"The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well." William Osler

"I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau

"Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle never know." Charles Kingsley


Today's image: untitled by Felipe T. Marques. Great shot. Thank you for sharing.

"The ROI of Social Media is
Your Business Will Still Exist in 5 Years"

The four minute twenty-five second update on social media. It's worth your bandwidth. My thanks to Erik Qualman.




Bonus: The first media trade publisher to stop the presses and get online was Bob Hamilton. Bob quit the dead tree business 27 years ago and started publishing in the world of 300 baud. His writing, Top 10 things "New Radio" has to be, deserves your attention, it's here. Kudos, Bob!



Good read: The Power of Pull by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison. Amazon info, here.

"Our basic management approaches are fundamentally broken...We are running faster and faster and falling farther and farther behind...The basis of competition is fundamentally changing...Value creation was around 'knowledge stocks'...We are moving to a world where the source of economic value becomes knowledge flows...Are you in the flow?...The means of value creation are shifting from push to pull..."

Related video: David Weinberger's Web of Ideas: John Hagel on the Power of Pull. My thanks to Dr David and the Berkman Center. Video, here.

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." G.K. Chesterton

"By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out." Scott Adams

"Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of values." Michael Porter

Today's image: To Miss You by michelleBlack. Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing.


Today, more lessons learned from the ongoing development, presentation, discussion and refinement of my social media brief.

"If the news is that important, it will find me."

Those are the oft quoted words of an unknown college student. The student threw out that insightful gem while participating in a focus group conducted by researcher Jane Buckingham. The quotation itself became widely known thanks, in large measure, to an article by Timesman Brian Stelter (Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On, NYT 3/27/08)

The attitude, the expectation, inherent in that quotation signals a significant shift in relationships and responsibilities. What is really at work here represents a profound sea change in media behaviors. The definitions, patterns and rule sets of consumption are in various stages of transition or disruption as some have suggested.

As a practical matter, consumption (the economic activity of purchase) is being redefined. My sense is we are moving from generations of media built on businesses premised on attraction (i.e., importing readers, listeners and viewers) to a wholly new generation of media, a nascent mediascape, in which business models are fundamentally different. Success is a moving target predicated on issues of multi-channel distribution (exporting). A world of one-to-many is adding another layer or two, new constructs, many-to-one and many-to-many and all the while one-to-one connecting is experiencing nothing less than a renaissance. Thank you, Facebook.

Import + Export

It is still important but no longer good enough for a successful media company to simply attract readers, listeners and viewers to a single specific newspaper, radio/TV station, cable channel or web site. The concept of reach, critical to the measured media enterprise, is moving beyond a single definition, it's embracing multiple interpretations. It's a new and different game; like going from the 2D chess we know and understand to that 3D chess of Star Trek. From readers, listeners and viewers reaching for our content to an audience also being reached by our content. Continuing to invite and direct attention to our place while also working to become a part of their places. Now in play...a new sense of place. Moreover, recent anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that while consumers are continuing to elect one or more traditional channels (soliloquies) they are adding to their media mix, they are participating (if only by observation) in one or more related conversations.

The entire notion of how consumer media transactions are conducted is changing. Dan Gillmor first referred to consumers as, "the people formerly known as the audience." Increasingly, these folks are in the game. What makes this difficult for some to grok is the so-called old media are not just going away. The new media, the emerging forms, are additive and sometimes appear to be the old media in the throes of some evolutionary process. Print = text, radio = audio, TV = video. The biggest issue for media managers is one of legacy, it's a matter of an accepted tradition of control. Jeff Jarvis, a former dead tree exec turned digital evangelist, has proffered a law, to wit: "Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don’t give the people control of media, and you will lose. Whenever citizens can exercise control, they will." (Read more: The People Formerly Known as the Audience by Jay Rosen. June 2006)

For decades research was tasked with measuring media (s)elections, preferences of consumption after the fact. What ad did you notice? What station did you listen to? What program did you watch? As we move deeper into the new reality, the brave new world of hyper-connected real-time, the heads-up display, the dashboard, trumps looking in the rear view mirror.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
R. Buckminster Fuller

Going forward, the significant matters that deserve the considered attention of media management include mobile (the new black) and ensuring that all assets are...

