Media Curmudgeon

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March 31, 2007

Stern Is Desperate

Howard Stern, the bad-boy hope of satellite radio, is getting more desperate than ever to get attention. Edward Wyatt reported in a NY Times story today, headlined “Howard Stern Tries to Kill ‘American Idol’ With Kindness for a Weak Link,” “for the last two weeks, Mr. Stern has been promoting a Web site created by a 24-year-old ‘American Idol’ fan that encourages people to support the worst performer on the popular talent show.” It makes perfect sense—the worst performer in radio touts the worst performer in television.

Stern’s sick, attention-grabbing stunt spotlights a list of ills that are affecting our society, our youth, our country, the media, and, of course Howard Stern. It reflects a malady afflicting our society because it highlights our obsession with the trite, the mundane, and the worst, the basest our society has to offer—a fascination with the gutter.

Stern is urging his like-minded listeners to go to a website, votefortheworst.com, and vote for Sanjaya Malakar, an “off-key, lyric-fumbling, elaborately coiffed teenager” who is a contestant on Fox’s top-rated “American Idol.” Why is Stern urging the youth of America to do this? “American Idol” fans blast votefortheworst.com in posts on the site that accuse it of ruining the “Idol” by voting for someone who is obviously awful or of ridiculing Malakar and being racist (he’s Indian-American).

Stern is a self-loathing neurotic who is so desperate for attention that he’d rather have insults than invisibility. In fact, he probably prefers insults to compliments because these poisonous arrows reinforce his low, gutter-level image of himself, which might explain why Malakar is thriving on the attention, too. Plus, it might be why this type of self-loathing appeals to some vulnerable, rebellious teenagers who are desperately trying to gain attention and approval—the same motivation that compels them to put unflattering pictures and videos of themselves on MySpace and YouTube. “Look at me, pay attention to me! I want to be a celebrity and I’ll do anything to get noticed without having to practice or be good at anything!” Our instant-gratification culture now translates into, “I want celebrity now!”

Our country seems to be in a state of self-loathing, too, and doesn’t want to be reminded of the disastrous mistakes it made in re-electing the lying, corrupt Bush and Republicans and pursuing a disastrous war in Iraq, torturing unindicted suspects, and underfunding and forgetting about wounded veterans. No wonder Americans, especially America’s young, want to escape, want diversion from reality. If the diversion were about beauty and artistic excellence, it might remind the rebellious, the uninformed, the untalented, and the self-loathing of their devastating inadequacy. Better to think about Britney Spears’ bald head or beaver or Nicole Smith’s big, cold dead boobs than how we could have better invested $1.2 trillion dollars than on the Iraq war.

The media, especially the almost bankrupt Sirius Radio, can’t make any money appealing to young people’s tastes for uplifting content (young people defined as 18-34, many advertisers’ most desired demographic). Also, the media has a notorious bandwagon mentality, so everyone is now hopping on the “American Idol” cart, including the creatively arid Stern. Stern is desperate to increase his audience because after an initial spurt in subscriptions to Sirius, its growth has leveled off. The huge money Sirius spent on Stern in salary and bonuses have not translated into profits and Stern knows it, so he’s got to do something to get attention and bring in listeners.

Although Howard Stern is by far the biggest star in satellite radio, Sirius won’t release any ratings information on Stern because it’s afraid advertisers might start paying attention to the man behind the curtain and realize that the supposed wizard is a fraud—he doesn’t have as many listeners as people perceive and many listeners are defecting the subscription service either because they are going to much more satisfying and free Internet radio or are growing up—and in maturity leave youth and Stern behind.

I think that Stern’s audience consists of people (mostly men) who identify with Stern—rebellious, self-loathing, and self-absorbed neurotics who feel comfortable in the gutter. It’s sad that our society, our country, our youth, and the media are escaping down to this ugly, dirty, celebrity-filled place and not facing the real challenges of uplifting the human spirit and securing our grandchildren’s future.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:49 PM | Comments (4) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at April 3, 2007 11:07 AM writes:

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Dr. Blogstein at April 2, 2007 01:03 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 2, 2007 10:16 AM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 1, 2007 03:43 PM writes:

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March 29, 2007

Welcome, Dan, to CBS Radio

CBS CEO Les Moonves announced earlier this week that radio industry veteran Dan Mason would become president and CEO of the CBS Radio division replacing Joel Hollander. Peter Lauria in the NY Post indicated that Hollander and Moonves had a “testy relationship” and that “In choosing Mason, Moonves is making the safe bet, selecting an executive entrenched in radio and intimately familiar with CBS.” It’s also a safe bet that Mason will have his hands full, especially in dealing with his executive vice president/Western region, Brian Ongaro, who has been indicted, along with seven others, on 33 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, according to the Dallas Business Journal and the East Valley Tribune.

