"A magician is an actor impersonating a magician." Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
"The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without being frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of weird theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge." D.W. Winnicott
"What is true, what is false, what is, finally, important? It is not a sign of ignorance not to know the answers. But there is great merit in facing the questions." David Mamet
Today's image: Dennis and Edward by Thomas Hawk. Very cool shot. Thanks for sharing.
Bravos to Les Moonves and David Field. Both have demonstrated courage in doing the right thing with their radio businesses.
In pursuit of his strategy to lighten the concentration of ad-supported assets in the CBS portfolio, Les is selling his radio concern. Giving more resources to radio became counter-intuitive. My sense is an acquisition like Lions Gate seems a better resources fit chasing Les' strategy.
David's portfolio is radio. His strategy of opportunistically growing Entercom and the reach of his local platforms makes the purchase of CBS Radio a savvy move.
All legacy media is now fraught with peril. Accordingly, remaining in the radio game demands an uncommon focus, tenacity and agility. David and team are the radio geeks needed to succeed in that game. They'll also be advantaged by some valuable proprietary intangibles as the CBS Radio properties join the fold. Stay tuned.
New must-read: Sara Fischer's Media Trends newsletter via Axios. Also, follow Sara on the Twitter
Reading: One Mission. How leaders build a team of teams. By Fussell & Goodyear. Amazon info Watching: The Defiant Ones via HBO. The docu-series about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. More
Congrats & Cheers: David Field to Receive NAB's National Radio Award. More
Friday, February 20, 2009
"I have to be wrong a certain number of times in order to be right a certain number of times. However, in order to be either, I must first make a decision." Frank N. Giampietro
"You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something to contribute." Dag Hammarskjold
"A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance." Sophocles
Today's image: untitled by Hanna L. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
Doing the homework for an upcoming talk and noticed more than one canard needing attention. Allow me to take this opportunity to disabuse you of three patently false notions. With apologies to Adam and Jamie let's get on to some myth busting...
1. The youth no longer listens to radio (alternatively, youth listening is in serious and irreversible decline).
Busted. Not supported by the facts. One example. Radio programming ace Brian Kelly has gained reach among Milwaukee youth improving his 12-17 cume persons rating book after book. The most recent numbers, Fall 2008, show Brian's 103.7 KISS FM posting an increase in teen cume rating of over 36% compared to the earlier Spring numbers. Further, Brian's team continued to deliver exceptional adult numbers. #1 Adults 18-34, Adults 18-49, Women 18-34, Women 18-49 and Women 25-54. This is only part of the story. 103.7 KISS FM captured the highest share of Women 18-34 of any station in the nation delivering an incredible 25.6 share. Those Gen X and Gen Y women are obviously tuned in and happy. But it's the combined performance of 103.7 KISS FM and sister station 99.1 WMYX that is truly amazing. Brian Kelly has built much more than two successful radio stations, he's built and leads a team and they're on a mission to create killer radio from scratch every single day. Clearly, it's working. Word to the wise: take notes.
2. College students have no interest in or involvement with creating radio.
Busted. Facts counter the argument. Exhibit A: WSUM FM, the student radio station at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Hundreds of students are seriously engaged and involved in playing radio. In fact, there's a waiting list to participate. Best of all, the station sounds great. Don't take my word for it, listen in, they're streaming, here.
3. CBSis making a major strategic error in LA. The abandonment of talk on FM and the debut of a new Top 40 music format.
Since I was not invited to be a party to the discussions concerning the business objectives of CBS Radio in LA please permit me to speculate. Having given this matter considerable thought, Dan Mason and his team have come to believe that they have a better than even chance to win, to be in a better economic position because of the changes.
But wait, there's more. Some experts are suggesting talk is the single best long-term strategy for winning on FM and some LA market watchers are claiming that KISS FM is practically invincible. In their view CBS is walking away from the future of FM and taking on a fool's errand. Let's take these down in separate responses.
Busted. While the "all music formats on radio are dead" meme is said by advocates to be stuff born of pure critical thinking, it ain't necessarily so. Please see #1 above. Music radio is very much alive and well and profitable. The gang that's pushing to get music off of FM stations, those calling spoken word programming the only true salvation securing radio's future are promoting a thesis that's too clever by half. Among pubcasters this flawed notion is taking on the authority of a pragmatic sanction (i.e., industry consultants and thought leaders supported by the research demanded we do it). Music isn't what's getting radio into trouble or putting it in harm's way. My sense remains that responsibility is one of leadership and a massive failure of imagination.
