"Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur

"Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience." Comte de Buffon

"One morning one of us, having no black, used blue instead, and Impressionism was born." Pierre Auguste Renoir

Today's image: Late Night Travel By Thomas Hawk Beautiful shot. Thank you for sharing.

Markets are conversations

Thesis #1/95, The Cluetrain Manifesto

One key benefit of today's hyperconnectivity is the wealth of conversation. Not a day goes by without someone starting or adding to a discussion. On topics related to media there's a robust diversity of ongoing discussion. Those working in media will gain valuable insight and advantage by devoting attention to a couple of particular discussions.

First, serious inside broadcasting baseball conversations and, second, the abundance of comments on broadcast media emanating from what Jay Rosen has called "the people formerly known as the audience."

Many of us arrived here from a different world. Access or exposure to some kind of thought leadership or best practice wisdom and any continuing professional education whatsoever were limited; trade pubs were delivered weekly, popular industry conventions staged annually. The important exercise of "holding a mirror up to the audience" was typically a once a year ritual - the perceptual research study - more event than process.

This should not be understood as a suggestion we should discount the potential value of publications, conferences or survey research. Au contraire, my thought is each would be enriched, complimented, not replaced, by careful study of available conversations. What has forever changed is context. The conversations are already in progress. Get engaged and involved.

To review the (now) obvious fundamentals as stated in The Cluetrain: "The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media." and "We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that's more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with."

Localized radar: To get a quick read on your market create a local Twitter list. Populate with all the usual suspects. For best results make it an ongoing curation. Invite listeners/viewers/followers to suggest additions. Here's an example created for Madison, WI. Such lists can well serve your market "listening" strategy. FYI - some clients have created a second list using a Twitter account not associated with the company so they can also track tweets of all media in their market.

The Broadcast Ecosystem

My sense is broadcasters would benefit from some discussion about ecosystems. Let's frame it this way: Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook are each building and fine-tuning (iterating) an ecosystem. A bespoke community set designed to create and sustain competitive advantage. What is the state of your company's ecosystem? Seems a fair, timely and important question.

You can Google "Amazon ecosystem" (or any, all of the big four above) and get an idea of the concept, including graphic representations. In my experience, a candid and valuable discussion about any ecosystem should begin with mapping. Have your associates independently create maps which reveal what they believe is your present ecosystem. Gather your team to share and discuss their maps. Create a map of your ecosystem. Iterate. How can your ecosystem be improved?

One example: broadcaster ecosystem maps include Audience & Advertiser clusters. Within the Audience cluster are lifestyle groups and their purchase needs/behaviors. These relate to buyer, potential buyer groups within the Advertiser cluster.

An area often overlooked in this mapping is your local developer community. The upside potential of establishing a formalized approach, a respectful place within your ecosystem, to effectively involve talented hometown geeks is not at all insignificant. Thank me later.

Good reads

The Future of UI: Contextual Intelligence. By Bob O'Donnell, here

EXCELLENCE. NO EXCUSES. By Tom Peters. This 737-page download is a gem, here

The Power of One. By Fred Jacobs. Fred offers up a solid post about the Nielsen LA Radio ratings scandal which turns into an interesting discussion via comments on how ratings are used, here

Witty Worried and Wolf. Nancy Wolf, the smart and celebrated communications lawyer, is not retiring, she's restarting. Enjoy her new blog here

SCOTUS: The Aereo decision, here

In closing let me share a wonderful image. This week Professor Gary Hamel delivered another of his thought-provoking talks. A keynote at the London Business School's Global Leadership Summit, his talk was about hacking management. The following image was taken from his deck. My thanks to Dr Hamel for allowing it to be shared here. Dare to distribute, discuss and post in your workspace.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Yeats

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present...As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." Abraham Lincoln

"The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas." Eric Hoffer

Today's image: Untitled by taylorjonesphoto. Great shooting. Thank you for sharing.

Do the right thing

Ad-supported measured media is a mess.

The fish stinks at the head first, my friend Eddie Ruben often said. My sense remains that what we have here is a leadership problem exacerbated by a massive failure of imagination.

Gary Hamel, long a favorite business strategist of this space, has written a book every CEO should read. I know it was recommended here last year but it merits a serious revisiting. If you're a CEO please read it again (or read it for the first time). If you're not the CEO gift this to your guy at the top, thank me later. Get the Amazon info here: The Future of Management

Dr Hamel's thesis is management is out of date. I agree with Hamel when he says "What ultimately constrains the performance of your organization is not its operating model, nor its business model, but its management model." It's time for management innovation and, in my considered opinion, it needs to start at the top.

