Photo credit: Australia 2006 by Ron Fell

Some may know him as a photog and certainly he is, others may be aware he works with the Raiders' broadcast team, he has for decades, many will recall his years at The Gavin Report where he was the writer, associate editor who became the publisher, owner. Everyone who knows him would agree: Ron Fell is a class act and a mensch. Then, there are those of us who know the back story. Know about his salad days with Metromedia and NBC in the bay area. Ron Fell, the wunderkind who programmed KNBR, the youngest Program Director in the history of NBC. To be certain, we can all learn something from Ron Fell. I am blessed to know this great gentleman, privileged to know him as a friend, honored that he was best man at my wedding. Thanks Ron for allowing me to share some of your outstanding photography. Stay tuned readers, more on the way.

Support the Commons: An important email today from Larry Lessig, read it here. Larry tells us that CC is still short of their $300K goal. Should you be involved in any creative endeavor my suggestion to you is please get involved, support the Creative Commons initiatives. CC is doing work that matters. I encourage you to please give what you can today. Donation info is here.

Having to be right shackles your mind.

People are culturally conditioned to have to be right. The parents are right, the teacher is right, the boss is right. Who is right overrules what is right. Couples have huge quarrels about considerations that are forgotten as the struggle for who is right rages on...having to be right becomes a barrier to learning and understanding. It keeps you away from growing, for there is no growth without changing, correcting, and questioning yourself.

If you have to be right, you put yourself in a hedged lane, but once you experience the power of not having to be right, you will feel like you are walking across open fields, the perspective wide and your feet free to take any turn. John Naisbitt

Today's quotation from Naisbitt's most recent work - Mindset! Reset Your Thinking and See the Future, end note Mindset #4, Understanding how powerful it is not to have to be right. Amazon info here. Along that same line of thinking: There is usually more than one right answer.

Rex Sorgatz, formerly of Minneapolis and now a clever dude about Seattle offers up his 30 Predictions for 2007 in Media/Pop/Tech including...3) Apple. Apple buys Last.FM. Finally. And iTV is a hit. Finally. And the iPhone? Nope, never. Why? Cuz the iPhone is like God -- if it really existed, you wouldn't care that much. Check out Rex's entire 30 here. Rex's inventory of 2006 lists, an excellent collection in progress, is here

Best of 2006; take two - Best site by a radio talent: dahl.com, Steve Dahl's site serves as an excellent example of how to do a site right. Blog, forum, program archive, photo gallery, online shopping, it's all there and more. Bravo Steve! Visit Steve Dahl here.

Welcome to fly over land: Suits from the city spend $530 mil for Strib. Avista Capital Partners of New York buys their first dead tree outfit, the Star Tribune, Minnesota's biggest daily. Newspaper folk selling their most troubled, or at least most challenged, assets to private equity groups is now vogue. Because the suits don't know what they don't know they might just succeed (i.e., not smart enough to know they can't win). Strib coverage here LATER: Now hearing Avista paid 7.4x cf (industry avg valuation approx 8.7 cf, some deals have been done at 10x and higher) and it means the boys got a deal on the pricing. ALSO: Rafat cites AP as source for McClatchy CEO saying the company collected more than $1 billion in cash flow since the 1998 purchase.

Can you tell the difference between a Real Reporter and a Parrot? Excellent post by Google's Peter Norvig all about lazy reporters here.

Many thanks for the kind words on the new blog design. My thanks and bravos to uber-cool designer Todd Dominey of Atlanta - I am now using his "Scribe" design. All about Todd here.

Photo credit: Morning Road by Chicanery In WI. Excellent shot, bravo and thanks.

"As a media historian, what I understand about the emergence of new media is that they don't wipe out old media but they force them to adjust in some important way, so there is a rearrangement of the panoply of media. The publishing companies are like the oil companies in relation to solar power or hydrogen. They know that it's got the potential to destroy their monopoly so they are trying to control it, they buy up the patents and try and manage the transition. But they don't really know where it's going, they don't have much of a vision of how to adopt to the new digital universe." Adam Bellow

Adam has seen the future, read about his new role as pamphleteer via CJR Daily here. Reinventing the book for the 21st century, interesting concept, good luck Adam!

400 year death spiral continues: E&P's Joe Strupp reviews 2006 and notes the newspaper "budget wizards" have a need to nail down two things: "how to make money on the web and whether to charge readers." Strupp's Top 10 Newspapers Industry Stories of 2006 here. (Closed circuit to Joe - ring up Adam, and reach out to Jeff Jarvis).

Newsosaur makes a good call: Alan Mutter puts up some good reading about the recruitment category of classifieds. A comment from the research gang at Borrell is spot-on...“When the history of Internet advertising is written, recruitment sites will undoubtedly dominate the first chapter,” says Borrell. “In 12 years, these sites have grown from a few job boards to hundreds of niche competitors. Online recruitment now accounts for 25% of Internet advertising.” Check out Alan's entire post, Online tops newspaper job-ad sales, here. My second dot com job was working in the internet classifieds space. The worldwide classifieds annual spend is, generally, estimated to be about $100 billion (combined offline and online). Nothing but upside going forward. My sense remains finding and retaining the right talent will becoming ever more difficult. Put recruitment, and HR, on the 2007 reboot list.

2007 forecast; prediction #1: After having a strong year in 2006, outdoor will have another great year. As outdoor folks continue the digital migration of their assets compelling new value propositions will support ad spend growth second only to online. The street will rediscover good outfits like Lamar. The first tribe of wireless would do well to rediscover their own very special "out of home" value proposition (big upside in creative collaboration at the local level, visual + audio = unique engagement). My pov is Lamar may also be a perfect takeover candidate.