Busted. Incumbency is irrelevant. One need only recall the events of 1986. KISS enjoyed a 10 share and unprecedented success. Emmis launched Power 106 becoming the new market leader in less than one year. The sheer idiocy here is calling the new CBS music format a loser or a failed strategy when it has not yet been heard (as of this writing). Let's agree to follow the counsel of my longtime friend Rick Sklar and give the CBS gang the benefit of being on the air for a month before beginning to listen critically. Let's also agree to let the audience and advertisers weigh in before making any declaration.
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend. See you next week in a brand new show.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
"There is only one success: To be able to spend your life in your own way." Christopher Morley
"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." Thomas Huxley
"Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past." Thomas Hobbes
Submitted for your consideration, a case study in real-time, to wit:
You have a major talent working for your company. The talent is a market legend of thirty years making, respected by the industry as an accomplished, innovative performer; he has consistently produced top five ratings in the diary. For the past year the performer has been assigned to a morning drive shift after years of success doing afternoon drive at another station in your cluster. Performance in morning drive, as measured by the new PPM methodology, is significantly different and less competitive than that exhibited in previous diary created data. Management decides to take the talent off the air while assuming the obligation to pay the talent for the next two and one-half years of the performer's contract.
Of course, the reference is to Chicago media star Steve Dahl. He did his last show for CBS this past Friday. While CBS has, to my knowledge, not made any comment on the decision (a wise move since most covering their equity only know what they read), we have the penchant for transparency of Steve Dahl himself to thank for a bit of back story. Steve made mention of the meter during his last show, suggesting music programming did better in the meter numbers and was less expensive programming.
We now come to the issues of this business case.
Did management make the right decision in assigning Steve Dahl from afternoons at its Free FM talk station to mornings on its music intensive Jack FM station?
Did management provide those resources necessary to ensure the probability of success in the highly competitive morning drive environment? (The counsel of a mentor, Paul Drew, comes to mind. Did Steve have a "better than even chance to win.")
Once PPM data was in hand what corrective measures did management take to improve performance? Was Steve provided the direction, dedication of resources, deemed requisite to move the needle and improve performance? Were sellers provided the direction, support needed to build revenues needed to generate an acceptable profit?
If we stipulate continuing to do mornings on WJMK was not an option, what other options were prospectively available to management without regard to the election to pay and not play? Is it not management's responsibility to explore any and all options to retain Steve Dahl including those beyond the conditions and scope of the existing agreement?
Clearly, management decided it was better to have Steve Dahl off the air and paying him than on the air in some other assignment.
Many have said the larger-than-life personality was not a good fit on Jack FM, the bold contrarian move of putting a high profile talent on a jockless station risky from day one. While it is perhaps convenient to argue that Dahl failed to improve the station's ratings performance, it should be kept in mind that Jack FM has failed to achieve, sustain ratings success of any significance where it counts. Recent meter numbers would have us believe the station's biggest win is outside of prime, 7p-12Mid. One has to at least consider the logic that Steve was released from breakfast duties as part of an effort to somehow "help" Jack FM. The single most credible, attractive attribute of any jockless station continues to be the low cost of operating which is not insignificant. Putting Dahl on Jack FM changed this jockless economic model.
My sense is the real failure here is one of leadership. No matter the numbers, sales should have found a way to generate revenues. It is hard to argue there exists a more sales friendly talent than Dahl.
Given the option of creating the next successful music intensive format or finding the next killer talent, one is best served by electing the former. The latter is a far more complex mission, one in which finding becomes the easiest part of things, however, the rewards of engaging killer talent are almost without equal. The play's the thing so said Shakespeare and in this case the play is a killer talent, Steve Dahl.
As a practical matter, CBS is making a wager. They are willing to bet Steve will gain employment elsewhere, ultimately releasing them from their financial obligation. They are suggesting it is the best decision for the company to continue paying Steve to not be on their air or to have him working across the street. The alternative which management should properly consider, it seems fair to offer, being to retain Steve Dahl, putting him to work in a productive and effective manner on one or more of their stations. This will require the hard work of thinking, of engaging the imagination and most of all, it will demand creative leadership.
Stay tuned.
Previously, on Steve Dahl and the diary versus the meter, here.
