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June 22, 2007

A Million Dollars?

I apologize for inundating you with notifications today, but when you're hot, you're hot. After I posted the entry about NBC paying Paris Hilton $1 million for her first post-jail interview, I got to thinking, "What else could you do for $1 million?"

Then it stuck me--if I were Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, I would announced today the CBS was donating $1 million to the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. What a great way to stick NBC in the eye (pun intended) for releasing and continuously showing the videos of Cho Seung-Hui, the murderer who sent videos of himself to NBC News. NBC insisted that its logo appear on the grisly videos that so offended the families of Cho's victims and that all the TV networks played over and over.

What would you do with the $1 million by which NBC is showing its tawdry values?

Posted by Charles Warner at 1:32 PM | Comments (2) | Print | Mail this entry

Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 22, 2007 3:27 PM writes:

Brian Gruber, CEO of Fora.tv, writes:

"The entire operating budget for the first year of FORA.tv, aggregating a thousand events from around the world, the most important thinkers, issues and fora, and providing tools for participation, sharing, downloading and navigation, was $1 million. It took me months of fundraising to raise that money. How's that for an example of what you can do for $1 million?"

I think that's an excellent use of $1 million, and I urge all the readers of Media Curmudgeon to go to http://www.fora.tv for an excellent selection of intelligent videos of conferences and speeches by some of the world's leading thinkers.

By using Fora.tv you'll not only get smarter but you'll also help to build traffic for a worthy, quality, intelligent site where you'll never see an interview with Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, or Brad and Angelina.


Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 22, 2007 3:18 PM writes:

Steve Keenan writes:

"Give it to a fund(s) that have been set up for children of families that have had loved one(s) killed by DUI drivers."

Great idea, Steve! Call it the Paris-Lindsay fund.


Shift Happens

Since I am posting today about trends, I thought I would alert you to a fascinating video called "Shift Happens" about current global trends in education and population. It's a little scary. A good friend and blog reader Kevin Mashek, sent me the link, saying that I had to watch it. Because I am always at the service of my readers, I watched it immediately and was left speechless. For those of you who know me well, for me to be quiet and contemplative is, to say the least, highly improbable.

I urge you to view "Shift Happens" and let me know what you think.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:13 PM | Comments (0) | Print | Mail this entry

Prediction Checklist

It never ceases to amaze me that all of my good friends and I are married to women that are much smarter than we are. After my blog on June 21, in which I made some predictions, one of these smart women suggested I publish a checklist of all of the predictions I made, so we can all keep track of how stupid or prescient I am.

So, below is the Prediction Checklist which I’ll update from time to time. But in the meantime, here is a response from Bill Grimes on my June 21, “Puzzlement” blog:

“Superb analysis and strategic forecasts. In particular I think GE sells NBC soon, and if the government lifts FCC regulations on foreign ownership of TV stations,which it surely should, we could have a large foreign company, Sony, for one, or the billionaire from Hong Kong (I forget his name, but he's in satellite TV biz) buy NBC, which would fetch a large premium. The sale price might be $20-25 billion.”

Prediction Checklist

1. Yahoo stock will decline over the next year.
2. Yahoo will be bought by or merge with News Corp.
3. YouTube’s traffic will continue to explode on a worldwide basis.
4. Google’s stock will continue rise above the current $514 a share as its share of search traffic continues to grow.
5. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. will buy Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal.
6. GE will sell NBC, most likely to Time Warner, and the new owners will fire Jeff Zucker.
7. Microsoft will sell its Web businesses to News Corp., owner of a MySpace-Yahoo combination.
8. The MySpace-Yahoo combination will dominate Facebook, which will decline, and Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will regret not selling Facebook for $1 billion when he had the opportunity.

