Media Curmudgeon

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April 28, 2008

CBS Confirms Its Business Model

When CBS bought the billboard company, International Outdoor Advertising, last week, it confirmed that it was in the advertising delivery business and that its mission was to try to maximize profits for its shareholders. CBS thus distanced itself even further from the values of the CBS of Paley, Stanton, and Edward R. Murrow – a proud old CBS – in which serving the public good was a mission, or at least a consideration.

This purchase occurred in the same week as the publication of former CBS newsman Roger Mudd’s well-reviewed book, The Place To Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News. On the last page of the book, Mudd writes about the CBS News Washington Bureau: “We had no doubts about how good we were; we had no doubts about our values; we had no doubts that our mission was to cover the news without flattering or tricking the viewer. Most of us thought ourselves chosen. It was if we had been lifted up by a journalistic deity and dropped in the middle of the Washington bureau to serve our country by doing God’s work.”

In the glory days of CBS News Mudd appeared three times a day from the steps of the Capital reporting on the Senate filibuster debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Today CBS is more about sugary fluff like whether Katie Couric will stick around for the inauguration and “The Big Bang” than about nourishing news and entertainment.

It’s ironic and telling that CBS is buying International Outdoor Advertising (IOA), a company that has no content except for advertising – a goal CBS and the other television networks obviously embrace as they steadily increase the number of commercials and crowd out content. It’s a vicious cycle: More commercials drive away viewers, which lowers ratings, which necessitates putting in more commercials to maintain profit levels, which drives away viewers, and so on until death do us part. Also, IOA is strong outside of the US and is moving to digital billboards – giant TV sets in other words.

Therefore, what CBS is doing is taking TV out of the living room and onto the streets of the world and putting nothing but commercial messages on the big screens. So if we get sick of the sugary fluff on TV at home and try to escape it by going outside, we are accosted by huge TV sets showing nothing but commercials. Heads they win, tails you lose. The move is perfect Orwellian doublethink by CBS CEO Les Moonves, who got a 29 percent raise for driving the stock down almost 40 percent and who believes “news is entertainment,” who probably believes that “war is peace,” and who is more than likely laughing up his cuff linked sleeves at Mudd’s notion of a journalistic deity dropping him and other newspeople in the middle of the Washington bureau to serve their country by doing God’s work.

God’s work, as everyone knows, is to make a profit by delivering advertising to the world.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:00 AM | Comments (4) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at April 28, 2008 05:52 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 28, 2008 05:44 PM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 28, 2008 04:21 PM writes:

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Bruce Braun at April 28, 2008 12:27 PM writes:

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April 24, 2008

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that The New York Times and reporter David Barstow have shown us, once again, why responsible journalism, as practiced by The Times, the Washington Post, and the The Los Angeles Times, provides a vital public service of keeping the polity informed.

Barstow’s story, “Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” in the Sunday, April 20, Times is a thoroughly researched, eye-opening investigative article that details how the Pentagon and the Bush Administration manipulated television network military analysts to push the administration’s pro-war, everything-is-great agenda for the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Not only were the TV analysts, mostly former generals, willingly manipulated by the Pentagon, but they were also not required by the networks to be transparent and reveal their conflicts of interest – their ties to lobbyists, consultants, and contractors desperate to get a piece of the war spending bounty.

The bad news is that even though the military analysts look bad – complicit and greedy – the networks look even worse – careless and duplicitous. The Times article by Barstow reminds us that we can’t trust television network news, especially FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC which were the most frequent users of the analysts.

I don’t know why we still delude ourselves by calling television “news” news. It isn’t news; it’s entertainment. Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Katie Couric, Wolf Blitzer, Charles Gibson, Lou Dobbs, and Joe Scarborough are not journalists, they are entertainers. Like all entertainers, their goal is to be rich and famous. And to do so, they have to get noticed, they have to be outrageous, different, or cute, or, best of all, simplistically controversial and confrontational.

There is virtually no difference between these “news” entertainers and professional wrestlers. They all become popular by being over-the-top outrageous, fake, pumped up, overly made up tough guys who strut to a scripted “fight.” The animal ids of Americans have an increasing appetite for bloody fights and fighters – even in our politicians. It must be a reaction to collective frustration and anger at our powerlessness to make leaders and television executives care more about us than about themselves – their fame and wealth. Celebrity is the goal, not integrity. It’s Orwellian: Deception is truth; war is peace; entertainment is news.