As always, your thoughts are welcome. Thank you for stopping by.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
"Difficulty is the nurse of greatness." William Cullen Bryant
"Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best." David McKay
"Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought." Thucydides
Say it ain't so: WADV is the RAB streaming audio platform which will be dedicated to covering next week's Advertising Week V. WADV will be streaming a great many sessions next week however The Radio CEO Summit session will not be one of them. There is no good excuse for this. Yahoo! buys a full-page ad in the Advertising Week V program, the insertion is far-forward, check, it's left-facing, uh, ok, the ad copy uses a url that does not work, no, please, no! There is no good excuse.
Bonus: Marketing maven Tom Asacker offers his take on Microsoft's new Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld campaign, The Bill and Jerry Show w/videos, here. But wait, there's more...
Tom has also posted a new thought piece that you need to read and share with others on your team. A Little More Action..."turn up the volume of your childlike sense of wonder, compassion and rampant enthusiasm." Find the article here. Bravos, Tom. Spot-on.
Congrats & cheers: CBS Radio programming ace Mark Edwards and his KEZK team taking home the AC Station of the Year hardware from R&R and leader of the CBS Radio gang Dan Mason honored as Radio Group Executive of the Year. Others honored in the first round included Mike McVay, Ryan Seacrest, Tom Owens, Bob Call and Eileen Woodbury. MadTown's WJJO picked up Active Rock Station of the Year. Complete list of winners here.
Monday, July 14, 2008
"The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers." Arthur Koestler
"Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing." Paul Valery
"The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly." Vance Packard
AOL Radio (with CBS Radio on board) on the new iPhone 2.
Tech maven Leo Laporte posted the following on FriendFeed yesterday morning...
"Pandora is great, too. It's the death knell for broadcast radio."
Clearly, CBS Radio gains an advantage with iPhone users.
There are still some issues here, it's early. One comment on Leo's post said "Useless, until I can run it in the background" (pb30).
Perhaps the biggest issue is not with this single app but with iPhone penetration. One million units sold in the first weekend is impressive but in context still a small number. Apple is saying iPhone and iPod users have downloaded ten million apps from the new App Store.
This all gets interesting when developers offer AOL Radio, Pandora and other radio/music apps across more mobile platforms.
Doh!: My sense is Leo and Jeff Jarvis [related], have both missed the big picture here. They are enjoying broadcast radio content on another platform. This marks not the end of broadcast but a beginning, access of broadcast content via another media.
Reviewing the bidding: Aaron Landry provides a good overview of iPhone mobile social networking apps. All the usual suspects are here. Kudos, Aaron. Well done.
Congrats & cheers: BuzzFeed & Jonah Peretti on securing their $3.5 mil first round [via CNET]
LATER: Kelly O'Keefe weighs in via comment...
"What this suggests is that those people (myself included) who won't give up their iPhones and iPod, prefer these devices with a healthy serving of radio. After all, AOL Radio, mentioned above, is powered by broadcast radio."
Bravos, Kelly! Well said.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
"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 onedefining 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!
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 - ScobleinterviewsCurtis 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.
Monday, April 28, 2008
"Indecision may or may not be my problem." Jimmy Buffett
"Culture is simply how one lives and is connected to history by habit." Le Roi Jones
"What I have crossed out I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out I'm dissatisfied with." Cecil B. De Mille
Does radio clustering dampen station performance? Are the economies of the cluster working against realization of asset potential?
Today, at least in major market radio, the performance of the cluster appears, more often than not, to count for more than individual station performance. Indeed the conventional wisdom seems to suggest that the cluster affords operators the ability to rationalize one or more failed or marginal niche performers than pre-cluster days. Economies of scale and the arithmetic of aggregation permit the ratings laggard to be kept around on a kind of artificial respiration so goes the argument but is any such bean counting enabled life support actually hurting the industry?
A stand alone posting a 1.5 share would likely be a cash user and not be allowed to survive, the prudent courses being fix it or/and sell it. That same failed station could be viable as part of a cluster and made to reach an accounting breakeven almost immediately. Has this cluster mindset created something of a plenary indulgence? The luxury of shifting focus and measures less and less on the individual station and more and more on the collective, the so-called portfolio. This argument reasons that cluster economics sanctions the value of each station's ratings delivery in additive terms only. The bottom line here is clusters do enjoy more rating point throw weight per avail. What's perhaps lost in accepting this mindset is realization of asset full potential. Further, the case can be made that there's a possible unintended consequence - we may be reducing the market value of avails (e.g., using our sick - or least popular - kid to bring in the buy or surrender to the enticement of selling for share).