Watching what happens will be more fun than watching WWE Wrestling on the USA cable network, because the results won’t be rigged.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | Print | Mail this entry

GE Couldn’t Make the Numbers Work

This morning, I learned in the New York Times that GE was no longer considering making a bid, along with Pearson, for Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal because it “couldn’t make the numbers work,” according to WNYC’s “Marketplace.” I also learned on Media Post that “PER THE NEW YORK POST, NBC is paying $1 million to grab the first after-jail interview with Paris Hilton. The interview, scheduled for sometime next week, will probably be done by Meredith Vieira of "Today." Apparently, ABC was in the lead when NBC chief Jeff Zucker called Hiton's dad and made the pitch.” The New York Times also reported on Paris Hilton/NBC story, but I couldn’t find anything in the paper online this morning that dealt with the obvious and absurd connection between the two stories.

So for the benefit of this blog’s readers, here’s the grand irony: 1) NBC’s parent company, GE, was considering making a bid for America’s second largest circulation newspaper with one of the three most prestigious and credible newspaper brand names in the world, primarily to protect the WSJ’s relationship with CNBC, but backed out because it couldn’t make the numbers work—couldn’t make enough money on the deal. 2) NBC’s CEO Jeff Zucker inserts himself into the competition with ABC to get the first post-jail interview with society slut Paris Hilton and agrees to pay her and her family $1 million. Yes, that’s $1 million for an interview with Meredith Vieira on the “Today” show.

The whole thing is a perfect example of the current values of the television medium, which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog—profits above all and trash above journalism. Two of the most famous women in the last 10 years have become celebrities for performing oral sex—Monica Lewinsky and Paris Hilton—the goddesses of the Web and TV. I supposed we get the presidents, vice presidents, and celebrities we deserve.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt should realize that the desperate Zucker (he has to be desperate to offer $1 million for a Paris Hilton interview) is not going to pull NBC out its rating hole and Immelt should quietly put NBC up for sale—get rid of it before Zucker spends $2 million for a picture of Britney Spears's crotch. Maybe GE could sell NBC to Larry Flynt.

Posted by Charles Warner at 9:45 AM | Comments (0) | Print | Mail this entry

June 21, 2007

It’s a Puzzlement

Several disparate chards of information came to my attention recently that seemed to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but the final picture of the puzzle is fuzzy.

Here are the pieces of the puzzle; see what you think they mean:

1. Terry Semel resigned as Yahoo’s CEO a few days after an annual stockholders’ meeting in which he was criticized for a $71 million 2006 pay package, for the company’s poor stock performance, for letting Google completely dominate the search space, which Yahoo invented, and for missing the social network Internet space.

2. YouTube announced it was putting up localized versions in seven languages for Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, Holland, Poland, and Spain, in part because half of its users are not in the U.S.

3. GE and Pearson were talking about possibly making a bid for Dow Jones & Co. and its crown jewel the Wall Street Journal, presumably to protect their CNBC and Financial Times franchises by preempting Murdoch from owning the WSJ.

4. Several sources (blogs and media news websites) reported that NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker met with Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart to discuss…who knows?

5. Rupert Murdoch is selling nine of News Corp.’s 35 TV stations.

6. Rupert Murdoch reportedly offered Yahoo MySpace in return for a 25 percent interest in Yahoo.

7. Microsoft backs down and agrees to alter its new Vista operating system after being sued by Google.

Although the picture of the puzzle is fuzzy, it kinda looks global, young, internet-centric, and conglomerate-dominated. The 76-year-old Rupert Murdoch, who emerged from the Australian newspaper business, looms as the most dominant strategist in the Internet age and every media company is deathly afraid of him and Google, including Microsoft.

Yahoo got rid of Semel, and Jerry Yang, one of Yahoo’s founders, will be its new CEO. Semel stabilized a young Yahoo and rode its enormous popularity to a huge payday. He made about $500 million dollars, but was it him or Yahoo’s popularity? I think it was Yahoo’s popularity based on its initial search technology, which was eventually buried by Google’s superior search algorithms. Can Yang bring back Yahoo? I don’t think so. It will continue to be the most popular portal for awhile, but Yahoo is primarily a content aggregator, which is so yesterday. Yahoo let Google clobber it in search, MySpace and Facebook clobber it in social networking, and YouTube (bought by Google) clobber it in user-generated content. So now, Yahoo has little to offer the younger generation of web users. If you own Yahoo stock, sell it because it’s now a has-been media company.

