Media Curmudgeon

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December 29, 2006

YouTube and Art

My good friend, Bruce Braun, sent me Mark Cuban’s blog about YouTube, titled “Ripping on Gootube” at http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/12/27/ripping-on-gootube-again2/. Cuban makes some salient points about YouTube’s problems involving copyrights. He claims that many copyright holders of video material are asking that the content be removed rather than sign license agreements and pay anything. Cuban’s criticism focuses on the business and legal entanglements Google’s YouTube faces.

I had lunch yesterday with a young woman who is finishing her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Michigan. We had a great time discussing art and its importance to our culture. I talked about how, when I ran for the School Board in Columbia, MO, that one of the planks in my platform was a proposal for increased funding of the arts in the schools. I remember saying that “art is the soul of our society and must be encouraged.” We agreed that art was not only vital for the health of a society and that art not only reflected the political and cultural philosophy of the times but also impacted culture—that artists were, in a sense, clairvoyant and led the culture, introduced it to new ideas and pushed the boundaries of understanding.

Discussing YouTube from a business and legal perspective is interesting; however, I believe that looking at the popular website from an art perspective is more meaningful. What impact do the videos on YouTube have on the culture and artistic sensibility of America? Are senseless, silly, soft-porn, prurient videos reinforcing a moronic, kitschy, anti-art culture of celebrity gawking and of mindless curiosity? What impact do the videos on YouTube have on the creative abilities and sensibilities of American youth, or even on the general population? YouTube is tasteless chewing gum that debases our culture, I believe.

Do people have a right to view this nonsense? Of course they do. Just like people have the right to watch “American Idol” or other senseless TV shows that debase our culture or to go to ever-more violent movies such as “Apocalypto.” I just wish that movies theaters would hand out free passes to art museums when people bought tickets to violent or stupid movies. That way, it might encourage people to view art, to get another perspective.

YouTube might occasionally put up a video of an art lecture or MySpace might occasionally feature a symphony in its music section. In other words, some of these websites might develop a social, artistic conscience. Not that these gestures will have much impact, but you never know. At least it’s worth a try, if just to salve the conscience of the owners and investors, to say nothing about making the Media Curmudgeon happy.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

December 25, 2006

Merry Christmas

I don't care what anyone says, especially the PC police. Therefore, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! And thank you for letting me send you my ramblings.

Posted by Charles Warner at 03:16 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Karen at December 25, 2006 04:30 PM writes:

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December 22, 2006

Egos Sink Air America Radio

I was sorry to read that Air America Radio was having trouble in the NY Times December 18, article by Elizabeth Jensen and Lia Miller with the headline "After Bankruptcy Filing, Recrimminations Fly at Air America." Unfortunately, my reaction was, "so what?"

When Air America Radio first went on the air, it got a lot of great initial ink and even a PBS documentary. It should have succeeded. I used to listen. I loved Al Franken and how he used to brilliantly bash George Bush and Rush Limbaugh, whom he seemed to hate as much as I did. I couldn't listen to the rest of the screaming liberal talk-show hosts, even Randi Rhodes, who had pretty fair ratings, but who literally screamed and interrupted too much.

But, as the NY Times story detailed, the liberal network never had a viabale business plan and was never run by radio professionals, especially pros who knew how to sell advertising. Instead, a string of rich liberal egomaniacs seeking power and fame started fighting over control. The funny and well-informed Al Franken might leave and run for the senate, which will sink the network even lower, if that's possible.

What Air America Radio needs is some managers from the porn/adult industry to take over and run the network. I have a good pal who used to be in the media and who now runs a business that deals with the porn/adult industry in a peripheral way. He tells me that the porn/adult people are the nicest folks in the world. They have no agenda except making a lot of money--no egos, no power trips. That's what Air America Radio needs, someone smart and focused on making a lot of money and with no ego and no political agenda.

Can't you see the limosine liberals who listen to Air America and who are fighting over its carcass throwing a fit if it was run by a porn/adult executive? They'd vomit, as though the network had been taken over by neo-conservatives. So Air American Radio will not be saved and will sink for good. The saddest thing about the whole thing is, "so what?" Air America, except for Franken, is unlistenable, not entertaining. It's not a hit, so who cares?