What may have begun in practices of some major market duopoly operators has been exaggerated by clustering in the majors. It's considered acceptable to employ a second station as protector of the mother ship (i.e., a flanker) allowing that second station to post a modest, less than full potential performance. The reasoning being the 1.5 share of the second when added to the 3.5 of the franchise not only yields a 5 share but creates a realistic barrier to entry as well. Some have employed a "ratings robber" strategy, targeting a competitor with the purpose being to stunt or limit the competitor's performance. One improves performance in relative or comparative terms by hurting the other guy. Duopoly and clustering become zero sum games. So what then of the somewhat popular suggestion that clustering has created, enabled more failed or marginal performers? Let's look at San Francisco. Comparing Spring 1991 v Spring 2007 Arbitron data, all stations posting 1.0 or better...
Number of stations: '91 - 31, '07 - 28 Mean share, 12+: '91 - 2.59, '07 - 2.40 Percentage of stations posting 1.0 - 1.9: '91 - 38.7%, '07 - 39.2% Percentage of stations posting 1.0 - 2.9: '91 - 70.9%, '07 - 67.8%
One must concede, absent any discussion of share compression, the data has remained fairly stable. No cluster as evil smoking gun in evidence.
Getting down to the grits: Let's use one operator, CBS Radio, for purposes of illustration only. In the Spring 91 book KCBS delivered a 5.2, KRQR a 2.3, a collective 7.5 share. In the Spring 07 book, KCBS 3.9, KITS 1.6, KLLC 1.8, KMVQ 1.4, KFRC 0.9, a collective 9.6 share. The real economic power of clustering is, of course, in the avails; CBS has acquired 2.5 times as many since the Spring of 91 when CBS offered 48 hours of avails per day whereas today they offer 120 hours daily. Moreover, there's a new and growing abundance of avails today, a potential for wealth creation not around in the last century (e.g., HD Radio spectrum, online).
Would it be possible for any of these CBS FM stations to survive as a stand alone? This question brings us to the matter of asset potential. What is the potential in ratings, revenue and profit for each of these FM stations? How can any gap between performance and potential be closed? My sense is the CBS Radio team in San Francisco is giving it their best shot.
Some key questions on execution: Should we allow perfectly good full-market signals to deliver less than their full potential? Should we tolerate what could be reasonably judged to be continued failure without consequence or sense of urgency? And the list goes on. Should we adopt the jockless music format launch as best practice and the new default industry standard? Accept as demode market-changing (demo ranker reordering) ratings debuts by newly formatted stations? It all depends on how one defines success.
My thought is while the big questions have remained the same, the acceptable answers have changed. The cluster makes us do it or at least allows us to. My take is the cluster buys time for programmers, reducing the economic stress and pressures on near-term ratings performance. Further, the cluster may be exactly the safe harbor needed to spark genuine product innovation in the most competitive of markets like San Francisco. The cluster provides the blessing of precious development time, time a stand alone can ill afford (rare exceptions, outliers, do exist, Bonneville's entry into LA, format launch is one recent example). Accordingly, cluster management should step up and take a flyer. The risk management calculus has never been more favorable for bold innovation. To succeed sooner we must begin learning how to fail faster. Dare to emulate Lt. Col. Frank Slade and embrace the audacity of saying "I'm in the amazing business." Make something happen.
To be certain there are clear and present dangers here. Getting caught up in the inertia of complacency, accepting what is rather than demanding what could be. Giving in to the strategic trap of optimization, that is, wasting time trying to get better rather than discovering productive ways to get dramatically different. Saving our way to success (the losing game of reduced expectation) and in the process failing to make the disciplined investments required to compete for the future.
On balance, my suggestion is we are living in a new sweet spot for radio and all measured media; opportunity abounds! The only limitation is our imagination. Game on!
Congrats & cheers: Ann Compton, her WHCA team, C-SPAN, and Craig Ferguson on a very entertaining White House correspondents dinner. One of Ferguson's many memorable lines "Canada: the apartment above the party." Radio programming ace Lester St James joins Clear Channel, Omaha. BBC and Terry Jones for showing us how to effectively promote a media player - check it out via YouTube here. Brilliant!
Bonus: Amy Tan @ TED - Where does creativity hide?
Friday, April 25, 2008
"Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable." Rene Daumal
"The true leader is always led." Carl Jung
"The honest man must be a perpetual renegade." Charles Peguy
Radio programming ace Phil Hall has joined the conversation and started a blog. We can all learn something from this exceptionally bright gentleman. Phil writes...