There is one ray of hope. The Media Post Center for Media Research Brief reports:

"According to the Newspaper Association of America, new consumer research conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo and commissioned by Google, among people who research products and services after seeing them advertised in newspapers, 67 percent use the Internet to find more information, and nearly 70 percent of them actually make a purchase following their additional research.

John F. Sturm, NAA president and CEO, said '...newspaper advertising is incredibly effective in motivating consumers to make a purchase. This new study... demonstrates that print ads also drive people to conduct additional product research online.'"

This is the first good news I’ve seen about newspapers in over two years. The report suggests that a combination of newspaper and online advertising works best for advertisers, which might slow down the decline of newspaper advertising, thus allowing newspapers such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other great newspapers to survive as both print and online publications and to continue to serve the public interest and counteract the toxic, non-news entertainment of television.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:29 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at April 25, 2008 05:24 PM writes:

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Adina Montgomery at April 25, 2008 05:05 PM writes:

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April 20, 2008

My Conservative Friends Speak Out

I often post the comments and rants of my liberal friends, so in order to be fair, I want to post some comments and rants from my conservative friends.

Neil Derrough writes:

"Let's say that it was just found that John McCain had a long term friendship with David Duke. That he had supported Duke's past campaigns and had included him in his circle of advisers. And, when the press probed this relationship they were accused of sensationalizing and covering "dirty laundry". How much credit do you think that argument would get.

The messenger can be blamed for unfairness for covering Obama's past relationships but a rational public knows better."

Paul Atkinson writes:

"Obama was correct - that 45 minutes of "gotcha" questioning on the ABC debate was a waste of time.

But from a conservative's perspective, Obama's "fresh way of looking at real issues" inevitably involves three standard thrusts
1) virtually any economic or social ill affecting Americans today can and should be ameliorated by government action

2) the insurance, drug, mortgage and oil companies are the root of all evil and

3) it is an article of faith that income taxes must be raised on those who already pay 44-45% of every incremental dollar they earn in income taxes

When you examine Obama's positions, he emerges as an orthodox Democratic liberal. If he truly wishes to create a new paradigm for the 21st century, " the voter as victim" is not going to cut it.

Even Bill Clinton was willing to challenge the victimization rationale in the black community by ending "welfare as we know it" and was willing to acknowledge America's need to compete in a world of free trade."

Bruce Braun writes:

"We start by throwing out gerrymandering to protect incumbents that currently return 98% back to office every election cycle and impose term limits of not more than 12 years in the senate or congress or in combination. We limit the president and most governors, why not the rest of them.

Impose restrictions for no less than two years upon those leaving office from working for lobbying on behalf or representing any company that came before any committee they served upon. The executive branch and cabinet officers are prohibited from such employment and have been since Nixon left. Preclude ex-presidents from profiteering on their tenure by prohibiting any consulting or advising,etc for anyone for at least four years! Write all the books you want but learn to live on your presidential pension.

Eliminate congressional pensions and free healthcare during and after being in office. Make them pay for it, like everyone else. No more junkets all over the world so they can play junior secretaries of state or defense or free transport on military aircraft. No more free bumps to first class when flying commercial. No luxury rental cars or luxury cars paid for by taxpayers...limit them to Chevy Cobalts. And if you are arrested for drunk driving, getting a blowjob from an intern, wagging your weenie in a men's room, are caught performing an unnatural act with a 9 year-old boy or barnyard animal, you are suspended without pay until found innocent.

Once we take out the career hacks, coat-tailers (like Hillary) and all the perks and benefits, we will most likely have some folks who really are in the service of the public.

If only I were King!"

I am blessed to have so many friends with such diverse opinions -- it keeps me young.

Posted by Charles Warner at 09:10 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Jesse Kornbluth at April 20, 2008 09:36 PM writes:

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April 19, 2008

Shame on ABC

Guest blogger Hank Lowenstein writes:

Shame on ABC

Wednesday night’s Democratic debate was the most shameful use of TV air time I have ever seen. First rate journalists like Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous used their stage at the Independence Center to sweep the major issues of our time off the table, and encourage the candidates to air their dirty laundry before the voters in Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. The idea that voters are truly concerned with “baking cookies” and what some pastor said in a church, instead of how they are going to pay their bills, get healthcare for their families and send their children to college, is insulting the intelligence of every citizen of our country. Any American who enters a voting booth next November, and casts their ballot based on race, religion, gender or age, deserves exactly what they get. We did not need ABC to add fuel to the fire in a race between the first woman and first African American to run for the presidency.

