"The future approaches us at 60 minutes an hour." Richard Seymour

"I really believe that everything resides in technique. You can't teach creativity, you can teach technique, and it's from technique that one is able to be creative. This is the terrible mistake of this century, to put creativity first." Vivienne Westwood

"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator." Edward Gibbon

Today's image: Zenith - Long Distance by InfraKen. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Bogus Ad Spending Forecasts: Jack Myers makes a good case for revisiting each of the ad forecasting models. Specifically he calls on trade press and Wall Street to stop reporting on the forecasts of Robert J. Coen "...as if they were gospel." Jack's suggestion is the methodologies and econometric models used by Coen are outdated. Get the detail at the Jack Myers Media Business Report here. From the narrative...

"While Myers projects overall ad spending will stay on the positive side through 2009, forecasts for consumer and trade sales promotion are less bullish, with slight declines forecast in 2008 and 2009. Some of these declines result from re-positioning of Procter & Gamble budgets for in-store marketing as advertising rather than trade allowances. Myers also projects robust annual growth of 15 percent in 2007 and 2008 for event marketing, which is also pulling budgets away from sales promotion. Several major media companies, especially consumer magazines, are targeting event budgets by creating co-branded opportunities for marketers to combine magazine ads with relevant consumer-focused events.

Myers projects the largest declines in ad spending will be suffered by newspapers, which will lose 4.6 percent in ad revenues in 2007, 2.4 percent in 2008 and 4.5 percent in 2009. Broadcast network TV will increase 2.0 percent in 2007 and 3.2 percent in 2008, but Myers believes they will adjust downward in 2009, losing 4.0 percent. Local and national spot TV, which is the greatest beneficiary of political spending, is forecast to gain 13.5 percent in 2008 after declines of 6.0 percent this year. Terrestrial radio will decline 2.0 percent in 2007 and rebound with 2.5 percent growth next year before declining 4.0 percent in 2009."

Kudos to Jack and his team for making the case. We do need to revisit ad spend forecasting. The landscape has changed and is significantly different. As Jack points out most forecasters are projecting 12 categories of spend, his group is projecting 18 including the 12 traditional categories. Chasing an earlier post here's a look at some selected shares of ad spend. Note the slide of broadcast.

Media Shares: 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009

Radio - 9.4 - 9.0 - 8.6 - 8.0
Local & National Spot TV - 12.4 - 11.3 - 12.0 - 10.5
Newspapers - 21.4 - 19.8 - 18.1 - 16.8
Local & Regional Cable TV - 2.6 - 2.8 - 2.8 - 2.7
Yellow Pages (print) - 6.4 - 6.3 - 5.8 - 5.5
Broadcast Network TV - 8.3 - 8.2 - 7.9 - 7.4
Cable Network TV - 7.5 - 7.7 - 7.7 - 7.7

The headline here is Jack projects the ad spend will grow 3% in '07; 7% in '08; 3% in '09. What is interesting is the ad share of the total advertising and marketing spend. 2006 - 30.8%, 2007 - 30.7%, 2008 - 31.8, 2009 - 32.7%. Selected projected shares of marketing spend for 2008: Direct mail - 22.8%, Trade promotion/slotting - 21.6%, Consumer sales promotion/incentives - 18.0%, Event marketing - 2.5%. Detailed schedules here. My thanks to Jack and team for sharing and for his valuable insights. Meanwhile, RAB, TvB and CAB need to get busy, now.

Congrats & cheers: Programming ace and uber-tech-scenester Michael Fischer profiled. Well deserved, long overdue recognition. Inside Radio scribe Mike Kinosian does the honors here. Thanks for the mention Michael!

Bonus: Doris Lessing speaks of a hunger for books in her Nobel acceptance speech here...

"The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative."

Australia red: 100% Grenache. Chris Ringland and Lisa Wetherell using fruit from the Barossa valley offer up the provocatively named Bitch Grenache 2006. A strong value for under $10.