"High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace." Tennessee Williams

"There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it." Shirley Booth

"No pleasure lasts long unless there is variety in it." Publilius Syrus

Today's image: Test pic #9 by Dave Winer. Very cool shot. Thanks for sharing.

The show must go on

Succession planning is difficult. It's one of the only mission critical tasks that consistently gets a pass until it becomes a high priority, one of obvious and serious urgency. We should get around to that someday becoming What are we going to do now?

The sudden and unexpected loss of the very gifted, hard working and successful Tim Russert serves as a perfect illustration.

As a practical matter, Tim was an incredible talent and a strong leader who held four key posts at NBC News.

Wendy Wilkinson, already on staff, would appear the person most deserving to be named NBC's D.C. bureau chief, one of Tim's responsibilities.

But who is best qualified to serve as the next managing editor and moderator of Meet The Press? Who is the person that can also contribute to the other news division shows as chief political correspondent (and advise parent GE on relevant political matters)? Finally, who is the executive that can serve as effective advocate for political news when dealing with New York.

No doubt, Tim Russert was that most rare of once in a generation broadcasters but the show must go on. Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker have a big, complicated hiring and potential major reorganization on their hands. They'll need to do a job equal to that once done by Michael Gartner in hiring Tim (likely a mission impossible).

Waiting until you need to find someone is never the best strategy. The odds are against you especially when timing is no longer on your side. Succession planning deserves to be a priority on the agenda of every manager before need presents. It's consistently the one must-do that managers just don't do. The unexpected happens and it happens to the best of managers. The failure to develop a solid succession plan twice worked against CBS in recent years. Howard Stern and Dan Rather.

Five suggestions.

1. Champion human resources development. Every person on your team deserves the opportunity to realize their full potential. Develop the people who develop your profits. Exhibit A: Meet The Press EP Betsy Fischer started as an intern on the show seventeen years ago.

2. Make it a requirement. To be eligible for promotion people must have trained and/or identified (and be in contact with) one or more qualified replacements.

3. Formalize succession planning. Make it part of the annual business planning process. Establish timed objectives with delayed incentives for effective implementation (i.e., Identify candidates by dates certain, pay bonuses when actually faced with a need that the plan resolves).

4. Adopt the practice of continuous recruitment. No matter how strong the short list developed continue to network and search for qualified candidates, especially high potential candidates.

5. Keep score. At the end of every week ask yourself "If the airplane went down and [Dave Martin] didn't come back from vacation do we have at least two good candidates ready, willing and legally available to talk with us about [Dave's] job? Whom is [Dave] now training to take his place?" Keep a scorecard listing all your players, grade yourself. How ready are you this week? No, really, this week, right now, how ready are you?

Plan now for the show to go on later. Finding people is made easy when you're looking for them before you need them. Pay no attention to those who would have you (and their bosses) believe "There's no one out there," they're out there and you're paid to find, develop, retain and someday replace them. As the great Paul Drew taught "Planning affords the best ROI."

[Related: Timesmen Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg write With Tim Russert's Death, NBC Must Replace a Man of Many Roles here and David Carr writes The Media Equation - In Mourning for a Man and his Era, here. WaPo's Eugene Robinson writes The Outsider's Insider here. The story all insiders are talking about - news of Tim's death broke not on NBC but on Wikipedia - BW's Jon Fine w/more here.]

Word to the wise: Don't write another liner, produce another promo or create another ad until you read this PDF. Thank me later.

The responsive chord: Tony Schwartz passes. [Obit, NYT]

Local, local, local: outside.in bows Radar (in preview here)

Grapes: Favorable exchange rates (1 USD = 3.04 ARS) continue to make the wines of Argentina exceptionally good values. Budini, Malbec 2006 (Mendoza). A good red under $10, drinks like a $25 wine.

"What magic there is in a girl's smile. It is the raisin which, dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation." P.G. Wodehouse

"Nothing succeeds like reputation." John Huston

"Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it." Terry Wogan

Today's image: Cool Hand Luke by NontrivialMatt. Great shot. Thank you for sharing.

Inside baseball: Radio sports ace Les Grobstein delivered a rant yesterday during The Big 89 Rewind on WLS. Les wondered why sports radio stations in Chicago were not offering fans anything worth listening to at night or overnight (pbp excepted). His suggestion being Chicago was not some backwater and fans deserved better than dated (i.e., delayed) syndicated programming. Les made a valid point. He said out loud what fans must be thinking, he was speaking as an advocate for the listener. Kudos, Les.

The quick, easy and wrong answer would accuse operators of being cheap, too cheap for their own good some would say. My sense is the more honest, pragmatic answer would involve sales making this an issue of risk management. 7pm - 5am inventory is perhaps the most undervalued asset in radio. The problems related to a lack of demand are exacerbated by management's benign neglect. One could make the case that the majority of stations (of every format) have decided that this 41% of their daily inventory is just not worth the effort, not worth the investment in programming nor the attention and focus of sellers. This serves as an excellent exhibit in self-fulfilling prophecy.

Operators are not willing to invest in product because they are convinced demand will not be there no matter the audience developed. Being #1 at night too often viewed as a Pyrrhic victory - "So what, we can't sell it!" This is the same logic frequently used in walking away from renewal of sports rights - "We can no longer make the math work." While it may indeed be easier to save a dollar than to bring a dollar in, that's no way to build or grow a business. This is another bad habit developed over the years become accepted practice. As Samuel Johnson reminded "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

The dirty little secret here is nobody likes live sports programming at night or overnight but the listeners. They never got the memo giving them the heads up that all the good stuff happens between 5a and 7p. The cost-benefit calculus ensures management remains averse to any 7pm - 5am investment. The elephant in this room is sales. We have a crisis of confidence when it comes to betting on 7pm - 5am programs because the conventional wisdom tells us that even if we do develop a strong following we won't be able to monetize it sufficiently. The result is a kind of prior restraint with respect to programming innovation and audience development. Moreover, a market for barter programming is created and sustained. My thought is this is the crucible of Les' finding, that time and place devoid of acceptable options. Not to disparage network or syndi offerings, there's an abundance of good properties out there. It seems to me, at the core of this argument, we're talking the quality of local execution.