Gibson and Stepanopolous were clearly out to sensationalize the debate by fanning the flames of an already contentious campaign between Senators Clinton and Obama, and thereby cheated voters who tuned in to see and hear a discussion of real issues. ABC’s top people steered the candidates into a corner on Iraq as well, by asking for ironclad commitments about troop withdrawals. They also added fuel to the fire with regard to taxes, asking each candidate for a solemn pledge that they would not raise taxes on those earning less than $200 Thousand Dollars per year.

As a result of their myopic handling of the debate, Gibson and Stephanopolous cheated the American people, and the two candidates, from a real discussion of the monumental problems either will face if elected President.

Posted by Charles Warner at 12:06 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Bruce Braun at April 19, 2008 02:11 PM writes:

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Obama Video

If you support Obama, you will love this video of him having some fun with the stupid questions asked by Gibson and Stephanopolis during the first 45 minutes of the ABC debate on Wednesday night.

If you are not an Obama supporter you probably loved the questions that were asked, so don't waste your time on the video.

Here's the video:

Posted by Charles Warner at 08:44 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

April 17, 2008

Responders

Mild-mannered guest blogger Michael Weiskopf turns into a liberal man of steel who jumps over tall issues when aroused by the evil media.

Neil Derrough battles him to a draw with the cold logic of a conservative who defends the media. Here is Derrough's response, followed by an impassioned comment on Wednesday's debate by Jesse Kornbluth, who seems to have captured the sense of most people who watched the debate. First, Derrough writes:

"Editorial judgment will always be second-guessed. It’s a part of journalism. It’s often difficult to explain why one story is covered and another one is not. In breaking news coverage it’s a relatively easy decision. It’s story selection in the so-called discretionary news category that causes much of the problem. Add to that the highly charged political atmosphere that is a part of covering a presidential race and you have the perfect environment for many of the news gathering conspiracy theories that plague us today. It’s with this backdrop that so much anxiety exists about news judgment.

As I see it, in the process of covering a presidential race one of the most critical things that must be explored is, who are these people running for the office? Some of this exploration is superficial or driven by political operatives. Cutting through what’s important and what’s not is the hard part. We must as consumers of this information decide how it will influence our opinion of the candidates. In that our opinion is laced with our own political leanings, objectivity is difficult.

After saying all that, I submit the Bosnia and “elitist” stories strike at the heart of who these candidates are. A case can be made that knowing as much as possible about the candidates in advance of the election may lead to a better understanding how the candidate would deal with the Geneva Convention issues mentioned. As imperfect as the process is, exploring the character, honesty and deep-rooted political beliefs of the candidates is one of the most important responsibilities of covering an election."

Kornbluth writes:

"I figured out what to do about ABC's shameful hosting of the Obama/Clinton debate.

I gave Barack $.

And , in the future, I'm going to TIME MY DONATIONS so I give THE DAY AFTER the MSM shits on him and us.

Money talks? I hope mine does."

The Media Curmudgeon followed Jesse Kornbluth's lead and gave the last few dollars left to max out my contributions to Obama.

And then Nick Kotz writes:

"As if to confirm your comments yesterday [on being sick of the campaign and its coverage and wanting to see the movie], read Rothschild of the Progressive today on last night's debate."

Keep stirring the pot, everyone!

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:23 AM | Comments (2) | Print |

Bruce Braun at April 17, 2008 01:17 PM writes:

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Jesse Kornbluth at April 17, 2008 11:56 AM writes:

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April 16, 2008

I Want To See the Movie

I’m so sick of the meaningless, trivial media coverage of the presidential candidates that I have stopped watching news on television (CNN and MSNBC and FOX are not television news, they are television entertainment) and reading political coverage online.

The media is covering the candidates like it covers Britney Spears and Jay Z, which gives me less intellectual nourishment on important current issues than I get physical nourishment from eating Pirate’s Booty.

I’m even getting tired of comedians (and this includes Maureen Dowd), trying to be funny at the expense of the candidates and to the detriment of meaningful issues. I can’t wait for the race for the nomination and for the election to be over. I’ll wait to find out why whoever wins does win when I see the movie or the HBO series.