According to Lauria in the Post, in making the appointment, Moonves said, “[Dan's] perspectives on how radio can thrive and grow in our highly competitive media world are very exciting. Dan has a key understanding of the huge potential of our radio operations.” Really? I’ll bet if you ran into Moonves at cocktail party and asked him what Dan Mason was going to do to increase revenues, get more involved in the Internet, and fix the hole in morning-drive time programming left by Howard Stern’s defection to Sirius Satellite Radio, you’d get a blank look. You might even get “Who’s Dan Mason.”

In large media conglomerates that own television assets, radio has always been a poor, n-word stepchild, and CBS is no exception. Of the major media conglomerates (Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, CBS, and News Corp.), CBS is the only one that has a radio division. ABC sold most of its radio stations to Citadel last year because radio is a distraction and it’s not a glamorous growth business (ABC kept ESPN Radio and several Disney stations). Moonves probably doesn’t want to fool around with a radio division, even though it owns 144 stations and is second to Clear Channel in total revenue. He probably had a flunky write a nice and vanilla press release which he approved between going to Hollywood parties and watching pilots for the upcoming TV season.

Is Mason the right man for the job and can he grow revenues? Will he run an ethical, caring organization or will he be a brutal, screaming, nasty boss like his two predecessors, Hollander and Mel Karmazin? Will he get rid of the mean-spirited, sadistic, and indicted-for-fraud Brian Ongaro or keep him around? How he deals with Ongaro will be an indication of the tone of his stewardship.

The goals of a radio station general manager are: 1) Keep the license, 2) make a profit, and 3) get ratings. The FCC grants and renews radio stations’ licenses. When a group started by the pesky Ralph Nader filed a complaint against 63 Clear Channel radio stations in 2003, it said, “The FCC is required by statute to deny applications for license renewal if a licensee exhibits poor character.” If that’s the case, then Mason had better address the Ongaro issue quickly if he wants to look good to the FCC. Looking good to Moonves is another matter. Mason has to deliver profits to CBS and if the stations Ongaro oversees deliver enough profit, Moonves might not let him fire Ongaro, which will say a lot about Moonves.

The Mason appointment is probably the second biggest personnel decision Moonves has made, after the decision to have Katie Couric anchor the “The CBS Evening News.” That decision was a cynical one and hasn’t worked out, so Les is under pressure now to make some good ones. Can Mason make Moonves look good? What will Mason do about Brian Ongaro? Welcome, Dan, to CBS Radio.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:37 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

March 28, 2007

Couric “60 Minutes” Interview

This last Monday morning the blogsphere was brimming with opinions about Katie Couric’s interview with Elizabeth and John Edwards on “60 Minutes.” The blogs and comments mostly blasted Couric or the Edwardses. It was a close game, with the Edwardses coming out slightly ahead.

Having spent almost 50 years in the media, over fifteen directly involved in news/talk radio in one capacity or another, I know that negative comments outweigh positive ones somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to one. I know you rarely hear a compliment. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me that the blogs and comments I read were almost all negative. They either trashed Couric for her interviewing style, her questions, or her attitude, or they accused the Edwardses of being disingenuous and cynical for taking advantage of the return of Elizabeth’s cancer.

I haven’t watched “60 Minutes” in over 15 years at least, but my wife and I were visiting friends who wanted to watch (they TiVoed it), so we viewed after dinner. My male friend went to sleep almost as soon as Couric’s interview began and I had a difficult time not following him to the land of 40 winks. The two women stayed awake and grumbled about Katie Couric. My friend’s wife said she used to watch the “CBS Evening News” regularly before Couric replaced Bob Schieffer, but switched because she hated Couric. My wife, when she watches the news on TV, watches Jim Lehrer on PBS, hadn’t seen much of Couric but didn’t like the way she looked or the way she asked questions.

My hostess asked me, “What did you think of the interview?” I’m not very smart, but I am bright enough not to disagree with two intelligent women, so I thought I’d see what the blogs were saying and I read and watched the interview online so I could analyze it a little more and have a more informed opinion.

