Photo: Only 10 meters between by Fotoliebe. Beautiful shot of QM2. Bravo & thank you!

"Passion begets success. Success begets success formula. Success formula begets isolation from passion, vision and innovation. Isolation begets atrophy, decay, a fading away." Gordon MacKenzie

MacKenzie the former creative genius in residence at Hallmark and author of Orbiting the Giant Hairball sets the table with today's quote. From the first chapter, Where Have All The Geniuses Gone?, to the final page, MacKenzie's book is a gem. It merits your attention and a place in your library. Amazon info here.

The herd instinct seems almost hard-wired especially in the media. Success begets success formula. Once a show becomes a hit the herd scrambles to follow the leader. The pacing of real innovation, resourcing any fresh development, any original approach seems relatively glacial in speed compared to the breakneck velocity associated with producing the knockoff. Corporate staff greenlights plug and play solutions on a fast track buying into the notions of first mover advantage and creative preemption. Once a new hit show appears on the radar, a trend being good enough these days, the corporate paranoia gland has been properly squeezed and the rush is on to introduce the copy. The single hit become the alpha dog that leads the pack, overnight the main attraction of the entire dog show. The buzz becomes the goods. Copy trumps original. Comfort comes in knowing some other corporate team has pulled the trigger. They must know something we don't. It's high school with money and staff provides their board and the analysts with that most adolescent of arguments "everybody's doing it."

It was ever thus. From the variety and quiz show wars of early television to "fake Drake" in sixties radio to the ongoing attempts at covering tunes (e.g., the country version of the pop hit or vice versa) and of course the remake, bringing back hits unheard by today's youth. Licensing a hit for a TV commercial can be more creative than scoring original music just ask The Iron Butterfly. While it would seem fair and reasonable to devote a share of resources to R&D, especially for properties with fair market values exceeding $150 million dollars the facts belie any such thinking. It's the cover that continues to provide cover for c-level folks. Knockoff plug and play is the perfect creative prescription for the 95% who follow the 5% who lead. The challenge is to identify and follow the true innovators, that small percent of the leading 5%, the mavericks who are creating works of sustainable value. That, dear readers, is the pesky detail.

The story of the great genius Kokichi Mikimoto provides an excellent case study. Mikimoto invented completely new competitive space, he founded Japan's cultured pearl industry. Many thought they could simply copy, knockoff his nucleation process. They had failed to fully understand and appreciate the work of this brilliant businessman and tireless promoter. The world's largest oyster, the Pinctada Maxima, is native to the waters off Australia, the famous Eighty Mile Beach area. Using Mikimoto's technique with the world's largest oyster should have produced the world's largest cultured pearls or so they thought but they failed. They failed at first because they merely copied technique expecting a better result. Bigger oysters = bigger pearls. Sometimes ideas don't travel well. Sometimes the success of the original is more dependent on the original's "environment" than may first seem apparent. A well-crafted adaptation always takes the "local environment" into account.

Earlier thoughts on creativity and radio programming here and here and here. A post with the famous Making Something Happen ad copy here. And the very popular You Can't Polish A Sneaker post here. A bounty of earlier scribbling, each post a "most emailed" by readers.

The team that had the courage to greenlight the Queen Mary 2, an $800 million dollar wager, could teach us all a lot about innovation. Innovation has risk baked into it. It's scary. You can fail. You can also hit it out of the ball park and bring home a major victory. At the least you can get on base, get into the game. As Wayne Gretzky once said "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." This week take a shot.

Another legend passes: The great broadcaster Herb Carneal has died. The voice of The Minnesota Twins for all but the first of the Twins' 46 seasons in Minnesota. I had the incredible honor and pleasure of working for him during my watch at WCCO. We shall not see nor hear the likes of this amazing gentleman again. An artiste and a class act. A major loss for broadcasting and for baseball. More here.

Bonus: The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time. Fun! Check it out here.

Photo: Queen Mary 2 under the Golden Gate Bridge by niallkennedy. Thank you!

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick

"Learn to say, 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be used often." William Swanson

Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management: unwritten rule number one...

"How many times have you been in a meeting with someone who felt compelled to contribute even though he or she obviously did not know what to say? Silence is golden in these circumstances.