YouTube is the hottest site on the Internet and it's expanding. Video on the web is the new, new thing and it will get hotter. Traffic on the web is up 56 percent over last year, primarily due to YouTube and video. Because YouTube is now owned by Google, and Google is becoming more and more dominant in search and with other products such as Google Maps, Google Trends, Google Email and more, buy Google stock. It’s high at $514 a share, but it’s going up even more—noting so far has been able to stop its growth.

The Dow Jones board has taken over the negotiations for the sale of the company. It got sick and tired of the Bancroft’s petty bickering and sniveling. The board will sell to Murdoch, and when the sale is announced, GE will have lost its bid to protect CNBC and will look quietly for buyers of NBC, which will eventually be Time Warner (after the 2008 election year). Even if Zucker can make a deal with Jon Stewart, he can’t stop the erosion of TV viewing. Hold GE stock and buy Time Warner. Time Warner is a bargain now at $21.51. It won’t go up a lot, but it will go over $30 after it buys NBC.

Buy News Corp.; it will use the money it gets from selling its TV stations to buy Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch will bulk up the WSJ and go after the Financial Times and CNBC with his new Fox Business News Channel, both of which will eventually lose to Murdoch big time.

Yahoo will take Murdoch’s offer of 25 percent in return for MySpace and, eventually, Murdoch will buy Yahoo as its stock declines, making News Corp. one of the two biggest players in the media ballpark—rivaling Time Warner.

Microsoft will continue to limp along on the Web. Hold Microsoft stock, but don’t buy any more. In the next year or two Microsoft will sell its web business to Murdoch’s Yahoo-MySpace combination, which will have a battle royal with Facebook, which Yahoo-MySpace will eventually win because it will have more resources and Murdoch's strategic genius.

We will wind up with three big media companies who produce every more trashy television, ever more raunchy websites, and ever more profits for their investors. It’s sad, but it’s happening. The picture of the puzzle may be fuzzy, but several things are certain. Media companies will get bigger and produce more content that lowers taste levels. The only bright side I can see is that perhaps Jon Stewart and the "Daily Show" will replace a current network nightly newscast, which will cut down on the trashy celebrity and entertainment news.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:45 PM | Comments (2) | Print | Mail this entry

Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 22, 2007 11:09 AM writes:

I agree completely with Jesse Kornbluth, that traffic is going away from trashy television to more intelligent blogs and websites.

His blog/website, Head Butler.com, is fabulous--smart, erudite, and fun to read. Head Butler keeps you up to date on the best books, CDs, food, and ideas--it services your head with really smart stuff. I recommend that you sign up for it at http://www.headbutler.com.


Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 22, 2007 11:05 AM writes:

Jesse Kornbluth writes:

"My take: Same as it ever was. Media loves company, and them's that owns it can never get enough. At least this time around, nobody's talking about "synergy."

You could say--and you do--that this is a bad thing.

I say: These are desperate moves by desperate moguls. If I had capital and no need to apologize for less than 10% growth, I would buy (or partner with) smart sites for smart people--the very consumers running from the exits in the Big Media world.

If they'd take it, I'd throw money at Huffington Post, Eschaton, Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, Hullaballoo and a few other sites. Not because their politics are mine. But because the traffic is going their way. (I see this at my own site, HeadButler.com, which grows despite my refusal to "market" it.)

Blades of grass between the cracks in the concrete --they're where the fun is. And where the smartest readers will be. Eventually, someone will figure this out and invest sums of money considered laughably small in the Valley and on Wall Street. And although that someone won't get rich rich rich, I'll call him (or her) a mogul. And I won't put spin or snark on that."