Overall, I think the negative comments almost balanced out, with the Edwardses having the fewer negatives. I got the impression that most bloggers and commenters were in the grips of selective perception. In other words, they watched the interview with a pretty strong bias for or against the principals and used the interview to reinforce the opinions they had already formed. If they didn’t like Couric, they used the interview to reinforce their negative views. Same with the Edwardses.

Because I have never watched Couric anchor the “CBS Evening News” or had rarely seen her on “Today,” I had no opinion of her ability as a serious newsperson. I thought Les Moonves’ decision to have her replace Bob Schieffer and Dan Rather was a cynical one made by an entertainment executive in an attempt to merely improve the ratings, not to improve the quality of the newscast. I was not a huge fan of John Edwards, although I voted for the Kerry/Edwards ticket against the Bush/Cheney ticket. I also realize that he looks incredibly good now in comparison to Cheney, so there is probably an Edwards halo effect somewhere in the back of my head. With these biases in mind, I analyzed the interview.

Couric asked 21 questions. The Edwardses had 29 responses—Elizabeth 13 and John 16. In watching the interview, it seemed it was more about Couric than the Edwardses. Of Couric’s 21 questions, I thought two were leading, one was assumptive (giving the answer in the question), and two were what I would call “girly.” Question number 18 was, “They're 6 and 8. They're still baby birds.” I can’t imagine Bob Schieffer, Brian Williams, or Charles Gibson, using that phrase; it seems a little unprofessional and non-newsie. Question number 20 was, “Can you understand their concern, though, Senator Edwards, that gosh, at a time when we're living in a world that is so complicated and so dangerous that the president cannot be distracted by, rightly so, caring about his wife's situation?” Again, I don’t think Bob Schieffer, Brian Williams, or Charles Gibson, would say “gosh.” A little too cute.

Several bloggers and commenters put Couric’s interview in the context of her keeping working several years ago while her husband was in treatment for (and eventually died of) cancer. I think that fact is irrelevant to the “60 Minutes” interview. I think the objective questions are, did Couric do a good job of asking questions, were the questions good, fair ones, and did the Edwardses answer them straightforwardly and clearly.

When considering a television interview, you should evaluate both the content and the performance. Because television is a visual, intimate medium, performance always trumps content. In terms of Couric’s content (the questions), overall they were good. I’d give them a B+. In terms of the more important element, the performance, I’d give Couric a C. She looked out of her depth and as though she was trying too hard to be simultaneously serious, objective, and caring—a difficult acting assignment that only the most experienced actors can pull off. Couric is not that nuanced and her image, built up over years doing cream-puff interviews on “Today,” can’t overcome her cute cheerleader perception and image. And she looks like she’s trying too hard to do so.

I’d give John Edwards an A- for the content of his answers, but a B- for his performance. He just doesn’t come across as authentic. I think he might be sincere, but he doesn’t project sincerity—perhaps because he tries too hard to be genuine. I’d give Elizabeth an A for her content and an A for performance. She came across as strong, sincere, straightforward, and smart. She seems like the real goods—authentic.

It almost seemed to me that Elizabeth would make the best presidential candidate and that John would make an ideal news anchor—good looking, great hair, nice voice, and a good reader of well-thought-out content. He had better hair and was a better actor than Katie.

On the other hand, Katie had much better hair and was much cuter and much younger than everyone else on “60 Minutes.” The other anchors looked like CBS had raided the morgue for them. Katie should replace Andy Rooney immediately—she’s infinitely cuter and CBS could find someone who could writer funnier stuff. She’d also be a big improvement over Morley Safer, who looks like one of the old-man Henson puppets. Time for a new puppet.

Let Couric do all the segments and the commentary on “60 Minutes” and when Obama gets the Democratic nomination, let Elizabeth and John Edwards do the election coverage and co-anchor the “CBS Evening News"--another reason to root for Elizabeth.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:27 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at March 30, 2007 10:26 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at March 29, 2007 06:30 PM writes:

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March 23, 2007

Wrong Headline, Wall Street Journal

Memo
To: Editor, Wall Street Journal
From: Media Curmudgeon

Good story on the front page of the Wednesday, March 21, edition about the New York Times, but you needed to change one word on the headline, which read “How a Money Manager Battled New York Times.” It should have read, “How a Money Manager Battered New York Times."

The Journal's article by Sarah Ellison was the most thorough and in-depth analysis I’ve read of the ongoing feud between Morgan Stanley’s Hassan Elmsary and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and his family’s New York Times. Please congratulate her on my behalf. As usual with your front-page stories, you deal with important current issues by humanizing them and focusing on the struggles of individuals affected by the larger issues. In this case, the larger issues are: 1) the decline of advertising and circulation in the newspaper industry and its struggle to adjust to these declines caused largely by readers and advertisers moving to the Internet and 2) the pressure Wall Street is putting on publicly held newspaper companies to show more profit and, therefore, stock growth.

