as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief."

I think too many people in the country are living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief about Google--they are drinking Google's Kool-Aid. Certainly Google is drinking its own Kool-Aid, as witnessed by its announcement this past week that it was buying dMarc Broadcasting, and is trying to pass on its hyped-up story line those blinded by Google's success.

A friend of mine, Bruce Braun, a VP at Bridge Sales & Marketing, Inc., a company that does, among other things, market validation studies for new or emerging technologies, wrote me the following e-mail. Bruce knows his stuff because he ran a direct marketing media buying company for two years and was also in the radio business for years. Here's Bruce's take on the Google-dMarc deal:

"For those of us who grew up in the radio business, Google's deal with dMarc presents a real puzzlement. What it has accomplished in online is really a unique phenomenon without any strong or direct connection to what we call traditional media. The ownership of a vast majority of radio stations in this country is concentrated among six companies, notably Clear Channel and CBS Radio (until recently Infinity). Most importantly, these companies control the majority of listenership and ad revenue in the top 100 markets. Does Google really think these group owners are going to allow Google to muscle in on their turf? If they are thinking that way, I predict a 'come to Jesus' experience for Google very soon.

DMarc is a barter shop that sells remnant inventory. The company touts generating revenue from all the unsold inventory on a station after the logs are closed each day. In turn, dMarc will help a station lease equipment via bartering of station inventory. Does anyone really think CBS or Clear Channel needs to do barter deals to pay off equipment leases? Maybe stations in Moosebreath, WY-type markets, but not anyone in the top 150 markets, except perhaps the most desperate lower-rated stations.

What I think Google does not understand is that the Clear Channels of the world beat the crap out of their station sales managers to make sure that every spot is sold every day, 24/7/365 at top rates. Everything in major-market radio sales management is about yield and maximizing it. Moreover, these radio stations want 100% of the revenue at maximum rates. Clear Channel and CBS did not achieve their success by brokering their inventory on low-rate deals or bartering it.

This dMarc deal is what Google Print was trying to do--buying a remnant page and then chopping it up into smaller ads for ad-budget- challenged businesses. People, Forbes, or Sports Illustrated do not play that game and never will. Funny, we don’t hear much about Google Print, probably because it is on its ass.

I wonder if the Googlers asked for a list of dMarc client stations and the spreadsheets showing the days and times all this “great” inventory actually ran. I’m betting small- to medium-market stations with low ratings and a ton of open overnight spots are the rule. WCBS is probably not on the dMarc station list.

When the accounting rules and IRS regulations changed in the 1970s requiring barter or trade deals to be treated the same way as cash sales were, barter became very scarce. Grossing up the values on both sides of a barter deal (merchandise, services, and station inventory) became a boat anchor to stations' bottom line. It was funny money versus selling your inventory for just plain cash.

This part of radio history is not going to repeat itself, no matter what visions of the future Google may have.

The basic law of advertising (reach as many eyeballs as you can) is absent from these sorts of deals. If you consider local retailers like a direct response client, they need to see the sales needle to move, even more than a major brand does. Google will probably get a flurry of early adopters, but six months after it launches this local radio effort, it will die for a lack of sufficient response.

My guess he pricing will be based on the old Dennis Holt-Western Media ROS pitch: 'Give me $10K and I’ll run 100 spots across these 30 stations at a low CPM. However, I won’t let you see the actual station invoices or specific days and times, just my invoice with the total number of spots on each station.' Caveat Emptor!

Not that we have never seen dumb clients before."

Kevin J. Delaney's page-one 1/18 Wall Street Journal article about the Google-dMarc deal was not quite as cynical as Bruce Braun's view, but Delaney did seem somewhat skeptical--or at least not as rhapsodic as some online news stories and blogs I read. For example, Delaney wrote that, "Advertising executives played down the idea that Google's moves so far could have a big impact on the media-buying business."

Erik Sass on MediaDailyNews.com on 1/18 quoted dMarc's CEO Chad Steelberg, who forecast "future cooperation with HD Ibiquity, which is now rolling out digital radio."

Abbey Klaassen of AdeAge.com wrote on 1/18 that Google expanded into radio "to create a 500-station media network that lets advertisers buy and insert radio advertising directly," and quoted a Google executive who said "it is a tremendous value add to the whole industry" and the dMarc CEO who said the deal is "not a zero-sum game" but will bring a new advertising platform to radio. Less skepticism in this online article.