Clearly, the solution set involves creating demand and teaching sellers how to be much more effective. Imagine a day as being one hour, would you throw away almost 25 minutes of that hour? 7pm - 5am, nothing but upside. No matter your format, give it a go. Make something happen. Why continue pushing to make 100% of your number depending on only some amount close to 59% of your inventory. You can and should be using it all. Forget getting better. Start getting different. Change the denominator. The words of Hunter S. Thompson come to mind "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

Here's the biggest single competitive advantage - should you get serious and try this - it's all yours, no one is likely to follow. 41% of radio's daily inventory seems a terrible thing to waste. Can I get a witness?

LATER: Sales rock star Sheila O'Connor and others weigh in via comments. Thank you very much.

Bonus: Soundflavor

Four criteria: Gap CEO Glenn Murphy suggests four criteria that justify marketing spending; The brands must have...

• Good product
• Well-run retail environments
• "Imaginative, creative" message for the target consumer
• Be able to answer the questions: "Is the consumer ready to respond to the marketing? What is the psyche of the consumer? How are they feeling at that moment?"

More, thanks to Natalie Zmuda writing TV Ads 'a Waste of Money' for Back-in-Black Gap, via AdAge.

Same cool night feed, different damn channel: Web 2.o impresario Rob Barnett has moved the flag, his blog is now here. Please make a note of it.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Curley joins the Las Vegas Sun. Les Moonves & CBS for agreeing to join the 4A/ANA task force on ad integration fees. Eddie McLaughlin and Bob Bruno on their induction into the New York Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. Good to see NYBA is also honoring the great Roger King.

"I'm not finished, because I'm still curious." Barry Diller

"Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion; let the artist be truly taciturn." Paul Klee

"However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words." Ivan Turgenev

Today's image: Claudia, lost in the Garage by Portrait and Fashion Photographer. Great shooting. Thank you for sharing.


Danger, Will Robinson: Thanks to Barron's scribe Alan Abelson we learn the updated report from those smart guys at hedge fund T2 Partners bears title language including "We are still in the early innings of the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles..."

Then there's the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey hitting a 28-year low, and that pesky $4-a-gallon gasoline. S&P 500 first-quarter earnings down 25.9% from the same quarter last year. [Up and Down Wall Street, 5/19]

The recent buzz about online rates is CPMs have headed south. My sense is online is still pacing up at 20 something percent. The danger for sellers is depending on the usual suspects to deliver their month. Sales leadership needs to be more focused on developing new business including new categories. While this environment is certainly challenging to sellers now is a great time for buyers to invest in advertising. Rates are attractive and you'll gain share of voice (especially valid should your competitors fail to spend). The most optimum time to advertise is when others are not. As baseball player Wee Willie Keeler famously said "...hit 'em where they ain't."

Buzz: Vegas odds say...Mr Softy buys Yahoo (at least Search now says Arrington) then Facebook (so say others). Stay tuned.

Pre-order: Outliers the new book by Malcolm Gladwell is now on offer at Amazon for $18.47 - info here. Related 800-CEO-READ

Say it ain't so: Firefox checks their own box. Do the custom install option and you can uncheck the box making Firefox your default browser. Shame on Mozilla. Opt-out, bad. Opt-in, good.

If I give you my business card, do I give you the right to publish it on the internet? The Comcast-Plaxo, CBS-CNET deals and the important data portability issue (think last week's Facebook smack down of Google) gets thrown around and the discussion is nothing less than informative, if not plainly and purely entertaining (thanks to Steve Gillmor, Sam Whitmore, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Chris Saad, Marc Canter) in the latest Gillmor Gang podcast. Don't start tomorrow without it [Audio, MP3 Heads up, NSFW - language]. Bravos, guys. Good show! [Related: Marc Canter details his argument here]

Agenda item: The issues discussed in the Gillmor Gang podcast above are more important than one might first believe. We are at the beginning, the early days of a very real "data war." This amounts to nothing less than an arms race for some kind of control of user identity. Fair warning - get deep into this issue, now. What's in your ToS (and how well you play w/others) will play a role in the future of what's in your wallet.

Congrats & cheers: May sweeps winners, Fox leads 18-49, CBS leads in households and total viewers. The strike seems to have been the primary factor in 18-49 viewing being down almost 20% vs last year. The young guns of wireless being honored by Edison Media Research [names named here] Ken Fisher and team Ars Technica acquired by Conde Nast.[Ken's announcement]

Bonus x 3: 21 Accents + Ex-Boyfriend Jewelry + Ztail

Lost in space, the reality show: They call it "The Pioneer Anomaly." For reasons yet unknown something has dragged Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 a quarter-million miles off course. Robert Lee Hotz, WSJ's Science Journal editor chats about the anomaly in the following video. Could Newton and Einstein be wrong?

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." James Joyce

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"I'm forever raising the high bar and breaking my neck to clear it." John Kluge

Today's image: Surrealist Twist by AndyKapped. Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

What's the second most misunderstood word in the business lexicon? Innovation, so says branding and marketing ace Tom Asacker. Tom's right about that and right again in declaring the most misunderstood word to be brand. We can all learn something from Tom. Here's the first part of Tom's definition of innovation...