In a previous blog I faulted the PBS “Frontline” program for not revealing compensation facts about Wall Street analysts who were telling the Los Angeles Times how to run its business. I would have liked your article a lot better if it had indicated what Elmsary’s personal financial interest is in seeing the NY Times’ stock go up. In a previous blog titled “Like Any Other Business?”, I wrote that the following questions should be asked of analysts who are trashing a company: “What percent of the company stock does your fund/company own?”, “What is your annual total compensation?”, ”How much money is at stake in your performance bonus if the company stock goes up, say three points?” “How much is your fund up or down this year?”, and “How will the percentage it’s up or down effect your bonus?”

Elmsary claims he’s looking out for the interests of his stockholders in his fund, but, as your article points out, he has been relentless and public in battering the Times. I think we should know what he personally has at stake, then we can judge better if his claims are justified or self-serving. Without that information being disclosed, it could look more like battering than battling.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

March 20, 2007

A Garfield Too Far

In its March 12, issue, Advertising Age featured an interview with Bill Gates by Bob Garfield, its columnist who reviews television commercials and co-host of NPR’s “On the Media.” It was an ambush interview that made the acerbic Garfield look like a self-absorbed reporter trying to be clever, and was a good example of the kind of “gotcha” journalism that has been increasing over the last few years. Too many cocky reporters like Garfield are more interested in trying to be cute, impress their peers, and get a better-placed byline than covering a story. In the era of the iPod and iPhoto, they are the iReporters—totally ego centered.

The first insult to fairness was the title of the interview, “Garfield VS. Gates,” with the subhead “World’s richest man sits down with our most ornery.” The headline was about a conflict, a battle. The second insult to fairness was Ad Age’s choice of pictures—Garfield looking calm and benign and Gates looking dogmatic and angry. The pictures communicated the message that in the conflict trumpeted in the headline, the “ornery” Garfield was the winner.

The final insult occurred when Garfield asked Gates, “I want to ask you one more thing: Those Mac ads—how do you feel about the John Hodgman character?” Gates replied, “I can’t comment on someone else’s ad.” Then Garfield said, “OK…but he’s you,” to which Gates replied, “Yeah, I’m not gonna comment on someone else’s ad.” Then Garfield said, “OK, well, Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us.” There was silence. Garfield then said, “Can I just have a clean goodbye?’ There was silence. Garfield: “OK, can you just say goodbye? Thank you or goodbye or something like that?” Gates: “Goodbye.”

It didn’t read too acerbic in the article, but listening to the podcast of the interview, you got a different sense—a sense that Garfield was being a smartass who wanted to make Gates uncomfortable with a question that had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the interview, but was asked in order to feed the reporter’s huge ego and show how smart and ornery he was. “Look at me, I can stand up to and badger the world’s richest man,” seems to have been the underlying message.

It was a cheap shot on a man who has received a knighthood from the queen of England for his services in reducing poverty and improving health in the developing countries of the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives over $1 billion a year to worthy causes and does it so well that Warren Buffett has pledged the vast majority of his $40 billion fortune to the Gates’ foundation. You’d think Gates was due some respect, even from Mac users. I’d like to know how much Bob Garfield gives to help the world be a better place to live. He might be a cheap-shot artist in more ways than one.

This type of self-absorbed, macho chest thumping is all too common with reporters and news anchorpeople who crave celebrity as opposed to learning something and getting a story right. They seem to ask long, complicated questions in a way that makes them look smart and the interviewee look dumb or duplicitous — “have-you-stopped-beating-your wife” questions. Wolf Blitzer was guilty of this type of gotcha questioning in a recent interview with Dick Cheney. Blitzer asked how Cheney felt about his stand against gay marriage when his daughter, an avowed lesbian, was pregnant. Now, I hate Dick Cheney, but this type of questioning was out of bounds because it had nothing to do with the basic subject of the interview, just as Garfield’s asking Gates to comment on an Apple television commercial was.

Advertising Age, in playing Garfield’s interview about the changing media landscape as a good-versus-evil conflict, was lowering itself to tabloid journalism—the kind you see on Page Six of the New York Post, not in a respected trade publication. But I suppose even trade publications must stoop to celebrity journalism and cheap shots to entice readership and genuflect to celebrity-seeking reporters as their business model is being turned upside down by readers’ departure to the Internet (Ad Age’s website, RSS feeds, and podcasts are pretty good, by the way).