Saul Hansell's 1/18 Business Day page-one story (below the fold) in the New York Times was less skeptical than Delaney's WSJ story, but it still raised some questions about the viability of Google's entry into online selling of radio advertising. However, Hansell did write that "Advertising executives played down the idea that Google's moves so far could have a big impact on the media-buying business."

Let's look behind the hype and see what's happening. First, it is news that Google paid $100 million for a radio ad-insertion company, but it's not a $1.136 billion deal because, as John Battelle points out in his excellent blog SearchBlog of 1/18, titled "Google's Radio Play," it can't pay out $1.2 eventually and it is more of a desperation play by Google that looks for (and hypes) growth, which are sure "signs of a maturing business."

Most the news stories about the deal indicated that Google wasn't talking about how it would price and implement selling radio spots. Why? Because it's obvious that they haven't figured it out yet. Thus, Google bought dMarc on the come so it could have something to announce, not because there is a huge business there.

Some of the things that Google will find are: First, this is not a new business model. Google touts the online advertising system it employs now as measureable. Online that means advertisers can measure results by how many clicks their search ads receive. If Google plans to make radio measureable, what the deal with dMarc amounts to is a per-inquiry (PI) advertising deal, and PI had been around for decades. You've seen the commercials on cable television for "The Greatest Country Music Hits of All Time," well, they are PI ads--the sponsor pays only when it sells an album and remits a percentage of the sale to the cable channel. Cable systems and television stations put this type of direct-response advertising in unsold commercial inventory. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times use direct-response advertising to sell subscriptions.

PI, or direct response, advertising has not been a major revenue source for cable and broadcasting because it runs in low-rated postions and doesn't elicit much response and, therefore, doesn't produce much revenue. Viewers get burned out pretty quickly by seeing too many PI ads and after a week or two virtually no one responds. Also, radio, like television, commercials are interruptive--people can't avoid them unless they go to the bathroom or TiVo fast-forward through them. On radio, programmers hate commercials because people can easily switch stations and, unlike television, if there are no commercials, stations can play more music or talk-show hosts can talk more and, thus, keep audiences listening. Therefore, programmers would rather not have direct-response commericals and try to limit them to low audience times such as overnight where the response will be minimal.

Second, Google's Vickery auction model for selling its AdWords seach ads is the wrong model for selling radio advertising. Google's auction is good for Google because it raises the price of its ads. In the Vickery model, bidders bid up the cost-per-click (CPC) for a keyword and winning bidders doesn't pay their winning bid, they pay what the second highest bidder pays. This bidding method tends to bid up prices. Using an auction method for selling radio ads is not new. There is a Web site that has been selling remnant (last-minute unused) radio inventory for several years--Bid4Spots.com.

Eric Sass on MediaDailyNews.com, writes, "Dave Newmark of Bid4Spots, an online radio ad sales agency that uses a just-in-time reverse-auction model, expressed skepticism that Google's traditional auction model would succeed in the face of new models that drive prices down.

'The Google model of bidding the price up has not worked in the past for radio,' Newmark recalled. 'Advertisers don't really want to bid something up, so there's no motivation on their part. By contrast, 'A reverse-auction model has one buyer, the advertiser, for multiple sellers--the stations--who bid the price down,' Newmark explained. 'The reverse-auction model works so well because at this point radio stations have nothing to lose by lowering their rates dramatically. As an entity that is a single seller with multiple buyers, however, Google is never going to be able to offer that kind of market-driven efficiency.' I agree with Bid4Spots' CEO because agencies and advertisers are not interested in bidding up the price of unused radio inventory.

Third, Google has a technology solution to vetting its advertisers so that indecent words and porn doesn't appear on its search results (remember Google's espoused rule of "do no harm"). At this time, and probably for quite a while, there is no technology I know of that can monitor radio audio advertsing, especially for the type of last-minute insertions Google and dMarc are proposing. A person is going to have to listen to the audio of a commercial to determine if it's acceptable. If stations don't do this type of monitoring, pornographers and the indecency-conscious FCC will have a field day.