"Innovation is the successful introduction of a new idea that results in a more desirable customer experience, and..."

Complete that sentence and get Tom's insight on this much talked about (and too often misunderstood) subject, read his latest article The Enemy of Innovation, here's the jump. Highly recommended. Bravos, Tom!

"Nothing stops technology, nothing."

That's one important lesson learned from my dear friend, mentor and former partner the legendary Larry Bentson. The company that started in the motion picture exhibition business (you may know that as the movie theater or cinema trade) got into radio when radio was to kill the movies, then into TV when TV was to kill movies and radio, then Cable when Cable TV was to be the certain death of movies, radio and broadcast TV. The day I joined the firm they still owned every one of those businesses, had for decades and everything was successful or very successful.

Our mission was to stay ahead of the curve. The daily question being...What's next? The objective at hand...keep the plates we have spinning, add new plates.

We built a video retailing chain (remember, they were going to kill theaters, TV and Cable), got serious about building a telephony-communications firm (the phone is the future!), acquired the largest teleport in North America (sat delivery would soon be king), started a software development company (computers will be ubiquitous and they'll need software), launched a leisure services company (marinas could benefit from professional management including market research) and a bunch of other stuff. The point of this story is staying current is really important. Larry used to say when people asked why he got into so many competing and varied businesses "We're basically paranoid about losing everything and like to keep the portfolio diversified. We like to get into new things early."

As the partner responsible for marketing and sales let me say it was big fun. Over a dozen learning curves. Learned a bunch but the key take away comes back to Larry's one liner "Nothing stops technology, nothing." Getting a grasp of this, a deep understanding of what's happening around you is powerful. Early indications can be very important. The guy who is living on the leading edge of TV news, no...make that the future of video journalism is Michael Rosenblum. Please, come with me, see the future here. Thank you Michael, well done.

The real story: The one you won't read anywhere else. The back story on how the Clear Channel deal came around. Heidi N. Moore has done a fine job dishing the detail via WSJ.com, check it out here. Kudos to Heidi!

Bonus: Harve Alan

More future, more often: Eric Savitz provides excellent coverage of the week's single coolest event - The Churchill Club's Top Ten Tech Trends Dinner. Here are some headlines, complete post by Eric at the jump.

• "Demographics are destiny, creating opportunity"
• "The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer"
• "Water tech will replace global warming as a priority"
• "Evolution trumps design"
• "Within five years everything that matters to you will be available to you on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse"

Read At The Churchill Club: The Top Ten Tech Trends here.

They must be stopped: Gen X vs The Millennials. Robert Lanham fires the first shot via Radar here.

Astro buzz: Flash 10

Blogs you should know about (but probably never heard of): The Industry Standard's Top 25 B-to-Z List

Congrats & cheers: Les and Quincy on CBS acquiring CNET for 1.8 billion cash. Comcast bought Plaxo, deal closed today (thanks to Michael Arrington via FriendFeed).

"Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why." Hunter S. Thompson

"Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's jobs with yesterday's tools." Marshall McLuhan

"As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see." Julius Caesar

Today's image: 007 by honan4108. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

The media player wars

Ephemeral solutions

Art as metaphor

Dave Winer, quoted in a new writing [Who controls your data?] by Doc Searls, says "The tech industry is organized around the concept of wars...if there's money to be made in controlling users, there's been a war to lock those users in...Having seen a number of these wars, and seeing each of them end not in triumph, but irrelevance, I believe we're getting closer to the end of the warfare defined by social networks...Open is a funny thing, you can't be partially open. You can't edge your way toward open. You can't be open and hold the valuable stuff in reserve for yourself." Brilliant.

My thought is the big media companies are engaged in a war of media players. Resources are being dedicated in yet another protracted online battle, the spoils being the solution needed to cut the Gordian knot known as lock in. The rules of engagement are clear - the best walled garden wins. The flaw is in the logic driving these efforts. Media companies are focused on developing a unilateral advantage based on remaining solely in the import business (i.e., importing viewers and listeners). This mindset fails to recognize the increasing irrelevance of the home page and the need to develop new business models based on getting into the nascent business of export (i.e., exporting content). My suggestion here is we are reaching the point of incremental optimization as it relates to Web 1.0 and need to get serious about concurrent Web 2.0 development. Broadcasters no strangers to "live" have an urgent need to focus resources and share of agenda on the "Live Web."

The latest generation of media players deployed by big media continue, by design, to perpetuate the walled garden and with it the mythical quest for lock in. To prosper in the coming sea change, one in part driven by social media, content needs to be digital, discoverable, export friendly and truly platform agnostic. Today's media player solutions are ephemeral. The latest player initiative by CBS Radio while a step in the right direction is just that - only a step. There are miles to go before they sleep and please read that as praise and no disrespect for the nothing less than jump to light speed made by Dan Mason and his colleagues. The CBS Radio initiative seems fundamentally distracted, it's perhaps an elegant present day solution to one of yesterday's problems - online streaming. One hopes there's something Media-Web 2.0 cooking in the digital kitchens of Quincy Smith.

While we're talking CBS let me set the record straight and give Dan Mason some credit he is not getting elsewhere. It has been proffered that Dan's CBS could care less about appealing to the youth market, this is suggested within the context of the larger imperfect argument that the youth no longer listen to radio. Patently false on both counts. During Dan's watch CBS has started up stations targeting youth - Houston and Portland being two recent examples. This is to say nothing of the successful youth targeted stations he continues to support. Proponents of this defective argument are quick to cite the return of WCBS-FM as the defining moment of the Mason presidency when the facts more fairly suggest that was but one defining moment. Stay tuned.