Finally, I believe my contention that Garfield’s spoiled-brat badgering of Gates to say goodbye was out of line is supported by the fact that that portion of the interview was not included in the broadcast and podcast of NPR’s “On the Media” over the weekend. If Garfield hadn’t gone too far, the section would have been included in “On the Media.”

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:42 AM | Comments (4) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at March 26, 2007 10:57 PM writes:

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Paul Talbot at March 24, 2007 11:18 AM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at March 23, 2007 11:14 PM writes:

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Bob Garfield at March 22, 2007 02:55 AM writes:

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March 15, 2007

Viacom Sues Google/YouTube

My favorite headline for the story about Viacom suing Google for unautorized use of copyrighted content was “Boob Tube Vs. YouTube” in AM New York.

The Wall Street Journal had the story as the did the New York Times,” although they weren't quite as hysterical in their coverage.

But neither AM New York, the Journal, nor the Times gave much insight into what is really behind Viacom’s law suit against Google. Here’s what’s going on: The big media companies are pissed at Google for using their content without paying for it and trying to take over selling advertising in that content.

Google wants to muscle in on the media business, as its CEO, Eric Schmidt, indicated in a recent Bear Stearns media conference, as I covered in my March 9, blog and the Wall Street Journal covered with a Saturday, March 10, front-page story headlined “Google Gains on Goal of Controlling And Targeting TV Commercials.”

Even though the copyright infringement suit by Viacom has been in the works for months, I’ll bet a free ad on my blog that when Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s and CBS’s chairman, read “Controlling…TV commercials,” he went ballistic and told his lawyers to hurry up and file the suit. Not only is Redstone notoriously litigious, he’s brilliant and can see that Google wants to take over the selling of television advertising inventory its way, using an online auction model, and not by using the traditional face-to-face negotiating model used by the television networks (cable and terrestrial).

In a presentation to a Bear-Stearns investor panel on March 6, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hammered home the point that Google’s ads were highly targeted and their results were measurable, whereas TV and radio advertising was “completely untargeted” and “highly inefficient.” Those are fighting words to TV and radio people and Schmidt should have known that.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed a superb search technology with very smart algorithms that revolutionized search and the way people use the Internet. They didn’t know what businesses they were in; they had no idea how they were going to make money until an early employee, Omid Kordestani, the head of business development, figured out how to sell text ads next to search results. The rest is history.

But the Googlers, Schmidt, Page, and Brin, got richer than Midas and they must have figured, “We’re so rich, we must be smart about everything. Therefore, we know how to do media and entertainment better.”

When the Googlers paid a whopping $1.68 billion for YouTube, they must have thought that they could figure out how to make money on a website that, like the early Google, had great technology but no idea how to make money. YouTube’s business plan was “If we build it, they will come.” “They” did come by the tens of millions, but the money didn’t follow. So, Google paid for traffic, not revenue. It would figure that part out.

But YouTube users were posting a lot of main-stream-media (MSM) copyrighted content that YouTube was not paying copyrights fees for. Like most Internet geeks, Google’s culture was that “Information wants to be free,” and thought it was in the information delivery business.

The television and radio industries know what business they are in—the advertising delivery business—and that the way to make more money is to pay for and distribute popular content that will deliver advertising. The more popular the content, the higher the advertising revenue.

Google and YouTube were not paying for a lot of the MSM content that they were distributing, and then they wanted to “control” the MSM’s advertising associated with that free content. Google made deals to sell some newspaper advertising and bought a company that sold radio advertising and is trying to get into that business, not too successfully so far. It is now trying to find a way to sell TV advertising. I think that was the last straw for Redstone.

If Google wants to get into the advertising delivery and selling business, it will get farther with honey than with arrogance and negativity, and it better not mess with Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Dick Parsons, or Bob Iger. These media guys know what business they are in, understand the business, and won’t let the Googlers join their poker game without a significant buy-in. It looks like the wily old pro Redstone is setting the buy-in at $1 billion (which is probably negotiable). We’ll see if Google wants to play and, if so, how good it is. So far Google has come across as a rich, arrogant, over-confident, whiny rookie.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:54 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

March 13, 2007

NY Times, Half In and Half Out Of the Kitchen

The plain-talking Harry S. Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." The New York Times is in the heat of the media spotlight because it is America’s “newspaper of record” and is generally considered to be the best newspaper in the country, followed closely by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. However, in terms of being able to take the heat of criticism, sometimes the Times is half in the kitchen and sometimes half out.