Therefore, I belive that those who write about the media and advertising, Wall Steet, and the public ought to get out of their permanent state of suspension of disbelief, as Frank Rich calls it, about Google and, especially, about Google's purchase of dMarc Broadcasting.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

January 16, 2006

Google Gets Whacked

Google was whacked recently by two writers--take your pick of writers or reasons for the whacking.

Jon Fine, one of the country's best writers on the media in my view, has an article in the current (January 23) issue of BusinessWeek titled "Putting The Screws To Google: How Old Media could take back its share of search's ad bounty." Fine writes "...picture this: Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, in an odd tableau of unity, join together and say: 'We are the founding members of the Content Consortium. Next month we launch our free, searchable Web site, which no outside search engines can access.' (A simple bit of code is all it takes to bar all or some major search engines from accessing a site.) 'From now on we'll make our stuff available and sell ads around it and the searches for it, but only on our terms. Who else wants to join us? Membership's free.'"

Fine asks the right question, "Why have major media companies allowed Google to search their content and make money on it and not share that money with the content creators?" I don't know if major content providers will have the guts to form a consortium, as Fine suggests, but I do believe that plenty of them are upset and will try to find a way to limit Google's access to their content and they will try to monitize their own content.

I think 2006 will be the year that Google's growth will slow down. Perhaps Google has matured past its adolescent stage and reached maturity--still big, to be sure, but little more growth left.

Another writer, the infamous Henry Blodget, former Wall Steet Internet analyst, who now has a blog titled the Internet Outsider on which he posted on January 10, "No one else is writing this piece, so it will have to be me. I should say upfront that I'm not predicting that this will happen (yet), and I'm certainly not making a recommendation. I'm just laying out a scenario that could kneecap Google and take its stock back to, say, $100 a share."

Blodget makes a detailed and credible case that Google's stock is overpriced and shows how it could easily decline to $100 a share from its current stratospheric price of $466 (January 16).

Are these writers' predictions credible or plausible, or is it just another bash-the-big-guy reaction such as what happened when Microsoft became so dominant? I think it's a combination of the two. I believe that Internet-savvy people are beginning to worry about Google dominating the Internet like Microsoft did and are fighting now to cut Google down by encouraging competition, which Yahoo and Microsoft are glad to provide, especially after Google's purchase of five percent of AOL to keep Mcrosoft from getting AOL's search traffic.

I also believe that Google's stock has soared more because of the herd mentality that afflicts Wall Street than because of real value. This mentality creates bubbles and bubbles are bound to burst sooner or later.

Therefore, if I handled my own investments, which I am not dumb enough to do, I would short Google. But I wouldn't bet a great deal of money on shorting Google stock, maybe just one percent of my total investments, and just to do my little part in seeing Google's stock go down, I've put Yahoo search on my toolbar and have been using it. I find I like Yahoo's results better than Google's. Maybe that's another reason to short Google's stock.

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:34 PM | Comments (2) | Print |

Roland at January 21, 2006 11:29 PM writes:

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Half Sigma at January 19, 2006 09:38 PM writes:

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January 10, 2006

Howard Stern and Mel Karmazin

Yesterday, January 9, 2006 was the first day of the rest of Howard Stern's satellite life, and I don't wish him well for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm sick of reading about Stern in the newspapers, in online news, and in blogs. Enough already. Second, I don't like Howard Stern or his radio program. He is outrageously self-absorbed and an outrageous, but very clever, self-promoter, whose idea of a good time and of good humor is to tell flatulence jokes. And he's where the flatulence comes from--he's an asshole.

But even Howard is often more credible and less outrageous than his boss, Mel Karmazin, who gave a speech to the Citigroup Media and Telecommunications Conference in Phoenix just hours after Stern did his debut show. Karmazin is CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, Stern's new home, and he told the gathered analysts that Sirius would be "a $600 million advertising market by the end of 2006," according to Advertising Age's online Media Works news service.

What has Karmazin been smoking? A $600 million dollar advertising market? More ad revenue than the number-one advertising revenue producing magazine, People? I'm sure he meant that Sirius would have $600 million in total revenue in 2006, including subscription revenue and ad revenue from all of its channels that carry commercials. Sirius might do $600 million in total revenue. Let's look at the numbers.

If Sirius has 3.3 million average monthly subscribers during 2006 (a conservative number) who pay $12.95 a month (we'll make it $13 so the math is easier), that would bring in $514.8 million in subscription fees, leaving $85.2 million for ad revenue. Divide that $85.2 million by 52 weeks and you get $1,638,461 a week that Sirius has to generate in ad revenue.

