"When we listen to that small voice deep inside, we can never go wrong." Tom Kent

"Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought." Henri Bergson

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character." Horace Greeley

Today's image: Glorious color by Bill Shannon. Fine shot. Thanks for sharing.

Never underestimate the power of intuition. Over the weekend I was reading Grant by John Mosier (Amazon info). About General Grant's success he writes...

"...great generals are not just smarter than their opponents, they're luckier. And the luck is generally due to superior intuition.

Napoleon had wanted his generals to have this quality. But intuition is a talent that can't be taught. You either have it or you don't."

Perhaps it is a talent that cannot be taught but my sense is one may be able to develop the talent. Development begins with learning to listen to that little voice. The one Tom Kent talks about above. It begins when you open your heart to wonderment, to the possible. The most successful people I know make their own luck and my thought is intuition plays an important part in that process.

Thank you very much: Lots of emails about the weekend post. One of the most emailed questions being "what is your 08 forecast by media?" Still in process. However, here are a few projected shares from OMMA: Newspapers 26.9, TV 38.2, Internet 8.7

Location, location, location: OMMA reporting for the first nine months of 2007, spending by mortgage and home equity advertisers on Internet display increased to $669.6 million from $146 mil in the year-earlier period.

Midtown buzz: Barry Diller wants his AOL.

Better than ever: Paulie Gallis checks in after a brief hospital stay and he sounds great! All is well with the beloved great Greek.

Why too many don't care: Kudos to Brian Lamb and the C-Span crew for bringing us another very good Q&A this past weekend. This time around a conversation with Stanford University history maven David Kennedy. Kennedy opines on why we are not as concerned as previously about engagements of war. He makes reference to WW2 wherein 40% of GDP was devoted to military and 10% of citizens were involved in the armed forces. Contrast and compare to today. Less than 5% of GDP resourced to military and about 4% of citizens in active military. The draft once got the attention of youth, today no consequences for Gen X or Gen Y seems to translate into no interest in world affairs especially war fighting. Increasingly, our armed services are populated with more and more of the economically and educationally deprived. Professor Kennedy's suggestion is this represents a potentially dangerous historic change. He might be right and it should give one pause. I'm proud of our active military. As one who once wore the uniform let me express my sincere appreciation to those serving today and to their families. The good work being done all around the world by our service people never seems to get the attention deserved. If you would like to get dialed-in to one of today's best minds on all things military you need to read the writings of the gifted strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett. As it happens you're in luck, while you wait for Amazon to deliver his books you can read in, he's blogging here. Barnett is a rock star; highly recommended!

History rewrite: Mel stops in fly-over land and chats up the Tribune folks. Thanks to Phil Rosenthal we get this gem about radio...

"It's a very good business. It throws off a lot of cash. But it's not growing ... and once it's not growing, then they started cutting costs and letting Howard Stern and other talent get away."

The inconvenient truth is CBS radio stopped growing during Mel's watch. Readers of this humble blog are aware I'm a Mel fan. He's so money. However, the case can be made that it was Mel that left CBS radio in bad shape. Mel loves to run his mouth and he can be very charming, at times even brilliant but sometimes he says really stupid stuff. Read Phil Rosenthal here.

Congrats & cheers: Programming ace Kurt Johnson celebrated via the R&R Publisher's Profile. Peter Smyth and the Greater Media gang on their acquisition of the Lincoln Financial Charlotte radio portfolio. Raycom on the agreement to add the LF TV properties in Charlotte, Richmond and Charleston. Lucy Hughes named SVP Research for CBS Radio. Mark Johnson and the Powerlabs crew now live in alpha, very cool, I'm lovin being a Powerlabr.