In the Sunday, March 11, 2007, Week In Review section, the Times’ ombudsman, Byron Calame, wrote in The Public Editor, under the headline “Reporting the News Even When a Competitor Gets There First” about the Times, The Washington Post and the scandal at Walter Reed. Calame was tough on the Times editors and asked, “Why were readers of The New York Times left without a word of news coverage of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal for six days after it had been exposed by The Washington Post? That was the question posed to me in the wake of The Post’s Feb. 18 scoop by readers thirsty for news of the poor care given those wounded in Iraq.”

Calame goes on to criticize the Times for burying the story for a week. Bill Keller, the Times’ executive editor, acknowledged to Calame that the paper “could have been quicker in responding to the Post’s stories.” Keller also wrote in an email in response to Calame’s questions: “The treatment of wounded soldiers at the nation’s most prestigious military hospital in time of war was worth pursuing in the Post’s wake. We are now on the story, but as far as the conditions at Walter Reed, we ended up, for the most part, covering the consequences of the Post’s work.” The Times was “slow,” Mr. Keller wrote, because the digging done by the two Post reporters over four months “was hard reporting to match” and the paper’s Pentagon reporters were pursuing other articles.

The public editor goes on to include several of Keller’s rationalizations for being slow, but concludes with this Keller quote: “The easy explanation, and one that contains a good measure of truth, is pride,” he acknowledged. “Reporters (and editors) don’t enjoy being beaten.”

Then Calame writes: “Excessive pride, I believe, is the fundamental problem. The desire to be first with the news still permeates the newsroom at The Times and other newspapers in a way that makes editors and reporters feel defeated when they have to conclude that the information in another publication’s exclusive article is so newsworthy that it has to be pursued.”

And he concludes his column with, “In February 2004, my predecessor wrote a column chiding the paper for failing to pursue the exclusives of others. During my almost two years as public editor, I have continued to see this problem that directly affects readers. The reality is that when significant news breaks — even in the form of an exclusive in a competing publication — The Times must be committed to getting on the story. Anything less seriously damages the paper’s value to readers.”

The public editor took the Times to task, properly, for burying the story and not listening to earlier criticism, thus implying that the Times’ editors say they want criticism, but then seem slough it off. But at least the Times is willing to publish the criticism—it is half in the kitchen on this.

It is half out of the kitchen, though, when it comes to criticizing Bill Keller’s boss, Arthur Sulzberger, and his family. In my February 22 blog, “Shame On You, Pinch,” I detailed the circumstances of the Ochs-Sulzberger family taking $640 million of their assets away from Morgan Stanley because of criticism of the Times management and the structure of the company’s stock. I accused the Sulzberger family of the kind of economic bullying they would not put up with for the newspaper and that the Times editorialized against during the investigation of Wall Street analysts after the Internet stock bubble burst.

The Times ran a sanitized story about the asset pull-out, but it only quoted a spokesperson of the Times, not from Morgan Stanley---the Wall Street firm was smart enough to keep its mouth shut to the Times reporter. So, it was half in the kitchen for mentioning the “asset shift,” but half out for sanitizing it.

However, on March 12, the Wall Street Journal carried an article by Sarah Ellison titled “New York Times Hears Key Holders’ Complaints.” The article detailed the complaints and showed a chart of the New York Times Co.’s stock 41.2% decline. I don’t think you’d see an article like this in the Times.

As far as being able to take the heat of the kitchen, I think Bill Keller is half in the kitchen and has clothes on, but publisher Arthur Sulzberger is half out of the kitchen with no clothes on, but the Times editors are too cowed to tell him he’s naked, and I’ll bet his family or the board won’t tell him either.

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:21 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

MrSticky at April 11, 2007 07:31 AM writes:

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March 09, 2007

Guess What, Google, Media Is Hard

The investment banking firm Bear Stearns had their annual Media Conference earlier this week in Palm Beach where a bunch of top media moguls answered questions from Bear Stearns clients. I listened to several sessions on the conference’s website and thought Disney’s Bob Iger came across better than anyone else I listened to.

The reason I listened to the streaming audio of the speakers was because I read the following headline in Advertising Age: “Why Google’s Schmidt Finds Media Harder Than Technology.” The subhead was “And What Other Moguls Had to Say at Bear Stearns Media Conference.”

