"You cannot save your way into a transition. You have to learn how to grow top line revenues." Ann Moore

The CEO of Time Inc gets it, Ann knows what she's talking about. Read the Rafat Ali interview with Ann here. Kudos Rafat, good job. Here's more of Moore...

"Here is the strategy. First, build the best of product. Differentiate it. Second, build the big audience and by that I mean you need partnerships with everyone. Then third, worry about monetizing it, but you got to have a big audience to make money on the web because the CPMs are low. I have said this publicly: The magazine models is a beautiful model because you got high margins; two revenue streams, the consumer pays and the advertiser pays; beautiful cash flow, you get the money up front. The average reader of Sports Illustrated delivers about $118 to the bottom line in Time Inc. The average very engaged user of SI.com can generate about $5 in advertising contribution. I need many more online viewers to equal one magazine reader. That is why you have to go for big volume and that is why you got to have partnerships. You do not do exclusives with anybody."

Enjoyed a very interesting conversation with some west coast colleagues yesterday. One of the subjects was "value added" and it brought to mind a story about a great promotion involving a Chicago retailer, a cookbook, and a quarter. Think you know what a great sales promotion is? My thought is you will enjoy reading this story about a sales call with my mentor the legendary Kevin Sweeney. It was the day I learned a valuable lesson about promotion, all the details are here in this previous post.

Congrats & cheers: Pat O'Neill and his Magic 98 team on making a difference. "The Concert for Gilda's Club" is on, more info here. Local, local, local.

Trade secret: Want to do something special on your breakfast show, something that will get listeners/viewers involved and really light up the phones? You should also feature this topic on your station breakfast show blog. Behold the response Eric Zorn got when he took a moment to engage his readers and struck the responsive cord...Gone but not (quite) forgotten. Note the first reader comment was from Sept 05, the last posted May 07. Local, local, local. Works 100% of the time. Works with all demos, all formats. One of our EU clients, a rocker, ran it as "Bring out your dead" to amazing result. Off the charts but still in our hearts. It's fun and it works!

Eric's list and the comments of his readers brought back a rush of memories from my Chicago days. A late night joint, Mel Markon's, was mentioned, it was special to me back in the day...Lee Harris, John Wetherbee and I had many a fun post-midnight dinner there, a place packed with character and characters.

Bonus: Marc Andreessen on How to hire the best people you've ever worked with. Marc makes the case for three key attributes: drive, curiosity, ethics. Recommended. Check out Marc's writing here.