The majority of American youth still listen to radio and being told by their elders that they do not only serves to confirm what these digital natives know instinctively to be true - their grandparents really are a clueless bunch. Permit me to disabuse you of the pure nonsense that states one can only program with any success to the "available" older audience. Radio Disney Q.E.D. Further, in my book the "available audience" is defined as any person with respiration, heart beat and the strength to operate a radio and assistance can be provided to the latter. My sense is Dan being a smart guy, a good business person, wants every cohort possible tuned into at least one CBS station (or product of CBS Radio provenance no matter the delivery platform). Closed circuit to the wags - we live in a world of AND not OR. The zero sum games of yesterday are alive and relevant only in your own head.

Going forward, what next? Rather than using war or any other military metaphor please allow me to introduce another. I've often wondered what metaphors are used by the military since common sense would suggest they must use something. General Sir Rupert Smith is author of a new book The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World [Amazon info]. In this important work Sir Rupert argues a revolution, a new paradigm must occur in our conception of war. This follows earlier seminal writings on the subject of 4GW (Fourth-generation warfare) including the remarkable writing of Col Thomas X. Hammes - The Sling and The Stone [Amazon info]. Sir Rupert introduces art as metaphor, specifically he uses the Impressionists, those guys who once broke all the rules of academic painting.

He makes the point that the Impressionists were trained as Realists and became Impressionists. They used the same paint, the same brush, the same canvas and the same objects however they expected a different outcome. They re-created the sensation in the eye. They were hated for it, their work dismissed. What media needs now in my view is to break free of a confining and limiting mindset, a perspective that is in fact a major obstacle to real innovation. The broadcast business model is operating past its best used by date.

We have no lack of critics, modern day aspiring Lewis Leroy types more concerned with preserving the status quo of best practice than giving consideration to the new and appreciating any taking of calculated risk. Critics preoccupied with moving a tweaked, optimized version of some preferred celebrated past forward rather than being obsessed with competing for the future by way of innovation including abandonment. These critics will no doubt find fault with any and all attempts at radical re-invention but re-invention and innovation are the must haves no longer optional. Simply put they are the price of entry in a new game that is already in progress. The dogs bark, but the caravan is moving on. Best to keep the wise counsel of William Gibson "...the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."

Damn the rule takers, let the rule breakers and rule makers unite to make amazing things happen. Let the messy stuff of creative collaboration and innovation begin in earnest. Let us stop wasting valuable time trying to get better and let us start making those investments needed to get different, dramatically different. Let us paint!

Bonus: twictionary

Music video: Duffy, the 23-year-old Welsh pop singer is the goods. Check her out via YouTube.

Congrats & cheers: Microsoft Research opens WorldWide Telescope to the public. Very cool [Related video - Scoble interviews Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay project leads at Microsoft] Sam Zell on his flawless sale of Newsday. Sprout on their raise and using their product (below) to make the announcement and advance the demo - savvy! Finally, upon his departure from Bear Stearns, we salute Vic Miller. Vic's performance was exemplary, he brought honor to his firm, credit to his profession and insight to those of us in measured media made better by his consistently cogent observation. Best wishes, Vic - may all your dreams come true.

"The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in process of formation, the modern age represents a period of transition and anarchy." Gustave Le Bon

"Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation, others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one builds for all." Camus

"A competing product, if it is never tried, can't act as a reward creating a conflicting habit. Every spouse knows that." Charles Munger

Today's image: Lorain lighthouse at sunset by ronnie44052. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Way back in 1999 I left CBS and signed on with my first dot com. I was the old media guy (radio, TV, cable) given the privilege of working in new media and learning from a bunch of gifted young players. It was the year everyone was reading and talking about Cluetrain (the site). It was the beginning of my love affair with digital media.

If it's been some time since you've read Cluetrain and especially if you've never picked up on it, please take a moment now to lock it into your bookmarks here. Join me in reading Cluetrain again and do join us if it's your first time around. It reads as fresh as spring rain.

Today's post in tribute to Chris, Doc and David. Thanks guys.

people of earth...

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.

While many such people already work for companies today, most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it.

However, employees are getting hyperlinked even as markets are. Companies need to listen carefully to both. Mostly, they need to get out of the way so intranetworked employees can converse directly with internetworked markets.

Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

Read on here. (But don't tap on the glass as it just annoys the animals)

And then he wrote: Dr Dave says "The world is far more interesting than the mainstream media have let on. Blogging is all about discovering just how interesting the world really is." From his post The people vote with their clicks

Bonus: Marc Andreessen makes the case - Benjamin Franklin, blogging role model.

Closed circuit to Chicago Sun-Times: Where's Katie's money?


Legendary Lobel leaving WBZ: New England television sports icon Bob Lobel is leaving CBS' WBZ with a contract buyout, part of the recent company wide budget cutbacks.

I once worked for Bob. He was then and has always remained since a great gentleman. A hard working professional that was never really happy unless the best possible performance had been delivered. Bob delivered more amazing performances than anyone can easily remember, over the last three decades he was always there, a part of many of our most cherished moments of New England victory. During his exemplary career Bob wrote a page turning chapter in the history of sports journalism.

Bob cares about his work, he's deeply passionate and accordingly what he does really matters. Bob will always matter to listeners, to viewers, to colleagues who admire and respect his tireless dedication. He will always mean something special to all of us who, like Bob, truly love the game.

Bob serves as an inspiration to me and a great many others. Thanks Bob. Let the next game begin. Jackie MacMullan covers Bob's story via The Boston Globe here.