Digital

Discoverable

Ready to share

Next time: Why Tribune made a very smart move in changing their SEO's supervisor from the CTO to the COO. Plus, my thesis of Ready to share benefits from a practical illustration in the Hugh MacLeod concept of Sociality.

Bonus: Quotetrain #1 The new normal is that we expect businesses to listen to us. The companies that don’t are now perceived as Dinosaurs. - David Weinberger.

Spinning in the Grave. The three biggest reasons music magazines are dying. Jonah Weiner writes all about it in Slate, here.

"Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand." Alexis de Tocqueville

"A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it." Alfred Alistair Cooke

"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know." Daniel J. Boorstin

Today's image: There Are Places I Remember by Thomas Hawk. Outstanding! Thanks for sharing.

Bonus: David Weinberger delivers another killer JOHO newsletter here. A great way to start your week. Highly recommended. Bravos, David!

"Felicity shows the ground where industry builds a fortune." Sir Henry Wotton

"You learn most when you play against an opponent who can beat you." Richard Bach

"Dispatch is the soul of business." Philip Stanhope

Today's image: Guiding You To The Light by imagonovus. Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

An important post from David Weinberger...

"Almost from the day the Cluetrain site went up, I regretted point #74: “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We are so not immune. Branding works. We think of Volvos as safe and the Ford Fiesta as a car for young folks. We think of Coke as the original and Pepsi as the copy. We can characterize someone as a “wearer of Birkenstocks.” Branding and advertising in some important sense work.

Now, we certainly can undo some of the cognitive damage advertising and branding do. Market conversations in fact often are about the ways in which a product’s promises and sloganeering don’t live up to its reality. But that’s a lot different than saying we’re immune to advertising. We’re not.

I’d still urge companies to move their marketing away from messaging, however. Assuming the studies Francois cites are correct, our reactions to products do seem shaped by what we’re told about them. No surprise there, although it’s always depressing to find out what big dopes we humans are through no fault of our own. But, customers (= all of us) are going to increasingly resist and resent marketing that focuses narrowly on messaging — that is, on finding the simple idea they can pound into our heads over and over. Telling us your drink will make us refreshed or more alert may indeed make us more refreshed or alert, but treating us like freaking morons by droning the same words at us over and over will make your product less interesting to us. The real challenge marketers face in a world of online conversations is how to help us find what’s interesting about their products." My thanks to the good doctor for sharing. David's original post w/comments here.

Bonus: Thomas Hawk issues the challenge But Which One is Fine Art?. Bravos to Thomas!

Congrats & cheers: FriendFeed gets Business Week coverage. BW's Heather Green writes One Place for Your Many Online Lives here. Kudos to Heather! (FD: I'm totally addicted to FF)

"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.

"What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more." Occam's Razor. William of Occam

"The fewer limitations the artist imposes on his work, the less chance he has for artistic success." Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"The art of the art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity." Walt Whitman

Today's image: Paris - LeWeb3 by Doc Searls. Fine shot. Thanks for sharing!

Hearing that Doc rocked in Paris @ LeWeb3. Kudos, Doc! Disappointed (along with many others including colleagues in attendance) that Dr. Dave did not get to deliver his talk in Paris. Hey Dave, how about sharing your notes from that scheduled talk via JoHo or your newsletter? Consider this a Christmas wish.

Let me recommend a blog to you. Local Media in a Web 2.0 World by Mel Taylor. First and second tribes of wireless, dead tree guy, dot com stripes. Gotta appreciate a guy that has taken the scenic route. Well traveled in the Philly DMA (maybe he can get you a table at Vetri?). In fact, he's also one of those guys that's worked both sides of the isle, creative (arts & crafts) and commerce (sales). He's also a fellow member of the former major market radio music director dodge. Already added Mel's blog to my Other Voices, go ahead and check him out here. No, really, go ahead. I'll wait here.