Posted by Charles Warner at 03:47 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

December 17, 2006

Google's Radio Plans

On Thursday, December 14, the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section had a lead story by Kevin Delaney headlined "Google Tests New Ad Offerings--but Will Advertisers Follow?" The simple answer is "no."

The story, which was thorough and well written, as usual for the WSJ, detailed how Google had an extravagent party for major advertising executives from large Madison Avenue agengies and for advertisers and introduced its new radio advertising auction and support system. The support system included "a directory of specialists who can help advertisers create spots, writing scripts and recording and delivering the audio files." It also detailed how Google is "building an updated Web-based ad-buying system they want to use, something Google is working on."

The article goes on to claim, "Some bigger advertisers especially like the idea that Google can help them track the effectiveness of not only ads on the Web but in traditional media. At the meeting last month, executives presented Google Trends, a service that allows users to view the relative volume of queries for a given keywords consumers are searching for, such as 'Ninetendo,' over time."

In other words, Google is trying to disintermediate traditional advertising agencies and salespeople--put them out of business. I, for one, don't think Google will be successful. Large agencies will listen an be polite and eat the nice food and big cookies with clients' logos baked on them, but they won't buy Google's radio product in meaningful amounts.

How do ad agencies make their money (in some cases, a lot of money)? They create and place advertising. To clients, agencies pitch: 1) their creative ability--a reel of TV commercials is their biggest selling tool, 2) their marketing ability, and 2) their ability to plan and place an integrated media strategy. Measurable effectiveness is rarely mentioned.

"How do you measure a fabulous creative idea that propells a brand to the top?", they will say. Agencies don't want to be measured (in spite of what they say), because that turns creativity into a numbers game that clean-shaven, tie-wearing CPAs, MBAs, and CFOs can play much better than the bearded, open-collered, sloppy, chaotic creative types can. If effectiveness is measured by clicks and short-term sales, agencies are in trouble and they know it, so they will smile and mutter encouraging words, but never a major radio media buy will they make.

One of radio's traditional problems has been that young, hot-shot creative types make their big money and reputations by writing television commercials, not radio commercials. They won't write radio spots. Another problem for radio has been that the adminisrative costs of planning buying radio has been so unprofitable, that agencies don't want to bother with it. Therefore, Google's radio efforts will be successful with small spenders, like their AdWords search ads have been sucessful with small and mid-range advertisers, but will not be successful with the big money.

Television, especially terrestial network TV is where the profit is for large agencies, and that's where they will stay for as long as possible. Sorry Google, nice try. Oh, by the way, your Google Trends product is awesome.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

December 12, 2006

Bill Grimes Comments on Sirius and XM

Bill Grimes writes:

Each company has another choice instead of waiting for an unlikely third participant to enter the market. If two cannot profit in an industry how can three? And that choice for either, or actually both, is to declare bankruptcy. Both are seemingly headed inexorably in that direction if you look at their financial operating performances and the huge amount of investment capital and the millions in equity and debt that have been used by customer-acquisition plans (advertising).

Also, churn is hurting each company as their CEOs spend millions to "steal" the others' subscribers. So why would any investor want to make more money available to two management teams that have recklessly spent other investors money with no return in sight and with no reason to believe that profitability is anywhere in sight.

Whichever company goes under first, the remaining one will line up at the court to buy their assets at a dime, or less, on the dollar, and that survivor will have a successful business, with no competition. You then must say, "What the FCC is now using as a reason to preclude the two from merging today will be forgotten when the public faces the prospect of no survivor." Or, if Dr. John Malone, who is acquiring DirectTV from Rupert Murdoch, steps up as the people's and his shareholder's hero by providing a new and vastly improved audio product, thus evoking public comments from ex-Sirius and XM subscribers, "What was the name of that service we had back in 2006?"

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:06 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

Government Interference

How's this for being a dilemma: Mel Karmazin of Sirius Satellite Radio has been hinting of a possible merger with rival XM Satellite Radio, and it seems like a combination would make sense. But the U.S. government won't let them merge because a law says that there must be two competing satellite radio companies. So, until someone is stupid enough to rent satellite space and start a third satellite radio company, Sirius and XM must stay apart, no matter how much money they lose.

In other words, the government law is wrong; it's unnecessary interference in business matters. The recent announcements of both Sirius and XM indicated that growth of subscribers is slowing and that their previous forecasts were too rosy. In other words, satellite radio is not a hit.

