Photo: Mendota sunset 2 by pharder1 Fine shooting. Thank you.

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better." Wendell Phillips

"Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration." Andrew Carnegie

"Genius is initiative on fire." Holbrook Jackson

Peter Smyth, Greater Media's president and CEO is one of radio's best. I've been a fan since my days at WBZ when Peter was across the street at WROR. Peter recently shared his thoughts on Google's AdSense for Audio initiative. Let me encourage you to read Peter's piece Can Google Sell Radio? Much of what Peter says in his writing is pitch perfect, however, I must respectfully disagree with his conclusion (i.e., "it's not time to surrender"). Peter is right on the state of affairs in radio sales and simply wrong on Google.

Perhaps his most intellectually honest and valuable observation is "it's time for us to take a close look at the leadership, operating philosophy, and organization of our sales departments."

Little has changed in the way radio sells radio. Radio still gets up each day and goes to work to kill other radio. This zero sum game is the real reason radio fails to gain share of ad spend. It's silo warfare to gain share of a single digit ad spend while ignoring the double digit dead tree guys. This is the same kind of thinking that drives stations with a one share in Arbitron to target and attack other one share rated stations rather than targeting and attacking the market leaders. It was ever thus. We've been talking about gaining share from newspaper, yellow pages, television, cable and other media for decades. The biggest challenge today is unlearning. As Dee Hock once said "The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind but how to get the old ones out." We are using the wrong metrics. It's time to change the denominator. Time to reboot Miller-Kaplan. Clearly, we have a leadership problem. Chances are Peter would agree.

Back in the day I spent a good number of Saturdays and Sundays sitting in a conference room listening to the brilliant Kevin Sweeney as he taught us how to steal money from the dead tree guys. Kevin was the gifted sales development expert who famously said "Would you be interested in learning a technique that will produce a 100% improvement in your ability to close a sale?" He would then go on to preach the importance of the spec spot. Spec production is a lost art today. Sidebar: Later when I was a group guy we would use our unsold inventory on Mondays to play specs on the air when our sellers would call in from a retailer and tell us they were "ready." This only worked 75% of the time.

Peter writes about calling on retailers. Married to an owner of a retail business I am able to offer a somewhat unique pov here. Open for almost three years now my wife has been called on by just about every organization selling advertising. The most creative are those selling space in church bulletins. We advertise on television and in print, have done so for years. Accordingly, we are switch pitched weekly by every video and print seller. The most aggressive sellers are dead tree folks, they make face calls. The radio sellers tend to cold call via telephone. When told she is not interested in meeting with them their response is almost always the same..."You're making a mistake." You can imagine how powerfully that line works in positioning the radio seller as someone who understands what's on the mind of a small business owner. True story: one radio cluster operator (a major publicly held concern) took 16 months before making their first call.

My sense is this is not a singular experience. Radio simply does a poor job of selling radio's value proposition. In answer to Peter's well put question "Are we selling spots or are we selling value?" my thought is we are continuing to fail in articulating value; mostly, we are selling spots, doing whatever it takes to get the order. Further, we are asking too much of our sellers. The demands of today have eclipsed the skills and working knowledge of the majority of our sellers. They deserve better.

What Google represents is a new sales channel. It seems to me this is a potentially additive opportunity, given the right rules of engagement. What stands in the way would appear to be a dated mindset about inventory. We talk about calling on new customers, talk about developing the kind of clientèle that Google proposes to bring to us, we talk about a great many things when, perhaps, we should be decisive and take action. To succeed sooner we must learn how to fail faster. We need to understand that doing the same things and expecting a different result is flawed beyond any and all reason. We must stop focusing on getting better at a game that is no longer being played. We need to embrace that four letter word we most often avoid: risk. We have an urgent need to get different.

"..money doesn't talk, it swears" Bob Dylan

Leadership must be responsible for producing results.

The electronic ad exchange concept is not going to go away. Working with Google or any other ad exchange should not be viewed as an all or nothing proposition. Peter suggests, wrongly in my opinion, working with Google to be surrender. My thought is to work with Google is not to abandon our sellers but rather to abandon our bias against establishing new sales channels. It is the challenge of leadership to find new and effective ways to do business. To find fresh approaches that benefit both customer and seller. To boldly commit to doing what has not been done before. To adapt our basics, update our fundamentals, refresh and renew our best practices. The best used by date on the radio business model has expired. Radio is not alone, it's a sea change out there for all of ad supported measured media.