The movie will tell the story in a highly dramatic way, and tell it with 20/20 hindsight that will explain how inevitable the outcome was. Denzel Washington will play Barack Obama, Meryl Streep will reprise her role in “The Devil Wears Prada” and play Hillary Clinton, and Clint Eastwood will walk on his knees and play John McCain. The casting can be done in advance because, no matter who wins, any one of those actors will look presidential.

I don’t want to go through the agony of watching the current destruction of the Democratic party or a continuation of the destruction of the Constitution by the Republican party. I just want it to be over. I want to see the movie.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:31 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

bob hoffman at April 16, 2008 02:53 PM writes:

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April 15, 2008

Obama, Clinton, Arugula and Mindless Entertainment While Rome Burns

Guest blogger Michael Weiskopf writes:

Last Friday, Obama fed the media machine a sound bite that they have milked for five days with no immediate end in sight..Okay, so the talking heads are just doing their job...what a commentary on the state of public discourse and the game that politics is. Patraeous and Crocker testified last week but that wasn't where the prime time ratings were, nor where the highly charged emotional issues that drive ratings and sadly, elections as well.

On the Sunday morning talk shows, only Bob Schieffer ignored the Hillary Bosnia, Obama elitist story and attempted to have some kind of meaningful discussion with Gates and Pelosi on the war.

The question of whether Obama peaked too early or whether his recent loss of momentum and the resulting pile on of pundits is going to ruin his candidacy has yet to be answered..but it is a pretty good bet that the politics of Willie Horton and the Swift Boat strategy is what is driving a desperate Clinton campaign and regardless of success or failure, the democrats are on the brink of blowing it again.

More than 1.5 billion dollars will be spent on this election before it is over....the media industrial complex is the winner as long as the process continues. As long as meaningless incidents and "insensitive statements" by any candidate are distilled into entertainment continue masquerading as news, thoughtful voters yearning for meaningful discussion of issues of real consequence are the losers.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:33 AM | Comments (5) | Print |

Jesse Kornbluth at April 16, 2008 08:09 AM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 16, 2008 12:20 AM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 16, 2008 12:18 AM writes:

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Media Curmudgeon at April 15, 2008 05:00 PM writes:

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Jesse Kornbluth at April 15, 2008 10:45 AM writes:

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April 12, 2008

It’s Show Time At CBS

It’s show time at CBS, certainly not news time. CBS chairman and largest stockholder, Sumner Redstone, killed the notion that news and journalism were an important CBS heritage when he named show biz tyro Les Moonves, a former bit-part actor and TV entertainment executive, CBS’s CEO in 2005 when Redstone split CBS and Viacom into separate companies.

Moonves is a typical old-fashioned Hollywood mogul who believes that stars are the most important element in the success an entertainment program. He obviously believes that CBS’s showcase news broadcast, “The Evening News” is not a news program but an entertainment program – a show – which is why he lured Katie Couric away from NBC to be its anchor. He thought she would bring personality and show biz spark to the show. But the largely 65+ audience for “The Evening News” didn’t find perkiness a sufficient substitute for knowledge of current events or news judgment. The show’s ratings dropped to an even lower third place than before Cute Katie came on board.

CBS stock has dipped precipitously during Moonves’s tenure, as Wall Street sees little growth opportunities in a media company that depends almost exclusively on advertising revenue (TV network, TV stations, radio stations, outdoor, etc.), unlike other large media conglomerates that have multiple revenue streams. As ad dollars migrate to the Internet and as network TV ratings decline, the inevitable reduction in ad revenues will require drastic expense reductions in order to keep profits and the stock price from further declines. Therefore, Moonves has to cut news expenses, included Katie’s bloated $15 million salary.

Stockholders must wonder why she is making $15 million for being unsuccessful and why Moonves is paid even more (over $20 million) for being equally as unsuccessful. But in Mooves’s case, he’s got excellent company among media executives who are given outrageously, unconscionably large compensation packages for doing a terrible job for their stockholders – Barry Diller, Dick Parsons, Jeff Bewkes, Arthur Sulzberger, and on and on. So to keep his pay up in the clouds, Moonves, has to blame someone, so he blames Cute Katie, not himself, of course, for making such a stupid decision in the first place.