"Its the content. Its about the content. No where is that addressed except in the broadest of terms like diversified formats.
Content is why FM dominated AM. Content is why Howard Stern got and deserved the great Sirius deal, and its why people remember the colorful Harry Carey, Jack Buck, and Vin Scully while disregarding competent but less colorful game callers like Eric Nadel. One of radio’s premiere times was(is) a Vin or Harry or Jack called game. You could see the players, the horizon, and the field. In color! The magic of those broadcasts was the understanding they had for the way the fans felt about the team and viewed the game itself. They understand their audience...If we’re in this for the long haul we better get back to the basics of understanding the audience. Maybe even better understand who the audience isn’t. The audience isn’t one single person who does not live in your market."
Started The Craftsman, the new book by Richard Sennett. Richard is professor of sociology at NYU and The London School of Economics.
"The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake. Theirs is a practical activity, but their labor is not simply a means to another end. The carpenter might sell more furniture if he worked faster; the technician might make do by passing the problem back to her boss; the visiting conductor might be more likely to be rehired if he watched the clock. It's certainly possible to get by in life without dedication. The craftsman represents the special human condition of being engaged."
"All craftsmanship is founded on skill developed to a high degree. By one commonly used measure, about ten thousand hours of experience are required to produce a master carpenter or musician. Various studies show that as skill progresses, it becomes more problem-attuned, like the lab technician worrying about procedure, whereas people with primitive levels of skill struggle more exclusively on getting things to work. At its higher reaches, technique is no longer a mechanical activity; people can feel fully and think deeply what they are doing once they do it well. It is at the level of mastery, I will show, that ethical problems of craft appear.
The emotional rewards craftsmanship holds out for attaining skill are twofold: people are anchored in tangible reality, and they can take pride in their work. But society has stood in the way of these rewards in the past and continues to do so today. At different moments in Western history practical activity has been demeaned, divorced from supposedly higher pursuits. Technical skill has been removed from imagination, tangible reality doubted by religion, pride in one's work treated as a luxury. If the craftsman is special because he or she is an engaged human being, still the craftsman's aspirations and trials hold up a mirror to these larger issues past and present."
The Craftsman, Chapter One, The Troubled Craftsman. Amazon info. My thanks to radio programming ace Tom Teuber for the tip on professor Sennett.
Bonus: Charlene Li, a Forrester researcher, has written an interesting post, The Future of Social Networks: Social networks will be like air. Read her post here. Related slides from her talk are here. She suggests in future business models "Each person will have their own 'personal CPM'" endorsing a notion put forward by JWT's rock star of trendspotting Marian Salzman - my sense is Charlene and Marian are exactly right. Kudos, Charlene! Well done.
Closed circuit to Sean McManus: Now that you've decided to look for a new EP for The Early Show, you and Rick Kaplan should take a meeting with Michael Rosenblum. My suggestion is any further attempts to "get better" in order to close the gap on NBC and ABC will not be productive. Think "get different" and reinvent the breakfast show. Michael can help. P.S. He once worked at CBS.
Congrats & cheers: Dan Mason leading CBS Radio in joint streaming venture with AOL, CBS will manage ad sales across the combined 350 audio channels. Smart, innovation via creative collaboration. Steve Friedman and Nanci Ross launch consulting firm Vir2L Media.
Charlie Rose interviews Chris Anderson curator of TED
Charlie Rose interviews Chris Anderson of WIRED Magazine
Charlie Rose interviews Michael Arrington of TechCrunch
Friday, December 14, 2007
"Perfection has one grave defect, it is apt to be dull." Somerset Maugham
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Oscar Wilde
"Music is noise submitted to order by wisdom." Puccini
Today's image: Felicidad by jose87. Fine shot. Thank you very much.
The Year in Advertising - Business Week - Great lead quotation "Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking" Robert Stephens
Best website by a radio performer - 2007: On the day job we counsel broadcasters and others on the critical importance of being alive, always on, on the net. While there are an increasing number of really good station sites (and a few excellent endeavors), good sites by performers or talent continue to be rare. Again this year we find the site of Chicago media star Steve Dahl to be the best of class. Steve and his team have created a truly excellent site. Blog, photos, show logs, podcast, soundboard, video, merch, rss implemented, it's all there. Kudos to Steve for a job well done and bravos for continuing to set the standard. Check out his site here.
Dick Biondi's 2007 Holiday Toy Drive kicks off this morning. Details here.
