"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." Howard Aiken

Lee Arnold is a mensch. A Milwaukee-based serial entrepreneur, Lee is a deft raconteur, a scary smart creative and a gentleman blessed with an acuity in all matters of pop culture. We had the chance to catch up yesterday and Lee was in his usual rare form - the man is a force of nature. If you or someone you know is looking to get radio's attention Lee is the go-to guy (especially if you are in the music industry); should you own or manage a radio property that has not reached its audience potential, you'll benefit from involving Lee; should you own or manage a business you need to check out his merchandising/promotions company. Finally, if your venture seeks to do business with boomers Lee is an accomplished subject matter expert on that monied cohort and his good counsel stands ready for hire. You'll find Lee on the web here

Umair Haque understands the real opportunity for media folks...get deep into what's happening at the edge...

Put another way, It is the expected value of attention of consumers which PageRank is supposed to, somewhat accurately, compute. But as long as there's no real competition in search (and let's be honest - there really isn't), Google can keep shifting the costs of this arbitrage on to consumers.

As Scott puts it, "the media business has been reduced to pure transaction". That's a brilliant statement - he's exactly right. In fact, his statement parallels Mark Pincus's very nice analogy from a few months back - Google as Wal-Mart. The dynamics are very much the same: scale economies are achieved by shifting costs elsewhere; at the expense of consumers, quality, etc.
More from Umair's "Industry Update - The People vs the Googleverse" here

Jeff Jarvis is writing about the Tribune situation. My sense is this is shaping up to be another Knight-Ridder scenario. Jeff's take is here. On share buybacks I vote with Jeff and Gary Hamel...what a complete lack of imagination...the good doctor said some years ago...

Share buybacks are one of the simplest and perhaps most simpleminded ways of unlocking shareholder wealth. Fresh out of ideas? No compelling investment opportunities? No problem! Take the cash being produced by today's business model and return it to shareholders...

...If downsizing was the quick fix for corporate obesity, buybacks have become the instant cure for slow-growth syndrome...

..."Here" buyback CEOs seem to be saying. "We don't know what to do with the cash. You take the money and go see if you can find some better investment opportunities." Of course this is exactly what a CEO bereft of new strategy ideas should do! But it's no more sustainable than selling off assets...

...Unlocking shareholder wealth is a lesser challenge than creating new wealth. Stewards unlock wealth, entrepreneurs create wealth.

Thank you very much for the emails on my recent speaking engagements. One that deserves an answer...

It was about time someone said out loud what many of us have been thinking 'Hey Mel, STFU' What was the part about Shakespeare, missed getting the entire thing...what again was the challenge you issued??

My literary allusion regarding Mel Karmazin was...Mel will never be a Henry V, that is, a truly exceptional leader (at one time, an achievement I was almost certain he would reach). Rather, in my experience and opinion, he has become more of a Henry IV character. Bill Carter's book sums this view up when he writes about a Viacom executive who said "We would get tubed every year by Mel's operation, radio." The tragedy here is the one division Mel deeply understood is the one that was left in the worst shape upon his departure. Carter also writes
"Karmazin baffled many other Viacom executives. 'Mel would say, I don't want to watch any shows,' one senior Viacom executive said. 'I don't want to meet affiliates. I don't want to go out after six at night. That's it. I like coming at four-thirty in the morning.'...But longtime Viacom veterans grumbled that Karmazin's radio group was dragging down the company's stock price." Sad stuff. Hard for me to imagine a Mel that would not have a rabid interest in shows, certainly not the Mel I once worked for and admired. Things change as do people. He could have been a contender and....may yet make a come back.

My open challenge to Mel - the first tribe of wireless has shown the world its numbers, real radio listenership is an open book (280mil weekly reach), show the world your listenership numbers or shut up already. The sat radio folk throw around their subscription numbers which have nothing to do with usage, that is, actual listening. Lots of fuzzy math being used or so it seems. In discussing sub counts I used cable as a practical example. VH1 may have 60 million subs meaning their channel is "available" in 60 million homes, however, it does not mean those homes are watching, the majority never have, perhaps never will.