If you are asked to contribute and don't know what to say - or don't have the answer - then say 'I don't know.' Maybe you should know the answer, but if you don't, say so. Learn for the next time. Even better, volunteer to go get the answer.

It is my belief that if you behave this way, you will be respected for your honesty and candor. You are not expected to know the answer to everything.

We've all been in this position, and will be again. 'I don't know' are powerful words when used appropriately."

Gettin outta Dodge: Fred Winston is packing. Check out his post and his very cool photo here.

Congrats & cheers: Amy Anderson and Alex Gould on their engagement. A more perfect "wedding cake couple" simply does not exist. I am reminded of Goethe - "Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be."

Rosenblum for philosopher king: Michael Rosenblum is writing stuff you need to read, his unvarnished take is refreshing and right on the money...

"In 1452, Gutenberg’s printing press changed forever the relationship between power and average people. It put the power to publish into the hands of anyone with an idea… and a press. The Constitution, a printed document begins with the words WE THE PEOPLE. It does not say, ‘we the anchors’. ‘We the celebrities’. ‘We the hosts’.

Now, 500 years later, video on the web puts the power to publish images and video into the hands of anyone who wants to do it. It fundamentally changes the relationship between power and average people. The potential now exists in the world of video, television and images, to change the basic nature of our relationship to the machine.

We need only take it."

Read Michael's post We The People, here.

Sam says: Sam Zell tells Bloomberg reporters "My inclination would be to not break it up". More on the Zell-Trib story by Leon Lazaroff and Suzy Assaad here.

Bonus: We Want Media

Photo: Snowy Bike by DrStarbuck
Cool shot, thank you!


"Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late." Shakespeare

"Johnson well says, 'He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.' Life is made up of little things. It is very rarely that an occasion is offered for doing a great deal at once. True greatness consists in being great in little things." Charles Simmons

Congrats & cheers: Brian Kelly, the way-dialed-in programmer who first turned me on to the Gym Class Heroes and Cupid's Chokehold last summer - yesterday it was Top Ten on Rhapsody's All Genres List. Brian Lamb, the C-SPAN CEO, and all-around good guy, who told Sirius to forget it - the pay radio guys wanted rights to preempt C-SPAN for sports (FYI - C-SPAN remains on XM). Bravo Brian! Mel and his subs would be better served retaining Lamb's excellent PA product and preempting one of the Sirius music channels. Not too late to fix (might need a friend or two on the hill someday, someday soon).

Legend of legends: Gary LaPierre inducted into the WBZ Hall of Fame. Well deserved! Congrats Gary. Boston Herald item here.

Legend of legends 2: Marv Dyson is, arguably, the best dressed man in broadcasting, a mensch, and certainly A Great General Manager. CBS2 pays tribute to my pal Marv, the Chicago legend here.

Safe in Sydney: Ron Fell offers up the last post in his blog series - The Queen Mary 2 adventure here. Bravo Ron, well done! Hi to Kathy. Missed one or more of Ron's posts? You may find an index of Ron's posts from the Pacific here.

John Battelle: John posted a brief interview with Michael Wesch the KSU prof who did the killer Web 2.0 video. Video, via YouTube, here, interview, with comments, here. Kudos John, excellent post, thanks for sharing.

High-tech collides with low-tech: Elinor Mills of CNET News writes...

Google, which has a "significant sales force" that works with Fortune 500 advertisers on display and pay-per-click ads, has been hiring more sales staff and has account managers specifically allocated to radio stations, said Josh McFarland, a product manager for Google's Audio Ads business. The company has "a very high respect for what we call the direct (sales) side of the business," he said. "At the same time, we are committed to the self-service model."

Read Elinor's article, Google hears static on radio bid, here. Seems to me there have been seven changes in broadcast sales since 1965: fax, email, cell phones, traffic software, laptops, ppt and pdf, otherwise, just about everything else is pretty much the same. (Closed circuit to Josh: You don't need the major shops to get your product off the ground. Think "local" and "small retail." Consider "pairings" example: with coupons. One of the radio guys you should be talking to is Chuck Tweedle, he's in the bay area at KOIT)

Bonus: Infinite Thinking Machine, a blog devoted to teachers and students here. Which reminds me, perhaps because of the words thinking and machine, of a PBS series - The Great American Dream Machine. Killer satire on TV first brought to us by public television. If you want to know where the inspiration for SNL came from - look no further. Whatever did happen to Marshall Efron? (LATER - Marshall is doing just fine, still acting, more here. I love the internet!)