He’s also rumored to be trying to outsource news to CNN. Why not? Paying $7 million a year for a news bureau in Baghdad and then not using a package from Baghdad on “The Evening News” is a huge waste of money, which Moonves is well aware of. So why not combine news bureaus in order to reduce expenses? In fact, why not just eliminate CBS News entirely and have a bundle, which is what he has been rumored to be considering.

Here’s what Moonves could do to preserve profits and his job: 1) Eliminate CBS News – close all bureaus, terminate all personnel, and sell all equipment and assets associated with news – a big one-time charge, but good for future profits, which Wall Street would like. 2) Eliminate “The Evening News” and give that time back to local affiliates, including the CBS owned TV stations. This move would increase the revenue at local stations that could sell the time locally and improve the time-period ratings with game shows or reruns, which are badly beating “The Evening News” in the ratings. It would also give Moonves a good excuse for firing Cute Katie, who would save face and be able to say, “It was not my fault.” 3) Spin off its popular “60 Minutes” into a separate company that could produce investigative programs not only for CBS but for other networks, especially cable networks. 4) Create a CBS News cable channel on which it would run its library of old news programs such as “60 Minutes,” Edward Morrow’s “See It Now” and “Person to Person,” “CBS Reports,” and “The Evening News With Walter Cronkite.” 5) Cancel the third-place “The Early Show,” which isn’t succeeding in spite of the presence of Moonves’s young wife, Julie Chen, and replace it with reruns of the CBS prime time program “Big Brother” starring Moonves’s young wife, Julie Chen. He’d save a lot of money and keep his wife happy, two very important things to do for a man who is approaching 60.

Don’t be surprised if any or all of these things happen, because it’s show time at CBS, and in show biz survival is the name of the game.

Posted by Charles Warner at 05:01 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Jesse Kornbluth at April 13, 2008 08:22 AM writes:

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April 03, 2008

Peabody Awards Are Ironic

The annual Peabody Awards for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service by stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals” were announced this week, and they are ironically telling about the current state of radio and television.

Unlike the Oscars, Tonys, and Emmys, the Peabodys have neither set categories nor a set number of winners. This year the awards committee at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia gave 35 awards, and they pretty much define today’s radio and television.

For example, the story of the Peabody Awards in Broadcasting & Cable online led with “The Colbert Report” as a winner. The HuffingtonPost.com featured a video of Colbert having fun announcing the award, but there was no mention of the other 34 winners, including ABC’s Bob Woodruff’s heart-rending “reporting on veterans wounded in Iraq, drawing on his own experiences recovering from a traumatic head wound while covering the war there.”

Using Colbert’s satirical send-up of bloviating cable news channel talk shows as the lead pretty much says it all about the “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service” of television news, especially cable TV news – it’s comical.

The only award given to cable news was to CNN for “CNN Presents: God’s Warriors,” a series that “explored how rising fundamentalist disenchantment with the modern, secular world has affected Judaism, Islam and Christianity in sometimes similar but also different ways.” That award ironically buries the idea that the interminably and annoyingly repeated promotion line of CNN having “the best political team on television” has any credibility whatsoever. The Peabody Awards committee thinks what CNN reports best on is religion, not politics. Ironic.

Of the awards given to radio, none were to programs on commercial radio stations; all went to non-commercial, public radio. One of the awards went to Marc Steiner for his program “Just Words” on Baltimore’s public radio station, WYPR-FM – a program that was cancelled by the station for poor ratings, ironically.

And the awards do point out that finding “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service” on commercial radio is even rarer than finding news coverage for presidential candidate Ralph ______ (thank goodness!), and that NPR’s winner was “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!”, “a zippy update of one of broadcasting’s long-ago staples, this live quiz show reminds listeners of the week’s news even as host Peter Sagal and various panelists make witty sport of it.”

So news programs don’t win the “oldest and most coveted honor in electronic media,” as Stephen Colbert, on a video calls the Peabody’s, but programs that poke fun at the news and newsmakers do, which is as it should be. There is more truth in humor than there is in the vast majority of news sources, particularly newspapers, that take themselves way too seriously, as the media critic everyone loves to hate (including this blogger), Michael Wolff, points out in a letter to Jim Romenesko.

The message to the media the Peabody Awards committee seems to be giving is “lighten up and have some. Forget about being objective; be ironic.” Let’s hope the media is listening, because we all need something to smile about.

Posted by Charles Warner at 02:27 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Media Curmudgeon at April 3, 2008 09:12 PM writes:

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