Congrats & cheers: Sean Compton joins Tribune as SVP, Programming & Entertainment.

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." Eric Hoffer

"Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it - even though others may hesitate or differ. (You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.)" Benjamin Graham

Today's image: Meeting by Chris (archi3d). Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Local wins: Jeff Jarvis on the CBS local ad network here. Check out their ad formats here.

FriendFeed adds search. Smart.

Invited to the searchme beta, it's impressive.

Richard Parsons, former TW chief executive, talks change: "I tolerate change well, it doesn't intimidate me...Change just is, don't fear failure." The Change Nation interview (audio) Kudos to Ariane de Bonvoisin, well done!

Congrats & cheers: Slate editor James Ledbetter leading development of The Big Money, a new business news site, set to debut this summer. Joel Hollander opens his own shop, 264 Echo Place Partners.

Facebook chat demo

"Don't follow trends, start trends." Frank Capra

"There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; it's what we do with them that's important." Ruth Ross

"The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance." Emerson

Create your own social network for anything - in less than two minutes - for free. That's what Ning now has on offer. Kudos to Marc Andreessen. Get all the details here. Marc has also written a good post about The three kinds of platforms you meet on the internet. Level 1 - Access API (e.g., Flickr, Delicious); Level 2 - Plug-in API (e.g., Facebook); Level 3 - Runtime Environment (e.g., Salesforce.com). A good read here.

Being #1 requires no explanation: As true today as when it was first said by Paul Drew. Kudos to programming ace Brian Kelly and his team. 103.7 KISS FM is again #1 18-34, with double digits no less. While it's only a trend you can bet the farm (without worry) that these guys have a lock on #1. When next you hear or read that the youth market is not listening to radio don't buy it. Brian Kelly and his team are proving this notion to be nonsense. The truth of the matter is too few understand how to put on a show for the youth market and fewer still are getting it done. Brian Kelly is the exception that makes the rule. Teens and the 18-34s will listen when you give them something worth their bandwidth.

Today's image: sometimes the road gets rugged and it's hard to travel on... by dlemieux. The image was one of the top fifty finalists in the Smithsonian Magazine's annual photo contest. Congrats to Diana! Awesome image, thank you very much for sharing.

Courage: The Dan Rather story is sad, very sad. You may read the work of Gold, Reich and Parker, Dan's 32 page complaint here (in PDF, thanks to TMZ). Read the view of Mary Mapes along with 295 comments, and counting here. Read Rather Revolting, the post by Michael Rosenblum with comments here.

Bonus: The 10 rules of Twitter (and how I break every one) - Scobleizer. 62 comments and counting. Rock on Robert! There is only one rule - there are no rules!

Bonus 2: Xobni. Are you an Outlook user? You can not live another day without Xobni. Very cool, very smart. Not open to the public, yet. Chase all the action on their blog here. The thesis is your email usage is a social network - agreed. Genius!

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." Bertrand Russell

"From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents; from 18 to 35 she needs good looks; from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality; and from 55 on she needs cash." Sophie Tucker

"Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right." Kurt H. Adler

From the open letter to Dow Jones shareholders by Brad Greenspan...
"Every company and individual makes strategic mistakes over a long career. It always happens. But the big winners historically are the companies/individuals that learn from these mistakes, make changes, and have the courage to make another bet on themselves, their employees, and their portfolio of assets." The entire text here (WSJ sub). Over at CNBC, The Brain (aka David Faber), says the deal with Murdoch will be signed tonight.

400 year death spiral continues: Dead tree guys keep selling those ads. September fashion books are setting record high ad pages. Harper's - 360, W - 477, Elle - 598, Vogue - 727 (incl Fashion Rocks supplement in both Vogue and W estimates).

Mixing metaphors: Tom Asacker offers up a good post on brands, marketing and metaphors...

"It is compelling, and much simpler, to view a brand as a fixed and valuable asset, like a piece of real estate. One that simply requires protection and promotion. Instead, today's brands should be thought of as perishable assets, like salad bars. They are marketplace offerings, which need to be constantly reinvented and refreshed to remain relevant. Make no mistake about it. That's the metaphor change that will turn marketers into leaders." Read Tom's entire post here. Kudos Tom, well said. Brands are alive in the moment and related within the context of a dynamic marketplace. Winning brands are not static. The best brands are much more like fashion than architecture, soft v hard, alive v dead, moving picture v snap shot.

The Sumner show - Les is more: Q2 CBS earnings call this morning. Sumner set the stage, introducing Les as the "best executive in the media industry." Les said "technology is our friend" going on to chat up the last.fm acquisition ("a community around content") and other interactive initiatives. In his division by division review Les praised Dan Mason for his "swift and decisive changes" related to the radio group's New York portfolio saying that Dan was a "programmer at heart." Les indicated the NFL cpms are up double digits. Scatter up consistently. Same TV station sales down Q2 (taking out NCAA - flat). Les on Google radio and TV inventory sharing: "We're in discussion with everybody over everything, all the time." On the balance sheet - $2.8Bil in cash. My sense is Les is doing a great job. Thanks to Dan Mason, CBS Radio should enjoy a great 08.

Bonus: searchCrystal. Compare, remix, share. Very cool.

Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett launches his new venture My Damn Channel. But wait, there's more - throwing down with Rob are Harry Shearer, David Wain, Paul Reiser and Don Was. Okapi Venture Capital is backing. CBS Radio's Mark Edwards, delivers good books for KEZK and KYKY. Elizabeth Guider named top editor at The Hollywood Reporter.