Why not? For the same reason the record companies are crying their woes and finding it harder and harder to make money--iPods. When I take my daily walk around the birdal path in Central Park, it seems like every third person has an iPod plugged into their ears. I see no one with a portable satellite radio antenna and ear phones. I tried it once--wandering around New York listening to an XM portable radio with a special, small antenna attached to my clothes. The reception wasn't too good and I had to continually adjust the antenna. The choices of over 150 channels confused me with meaningless, silly music channel names. I gave up listening to a portable satellite radio gladly.

I now listen to "On the Media" and "The Brian Lehrer Show" podcasts, books, and music on my iPod. I realize that this is an unscientific and worthless convenience sample of one, but I do believe it is an example of why an iPod is a much better alternative than a satellite radio and might be indicative of the trouble the two companies are having.

Their recent forecasts were dire and the stock prices of the two companies are in the tank. Sirius and XM should merge to save money by combining back-end operations, do away with senseless program channel duplication, save money on advertising, and concentrate on a receiver technology that gets a single service. But the government won't let them merge, and even if the government would let them combine, the egos of the CEOs of the two companies would probably get in the way.

That's what happens when you get two companies competing violently and nastily--they begin to hate each other for no good reason, sort of like the tribal cival wars in the Middle East. The government can't solve that problem, and it is causing a satellite radio problem. I think satellite radio might last as long as Iraq might last as a unified country.

Posted by Charles Warner at 06:02 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

December 09, 2006

Paul Talbot Responds to "It's Time"

Paul Talbot writes:

"This begs the question "Why hasn't it always been time?"
Or at least time in our post-nineteenth amendment America?

Imagine the fortunes of the Republican party had the political trajectory of Margaret Chase Smith, a talented and moderate Republican Senator, followed a different course in the sixties.

Perhaps we really wouldn't have had Dick Nixon to kick around any more.

And Clare Boothe Luce? Most American men would have gladly slept with her... and perhaps a sizable number would have seen fit to vote for her.

These two women, and scores more, remind us that it may not be prudent to annoint Hillary Clinton as a political trailblazer, but rather simply to acknowledge her present, and fortunate, position on a political trail so arduously blazed by others.

Hillary and her handlers probably understand the behavior of the electorate may be influenced more by the quality of the candidate than the temper of the times.

I wish I could steal Lloyd Bentsen's line and tell Senator Clinton 'I knew Margaret Chase Smith, and you're no Senator Smith.'"

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:23 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

It's Time

Julia and I went to a party last night given by fly-fishing aficionados, Alan and Nancy Zakon, and met Sarah Low, a female fly-fishing guide I had used a couple of years ago. While talking to Sarah and her business partner, Karen Kaplan, I mentioned that I was going to write a blog about the fact that it’s time for the country to have a woman as president, this year of the woman in politics, and found out she comes from a political family in Rhode Island. I urged her to run for political office because I said she’d be a shoo in—the country is ready to vote for women in politics!

My point was that ordinary U. S. citizens are ready to vote for a woman for president because as a country we are ready for cooperation and compromise, and a woman president couldn’t possibly screw up the country any worse than a bunch of old white men have in the last couple of years. I said I know a couple of people who have worked with and for Hilary Clinton and that she is an exceptionally bright woman, and one that is certainly going to try to run for president; however, I don’t think she’s electable—too much baggage, too many people who hate her, and because she waffled on Iraq and other things. If not Hilary, who then?

On the Democratic side, I think because Hilary has amassed so much money, has such a lead, and has the greatest political campaigner and strategist in recent history as her advisor and husband, that no woman can snatch the nomination from her. That leaves the job to the hated (according to the recent elections) Republicans to get a woman elected. Certainly not Condi Rice who is tainted now as a Bush loyalist. How about Christie Whitman, a strong environmentalist and an independent thinker who quit the Bush cabinet as director of the EPA because she disagreed with the Bush anti-environment policies and neglect? She seems to me to be the only Republican woman with credibility, plus she’s smart and experienced (as much experience as Bush as an ex-governor).

A Republican ticket of Christie Whitman and John McCain (he’s so desperate, he’d probably take #2) could possible beat Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama (he’s also so desperate, it seems, that he’d probably take #2).

