"Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks." Joni Mitchell

"Keep to yourself the final touches of your art." Baltasar Gracian

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." Paul Gauguin

Today's image: remember by ropeboy. Awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Robert Scoble, Tech geek blogger and Philip Seymour Hoffman body double, is one of my favorite bloggers. You may know him as the guy who, with Shel Israel, literally wrote the book on blogging, [Amazon info]. You may know him as the guy who previously blogged in the name of Microsoft. You may have followed him or recently discovered him to be the guy doing FastCompany.TV for the Joe Mansueto venture Fast Company.

Robert Scoble is Web 2.0 and we can all learn something from him. My sense is his charm comes from his consistent daring to be naive. It's a naivete born of a deeply pathological curiosity. An intellectual honesty that is at once refreshing and engaging.

Thanks to FriendFeed (excuse me, but you have taken a moment and checked out FriendFeed, the very hottest social media app of the moment, right? It's here, thank me later) As I was saying, thanks to FF became involved in a conversation last night that started about one of Robert's blog posts [Related: Robert's post "The passionate vs. the non passionates"]

This discussion brought to mind a famous line used often by that great gentleman, the one renowned as a Count in the royal court of American music. I speak, of course, of the pride of Red Bank, New Jersey, the brilliant Count Basie. "One more once" the Count was heard to say in performance, this after having said "One more time."

One more once

Stop trying to get better

Start getting different

Stop tweaking the numerator

Change the denominator

The most effective solution set is not about getting better, it's about getting different - dramatically different. It's about changing the game and the messy stuff of innovation. It's all about learning how to fail faster to succeed sooner.

The old school adage is apt here..."If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." Let me also mash in some classic Dee Hock for flava..."The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out."

Bonus: Tom Peters on Passion! Hard is soft, soft is hard. Passion, energy, values, character, enthusiasm. Highly recommended as the best use of three minutes you'll spend on the internets today. Video here. Hint: this video contains the magic formula for hiring great talent, especially sellers. It works every single time and the candidate resumes are not at all important. Thanks, again to FriendFeed and to Peter Dawson for the tip. Thanks too to TP.

Search engine of the week, next week: Omgili - Find out what people are saying

Sergey Brin: iPhone Users Conduct 30x More Mobile Searches (and other fascinating stats)...

"On Sunday July 13, Apple announced that 10,000,000 apps had been downloaded via the App Store. A little over a week later - on July 21st, 25 million apps have been downloaded." The entire Ryan Spoon post here. Thanks to Scoble via FF for the tip.

Trade secret: Once watched Mel Karmazin setting up the closing of a deal. Wanting to recruit a rock star candidate, Mel took a blank sheet of paper and after signing his name to the lower third handed it to the soon to be future employee saying "Fill it out." Genius! What would you do with such a "blank check?" The brilliant move on Mel's part was putting the pressure on the candidate. While it's easy to say you would go for it and stick it to the man, the reality is very different. Put in that position one tends to ask for what one really needs and, perhaps, a bit more. The last thing any candidate wants to be thought of in that situation is rude. No one wants to be the crass opportunist that takes advantage of a generous open ended offer. As a practical matter, the candidate ends up bidding against themselves. It's almost a reverse Dutch auction. I've borrowed this set up to the close and found the majority never, ever tried to stick it to the me. In my experience, the majority have actually settled for less than I was willing to pay because they wanted the gig and did not want to come across as taking any unfair or obscene advantage of my blank check offer. Don't make that mistake; never sell yourself short. Go for it! There is almost always more on the table than you believe. Here's the lesson. You can always come down. Attempting to go up, once you've established a number, well, that's a different story.

Next time: Why it's smart to find out what people need and then be the first to suggest they be paid more.

"Though constantly looking at people, one rarely forms new impressions of them, impressions implying the registration of novelty rather than the confirmation of prejudice. At only a few stages do we actively sketch a picture of someone - on first meeting, after a long absence, in the course of a furious row, after an illness, something to break the laziness of photographic habit." Alain de Botton

"One can look at seeing...one can't hear hearing." Marcel Duchamp

"We build up whole culture patterns based on past 'facts' which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact." Robert Pirsig

Today's image: 2 of Spades by jaylara. Excellent. Thank you for sharing.

