"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work." Thomas A. Edison

"Go and wake up your luck." Persian proverb

"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all." Leo Rosten

Image: Dreaming... by nicolas valentin. Great shot. Thank you very much.

Fixing Yahoo! - they have 500 million uniques, what they don't have is a good execution strategy. Sramana Mitra sets it right...

"What I’m suggesting is that Yahoo build up and/or acquire multiple strong online verticals, monetize them thoroughly, report on them separately, and create an organization structure that enables them to execute on them successfully."

Bravos to Sramana! Read Yahoo, Please Put Up A Fight via gigaom here. My sense is to agree with Sramana. Yahoo! is broken but it can be fixed. In the ad space Yahoo! lags far behind Google and Microsoft and that position permits, allows, (should encourage) the radical revolution needed to make innovative and game-changing plays. Yahoo! needs to stop wasting time trying to get better (in a match they've already lost). Get different. To succeed sooner, fail faster. Hey, Jerry, the first step is talent, hire some freaks, now.

Another Yahoo! pov: John Furrier suggests Yahoo Please Join OpenSocial here.

Timesman David Carr writes about the ex-newsman who writes about newspapering...

"The life of an editor now is no longer a matter of just following the story. It’s trying to follow the story while fighting against YouTube and the blogs for readers’ attention, fighting for enough ink and paper after Craigslist and Google have taken their bites out of the budget, and fighting to keep the best reporters who can make better money elsewhere (like television)."

Carr is writing about the take of David Simon the creator of that fine TV show The Wire on what happened to the dead tree trade here.

Just the facts, Mam: You would think when writing about black radio on the day we remember Martin Luther King, Jr that some mention would be made of Atlanta's legendary WERD. Yesterday Dana Hall wrote about black radio and praised WDIA failing to even mention WERD. John Pepper, Bert Ferguson, David James Mattis and Nat D. Williams certainly deserve credit for their pioneering work at Memphis' WDIA. By the fall of 1949 WDIA was programming entirely for the black audience. Ms Hall is wrong in her writing when she states that the station was the first "black-run" station. The owners and management were white folks. What's significant here is in that same fall of 1949 another station, WERD, became not only the nation's first black owned and operated radio station but a station with a very special connection to Dr King. The Masonic lodge that was (later) home to WERD also housed Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. WERD owner Jesse B Blayton, Sr along with his family and others including Jockey Jack Gibson are equally deserving of credit and should have been at least mentioned in Ms Hall's writing. Especially in a piece offered on the day we remember Dr. King as he often spoke to the Atlanta community via WERD. More on WERD here. Hey, Dana, how about a piece on WERD! (FD: My dad, Johnny Martin, worked at WERD where he served as a talent and, at one point, station program director)

Congrats & cheers: Pownce is out of private beta and open for business. Kudos to Leah Culver, Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka. Upstart the cool new soon-to-be book from team Mansueto, headed by Adam Platzner and Scott Medintz. Erica Farber on her Publisher's Profile of radio legend Bill Drake.

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.

Photo: L'Etoile Madison, WI

"Delicious food starts with great ingredients which
are in abundant supply here in Wisconsin." Chef Tory Miller


Tory and Traci Miller are the co-owners of L'Etoile, a wonderful fine dining restaurant in Madison. Last year Gourmet Magazine named L'Etoile one of America's Top 50 Restaurants. Tory and Traci carry forward a tradition started by L'Etoile founder Odessa Piper: support local farmers and the sustainable agriculture movement.

For Valentine's Day we enjoyed their three course dinner with wine pairings. Food, wine, presentations, and service were simply outstanding. Bravo to Tory, Traci and staff on a truly great performance. Highly recommended. L'Etoile's home on the web is here.

"Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better." Emerson

Fred Jacobs: again suggesting that radio web sites integrate video, again he's right, here. Kudos Fred! Cory Bergman weighs in, his post Radio stations scramble to post video online with comments here. My sense is the video must be easy to find. No more than two clicks to find and play. The technology must be transparent. Make it easy for me to share the video. Don't make me download a custom player. Don't make me register. Don't make me think!

Congrats & cheers: Erica Farber, my former RKO colleague becomes my fellow honoree as she is to receive The Conclave's highest honor - the Rockwell Award. Well deserved!

The sail to Sydney - Day Eleven: Ron Fell, another Rockwell Award honoree, checks in aboard the Queen Mary 2 on his way to his charge of 20,000 words in two weeks. Read Ron's latest post from the Pacific here. (Closed circuit to Ron: roast would be the adjective in roast beef meaning roasted, my thought is your roast beefs is correct if somewhat awkward. Looking forward to your review on the Todd English room.)

MTVN layoffs: In her 2/12 memo to staff Judy McGrath writes: "Our industry is at an inflection point and many companies are going through the process of adapting their business models and organizations to the new realities." She said "approximately" 250 US-based staff would be terminated. Meanwhile back at the ranch Sumner says..."We will keep creating and changing the content. MTV is changing all the time. The consumer is king. We will continue to move with the taste of the consumer. We will continue to drive our product around the world. International expansion is one area, but organic growth the creation of channels and offshoots channels will continue to be a major source of growth for Viacom." Read Sumner's interview by Scott Roxborough via The Hollywood Reporter here. Bravo Scott, well done.

Frontline: news war. Part One was excellent. Congrats & cheers to all involved. Bonus: Series producer Raney Aronson online chat, transcript via WaPo here. Aronson: "I do think that many people were aggravated with Judy Miller's defensiveness that her sources were wrong, so then so was she."