Best of 2006; take one - Top Five Best TV (pro) blogs: Those blogs a broadcast video person could not live without, blog and blogger noted. Lost Remote (Steve Safran), TV Newser (Brian Stelter), BC Beat (Higgins, a gentleman others can only succeed never replace), PublicEye (Vaughn Ververs) and Eat the Press (Rachel Sklar). Honorable mention: PoMo Blog (Terry Heaton is, arguably, the media essayist of the year).

Cuban to Broadcast TV: Wake up!
"Last year I said that Disney was brilliant for breaking the logjam and selling their shows on Itunes. This coming year, 2007 will be known as the year Broadcast TV leveraged HD to create a golden age of TV with huge gains in ratings vs non HD networks, or it will be looked back upon as the year Broadcast Networks blew it." Read Mark Cuban's Internet Video and how the Broadcast Networks are Missing the HDTV Opportunity, here

Steve Gillmor sings it his way here, Joel Spolsky provides translation replete with back stories and commentary here. Come on Steve, bring back the Gang! Bravo to Steve for his unvarnished take, Joel for the insights and to all involved in one of this year's best year-end geek posts.

Paul La Monica, media biz guy over at CNN Money: Best & Worst media stocks of 2006 wherein Martha's Omnimedia, Marvel, Comcast and Dr Malone's Liberty Media and CBS get their propers, here. Paul also suggests the private equity folks could take a bunch of trading symbols off the market next year and he may just be right. CC Outdoor combined with Lamar in a take out?

Legendary leader, broadcast pioneer, Dr. Frank Stanton: "thinker and doer" Variety obit here. Norman Horowitz writes...

I can only think of the "good old days" when a network like CBS, and executives like Bill Paley and Frank Stanton could stand up to the congress and the president from time to time in order to continue to report to America just what they thought was going on.

Frank Stanton will be missed, not because he died, but because he "stood for something important," during his life and only let the feds push him around some of the time.

Bravo Norman, well done! His entire post is here

Photo credit: Adorn by Thomas Hawk. Very cool, cheers and thanks.

We're closing the offices for the year.

Let me take this opportunity to say thank you and express my sincere appreciation for your support. To you, the reader of my humble blog, I send best wishes for a blessed and safe holiday.

Back to blogging next week with another round of best of lists and 2007 predictions. Add your voice, your 2006 bests as well as your predictions for the new year ahead - please make use of the comments feature at the bottom of this post.

Cheers!

Photo credit: field fog by McBeth. Very cool image, thank you.

"Badmouthing competitors diminishes you. Period." Tom Peters

The always engaging Tom Peters offers up some great advice in his 100 Ways to Succeed #78
Bravo Tom!

Michael Arrington reviews the bidding on Google's Audio initiative. Read Google Audio Ads Snag with comments here. (Closed circuit to Google: the most opportune window for your beta is Q1, when the first tribe of wireless will appreciate the assist. Your Q4 launch was ill-starred). Also...Google's radio ad tests hit early snag - analyst via MarketWatch's Ben Charny here

Trump to Tara: You got your second chance. Bravo to the Donald, smart move giving the kid a break. Very few understand how to take advantage of an opportunity the way the Donald does and he gets the wood - every single time - check tomorrow's news stand.

Quincy plays hardball: CBS hires Michael Marquez as VP Strategy and Corporate Development. Michael will play a role in the new CBS Interactive division. Congrats to Michael. Kudos to Quincy Smith on a very smart hire. (Look for a bunch of "A" as in M&A)

"Hard to know when buzz is more than just noise" Ann Powers writes an excellent article Buzz Vertigo in the LA Times...

"WHAT is in flux is that imaginary portal where an artist makes the leap into public consciousness. There, where perception and reality don't quite match, time and space themselves are being messed with. In some cases, the very ground where music once emerged has been abandoned."

Bravo Ann - well done! Read the entire article here.

Dan Gillmor to Time: US, not YOU. Fine post Dan, Bravo! (word around midtown this morning is a round of holiday layoffs is coming to Time, Inc.) Nora Ephron offers up her take on being named POY here

Listen up: 10 Most Played Ad Age Podcasts here

The book folks love or hate: What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How To Guarantee Yours Succeeds by Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart. Amazon info here
Which reminds me of my mentor, the great Kevin B. Sweeney. Back in the day Kevin would hold training sessions on Saturdays and Sundays. He also gathered the sales staff before and after each business day. During one of his Saturday sessions he declared "Advertising fails!" and went around the room asking each of us "Why?" It was an excellent exercise, one that got all of us thinking. Kevin was famous for pushing us to the edge, while his approach could be harsh each of us who knew him were made better by his teaching, by his rants, by his "don't settle" get out there and make something happen attitude.

Get your list on: Pitchfork's The Top 100 Tracks of 2006 here

A few right, a whole bunch wrong: Lots of emails on my 2005 year end post. Let me answer to a few of my dead wrong items. I thought that Mel and Howard would put on the shows of their careers and in the process move subscription media ahead - wrong. Both guys failed to deliver the expected collective tour de force. Les Moonves would hit the trifecta and bring home successes in entertainment, sports and news - wrong. My suggestion that Katie would join the CBS fold generated a good number of emails with the same forgetaboutit vibe, here's a cut from one "You have proven yourself to be an idiot and a total hack, Katie will never leave NBC and everyone working for the company knows this to be the whole truth. btw, you suck." David Faber would jump from CNBC - wrong. My sense is the brain remains on Roger's short list for the launch team @ Fox Bidness Channel. At least one broadcast license revocation hearing would move forward - wrong. The big regulatory issue, concern of this past session turned out to be parental control.

Take the survey: Media Life invites your opinions in their The Year in Media poll here

FCC private briefing for clients of Bank of America? You decide, story from AP here, Consumers Union blog post here