We need to stop kidding ourselves, stop making excuses, stop rationalizing failure and get on with the serious work of reinvention.

Surrender is a word I chose not to use especially when we have a robust vocabulary of proactive verbs available including imagine and collaborate. The sun is setting on business as usual. A bright new day of opportunity beckons. Surrender? Never. Truth be told we have yet begun to fight. Game on!

LATER: Lindsay Wood Davis weighs in and makes reference to Christina Maslach, a professor at the University of California - Berkeley. Pluralistic ignorance is the term coined by Dr Maslach to suggest we tend to think we are different when, in fact, we are not. This is in play when we say "our market, our stations, our situation is different." Thanks for sharing Lindsay.

Bravos to Peter Smyth and the Greater Media gang for doing the right thing on June 26th.

Please standby: When the legendary genius Ron Jacobs tells us he's got a "big idea" we best listen. Ron launches July 7, 2007 (07/07/07). Bookmark it now. Fair warning. All the best Ron!

Your comments are always welcome. Have a wonderful weekend.

Photo: Stella by Thomas Hawk

Very cool capture.

Great title.

Killer color.

Thank you very much!

"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

"In great straits and when hope is small, the boldest counsels are the safest." Livy

"The art of using moderate abilities to advantage often brings greater results than actual brilliance." La Rochefoucauld

The History of Rock and Roll: Bill Mouzis has a commemorative CD set on offer. A share of proceeds benefit charity. Beginning today at 3pm Boss Angeles' time (pac) place your order at Bill's site here. Robert W. Morgan narrates the Pete Johnson written opus, engineered by Bill Mouzis. In 1969, during the watch of legendary genius Ron Jacobs, 93 KHJ presented this 48 hour history making special. More info here. Please join me and order yours today; a strong addition to any serious audio collection (and it benefits some good work). My thanks to Claude Hall for the tip. Thanks too to Bill for making this available, very cool.

Black Swan? Lots of buzz on the new Nassim Nicholas Taleb writing, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. NPR TOTN info here. NYT Book review here. It makes a book list by Tom Peters here. Amazon info here. I did enjoy Taleb's previous book, Fooled by Randomness and highly recommend it. Speaking of buzz...Feedburner!

Kudos: Chicago programming ace Elroy Smith is stepping down. He joins the greats that have made a difference in Chicago radio including Lucky Cordell, Lee Michaels and Marv Dyson. He's certain to do more great work. All the best Elroy.

Congrats & cheers: The Library of American Broadcasting honors the "Giants of Broadcasting." Those honored this year include Cathy Hughes, Diane Sawyer, Dennis Swanson, Joseph Flaherty, Dennis FitzSimons, and Charlie Rose. Also honored are the late, great John Blair and another we lost, the charming wit Tony Malara, forever our favorite master of ceremonies. Howard Lindzon, Adam Eland, Jeff Marks and the star of the show Lindsay Campbell all headed to the big time, CBS acquires WallStrip. Check out today's vid wherein Lindsay is escorted out of Black Rock "We're here to save your network" (nice cameo Quincy).

Connecting the dots: "If the ad networks are just playing an arbitrage game, then they will not survive in the long run" so said Gokul Rajaram project management director for Google's AdSense. He's right on the money. He also believes indies can survive by adding value to publishers in a sustainable and scalable way. Bravos Gokul! OMD's Temeka Kee writes Google Inches Toward Comprehensive Online (and Offline) Ad Solution here.

Google Proposes Innovation in Radio Spectrum Auction, a writing by John Markoff via NYT here. Kudos John, well done! The bottom line...there is plenty of spectrum needing more diverse, innovative allocation and Google's concept would seem to provide opportunities for real depth in practical shared distribution.

Alpha is the new beta: Operator 11. Smash or trash? You decide.