Thanks for all of the emails on the posts about the HD Radio Alliance. Please give me a few days to get back to you. Getting everything closed for the year.

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." Sir Ken Robinson

"If you're not failing, you're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative." Scott Berkun

"As the spirit wanes, the form appears." Charles Bukowski

"...privacy is not just about information. It's all about the defaults." David Weinberger

Dr Dave has written a thoughtful piece about Facebook and privacy...

"Our privacy norms are changing rapidly. They have to because we've now invented so many new ways to be in public. That's why Facebook's move is especially disappointing. Although they are rigorously supporting informational privacy, they are setting the defaults based not on what's best for their users but on what's best for them. It's clearly and inarguably better for users to be able to opt out of the entire third-party system, but it's clearly more lucrative for Facebook to make it hard to opt out (not to mention making it an opt in system)."

Read the entire writing here. Kudos David! Perhaps this is another one of those cohort issues. The privacy norms of the Gen Y crowd are radically different than those of Boomers. Still, there is something fundamentally wrong in requiring someone to opt out before being automatically opted in. TOS and lawyers be damned. Transparency and disclosure should ever be plain and simple when it comes to personal elections. Facebook will get this right (or not). The issue will likely become which generation of users should decide? The deeper issue here concerns the myth of privacy. Sidebar: What would Jan Deverson and Charles Hamblett have named those Gen X teens provided advanced insight of the wide adoption of their convention? So, Gen Z is succeeded by?

John Battelle makes an excellent point...

"Pull to point" - I find that I read more things that have been pointed to by others, rather than only those which I pull down myself.

Agreed. Read John's post From Pull to Point: How to Save The Economist and The Journal from Irrelevance here. Deep links make it possible to export content, and help to make digital assets discoverable.

Bonus: The mad cool gift of this holiday season and the perfect early 08 buzz must-have.
Behold - chumby

Let the marketplace decide: Programming ace Dave Beasing of Jacobs Media blogs an open letter to the I-man wherein he suggests JD use his considerable talents to "everyone's benefit." I respectfully disagree with that notion. Read Dave's letter w/comments here. Some of my previous posts on the Imus mess here, here, and here.

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." John Keats

"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments." Flaubert

"Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." Albert Einstein

Today's image: Need for Speed by Amnemona. Fun shot. Thank you very much.

It's that time of year. Making the best of the days and weeks remaining before year end. Getting ready for the new year.

One of the most important questions to ask is "Who are we?" The question regards our highest aspirations. What exactly are those aspirations? How will we define success? What measures must we monitor? Business objectives should be stated in clear and simple terms. For example:

Top five, 25-54
Top five rev producer
20% of rev = non spot

55% bcf

Aspirations, indeed our highest aspirations, should be bigger than our business objectives. Aspirations should be the stuff of dramatic difference. Achievement of our business objectives allows us, enables us, to reach for our aspirations. The two largest retailers in the US are doing just that. Wal-Mart and Target are each funding community initiatives, initiatives that make real differences in their respective communities. Broadcast has the unique, powerful and game-changing ability to influence.

On a roll: Dr Dave is...

"Hyperlinks are the opposite of information. They enrich, rather than reduce. Open-ended, decentralized, messy… all the things databases of info are not. Most of all, they are social...

...They are done for someone by someone. Linking is a type of writing. We link for some anticipated set of readers.

So, the Web works against the regime of informationalization."

"It is ultimately language that is the unspoken between us. Language is driven by what matters to us. We have words, sentences, paragraphs, punctuation.... That’s the shared lumpiness of the the unsaid. And now we have links. Links that have presence and persistence.

Our brains discriminate edges, but we we also are fascinated by the transcendence of edges. The value is in the complex, the loose-edged, the potential, the unspoken, because that is what we share and how the world matter to us.

Defrag -- our generational project, not just this conference -- isn’t about reassembling pieces. It’s not about clarity and simplicity. It’s about how we are finding ways to let the world matter to us together. For that we need to enable, cherish, and protect the unspoken between us."

More here. Bravos, David!