June 15, 2007

“I’m Mad As Hell…”

Remember Peter Finch’s great rant in the prophetic 1976 movie “Network” when he urges people to shout out their windows, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore?” Back then we all loved Peter Finch’s character, Howard Beale, were fed up with network television’s inanity, and wanted to start yelling the chant ourselves. That was 21 years ago and network TV today is 21 times worse, so we should be yelling 21 times louder.

Before I lumber on, let me make it clear that I’m not condemning all television, just the five broadcast networks, especially their prime time programming, and the three cable news channels, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. Some TV is OK—some programs, especially “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on PBS, “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel, my local all-news cable channel in New York City, and several other programs on PBS and HBO.

One reason “we’re mad as hell…” is because the cable news networks want it that way. My favorite radio program and podcast (I usually catch it as a podcast) is “On the Media,” which is on my local NPR station, WNYC, and the podcast of which I subscribe to on iTunes. On the March 18, podcast of “On the Media” co-host Bob Garfield interviewed Mel White, who as at one time a ghost writer for Jerry Falwell, who had passed away the previous week. White said that he asked Larry King why he had Falwell on his CNN program “all the time.” King said, “Because he gets people made, and that’s what we’re here for.”

In other words, making you mad is a programming strategy, not giving you facts, not giving you any analysis of the news, not giving you information you can use, but making you angry. This strategy is perfectly clear if you watch Larry King or Lou Dobbs on CNN or the masters of madness, Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity on Fox News, or Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, or Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (disclaimer, I’m a big fan of Olbermann and a progressive, so Olbermann doesn’t make me mad, but he makes conservatives go ballistic, which he does on purpose, of course).

Rush Limbaugh has emphatically proven that getting people mad is good programming strategy. Although he does is anger inducement on radio because his television show failed, he is still the master of riling people up with disinformation. Rush is not an expert on politics, he’s an entertainer, an ex-DJ who knows how to make people furious. O’Reilly, Hannity, and Scarborough are also primarily entertainers. Entertainers’ expertise is knowing how to get an emotional response from the most number of people. They understand that the vast majority of people don’t have post-graduate educations or make over $150,000 a year, so they aim their invective at the middle and lower middle income/education majority. In other words, it’s entertainment, not news, and it’s entertainment that tries to get a rise out of you.

In the movie “Network,” Howard Beale goes into his rant because he is a news anchor on a TV network that has fired him because the news programming has been turned over to the entertainment division and the entertainment division head, played wonderfully by Faye Dunaway, fires Beale because he’s too old. Wow! Life imitating art--so long Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer and hello Katie Couric (Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, and the person who hired Katie was previously head of CBS’s Entertainment division).

That’s why I like NPR radio, PBS’s “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer,” and my local cable news network—they are about news, not entertainment—and I get a nourishing news meal. I don’t trust entertainers—not very informed, manipulative, and trying to get an emotional or visceral response, not an intellectual or rational response—and I get a lot of calories and sugar but no news nourishment, and that makes me mad.

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:14 PM | Comments (4) | Print | Mail this entry

Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 17, 2007 6:25 PM writes:

Thanks for the comment, MK...excellent point, but those who believe that Fox News is fair and balanced will be out of power in the 2008 election.


Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 17, 2007 6:24 PM writes:

MK writes:

"You are so right about these "entertainers" whose role is solely to make people angry. But I would point out that we know some highly educated and affluent people who believe that Rush Limbaugh speaks only truth and that Fox News really is fair and balanced. Go figure."


Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 17, 2007 6:21 PM writes:

Thanks for the the comment, Kevin. It's good you're mad as hell, too. Let's hope it's catching.