"Every valuable creative idea (concepts and perceptions, not artistic expression) must always be logical in hindsight. If it was not, we would never recognize the value of that idea. It could only seem a 'crazy idea'. We might catch up with it in twenty years time - or never, for it might truly be a crazy idea." Edward de Bono

"Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress there is disintegration. Today a thousand doors of enterprise are open to you, inviting you to useful work. To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities. Today is the day in which to attempt and achieve something worth while." Grenville Kleiser

"Men and women love inertia. And to my way of thinking, inertia is the silent killer of most businesses and, in some cases, entire industries as well. Inertia in business, both up and down the chain of decision making, is no different than inertia in other aspects of one's life; it has to do with protecting one's identity, immediate self interest and inter-personal relationships." Tom Asacker

The efficacy of out-thinking the competition to win is rarely, if ever, considered. First, thinking is hard work. As George Bernard Shaw famously said "Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." It is tempting to substitute analysis for thinking and it is wrong. Edward de Bono writes...

"We have always depended on analysis not only to solve problems but also for our source of new ideas. Most people in education, science, business and economics still believe that the analysis of data will give us all the new ideas that we need. Unfortunately, this is not so. The mind can see only what it is prepared to see. That is why after a breakthrough in science we look back and find that all the needed evidence was available a long time before but could be seen only through the old idea (Kuhn's paradigm shift). There is a desperate need for the sort of 'idea work' or conceptual effort that Einstein provided in his field and Keynes in his. We know this is important, but we are content to let it happen by chance or genius because our traditions of thinking hold that analysis is enough...The brain has to use existing patterns and catchments. When we believe that we are analysing (sic) data we are really only trying out our stock of existing ideas to see which one might fit. It is true that if our stock of possible ideas is rich then our analysis will be adequate. But the analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas." (I Am Right, You Are Wrong)

Tom Asacker is correct when he says inertia is a silent killer. My suggestion is inertia and analysis are a very dangerous combination. They lead us to see reality not as it is but as it was or as we wish it to be. Again Edward de Bono...

"Perhaps the greatest dangers are those of arrogance, complacency and the ability to defend that arrogance and complacency. An acknowledgement (sic) of inadequacy is a prelude to change. A defence (sic) of arrogance is a denial of any need to change...The arrogance of logic means that if we have a logically impeccable argument then we must be right" (ibidem)

Congrats & cheers: Michael Walsh new Interep prexy and COO.

Buzz: Facebook to Mr Softy for $6 billion? John Battelle's take on why Mark and his team (after passing on Yahoo's $1 billion) ain't sellers, here. The Scobleizer pov here w/comments. Kudos to John and Robert.

Report card - video: Nielsen-Netratings June, uvs. YouTube 51 mil, Google Video 18 mil, AOL 16 mil, Yahoo 15 mil.



First day at school - CBS-FM: My friend Rick Sklar said it best about new stations "Listen in four weeks." While it is unfair to judge any format initiative on the first day there are almost as many opinions on the CBS-FM debut as there are about which is the best slice in the city, which is the true or best Original Ray's or whether one really need go to Brooklyn for the finest burned meat. Allan Sniffen has devoted a board to the flip here. The Sean Ross First Listen is now on offer here. Dan Kelley gives his pov including some tunes he would have included out on the first day here. The Daily News writer David Hinckley on the change and the first day.

Failing to take Sklar's wise counsel we punched up the stream and played it in the office all afternoon and into the evening. The tech errors were to be expected but early on someone put audition audio of the phone bus on the stream and we were able to listen to callers being coached on their shout outs. The duration of this error was such that one wonders if no one was monitoring the stream or those that were thought someone else was already on it. The stream returned with Jack. A cache clear and relaunching the player brought back the main channel stream.

Between phone calls and meetings I was able to get a good sense of the first hours and they were not bad. The production, advertised as some of "the best work from across the company" was disappointingly average. It was good to hear Ziggie back doing the vo. The drops with city celebs including Senator Clinton are a good idea and deserve better staging (there's a solid branding element in there). The music log was not as strong as it needed to be on the first day. My thought being the station should have played more to the core and featured the best testing tunes not now being heard on other stations. Era, tempo and construction (sound) balance needed work, the log could have been cooked much better. The station's music was different but not different enough as played. The talent sounded up and good. The web page and player were, again, ok. Top of the page banner art icons need work. Aretha and Bruce - ok. Doobies - maybe. Rick James - no. Paul and John without Ringo and George?. Missed opportunity. Kudos for having something up and bonus points for putting up the videos, a nice touch. Not playing Hit the road Jack? A significant missed opportunity, shame. Playing Jack for a chump in his last hours - "who is Bob Shannon?" - priceless.

Overall, I give the first day an A for concept and a C+ for execution. It is certain to get better each day. Congrats and cheers to all involved. I'll wait four weeks before listening again.

Bonus: A collection of quotations on creativity, lateral thinking and problem solving here.

Photo: day dream by rabbilydia. Very cool image. Thanks!

"The successful producer of an article sells it for more than it cost him to make, and that's his profit. But the customer buys it only because it is worth more to him than he pays for it, and that's his profit. No one can long make a profit producing anything unless the customer makes a profit using it." Samuel B. Pettengill

"Great opportunities come to all, but many do not know they have met them. The only preparation to take advantage of them is single fidelity to watch what each day brings." Albert Dunning

"The life each of us lives is the life within the limits of our own thinking. To have life more abundant, we must think in the limitless terms of abundance." Thomas Dreier

Inertia: Tom Asacker makes a cogent argument reduced to one word. During our discussion at the airport the other evening Tom offered this insight - the solutions to the biggest challenges facing broadcasters are being suppressed by the considerable powers of inertia. Bravo Tom! He's right on the mark. It's the conventional wisdom, the accepted best practice, the things we do because we have always done them, these represent too many of our self-imposed limitations. The press of daily affairs too often pushes us into performance by rote. The danger is to continue doing something long after its best used by date. To perpetuate habit for no good reason. We must dare to question this industry genetic blindness. Game-changing innovation requires that we achieve what amounts to an escape velocity, that certain sustained burst of well focused new activity needed to break free of bad habit and begin to set good, effective habit. If you have not spent some time on Tom's blog you should. Check out his writing: a clear eye. Highly recommended.