Bonus: Michael Rosenblum...

"We are all pioneers in a new realm - the world of communicating and expressing yourself online - not necessarily to ‘the viewers’, but increasingly to ‘each other’.

It’s not broadcasting. And it’s not vlogging.

It is something else.

With its own rules, its own grammar and its own path to take.

We are really just getting started with this, but I think there is something here."

Outstanding! Michael's blog is a must-read, his thoughts well worth the bandwidth. MORE

Brian Williams held his own and turned in a fine performance with the SNL kids. Kudos to Howie for making it a topic on Reliable. I'm with Rachael on this one.

Where the hell is the Container API? Russell Beattie asks the important question here.

Pump up the volume: Who had more sponsored link impressions than eBay and IAC in September and August? From zero, that's zilch in July to growth at the rate of 209,950%...the answer here. My thanks to Alex Patriquin and the Compete crew for sharing the insights.

Web 2.0 - On The Ropes? You decide. Tom Foremski offers up his take here.

Who's zooming whom? Radio trade pub edition: Blue = R&R, Red = Radio-Info, Green= Inside Radio.



Jan Chipchase, Nokia researcher, delivered a great talk at TED earlier this year. Jan does human behavioral research, his talk is about connections and consequences. He is preoccupied with what we carry. "The street will take it and will figure out ways to innovate...and it will innovate in ways that we cannot anticipate." Kudos, Jan! Outstanding.

Owned > Considered > Carried > Used

Congrats & cheers: Steve Dahl on the debut of his new morning show. Dan Mason and Dr Kathleen Dillon on their marriage.

Photo: Picnic07 Photo Booth by silvertje

Picnic 07 was a smash! Kudos to all involved in this great event.

Check out the Picnic07 photo booth.

Check out the video of the David Weinberger Picnic07 presentation here. The session ends with a discussion moderated by Walt Mossberg with Dr Dave and Andrew Keen. (1 hr 25 min)

Picnic 07, day 1 - video by Mindcaster here.

We join the conversation, already in progress: Martin Weller began the discussion on The Future of Content, part one here. Ray Corrigan contributes part two here. Patrick McAndrew takes up part three here. Will Woods offers up part four here. Martin explains the format of the conversation (structured, distributed blog article) here. In total the four writings are long, however, certainly worth your bandwidth. Highly recommended. Kudos to Martin, Ray, Patrick and Will for a good read and a job well done!

Congrats & cheers: Programming ace Jhani Kaye, my friend and former colleague, on KRTH winning the well deserved R&R award for Oldies/Classic Hits Station of The Year. Jhani's afternoon star Shotgun Tom Kelly wins Oldies/Classic Hits Personality of The Year. And to my pal Kevin Metheny on winning Oldies/Classic Hits Program Director of The Year. David Rehr, John David, George Hyde and Erica Farber on (as I'm hearing it in catching up) their outstanding shows.

"Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared." David Ben-Gurion

"To lead the orchestra you must turn your back on the crowd." Johnny Martin

"Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower." Goethe

Required reading: Keen v Weinberger - thanks WSJ. This round - advantage Dr Dave, it was ever thus, kudos! "The mainstream media's business model does not aim at nurturing talent. It aims at moving units. It therefore does exactly what you complain the Web does: It panders to the market. If you want to see the 'democratization' of talent you fear, just look at a Top 40 chart. There are bright spots, but you seem to have confused the mainstream media's handling of artists with apprenticing in Michelangelo's studio."

Dave ends his argument..."Yes, Andrew, we are amateurs on the Web, although there's plenty of room for professionals as well. But we are not replicating the mainstream media. We're building something new. We're doing it together. Its fundamental elements are not bricks of content but the mortar of links, and links are connections of meaning and involvement. We're creating an infrastructure of meaning, miscellaneous but dripping with potential for finding and understanding what matters to us. We're building this for one another. We're doing it by and large for free, for the love of it, and for the joy of creating with others. That makes us amateurs. And that's also what makes the Web our culture's hope."