Hope he's wrong, but my sense is he's right: Michael Arrington is a bright guy. If you are not reading Techcrunch put it in your reader and give it a week. Read his post - Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now - with comments here. Danger, Will Robinson! Dave Winer weighs in and agrees with Michael to wit: "As they say, you can't throw a pot sticker into a crowd without hitting a budding entrepreneur with a pitch. The place is crawling with get-rich-quick schemes." More Dave here. Bravos to Michael and Dave. There is a late 1999 vibe out there and lots of cash parked on the sidelines. Reminds me of something the brilliant Gary Hamel once said "Money makes you stupid. Lots of money makes you really stupid." This remains a year of amazing opportunity for the real deals. The danger is the enticement of easy money. The sketchy business model. Dave Winer's superficial pet food example is only too real. Sales and profit are very, very important, don't leave home without them. When the team is more concerned about, focused on, preoccupied with the next round rather than obsessing on sales and profits, trust me, you're in the wrong outfit. Word to the wise - do not make a move without paper that includes a bullet-proof exit.

Thank you very much but you just can't motivate others. A bunch of emails on yesterday's sales manager post. One example: "Hey, did you forget about being a motivator, duh?"

Well, no. Motivation was discussed and dismissed.

Granted, a great leader should have the ability to inspire, to encourage, to incite but even the greatest leaders are not able to motivate. Can't be done.

People motivate themselves.

The real enemy of the dead tree guys - the dead tree guys."I'm talking industrywide mismanagement among print-media companies -- both glossy and newsprint. I'm talking Detroit-in-the-'70s, with no Lee Iacocca in sight." Simon Dumenco writing in AdAge, Are Your Shoes Tied? Then You're Smarter Than Many Print Execs. Bravo Simon! Read the entire article here.

Photo: Madison twilight by KAP'n Craig

Amazing image, thanks. To appreciate this image please click on the photo title above, on the flickr page select "all sizes" above the image, upper left and choose original size. Also keep in mind he shot this from a kite, probably standing on the lake (which is now frozen) and it was single digit cold when he shot it. Bravo KAP'n Craig! (Closed circuit to Madison media: hire this guy or at least license his images for a charity calendar, your website, et al)

Craig Wilson uses a "kite cam" to create his very cool pics. Check out and buy, via Amazon, his book Hanging by a Thread: A Kite's View of Wisconsin here.

"A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life." Goethe

Web 2.0 in less than five minutes: Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, has produced a killer video. Highly recommended. Check it out via YouTube here. Thanks to Dave for the tip.

Nobody liked it but the prospects: The Salesgenie.com Super Bowl ad, one of the ads rated poorly by the ad community, critics and citizens alike, seems to have been a good investment. The company says they signed up more than 10,000 new subscribers by Monday afternoon (they needed 700 new subs to break even on the ad). Salon's King Kaufman has more, Shockingly, the experts - that's all of us - got it wrong on that Salesgenie Super Bowl ad here. Reminds me of something the great David Ogilvy said about those infomercials run in the dead of night..."they work."

The sail to Sydney: Ron Fell posting from the Pacific here. Bravo Ron! Well done.

The Wizards of Buzz: Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen do a fine job reviewing the bidding that has become known as social bookmarking. From Digg.com to Reddit.com to Del.icio.us to StumbleUpon the gang's all here. Read their well-written WSJ piece here. Bravo Jamin and John!

Google will crack the code: Some folks are making a mistake by counting out the Google Audio initiative. Of course there are "hurdles" but none that can not be overcome. View this as a marathon rather than a sprint. It's way early on. Miguel Helft writes about Google via cnet/NYT here

Tribune "self-help" strategy: Sarah Ellison and Dennis K. Berman update the Tribune story writing in WSJ here. My thought is should they sell off broadcast TV they are not likely to retain WGN radio. Assuming a bcf of 40%, a modest 10 multiple would yield $193,600,000. My guess is the station could go for close to $200 mil. Of course several other factors would be in play. Cubs rights and real estate issues could have impact that might not be insignificant.

Wheredaguy?: Ron Jacobs' website, ronjacobsonline, is MIA. Any insight into what's up with the Big Kahuna? My hope is all is well with Ron.

Burger invented here: Was it CT, TX or WI? Fred Winston blogs on the birth of the burger here

W2W Anna Nicole: The freak show was off the chain last week. The characters in the Anna Nicole drama being way too rich to resist. The biopics, the tabs, the November sweeps, the books, the courts, the lawyers, this one is only beginning. Steve Dahl served up his usual, unvarnished, pov..."Friday morning on Today on NBC, they said that Anna Nicole was famous for being famous. It seems to me that she was famous for having really large breasts and an extremely messed up personal life." Read Steve's take here.

Thomas Szasz: "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."