Video bonus: IT department "help desk" Middle Ages era. Great waste of bandwidth. Introducing "the book" via YouTube, here

Photo: Ron Fell and Captain Christopher Rynd
on the Queen Mary 2 bridge

Posting from the Pacific - Day Thirteen, Ron writes he spent time with the ship's Captain..."I was curious about how he divides his day between administrative chores and the craft of sailing the greatest ocean liner in the world. He said unfortunately about 95% of his workload is purely administrative, not unlike the president of a multi-million dollar company with nearly 1,500 employees and an average customer base of more than 2,500 demanding passengers."

Ron also gives us the inside on the ship's entertainers: "Entertainment on the Queen Mary 2 is a big deal and Ray Rouse, the ship's Cruise Director told me that during the 81-day round-the-world cruise there will be 70 different acts performing aboard. I wondered how this would all be possible and was told acts are constantly joining and disembarking at ports along the way." Ron's sail to Sydney continues. Bravo Ron and thanks! Read Ron Fell's latest post via his KGO radio blog here.

Photo: Thomas Hawk
Falling in Love

Outstanding shot, thanks

"Today is not yesterday. We ourselves change. How can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful, yet ever needful, and if memory has its force and worth, so also has hope." Carlyle

Word is Chad and Ryan Steelberg, the founders of dMarc, have left Google. Good luck guys. The downtown buzz...is Judy Barry leaving WSJ?

Congrats & Cheers: David Kennedy joins Interep as CEO.

Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll. Emily Nussbaum offers up an interesting read. She would have us believe "The future belongs to the uninhibited" and..."In essence, every young person in America has become, in the literal sense, a public figure. And so they have adopted the skills that celebrities learn in order not to go crazy: enjoying the attention instead of fighting it—and doing their own publicity before somebody does it for them." Bravo Emily! The piece rocks. Read her New York Magazine article here. (Thanks to Rex for the tip)

The sail to Sydney: Ron Fell checks in from the Pacific on board the Queen Mary 2, here and here. (Closed circuit to Ron: please ask your mathematician pal about the "P versus NP" problem, his take on Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin. And what of the Hodge Conjecture? My sense is these qualify as math porn.)

Photo: terrace closed for winter
by IHP

Love that shot, thank you!

Ron Fell's Queen Mary 2 adventure, the sail to Sydney, continues, read his "Day Two" post here.

Never did I believe that Ron would fail to exchange his adult beverages for Coca Cola product; No contest - Ron is blessed with the social skills of a world-class diplomat - the ocean liner's staff never had a chance.

Timing issue: "...there's no question that a Fox Business Channel is coming" That's the word from Georg Szalai and Paul J. Gough writing in The Hollywood Reporter. Best guess is a Q4 debut. The story via Reuters here. (Thanks to Romenesko for the tip)

A Great Program Director: Not a week goes by without someone contacting me about the Great PD monograph. Usually folks are wanting a copy to replace an older or misplaced one. Sometimes they have seen a copy and want one of their own. My friend, the media research maven, Roger Wimmer has the text posted at his site here. I have decided to do two new printings of the monograph. One 8.5 x 11 similar to the ones printed earlier and another poster size printing, perhaps numbered, framed and signed with a dedication. My thought is the poster size prints would be available for sale with proceeds benefiting a good cause or two. Should you want a free 8.5 x 11 print just use the contact me feature in the left column of this page and provide me with your mailing address. Printing and mailing sometime in March. (My thanks to the CBS manager who suggested a new printing).

Photo: Ron Fell
Great shot, thanks Ron

My friend Ron Fell has set off from San Francisco on the Queen Mary 2. His 15 day cruise will take him west to Honolulu, Pago Pago, and Auckland. Read all about his voyage via his KGO blog. His first post, the scene setting entry, is here and his first day on board post is here.

Enjoy the cruise Ron and thanks for sharing.