We are blessed to have Dave in this conversation. My sense is Andrew is playing agent provocateur a bit too much. He's saying things simply to get attention. His reference to self as a "wannabe Hitchens" is cause for him to offer Christopher a formal apology as he is no such thing. Again, bravos to Dave! No contest.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: A target of Andrew's rant Boing, Boing says thanks.

Bonus: Certain to help further Andrew's case is this simple blog. The humanity.

Bonus 2: Susan Mernit Fads of the moment: Ten things we can learn from Facebook.

"8. Passive versus active still matters--but you can drive behavior. Remember those rules about people who watched TV rather than posted in online forums? It's still that case that most people are reluctant to write, slow to put themselves out there, and cautious about privacy and sharing. BUT--smart networks like FB model behavior and get that lagging 80% to do more that they ever did before, raising the bar on all network/community activity." Wonderful Susan, kudos! Thanks to Dave for the tip.

Congrats & cheers: Dave Edwards, GM of WUWM, Milwaukee named chair of the Radio Research Consortium. Laurel Touby sells Mediabistro.com for $23 mil. Peter Moore leaving Microsoft, named new EA Sports prexy. Seth Goldstein and David Henderson launch SocialMedia.

Photo: a reward from patience by DanielJames Cool, thanks!

"It is with life as with a play - it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is." Seneca

"Knowledge comes by taking things apart: analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together." John A. Morrison

"A principle of policy once established, be it sound or unsound, is almost sure, through evolution, to exert an influence far beyond that created at the time of its original inception." Alfred P. Sloan Jr.

The weather here at home has been nothing short of spectacular these last few days. Back in the office today.

Robert Scoble is now writing a column for Fast Company, check out his first here. Meanwhile father and son contrast and compare Nokia's N95 and the new iPhone here.

Everything is Miscellaneous the new David Weinberger book is a wonderful read. David does an outstanding job of story telling and in the process makes his case about the new principles of digital disorder that are changing, well, everything. Highly recommended. Amazon info here. David's book blog here. Bravos David!

The rest of the story: The King won the hour, Fox took prime. Thanks to Steve Donohue of Multichannel News we have comparative data. In the 9pm hour - The King and the heiress 3.1 mil, H&C 1.6 mil, Scarborough 502K. Prime - Fox 1.858 mil, CNN 1.851 mil, MSNBC 279K. Word around LES this weekend was Rosie will get her own prime shot on MSNBC.

Thank you very much for all the emails especially those on the Google Audio AdSense initiative. Broadcast sales channels remain among the least efficient. Further, one could make the case those traditional broadcast sales channels are less than effective in new business development. The mindset on the part of broadcasters seems to be "it's our audience, our inventory, we will sell it on our own (with the assist of our national rep), thank you." The disconnect has three parts...

• Getting better v Getting different. Broadcasters are focused on working harder, some would say smarter, the goal being to get better at local sales. The areas where progress is being made...1) more aggressive silo switch pitching thanks to advances in competitive tracking and 2) NTR. Broadcast is still, primarily, focused on other broadcast. As a practical matter, broadcast is getting better and better at calling on - generally - the same clients. Real new business development (defined as those new to the medium or new to electronic) continues to represent a small percentage of the rev stream. The result is suppression of share growth. Getting better is not yet producing meaningful growth.
• Averse to the risk of new. The coverage of last week's Interep meet suggested Farid would rather fight than switch, that doing business with an ad exchange would indicate his sellers had not done their jobs. It is not either or but rather and. My thought is (provided proper rules of engagement) the business and clients ad exchanges are most likely to bring to stations would, in fact, be new. These are the clients broadcast has failed to pitch. Absent a plan to change the way broadcast is calling on non-broadcast spenders to continue being averse to the risk of new sales channels seems less than wise. The argument that ad exchanges will advance the commoditization of station avails and work to diminish market values and AURs presumptively involves station folks going off the rez. Broadcast needs to own up to the facts - given the present business structure - some inventory will never be sold, some clients will never be called on. Coopetition is one solution. Another is Doc Searles' Project VRM. Ad exchanges could serve an important role in real new business development.
• The new sales channel value proposition. Broadcast needs to take a flyer on new sales channels. The value of what Google is potentially bringing to the table is somehow not being communicated effectively or not being understood. Perhaps it's being lost in translation. Broadcast needs to move beyond the notion of remaindering and remnant. If the Four Seasons can sell their inventory online without putting their good name and business at risk so can broadcast. The solutions needed here should be more buyer-centric, less seller-obsessed. To borrow a phrase from my favorite modern day military strategist "Less Clausewitz, more Sun Tzu." My thanks to Thomas P.M. Barnett.