KMashek Author Profile Page at June 15, 2007 6:18 PM writes:

Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, Don Imus, Rosie O'Donnell-these are the BIG STORIES in our news. Our corrupt goverment stories such as exposing our goverment agents to the world or firing our U.S. attorney's because their not "Bushies" and all the crap that has gone on under this administration (which I could go on for two hours of reading) comes second. And then last, that ugly war in Iraq where our boys are dying everyday comes last because it's upsetting to hear about that. The News is being ruined by the News departments. We as a society will pay dearly for what is going on today and in the future where nothing can be trusted or reliable. But hey, isn't it sad that Paris Hilton had to endure the pain of going back to jail?? Maybe Rosie will get her released WOW What a news story!!!!!!!


June 4, 2007

CBS Hollers Help!

At a recent meeting in Las Vegas, CBS asked its local affiliated television stations to help the sagging “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” by asking the “…local stations to transition seamlessly from their early newscast to Ms. Couric's show—meaning no intervening commercials or promotional spots,” according to TVWeek.com.

Of course, this move would mean dropping commercials between the end of the local news and Couric's lead story, which would affect a local stations' bottom line negatively. According to TVWeek.com, CBS research indicates that “a third of viewers decide what they're going to watch next in the last seconds of their local newscasts,” and CBS wants to eliminate any thoughts that viewers have of going somewhere else other than "Evening News," which plummeted to a record low of 5.96 million viewers a couple of weeks ago.

I guess CBS wants its affiliates to share the pain, but not the revenue losses. And the affiliates will probably go along—they are desperate. What else can they do, key out Couric and substitute their local lead anchor? Drop the “Evening News” and substitute CNN’s Lou Dobbs? The jowly, arrogantly avuncular (translation, really old) Dobbs is perfect for CBS, whose audience remains really old (55 plus) and obviously hasn’t warmed up to perky Couric. Dobb’s loopy conservative views would mesh well with CBS’s heavily weighted C and D county, rural audience.

It’s pretty hypocritical of CBS to ask its affiliates to lower their revenue potential while CBS continues to load up the “Evening News” with commercials. I checked out the WCBS-TV local 6:00 p.m. news tonight to see if the CBS-owned New York flagship station was going along with the seamless, commercial-free transition. It was. I then watched the “Evening News” and counted the commercials—a total of 19, the majority of which were for pharmaceutical products for really old people. It was enough to give you the impression that everyone in the US would be blissfully happy if they took drugs, which is probably true, but those drugs aren’t Avandia or Nexium.

Couric’s lead story was about violent crime in America and how deadly violence was up for the second straight year. Couric said that police blame gangs, guns, and lack of money. NY police commissioner Kelly was interviewed and said the Federal budget cuts have hurt crime fighting efforts by reducing the number of policemen on the streets. The first story after the second commercial break (a pod of five commercials) was about the trial of Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor and it showed several scenes of boys as young as eight brandishing and firing automatic guns and rocket launchers in an ongoing civil war.

Now, can you conceive of Couric saying in the lead story, “police and experts on violence say that the increase in deadly violence that the country is witnessing is primarily the result of young people watching violence and mayhem on television, both in news and entertainment programming?” And following up with, “because of the horrible effect that watching violence has on people, especially young people, we won’t be showing you a story of eight- and nine-year-old boys shooting guns and rocket launchers—it’s too tragically graphic?”

The television networks, both in their news and so-called entertainment programming, are in total denial about the violence they have become addicted to in both types of programming—violence is “good video.” CBS News, Katie Couric, the other TV networks, and local stations have no concept about their hypocrisy of continually showing violence and then letting surrogates blame the government. No wonder that TV news has lost its credibility and that young people go to Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” for their news—no violence, just good, clean satire directed at people who deserve being made fun of—television news people, commentators, and politicians.

Rather than blame Couric’s “Evening News” low ratings on poor lead-in programming, maybe CBS ought to look in the mirror and say, “Couric sucks and our news is too depressingly violent. Let’s hire Jim Lehrer, make the show an hour, and drop all commercials. We can do a public service and deal with important issues in depth without showing too much violence; thus, we can beat the competition and deliver great lead-ins to our prime time, violent programming.” But I ask for too much—a new kind of reality television—realistic thinking.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | Print | Mail this entry

Bruce Braun Author Profile Page at June 6, 2007 2:22 AM writes:

On the mark as usual, Charlie.