Could Stern alone generate $1.638 million a week? If he's on five days a week, that's $327,692 a day and if he's on for four hours, that's $81,932 an hour he has to generate. If Stern runs 12 spots an hour, that's $6,826 a spot, assuming he's sold out. If we also assume that all 3.3 million Sirius subscribers listen to Howard Stern (and he certainly believes they do), then the cost-per-thousand (CPM) for a $6,826 spot would be $2.07, which is quite good. If only half of the 3.3 million subscribers listen, the CPM would be $4.14, and if only 25% of all Sirius subscribers listen, that would be a potential CPM of $8.28, which is reasonable, especially if Howard reads the commercial.

If I were an advertiser trying to reach a male 18-34 year old audience that laughs at fart jokes and likes to hear Howard talking with a stripper sitting in his lap, would I pay an $8 CPM for Howard? Yes, more than likely.

So, I guess Karmazin has been smoking expensive cigars as he looks forward, reasonably, to a $600 million year, and I might advertise on Howard Stern's show but never be able to stand to hear my commercial.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:23 PM | Comments (3) | Print |

Judd at January 14, 2006 04:35 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at January 11, 2006 12:30 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at January 11, 2006 12:23 PM writes:

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January 09, 2006

When Will They Stop Bothering Us With Web TV Already!

The following was written by Adam Broitman of Morpheus Media, an interactive advertising agency, where Adam is a senior media strategist. He has some very interesting and timely observations about the interactive medium and its future.

"With congress approving a legislature that states that all television must switch from analog to digital by the year 2009 (http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/technology/pluggedin_digitaltv/?cnn=yes) it is not wonder that the digital world has been rolling out television products en masse. Talk of IPTV (Internet protocol television) has long been a dream of Web gurus everywhere and it is my estimation that, although 2006 will not see Internet television reach critical mass, it will be the beginning of the inevitable media convergence that will put the PC at the center of America's home entertainment systems.

Leading chip manufacturer Intel, has begun the process of integrating the PC into home entertainment systems with the recent release of Intel Viiv Technology (http://www.intel.com/products/viiv/index.htm).

Leading internet portals are also making a push to support this new platform. AOL recently made a deal with Intel that will foster this nascent technology (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=38189) and Google and Yahoo will both be producing content that is not solely to be viewed online (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=38248&Nid=17597&p=239862).

What does that mean for the interactive media planner?

My thoughts are that the field that we currently work in will continue to flourish. As more and more interactive media becomes available, there will be more opportunity to reach audiences in a relevant manner. Contextually relevant, endemic content areas will become more prevalent and interactive advertising will continue to take the place of the arcane methods of the "old Madison Avenue." The key will be to stay abreast of movement in the interactive media world. My feeling is that, if you think your precious knowledge of the current search landscape will last you for the rest of your career, you have another thing coming. Media consumption habits are changing very fast, are you?"

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Soros Should Buy CNN

Jesse Kornbluth writes in a blog entry on the Huffington Post that George Soros should buy CNN. He writes it much better than I ever could, so I recommend that you read "Open Letter to George Soros: Buy CNN."

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:12 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at January 11, 2006 12:40 PM writes:

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January 07, 2006

We Should Demand More

Guest blogger Neil Derrough, former president of the CBS Television Stations Division, writes:

Watching what’s going on with news reporting today often astounds me. The list of recent grievances committed by major news organizations should be of concern to all of us. Fabricated news stories have challenged the reputations of some of the most respected newsrooms. Questionable anonymous sources have become a recurring concern. All this has contributed to an awareness of newsgathering practices that usually goes un-noticed. Of all of the blunders, reporting rumor as fact is the most troubling to me.

The reporting of the aftermath of Katrina tragedy is an example of rumors driving news coverage. The reported rapes and murders in the Superdome, reporting about dead bodies found in a freezer and other rumors reported as fact drove broadcast and print coverage for days.

The most recent reporting of 12 miners surviving the mine explosion dramatically reinforces the practice of substituting rumor for fact. The 24-hour cable news channels that are driving much of this frenzy couldn’t resist going live with nothing more than a rumor about the miners survival. Essential journalistic standards were completely ignored. There was no excuse for newspapers to have banner headlines trumpeting the survival. Newspapers don’t have the immediacy concerns that exist with live reporting. There was time to find out if there was an authorized source for what they published. Competitive interests ruled.