I was intrigued by the headline and wanted to find out more about what Eric Schmidt had to say after I read Ad Age’s summary of his remarks written by Claire Atkinson. Schmidt said, “I have learned that as a part of being a player in the media industry, the way one negotiates is everything is leaked and you are sued to death. This is news to me. It may be because there’s a lot of lawyers or because that the way we are running the business, I don’t really know. It’s not normal in the technology industry, I can assure you.” I wanted to hear more about “why Schmidt finds media harder than technology,” because his quote sounded like a dumb thing to say.

So I listened to what Schmidt (CEO of Google) had to say. I also listened to Bob Iger (CEO of Disney), Jeff Bewkes (COO of Time Warner), and Les Moonves (CEO of CBS). I learned a lot—not only about the strategies and management styles of these media moguls, but I got a sense of them as people, which was cool because I would never get to meet them face to face.

When listening to Eric Schmidt, I realized that Ad Age had picked the wrong lead—one that would titillate a reader but that didn’t capture the essence of Schmidt’s remarks. It was lazy, misleading reporting, in my opinion, but, of course, I could have been a lousy listener (not the first time I’ve been accused of that).

Here’s what I think Schmidt was trying to get across: Google is trying to create a new way of doing targeted advertising. He asked the audience, “Did anyone read a newspaper this morning?” And he then asked an even more leading question, “Does anyone remember an ad?” Of course no one was willing to be put on the spot or spoil Schmidt’s point. He then went on to say that TV and radio advertising was “completely untargeted” and “highly inefficient.” He said that “no one else is targeting media advertising like we’re trying to do.”

Schmidt also talked about how ads on Google were more measurable than traditional advertising. His two themes that he hammered home were that Google ads were more targeted and more measurable, and he made sure he positioned newspapers, television, and radio (the three biggest media in ad revenue) negatively.

Schmidt was introduced as Dr. Eric Schmidt (he has a BS from Princeton and an MS and PhD from Cal Berkley) and he sounded like a bright, arrogant geek that was talking down to his audience from a $4.8 billion pedestal (the 129th richest person in the world). Even though he is CEO and the adult in the room, he still works for Google’s two young founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are mathematicians. He talked as though Google were in the media business, but he clearly didn’t understand it. His silly remark about being sued to death was probably said in pique at being sued for copyright infringement by content providers who wanted to get paid for content being posted on Google’s YouTube (understandably).

You could tell he was a scientist (an electrical engineer, in which a lot of math is involved) because he was pushing targeted and measurable advertising, since that’s what mathematicians do, they measure stuff. If it isn’t measurable, if you can’t put a number on it, it’s no good. He never once mentioned creativity, impact, or engagement. He was a boring, arrogant stiff who I would pay not to hang out with, and he was introduced as “Dr. Eric Schmidt.”

The CEO of the Walt Disney Company was not introduced as Robert Iger, but as “Bob Iger.” He didn’t go to an Ivy League college (he went to Ithica College) nor have a PhD. He has worked for ABC and Disney his entire career. He was considered a suit by many critics who thought Michael Eisner had named Iger as his successor because Iger would fail, thus making Eisner look good.

Iger’s answers to questions were not arrogant but were, smart, informed, and straightforward. He seemed relaxed, almost conversational, and not defensive. Most important, it was clear Iger understood the media business, especially network television, a business on which Google is trying to encroach because the smart mathematicians from Google believe they know how to do it better. Iger came across as a bright guy who encouraged his people and talked about creativity and building and protecting the Disney brand. I liked him and I'd enjoy hanging out with him.

What the arrogant mathematicians and brains from Google don’t get is that selling advertising to large advertisers is not about math, it’s about relationships. Ad agency buyers and their clients buy from people they like and trust, not from people who talk down to them, bore them with philosophical, goody-goody BS, and tell them they (the mathematicians) know how to do it better.

The reason “Google’s Schmidt Finds Media Harder Than Technology” is not because there are more lawyers initiating lawsuits in the media but because for stiffs it is harder.

I have a feeling if I was introduced to the two of them, Schmidt would ask to be called “Dr. Schmidt” and Iger would say, “Call me Bob.” That’s essentially why Google will fail to sell radio and television advertising—it’s not about math, it’s about relationships, and the nice guy from Ithica College and the good, average street guys like him who Google would never have hired will kick Google’s ass.