Congrats & cheers: Gwen Piening, Linda Compton, Christine Merritt, Dennis Lyle, Gary White and colleagues on their achievements in bringing to life the Midstates Broadcast Management Futures Summit. Dan Mason and his WCBS-FM team, Jennifer Donohue, Brian Thomas, and staff on doing the right thing and in the process making history. Welcome back! Check out the special launch day audio and listen live here.

The obvious: Tomorrow is Friday the 13th

Photo: sunsmoke by Karmalize. Very cool. Thank you very much!

"Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy." Marshall Field

"As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before." Francois de Chateaubriand

"If the world is cold, make it your business to build fires." Horace Traubel

CBS, again most watched. CBS is saying when the numbers are in they will show them #1 in prime for the fifth-straight year. NBC finishes fourth for the fourth-straight year. In the 18-49 demo Fox leads 5.23 mil, CBS 4.85 mil, ABC 4.55 mil and NBC 4.05 mil. Michael Janofsky has more at Bloomberg here.

CNN to deliver more local. CNN buys a minority share of Minneapolis based Internet Broadcasting giving it access to the local news content of some 70 stations. Emily Steel has the story for WSJ here. Cory Bergman has a good overview with comments at LostRemote here. The end game is local, that's the ultimate destination of online wired and wireless. My thought is the dead tree guys are still leading online local. TV is playing catch up while radio is not yet in the game. Still seems a perfect opportunity for broadcast to lead development of local online.

Now that CNN Pipeline is free they should ring up Dave Winer and learn about his Checkbox News concept. Rather than mess around with their main page, an idea certain to rattle the powers that be, CNN would benefit from putting Dave's idea into play as a part of the new and free Pipeline. The notion that someone at CNN will decide what "local" stories are linked "on merit" preserves an obsolete editorial control. Give me, the reader, control. For example, let's say Minneapolis - St Paul is one of the 70 IB local CNN affiliates. Give me the option of electing "local" Twin Cities stories. Let me also decide the topics of interest (e.g., Twin Cities entertainment news or Twins baseball).

Please stop telling me what the top stories are and please start giving me what I want.

To have access to 70 streams of local content without making 100% of that content available and easy to get would be missing a major opportunity. Dave's Checkbox News concept might be a solid solution that takes advantage of Pipeline's already cool technology and creates real value for the reader. While you're at it, where's my "local" widget?

Congrats & cheers: Bob Shannon on his excellent writing about the great Fred Winston. Bob's writing, All Them Big Dogs, is available on AllAccess.com (free sub req). Dave Sifry and team on the latest refresh of Technorati. Six months in the making, read all about it here. Pandora + Sprint = personalized radio on your phone, very smart. Details here. The gang at Feedburner on getting a cool 100 million from Google, Michael Arrington has the details with comments here. As was said here yesterday, big dogs eat first and they eat till they're full.

Sir Paul vid debuts on YouTube: Smart. Back story via ET here. Catch the vid Dance Tonight @ 5pm eastern today.

Thank you very much: Ron Fell, the best of men, checks in with photos to share. He's just back to the states after a trip to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. Watch this space for Ron's pics, coming soon. Thanks Ron! Mark Levy, the RAB's cool young turk of training, for his kind words about A Great General Manager. Thanks Mark!

Mileage may vary: Attempted to purchase The History of Rock and Roll CDs yesterday. Submitted all the info. Directed to a page saying I would be getting a confirming email. No confirming email as of this morning. No charge to my card yet. Hate it when the cart fails to work as advertised. Hey Bill, you're losing $$$. Will try it again. Should you be interested in getting your very own copy of this uber-cool commemorative audio, here's the place.

Cartoon: Great ideas by Hugh MacLeod. Simply outstanding Hugh. Thanks much!

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight Eisenhower

CBS gets in the game: "We can't expect consumers to come to us...It's arrogant for any media company to assume that." Quincy Smith, CBS Interactive prexy via the WSJ writing by Brooks Barnes - Can CBS Put the Net Into Network? Bravo Quincy! You guys need to add audio from Dan Mason's group to your "Rolling Thunder" initiative, it's the critical missing piece in the tag line of your CBS Interactive trade ads. Audio will also provide significant younger reach and a strong depth of demo. Quality audio is a value adding asset you have that others do not. CBS should create "CBS to go" content widgets that can be used by O&Os, affiliates, or any and all other web producers. Kudos to Brooks, well done.

Quincy said it right. He gets it. He's the A student that deserves today's gold star.

The deadly combination holding back most media firms from making any real progress is hubris and the ignorance of inexperience. Phyllis Theroux said "Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom." It's learning to succeed sooner by failing faster. CBS is fortunate to have Quincy in the lead.

Is It the Woman Thing or Is It Katie Couric? How's that for a headline. It's the Bill Carter writing in today's NYT here. In this 6:30pm dog fight with $540 million up for grabs my money remains with Rick Kaplan. If The CBS Evening News can be turned around Rick is the person that can get it done. However, not having a studied "Plan B" is less than wise. CBS would be smart to get Michael Rosenblum dialed into their conversations. First about fixing the Morning Show, second about the bigger strategic issues. Let me also suggest you get Dave Winer into the mix. Dave's "Checkbox News" concept has real potential. Personalized feeds for news junkies would be very cool. Further, getting news fans into the mix at the beginning of the editorial process could provide valuable feedback ("We're working on these stories, please check the ones you are interested in learning more about"). Kudos to Bill on a well written review of the bidding.