Not getting caught up in the excitement of unverified information is one of the critical things expected from reporters. Where were the serious questions about the authenticity of the information? Where were the editors? Where were the senior news executives from NBC, CNN, Fox and the many newspapers? Why weren’t they demanding substantiation?

At a time when so many of our institutions are being questioned about their integrity we need to have confidence in the information we are getting from our news sources. I hope these incidents prompt a careful review of current practices. I also hope that the missing executive oversight is present to demand meaningful review and operational changes to keep this kind of thing from happening again.

We should all demand it.

Posted by Charles Warner at 01:39 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

January 05, 2006

Two Essential Perspectives

If you are interested, as I am, in the challenges that face the newspaper industry in general and the New York Times in particular, then there are two recent articles you should read that provide great insight from two different, but essential, perspectives: Ken Auletta's article, "The Inheritance," in the December 12 issue of the New Yorker and Seth Mnookin's article, "Unreliable Sources," in the December issue of Vanity Fair.

Auletta is the dean of American writers about the media--no one has the pedigree and consistently intelligent, insightful, and thorough body of work as Auletta does. Mnookin is relatively new to the media writing scene, but his book Hard News about the crisis at the New York Times as a result of the Jason Blair disaster and the rein and subsequent firing of executive editor Howell Raines received excellent reviews and has catapulted him to the stratosphere of media writers, in my view.

Both Auletta and Mnookin place much of the blame for the Times' recent troubles squarely on the shoulders of the Times' CEO, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., but each writer comes to his conclusion from a different perspective. Auletta writes from a financial, boardroom, newspaper industry perspective and focuses more on Sulzberger--his background, early career at the Times, and his management and leadership style--using the context of the recent Judith Miller brouhaha as a springboard for his analysis of Sulzberger's problems and style. Mnookin writes from a reporter's, Times newsroom perspective and focuses more on the inside reaction to Sulzberger's leadership (or lack of it), using the Judith Miller brouhaha as his springboard, too.

I liked Aulatta's article because he related the Times' problems to the challenges facing the newspaper industry. He has a deep understanding of Sulzberger's background, motivations, and shortcomings. Also, because of his reputation and credibility, Auletta had access to Times' board members, Sulzberger, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, and to Judith Miller, all of whom he interviewed for his article. The biggest problem with Auletta's piece was that he had to go easy on Miller and Keller because, as he disclosed in the article, his wife is a literary agent who represents both Judith Miller and Bill Keller. So he had to be relatively gentle on them, and he was. Auletta's article reflected the tone of the New Yorker--intelligent, in-depth, refined, reserved, and high-toned.

I liked Mnookin's article because he didn't go easy on either Miller or Keller, particularly Miller. Sulzberger, Keller, and Miller wouldn't sit for interviews with Mnookin like they did for Auletta, but Mnookin has excellent anonymous sources inside the Times newsroom, who unloaded. Readers got much more of a sense of how the reporters in the newsroom felt about Sulzberger and, especially, about Miller. Mnookin reported that Miller had a "reputation for sleeping with her sources." He must have had several unimpeachable sources in order to get that comment past the Vanity Fair lawyers, much to the delight of Vanity Fair's editor, I'm sure. Mnookin's article reflected the tone of Vanity Fair--smart, bitchy, insightful, edgy, and fun to read.

Auletta would never have stooped to pass on that gossipy item and put his wife in the position of having to choose between having lucrative clients or being married to him. In the New York high-octane, highly-competitive media and literary stratosphere, it's best to avoid those types of dilemmas in an environment in which money is the ultimate bond.

Mnookin ends his article with an expression of hope from the newsroom that someone other than Sulzberger will lead the Times in the future. Auletta ends his article with a more realistic assessment from the boardroom that Sulzberger's rein will continue because the family controls the voting stock of the company and the family has closed ranks in support of Sulzberger. Auletta quotes Gay Talese, who wrote the definitive history of the Times in his book The Kingdom and the Power, as saying, "you get a bad king once in a while." I think this is the point that both Auletta and Mnookin make coming at the situation from different, but essential, perspectives.

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:58 PM | Comments (0) | Print |