At any rate, I urge Sarah Low to run for office, but not Christi Whitman—she might win, even though I do think it’s high time for a female president.

It’s Time, Part II

If it’s time for a female president of the United States, it’s time for a woman CEO of one of the big media giants. I’m getting tired of Murdoch being so smart and building up a media behemoth for his younger son to take over (the older son quit in disgust). Redstone will never give CBS to his daughter, Parsons has anointed Jeff Bewkes (who seems to have anointed Randy Falco) as his replacement, Iger is too young and probably too timid to give Disney over to a woman, although Meg Whitman interviewed for the job and would have been a good choice, and Brin and Page are too young and too rich to leave Google. That leaves Yahoo, which this week announced Sue Decker would become #2 and who the NY Times touted in a puff piece indicated would succeed current CEO Terry Semel when and if the board fires him or he retires (it looks like a race to see which comes first). Decker would be another female to head a major media company, if you consider eBay an entertainment company, which I don’t, and it’s about time, I think.

Some women have failed at big companies (Carly Fiorina at HP), but I believe the macho media world could use a woman’s touch, and, of course, I don’t mean drapes on the windows or tea and cookies; I mean cooperation, humanness, and compromise (unlike Martha Stewart). So lets’ hope both Microsoft’s Joanne Bradford and Yahoo’s Sue Decker get promoted and become CEOs of their respective companies. The media needs it.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:59 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

December 06, 2006

‘Tis the Season for Predictions, Tra La La

Robert Coen, the world’s leading media forecasting guru, gave out his numbers Monday, December 4, 2006, at USB’s annual forecast/prediction meeting. What most forecasters predicted was a 2007 that would show slower growth in media spending than 2006 did—pretty safe in that 2007 is neither an election nor an Olympics year. Contrarily, Coen predicted that many marketers would increase ad budgets as they “start turning their attention back to long-term communications” from cost cutting, according to Stuart Elliott in Tuesday, December 5th’s NY Times (page C3).

Coen, a senior vice president and forecasting director at Universal McCann, part of the Interpublic Group, predicted the four largest television networks would increase only 3 percent in 2006. Coen predicted that local media would be the hardest hit because “consolidations are killing things locally.” Department stores, pharmacies, and hardware chains are consolidating and hurting local dollars, it seems. Coen predicts local radio will increase only 1.5 percent and newspapers will increase only 2 percent, well below the 4.8 percent increase he predicts for total ad spending in 2007 over 2006.

My guess is that Coen is not contradicting himself by predicting that marketers would increase ad budgets and predicting that local media would show slow growth. It means that the large national advertisers’ increases will offset the cut-backs in ad spending locally, although, the NY Times’ Stuart Elliott didn’t say so in his fact-jumbled article.

I have found that in the past Jack Myers of the Jack Myers Media Business Report has been fairly accurate in his annual media forecasts, especially about the Internet. Myers, I think, is more realistic for newspapers than Coen, too. Myers predicts that newspapers will show only a 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) growth in ad revenue for 2007. I guess he doesn’t have much faith that Yahoo or Google, which recently announced partnerships with major newspaper chains, will have much impact, which I agree with.

Myers also predicts that “Local & National Spot TV” will be up 9 percent, a figure that I think is too high. He predicts “Terrestial Radio” will be up 2 percent and that “Satellite Radio” will be up 160 percent from $45 million to $117 million. This is a little high, I think, especially after Mel Karmazin announced the same day, according to a headline in the Wall Street Journal, “Sirius Cuts Subscriber Outlook as Sales Pace Slows” (page B3). If Sirius and XM’s subscriber pace slows, then an advertising slowdown will follow, because advertising follows audiences.

There is one thing every prognosticator agrees on (to varying degrees ranging from 25 to 30 percent) that Internet advertising will increase dramatically. Of, course I agree. In fact, I think advertisers, particularly traditional print advertisers, will discover the elephant in the room—that large, especially full-page ads, in newspapers don’t work well and are a waste of money. They will switch faster than expected to the Internet.

As long as we’re smoking something that smells funny and making predictions, I predict that MySpace will soon pass Yahoo as the number-one website, and that I won’t get kissed, no matter how much mistletoe I hang up.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:44 PM | Comments (0) | Print |