Doing the right thing, right now: Fred Jacobsblogs here about Toys for Tots needing an assist from media this year. This is a cry for help that deserves the attention of every broadcaster. Not only does it make good television and good radio, it makes a difference in your community. More info here. My thanks to uber-mensch Fred & his Jacobs Media gang for the heads up.
We all need a coach. Should you be a radio talent ready to improve your act allow me to suggest you check out Jay Mitchell blogging here.
Bonus: Bill Gates on the skills you need to succeed... "Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.
I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books."
On the money: My notion is Les Moonves is one of the smartest execs working in the entertainment TV game today. Here are details on his new contract. While his base drops from the $5.6 mil of 2006 to $3.5 mil, his total package is richer. A target bonus of three times his salary ($10.5 mil), an option covering 5 millions shares (est. $35 mil in value using the Black-Scholes model), an annual grant of free shares worth $7.6 mil on each of four grant dates during his contract. He also gets a "make-whole" provision not having to face the higher New York state income tax (Les is a California resident). If he does not get renewed at the end of his deal, which terms Oct 2011, he may elect to become a senior adviser to the firm for $2 mil per year for three years (required to work no more than five days a month, eight hours a day) and a one-time grant of 300,000 shares (worth around $8 mil this month). Using a total package value of $30 mil per year, working 60 hours a week, 48 weeks per year his hourly rate would be $10,500. More detail on this data plus commentary by Graef Crystal here.
Congrats & cheers: Kevin Murphy named SVP/MM for CBS Radio, Detroit. BigThink, off and running in beta.
Friday, December 07, 2007
"It is not enough to conquer, one must know how to seduce." Voltaire
"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising." Lord Northcliffe
"You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are seeking is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle...In fact, it is almost like listening for the meaning instead of looking for it." James Webb Young
Congrats & cheers: CBS Radio CEO Dan Mason for standing up and providing some long overdue leadership...
“Radio is king –- there is no media that can better deliver more targeted, personalized messages to audiences and advertisers"
Read more via Kurt Hanson's RAIN, here. Jeffrey Yorke also offers up the Dan Mason/UBS story via MediaWeekhere.
The first tribe of wireless continues to suffer from a crisis of confidence, a tradition born of low expectations and poor self-esteem.
The original, and best of class, medium for reach, radio, created its own problems when it elected to become the first and only media to employ the value proposition of time spent. Radio wasted decades failing to learn, accepting the status quo, content with single digit shares of the ad spend. Each new management cohort ran their mouth about growing the pie. Remotes, endorsements, co-op, recruitment, vendor, non-spot, co-pros, event marketing, online, step right up, it's NTR du jour. These initiatives, however well intended, have failed to grow the business.
We have confused activity with progress
We can thank Arbitron for the coming measurement reboot (PPM) and the related new dawn of selling radio's heretofore most valuable yet hidden asset - reach. It's back to the future and Westinghouse NuMath (kudos to Jim Yergin the brilliant media researcher who first gave us a credible reach tool thirty-five years ahead of his time). Kevin B. Sweeney, founder of the RAB and my sales mentor, was also way ahead of the curve. Kevin taught us to use one and only one Arbitron data point - weekly cume. It was Kevin's notion to use our circulation number in making the case against the dead tree guys. On the day job we continue to employ, teach and coach Kevin's legendary and very effective four-point pitch. Kevin's consultive selling template is still valid, robust as ever. Truth be known too many are merely talking a good game and as my friend and former partner the great Joe L. Floyd used to say "Talk is cheap, whiskey costs money."
Price has become an objection because we have failed to articulate value
The single biggest challenge facing the radio business is remaining a relevant (i.e., valued) advertising and marketing platform. While the radio business continues to produce impressive margins and free cash it has failed to show growth and growth is the bitch goddess of Wall Street. Absent real growth the radio stocks remain unattractive, poor investments. No amount of creative financial engineering will save the radio stocks. The publicly held radio outfits have to save themselves and the work that really matters must happen in the field. The catalyst Farid needs to drive CDL up (free and clear of being a penny stock) resides within his sales organization, or not.
What is demanded today is the ability to consistently articulate and proof a credible value proposition. Facing another year of flat (or down) ad spend radio must reinvent sales. Our sales managers and sellers need a new format. Radio sales is beyond the point of effective reboot, what it needs now is a new OS. We must stop training sellers to make calls they're never going to make. Leadership must stop making excuses and start producing results.