Congrats & cheers: Keith Summa on joining CBS as senior producer. Brian Williams and NBC for the first Tony Blair get.

Midtown buzz: At the risk of making this an almost all things CBS post let me just say WallStrip and throw in the name of Lindsay Campbell.

Before folks take their eyes off the ball and get all caught up in the multi-platform dance it's wise to remember the fundamentals.

Please permit me to say it again.

The play's the thing.

All that's important is what's on the screen(s) and what's coming out of the speakers...everything else is a footnote. Everything.

Make something amazing happen this week!

"...stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments" Brian Montopoli

Today's quote from Brian's writing CBSNews.com Turns Off Comments on Obama Stories here.

Cory Bergman has discussion with comments here.

Congrats & cheers: Steve Dahl again delivers the only competitive 25-54 numbers on WCKG (Winter book). Bravo Steve! But wait, there's more...CBS would be wise to make an arrangement with Steve to sell his web inventory. According to Alexa it seems Steve's site captures more page views than the WCKG station site. Steve does a great job with his site, whereas the WCKG site clearly needs some serious attention. Steve also appears to generate more uvs than the station site. Here's a Compete SnapShot:



Uber-mensch Dick Rakovan checks in to advise the great John Rook will be attending tomorrow's gathering in Chicago. See you there Rackets!

Robert E. Ingstad, Jr has passed. Bob was a second generation broadcaster and a good man. During my consulting days of the last century I advised stations that competed with Bob. In my experience his stations were always well run and strong competitors. He also had a gift for attracting smart and talented people. Many accomplished broadcasters began their careers or sharpened their saws at an Ingstad property. An original in every sense, Bob will be missed. Services have been set for May 10 in Valley City, North Dakota. Our thoughts are with Bob's wife Jan Marie and his children.

"These are great days. They are trying, difficult, dangerous. But they are great days." Sylvester L. Weaver Jr., 1953

My thanks to James L. Baughman for today's quotation. Taken from the opening of chapter 5, "Mr. Spectacular," of his new book Same Time, Same Station.

We can all learn something from Pat Weaver, the gentleman, genius, ad man and NBC programming chief, who invented The Today Show and The Tonight Show.

Weaver taught us much, he was one for backing bold moves. Lesson: the solution to getting on the ratings radar is daring to get different rather than trying to get better.

Which brings to mind today's TV morning shows.

My sense is it's time for MSNBC to call off the morning show auditions and get different; give up their morning program to the whims of a real TV revolutionary - the brilliant Michael Rosenblum.

Michael, in my opinion, represents exactly the kind of new attitude that Pat brought to the game. He dares to be different. Michael's fresh ideas and unique pov are what MSNBC needs rather than yet another rehash of today's conventional morning format. Hiring the right readers is incremental not innovative. Same goes for last place CBS and CNN.

Stop trying to get better and start getting different.

My schedule at this years NAB did not allow me to attend Michael's session. The Jeff Jarvis video below shows a taste of Michael's usual unvarnished take. His comments in the video from this year's NAB/RTNDA Vegas meet are spot-on. "Katie Couric, 14 million dollars to work 22 minutes a night reading what someone else wrote for her. If we took the 14 million and hired...140 people at $100,000 a piece..."

In the words of Michael, "To do list for the broadcasters: Burn it to the ground."

He goes on to suggest the web is the place where breaking news should be and "...the website is your focus group, the website will tell you what everybody wants to see...you wouldn't have an executive producer on eBay"

Bravo Michael!

While I do not believe you will get any takers for the 6:30 show, the odds are much better for a shot at mornings. MSNBC, CBS and CNN are excellent candidates. CNN Headline should consider giving Michael one of their prime slots - nothing to lose by doing something completely different. Each would benefit significantly from such a smart, bold move.

I highly recommend you check out this brief video (less than 2 minutes) and bookmark or better, put Michael's blog into your reader.



Closed circuit to MSNBC, CBS, CNN, et al: Engage Michael before Rupert does. Closed circuit to Michael: Thanks for the email.

Photo: The UW Arb, Madison
by mjlmadison
Cool pic, thanks

via The Isthmus Pool


"Advertising is the art of getting a unique selling proposition into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost." Rosser Reeves

The Super Bowl numbers are out. CBS posted a 42 rating, 63 share, about 93 million viewers. In Chicago WBBM-TV put up a 50 rating, 77 share (lagging the '86 season record 63 rating, 87 share). In Indy WISH-TV had a 55 rating, 79 share. At $2.6mil that's national delivery of a little under 3 cents a head. A cpm of $27.95 is remarkable. The key is the right message. It's a shame most national ads were so very poor this year. CBS posted some killer 18-49 numbers, a 57 share 7-10p. FYI - second-best total bowl numbers of all time and the third highest rated program of any kind in TV history.

Congrats & Cheers: Bant Breen named prexy of Interpublic Group's Futures Marketing Group. Smart guy, smart move.

Some of the news, most of the time: 23/6 is the working title of the original video program slated to debut next month on Barry Diller's CollegeHumor.com, IAC's Michael Jackson at the helm, editing by Daley Haggar. Well-written story by Jessica E. Vascellaro in today's WSJ here.

Reading: Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. Interesting take on what's happening in CGM. Visit their blog, Church of the Customer, here, their main site here, Amazon info here.