Posted by Charles Warner at 01:31 AM | Comments (1) | Print |

Rob C at March 15, 2007 09:55 PM writes:

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March 04, 2007

Amusing Oursleves to Death With The Help of Fox

Neil Postman, an NYU professor and brilliant thinker about the media, in 1985 wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. I’m sorry that he passed away in 2003, because I’d love to hear what he had to say about the media today. The recent overkill coverage on television news and in the tabloids about Anna Nicole Smith’s death and Britney Spears’ shaved head validates Postman’s pessimistic and clairvoyant theory. I think we are amusing ourselves to death even more than we did in 1985.

By giving people what they want—amusement—the main-stream media (MSM) is doing nothing new. The French Emperor Louis-Napoleon “suppressed an insurrection in Algeria in 1856 by sending the magician Robert-Houdin to Algiers to bamboozle the locals with repertoire of amazing tricks, including his ‘bullet catch’ routine.” Napoleon III reasoned that if his subjects could be entertained, then they might not notice or care about the fact that his regime had taken away most of their liberties. An English critic, writing in the The Athenaeum noted, “So long as Parisians are amused, there is less probability of their thoughts dwelling on political slavery.” These quotes and paraphrases are from The Judgment of Paris.

The emperors of the MSM are using the same trick, hoping that we won’t realize that they are diverting our attention away from important issues such as the disastrous Iraq war, the Walter Reed and Veteran care scandal, or from other “negative” news. Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. announced the latest diversion recently--the Fox Business Channel--which Murdoch and his right-wing lieutenant, Roger Ailes, indicated would be “more business friendly than CNBC.” Murdoch said that CNBC was quick to “leap on every business scandal,” clearly implying that the Fox Business Channel wouldn’t bother with that kind of negative stuff.

The Fox Television network won the ratings battle in the latest sweeps on the strength of two nights of “American Idol,” the biggest television diversion for the youth of America. Recently, the Fox News Channel scored a hit with its “The ½ Hour News Hour” program—a satire on the news. Obviously meant to compete with Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” but with a right-wing spin, the first episode featured conservative stars Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

I’m not sure why the Fox News Channel is doing a satire of the news when the entire channel is a satire on the news. It’s what Dan Rather has properly dubbed as infotainment. Of course, the tragedy is that Fox News gets ratings, which is why CNN is trying to copy its tabloiditis. I suppose all of the programming on the new Fox Business Channel will be business tabloiditis. It will have to hire a female anchor/reporter who is sexier, cuter, and with better cleavage than the Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, and who will have to cozy up to corporate types more alluringly than Maria does.

Here are some ideas for shows or segments for Ailes and the new, business-friendly Fox Business Channel: “The Sex Lives of CEOs!”, “Female CEOs, Chairman This!”, “What Goes On In The Boardroom!”, “The Jeff Skilling Show, Live!“, “The CEO Apprentice!” Imagine the possibilities--would-be apprentices would have to “audition” for CEOs like Donald Trump. Visualize positive coverage for all CEOs, corporations, and, of course, the Bush administration’s pandering to corporate interests. CEOs will love it and will refer to it as the Fox Business Promotion and PR Channel. No press release will be too outrageously self-congratulating not to get full coverage.

One thing these silly examples point out is that, as Neil Postman wrote, television is different from print. To make money in television, you have to get ratings, which means you have to entertain people by engaging their emotions and appealing to their prejudices and baser tastes. To be successful in print with an upscale audience you have to engage people’s minds, which is why magazines and newspapers that try to inform us (New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal) do so by dealing with reason.

This essential difference is probably why the Wall Street Journal, a great newspaper that has the second largest national newspaper circulation and appeals to the business community, still manages to cover and to break stories about corporate malfeasance. Its readers are intelligent, upscale people who seek information about business, not entertainment. And the Wall Street Journal is quite profitable.

Will the Wall Street Journal’s and CNBC’s audience, including corporate executives and Wall Street investment bankers, watch the Fox Business Channel and give it the same or more credibility than they give CNBC? WSJ readers and CNBC viewers love to have positive coverage of their own companies and investments and hate “negative” coverage, meaning anything other than positive coverage about something they are connected with. But as much as they like glowing stories and reports, cream-puff interviews, and the Money Honey, they like negative coverage and scandals about their competitors even more. Therefore, they will watch the cable business news channel that gives them the opportunity to stuff their quivers with arrows to shoot at their competition.

Fox, Murdoch, and Ailes might cynically believe that corporate executives and investors want the same kind of amusement that viewers of “American Idol” do, but I’m not so sure. We’ll have to see if WSJ readers and CNBC viewers want to amuse themselves to death when there’s a potential to pick up some dirt on the competition.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | Print |