A massive failure of imagination
Leadership must be held accountable for growing share, for driving topline, for producing results. As has been stated here previously, this is an issue of critical strategic importance. The mission and metrics must be focused on changing the denominator. Continuing to invest time and precious resources into driving the numerator simply will not get the job done, in fact, it's a potentially deadly error in judgment. It's not about getting better, it's about getting different. Radically different.
Whereas once upon a time you could count on the sales department to buy the time needed for programming to develop and deliver the numbers, today we too often witness the sales department killing programming. KOAI, Dallas is but one example. After a nineteen year run in north Texas the smooth jazz format was dumped because "sales couldn't sell it" or so I have been told. Iatrogenic format extinction. The error larger than blowing up a three share station the sellers have lost faith in might be keeping a one share station on life support - cluster detritus - because the costs of creating the inventory have been minimized (along with bcf expectations). Then again perhaps these are each results of a modern day Hobson's choice. (Disclosure: I once worked at KOAI).
Radio folks need to stop going to work everyday with the same tired single minded mission of killing the guys across the street. Radio folks obsessed with killing other radio folks is now killing the business where before this activity only suppressed the share of ad spend. Competitive media are not significantly involved in radio's revenue stagnation. The silo is being collapsed thanks to improvements in internecine warfare. Advances in competitive monitoring have actually worked to narrow the field of prospects limiting the acuity required to grasp and understand the full ad spend landscape. The danger here is as national advertisers move dollars away and local online platforms (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Craigslist, et al) increasingly capture more local direct dollars - the nightmare squeeze play happens. Fighting for share of fewer and fewer accounts while failing to develop new categories...inertia, attrition and entropy take over (with assists from denial and genetic blindness). It doesn't have to be this way. Radio can and should be a growth business.
We need to face reality as it is, not as it was nor as we wish it to be. Radio enjoys an effective and powerful reach, what we lack are the evangelists who can tell the story, articulate value, under-promise, get the order, over-deliver, keep the client, grow the business and teach others how to do it. We can do this. Game on!
"A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have."
Have a wonderful weekend. See you next week with a brand new show.
Monday, November 12, 2007
"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.
Monday, October 29, 2007
"The shortest distance between two comedians is a straight line." Ron Fell
"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." Douglas Adams
"Strive for brevity and clarity in oral and written reports." William Swanson
Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management: unwritten rule number fourteen...
"It takes longer to write cleanly and crisply. It shows respect for the time of others when you do.
Learn to type with your thumbs on a Blackberry-like device. That will really discipline you to use shorter sentences and shorter words.
As you grow in position and assume roles of increasing responsibility and complexity, you truly appreciate those who communicate with brevity and clarity. Their emails, notes and reports will get read! Conversely, and sadly, good ideas in hard-to-open packages wrapped with complicated bows may be overlooked."
Going mobile: Empowering People through Mobile Technologies in Developing Regions, A presentation by Nokia's Joe McCarthy via slideshare here.
Radar Quiz: Fox Business Anchor or Porn Star? Take the quiz here. Kudos to Neel Shah. I scored 7 correct out of 10.
Steve Dahl delivered the mail. Changes at CBS Radio in Chicago. Steve to mornings on WJMK (JackFM), Monday, November 5.
Congrats & cheers: Rob Barnett and his My Damn Channel crew on their two nominations in the TV GuideOnline Video Awards competition. Jacki Kelley joins Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as sales chief and Yahoo! loses another player. Newser principals Patrick Spain and Michael Wolff on their formal debut tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging." Hank Aaron
"You can't win until you learn how to lose." Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"When you lose, you're more motivated. When you win, you fail to see your mistakes and probably no one can tell you anything." Venus Williams
Today's image: Late Fall Rose by Fred Winston. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.
Great Program Directors deliver numbers to the sales department: Kudos to programming ace Brian Kelly and his team on another exceptional performance. 103.7 KISS FM posted #1 Teens, #1 18-34 Women, #1 18-34 Men, and #1 18-34 Persons. The station delivered a 50.0 cume rating with Teens and a 40.5 cume rating with 18-34 Persons (so much for the continuing myth that the youth market ain't listening to any audio that's wireless). Moreover, Brian's two stations KISS and 99.1 WMYX were both in the top five 25-54 Women. CHR and Hot AC done right are winners, Brian and his team understand how to do just that (as too few others do). Brian Kelly delivers, again, he's the goods.
The unlimited (almost) bandwidth of youth is the answer: Doc writes about Facebook and time spent. My sense is this is a cohort issue. Doc goes on to suggest bringing down the wall. I agree. Further, as has been written here before, they need to get into the export business and out of the import business (as only access).