One symptom of how really soft this year has become - affiliates not only running paids in daylight hours but running paids in prime. The arithmetic would suggest taking an hour of inventory off the shelf to run a paid = more profit. Perhaps, but it deserves attention. At what cost do you value your audience? Seems the most important question is not how much are you charging but how much are you keeping and at what unintended cost (e.g., loss of audience).

Even more important - your cost to create avails likely remains constant. That is one of the flaws in most AUR calculations. The average against inventory sold is one pov. The ratio of inventory sold v cost of inventory creation is another. The next time you calc an AUR take into account the unsold avails. Let's use a radio example. 12 units per hour x 24 hours = 288 avails. Given a 75% load, 216 are sold, 72 remain unsold. Include the value of the 72 @ 0. Another pov - divide the day's take by the total number of avails to arrive at a real-world evaluation of performance. Change the denominator.

Congrats & cheers: Jason Kilar named CEO of the new News Corp - NBC online video jv. Erica Farber my former RKO colleague and now fellow Rockwell Award honoree, well deserved! Sorry my schedule did not allow me to be at The Conclave this year, it's always a good meet. Mister Ed Lambert on his appointment as OM of the Bend Radio Group. A wonderful move for Mr Ed and a very smart hire by BRG. We do miss Oregon, what a beautiful part of the world. Google on acquisition of GrandCentral, Wesley Chan delivers the details here. Wieden & Kennedy on winning the Nokia creative assignment - very cool.

"Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself that either thought or theory." William Wordsworth

I love my Google home page. It allows me to add stuff I want and position elements on the page. Stuff I want, how I want it.

Widgets.

Stations should consider the same approach. Let me customize the primary content area. Make it easy for me to make your site my personalized home page.

Everything is Miscellaneous: The book (preorder via Amazon) by David Weinberger has a companion blog (beta) here. Book ships May 1. Bravo David!

Photo:
Ron Fell
Good shooting, thanks Ron!

"Successful, effective messages - words and language that have been presented in the proper context - all have something in common. They stick in our brains and never leave, like riding a bicycle or tying our shoelaces. Not only do they communicate and educate, not only do they allow us to share ideas - they also move people to action. Words that work are catalysts. They spur us to get off the couch, to leave the house, to do something. When communicators pay attention to what people hear rather than to what they are saying, they manage not merely to catch people's attention, but to hold it." Frank Luntz

Congrats & Cheers: Tony Perkins and his AO team have done it again, another successful meet, this time it's AO Media happening this week in the city. Live + archive video and program details here.

David Weinberger speaking at yesterday's AO Media Buzz Marketing session (from my notes, not exact but close): "Basically you want to be interesting but marketers generally have forgotten how to be interesting because they are so concerned with shaping the message...If you can manage to be interesting you've got buzz...The fact that it sometimes works is not a model for how you market...Buzz marketing is all exceptions, an act of genius, you can't do a methodology for exceptions, for genius, can you?...Go forth and be interesting...except, you are probably, the company, especially the marketers, are probably incapable of being interesting anymore, the most interesting people in your company are your customers, your market, way more interesting than you are...message control does make people boring...Marketing is still at war with its customers." Brilliant, David! Bravo! Kudos too to Jarvis, just back from Davos, good job moderating.

Equal parts Marvin Gaye and Jack Johnson: That's the Rhapsody take on Paolo Nutini, his debut album drops in the USA today. His New Shoes track is tight, love it. Paolo clearly has buzz. Artist site here.