Leadership makes a difference.

Marin Alsop the gifted music director of the Baltimore Symphony told Charlie Rose last night she wants her legacy to be "...a culture of joy about making music."

She also suggested the same orchestra, playing the same maps, in the same hall led by five different conductors would produce five perceptibly different performances.

She's right.

In my experience the same performers, working in (basically) the same format, at the same station led by different show runners, EPs or program directors produce perceptibly different performances. Moreover, I have witnessed or been involved many times when stations with the same staff, same format go from worst to first in the ratings by changing leadership.

The six word job description of a leader is get the best out of others.

Marin says that one needs to "enable them" and that means one must be sincere, authentic, committed. She told Charlie believing in people was key.

She's right. Check out the video.



Nobody likes it but the listeners: The vogue subject matter some are writing, opining about and beating to death is the false notion, the canard, that the youth are no longer listening to radio.

Total nonsense.

Exhibit A: Brian Kelly's 103.7 KISS FM.

Here is the station's five book cume rating trend, 12-17 persons...

49.1, 49.7, 50.4, 50.0, 55.4

55 out of every 100 teens in Milwaukee tuned in to one station, Brian's radio station, at least once a week this past fall.

That's up from 49 in the fall of 06.

Up.

But wait, there's more. 103.7 KISS FM posted a 35.5 cume rating with 18-34 persons. A full third of all Milwaukee 18-34s said they listened to one station, KISS, during the week. Congrats and cheers to Brian Kelly and his amazing staff on another killer book.

Closed circuit to Radio CEOs - Part one (of I don't know how many in a series)...

Applause

That's one of the things missing in most outfits today.

Catch your station people doing something right.

No matter how bad things are and, I know, things are not good this January, someone at some station in your group is hitting the cover off the ball. Are David Field and Weezie Kramer showing Brian Kelly the love? I'll bet you that's one of the biggest reasons why he is still getting his mail in Milwaukee and not in Chicago, LA or New York.

It's about leadership. It's about the Radio CEO understanding their legacy to be "a culture of joy about making great radio." Some words are very powerful, thank you very much and I'm proud of you have their own weather systems. Catch people doing something right. Show them that you care. "Action today!" as Churchill famously said.

Game on.



Set the wayback machine for November, 1958, Louisville, Kentucky...

RADIOPULSE

4:00-5:00 PM, Monday - Friday

Station Men - Women - Teen - Children - Total - AQH Rating

WAKY 28 51 49 5 133 9.9
WINN 39 77 13 5 134 4.0
WHAS 35 89 6 7 137 2.4
WKLO 37 78 16 7 138 3.4
WAVE 37 80 8 7 132 2.6
WLOU 37 75 13 6 131 0.8

The guy holding down afternoons on WINN was Johnny Martin, my dad. Not bad for a PD with an airshift.

"We have conducted a thorough search and are able to report to you without reservation that there is no money in the building"

During my talk last week to the sales team at a client TV station, the one line that generated an email from almost all attending. Thank you very much.

Getting and staying focused on top line delivers one of the very best ROIs. When you've got top line working the bottom line takes care of itself. Hint: Ensure your sellers aren't doing their best selling in the building.

"We are in the friction removal business."

A great line on leadership by Tom Peters from his Project05 doc. Outstanding! Thanks TP!

Bonus: Seth has written something you need to read. Only two years left...

"So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That's why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment -- just one second -- to decide."

Thanks, Seth. Bravos! Wonderful! Read the entire post here.

Bonus 2: Radio programming ace Michael Fischer tips me to another Seth post, Workaholics...

"A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear."

Read Seth's post here. Thanks, Michael! FUD is deadly; decide to be optimistic and go for greatness! Make something happen. Patton said it, quoting Bismarck (quoting Napoleon) "L'Audace, toujours l'audace" Audacity, always audacity.

Congrats & cheers: Robert Scoble joins Mansueto Digital to launch FastCompany.TV - smart, very smart. Release here.

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.