"The big challenge for Facebook, as it has been for AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and everybody else who ever ran a walled garden, is to make their “platform” something that sits on the Net and the Web, not something that substitutes for it. Facebook’s mail, for example, is a substitute. If there’s a way I could get Facebook mail with my IMAP or POP client, I’d rather do that. (Can you, by the way? I doubt it, but I dunno.)" Read Doc's entire post here.
The play's the thing: Michael Rosenblum asks..."It's called The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. But it's not called The New York Times with Tom Friedman. Why is that?" My thought is to quote PJ "In all of art it's the singer not the song." This is especially true with the first tribe of wireless. Talent-driven radio programs (and stations), generally, tend to be more successful, consistently, than those that offer up some bland generic brand. Steve Dahl provides a good exhibit that makes this case. Steve continues to deliver great numbers book after book and does so on an otherwise dead radio station. The audience is tuning in for Steve, they are loyal to Steve not to the station. Years of numbers have proven this to be a fact. Steve is a star, an artiste, he has developed a following that has little (and one could make the case - nothing at all) to do with the radio station around him. He remains a success against all odds and that is one definition of rock star talent. The play's the thing. Moreover, Steve has proven the efficacy of the format, he has confirmed the validity of spoken word on commercial FM. The problem at WCKG is not the format, the problem is execution combined with a massive failure of imagination. It's about casting, providing direction, creating a positive creative environment, setting a stage for greatness. It's a leadership problem.
There is a significant delta between personalities and disc jockeys and yet another between disc jockeys and announcers. Voice actors v. announcers, a grand canyon of difference. The same holds true with TV talent. The reader v the rock star. Almost identical story line-ups (excepting soft), one show wins, one shows loses. Like you I have sat in focus group sessions and watched as one reader gets dialed up and another dialed down delivering the same story. One weather guy wins another loses. At the end of the day, all other things being equal, people listen to and watch those they like (and in some cases those they love to hate). There is no logic to any of these decisions, these preferences and behaviors. People are not rational, they don't do things for any reason but their own.
Personally, I prefer working with rock star talent, they dramatically improve your chances of winning. When I hear that a certain talent is "difficult" it's music to my ears. Typically, it means they care about their work. "The rocks go with the farm" as my friend Larry Bentson is fond of saying. Great talent is a pleasure to work for. They can't be managed, they demand to be led. Read Michael's post The "Talent" Trap here. Bravos Michael for continuing to offer up interesting subject matter of merit. Almost related: on the day job we have done a number of perceptual studies on the media sales process. One of the most interesting findings is that the highest "rated" media sales professionals are consistently those that are "most liked" without regard to any other single attribute, skill set or variable. All things being equal or even unequal media buyers buy from the people they like. This finding is consistent in market after market. You could say the same about bloggers. There are bloggers and then there are Bloggers. While I might not always agree with Dave Winer his blog is, consistently, a good and smart read. Same with Dr Dave and Michael Rosenblum. Agree with them, or not, they provoke you to think! Bandwidth well spent. I must admit to being one that enjoys Michael's "Burn it to the ground" thesis because he dares to question practice too far past the best-used by date. The bonus is he offers up an intellectually honest and practical alternative.
Kudos: Jess Lee, Google Maps Project Manager offers up Southern California fire maps here.
Congrats & cheers: Salman Ullah the Google corp dev ace leaves to found a venture firm, Copper River Partners. Scott Herman named EVP, Operations and Michael Weiss hires on as President of Sales, both for CBS Radio.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
"Change before you have to." Jack Welch
"When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective." George C. Marshall
"Often you just have to rely on your intuition." Bill Gates
150 men showed up wearing high heels and ready to run. 50 men, selected at random, competed to win tickets to see Hannah Montana. It played out as The Y98 High Heel Derby. The Y98 Insane Promotion Posse staged yet another cool event. Kudos to Courtney Landrum (her idea), Laura Hobson and Lindsey Wright (their execution). More pics at the Y98 site here. Related WaPostory here.
Success is not an accident: CBS Radio programming ace Mark Edwards is winning in St Louis because he understands the critical importance of being, and staying, in the moment. Doing that is hard work, doing that consistently, being known for it, that's the stuff of truly great performance art. As ever, Mark's stations are tight and right on time. In the just released summer numbers Y98 and KEZK dominate the female demos, they own prime. Moreover, they've earned it.
"A magician is an actor impersonating a magician." Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