For all of the years I worked in radio and then TV, we preached to advertisers that by constantly advertising to our audiences, the viewers/listeners would buy their products. Our claims were proven by the results we produced at the check stands. Constant repetition of a commercial message over time (frequency) to large audiences (reach) drives people to action. A fact, unquestionably.

Logic and common sense would dictate that applying the same reach and frequency equation to graphically violent TV programs would impact those audiences to produce similar outcomes.

Try to have that conversation with a TV programming executive! Every time I ever broached the subject with the top programming guys at the networks I sold for, they would hyperventilate. Talk about denial, they sounded like a CEO for Smith & Wesson. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Drive-by shootings, road-rage, gangs...you name the violent behavior and TV will figure out a way to monetize and glorify it....and then deny that any of it is mimicked in real life.


Media Curmudgeon Author Profile Page at June 5, 2007 10:42 AM writes:

Bill Grimes writes:

"Completely agree..."


June 1, 2007

Time Warner Should Buy NBC

NBC’s upfront presentation last week was considered to be so ho-hum by the advertising community that the consensus was that NBC would again finish dead last in the 18-49 ratings next season. The programming architect for the shipwreck 2006-07 season, for the upcoming 2007-08 season, and for the upfront presentation was Kevin Reilly, who was fired a couple of days after the new schedule was announced. The 2007-08 season schedule went over like a NY Post headline at a lecture on Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I can’t get used to calling NBC NBC Universal, so I’ll keep referring to it as NBC. Universal is the film studio that made those great horror movies in the 1940s, like “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” and my favorite, “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” which is an apt description of NBC’s programming this year. “Heros” was a hit, but was not as good as “The Wolf Man,” which is 66 years old.

Also, week before last NBC Digital announced a new Web project, MyNBC, a social networking site it will launch this to compete with News Corp.’s MySpace. Just what the young people want--a corporate MySpace. Not much innovation there.

Jeff Zucker was named CEO of NBC in February, but it was under his watch that NBC dove from first to fourth, so I’ll bet GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt will be glad to get rid of the fourth-place network and its new CEO who led the nosedive.

Time Warner is a good fit for NBC because TWX is the only big media conglomerate that doesn’t own a broadcast TV network or TV stations. Time Warner would have to get a waiver from the FCC to allow it to own a TV station and a cable system in the same market, but the Republican-dominated FCC is very corporate friendly and would probably give Time Warner the waiver, just like it gave Murdoch’s New Corp. a waiver to own two television stations and a newspaper in New York.

Also, Time Warner hired Randy Falco as the CEO of AOL, and Falco has a lot more experience with network television sales than NBC’s new head of sales, Mike Pilot, who came from GE Consumer Finance—yes, Consumer Finance to television network sales.

Falco was head of NBC TV network sales and when he realized that Zucker was going to replace Bob Wright, he started looking around. Time Warner was smart enough to snap him up to replace Jon Miller as CEO of AOL. Falco was what AOL needed to sell its massive online audience like TV sells its big audiences. Falco would make a much better CEO for NBC than Zucker.

Furthermore, Time Warner understands the television and entertainment business better than Zucker or its corporate parent, GE, do, so Time Warner would have more expertise to pull NBC out of the basement than Zucker has, although the new head of programming on the west coast, Ben Silverman , has a good resume and might be able to do something.

Of the three networks, NBC has been the least innovative online and off to a much slower start than the other networks, especially Fox with the MySpace association, so the synergies with AOL would certainly help NBC’s lagging online efforts.

It’s probably too reasonable an idea to ever happen, but short of being bought by someone who can turn NBC around, the best chance NBC has for success is to bring back the Universal hits of the ‘40s. How about “Earl Meets the Wolf Man,” or “Frankenstein at 30 Rock?”

Posted by Charles Warner at 3:07 PM | Comments (0) | Print | Mail this entry