Allow me to quote further from the preface to Hamel's writing...

"I dream of organizations that are capable of spontaneous renewal, where the drama of change is unaccompanied by the wrenching trauma of a turnaround. I dream of businesses where an electric current of innovation pulses through every activity, where the renegades always trump the reactionaries. I dream of companies that actually deserve the passion and creativity of the folks who work there, and naturally elicit the very best that people have to give. Of course, these are more than dreams; they are imperatives. They are do-or-die challenges for any company that hopes to thrive in the tumultuous times ahead - and they can be surmounted only with inspired management innovation."

It's time for management to do the right thing. Time to carefully review and examine the leadership of the organization.

Bonus: Chris Brogan ppt Social Media for Publishers here.

Pre-order: Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by N=1 house artiste Hugh MacLeod. Amazon info here.

"If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup." Turkish proverb

"A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities." Herman Melville

"Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's image: cloudy by twentyeight. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Ongoing discussions about the leadership problem in media leads me to add one more quotation. Something more to think about, the bottleneck is at the top...

"Where are you likely to find people with the least diversity of experience, the largest investment in the past, and the greatest reverence for industry dogma: At the top."

Gary Hamel

Podcasting: Fad or trend? Kurt Hanson offers the pov of three bloggers and his take here.

Congrats & cheers: Radio programming ace Patty Martin & her team at The Drive in Chicago. Early pre-currency indications are, again, history making and please let me add, well deserved. A highly respected local tells me "...a consistently well-positioned, well-programmed and well-marketed station since day one." There you have it dear friends, the secrets to great success.

Internet radio rock star Kurt Hanson and crew at AccuRadio are launching 30 new channels in 30 days. Check it out here.

Making the hits: Web 2.0 impresario and video entertainment ace Rob Barnett is making things happen. Kudos to the My Damn Channel gang, they continue to amaze. In August the site delivered 2.8 million views. But wait, there's more...now they're adding Yahoo! as another distribution partner.

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." Lou Holtz

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be." Kurt Vonnegut

"There is always room at the top." Daniel Webster

Today's image: Fall Sunset Splendor by Bill Shannon. A killer pic caught at sunset in Columbus. Thank you very much.

Two chances to win: Four of the six CBS radio stations in Chicago are posting revenues which place them among this year's top ten billers. WBBM-AM ($33 mil), US99 ($20 mil), WXRT ($16 mil), B96 ($16 mil). Two properties represent significant upside potential: WJMK ($8 mil) and WCKG ($5 mil). The combined billings of WJMK and WCKG fail to reach the billing of either WXRT or B96. At this point it is fair to suggest getting better is not the solution but rather getting different. Time to position the assets (and the portfolio) for 2008. Tis the season. Related: The wayback machine - 1991 billings. WJMK $10.2 mil, WCKG $11.4 mil. The #1 biller in 1991 was WGN - $43 mil, #2 was WLUP - $19 mil. WJMK was the #8 biller, WCKG ranked #7.

Rules for Management Innovators

• To solve a systemic problem, you need to understand its systemic roots.
• At least initially, it's easier, and safer, to supplement an existing management process than supplant it. (Run the new in parallel with the old.)
• Commit to revolutionary goals, but take evolutionary steps.
• Be clear about the performance metrics your innovation is designed to improve.
• Start by experimenting in your "own back yard," where the political risks are the lowest.
• Whenever possible, rely on volunteers.
• Diffuse potential objections by keeping your experiments fun and informal.
• Iterate: Experiment, learn, experiment, learn.
• Don't give up: Innovators are persistent!

My thanks to Gary Hamel for this morning's brief, taken from his latest work - The Future of Management. Highly recommended. Amazon info here.

Bonus: Dave Winer via Twitter "if you're scared to hear what people really think you're not prepared for the world you live in." Made my day, Dave! Bravo and thanks.

Congrats & cheers: Respected Pac NW broadcaster Dave McDonald down the I-5 and back to Portland where he will, again, manage the CBS radio portfolio.

"Successful leaders make sure that they succeed! They are not afraid of strength in others. Andrew Carnegie wanted to put on his gravestone, 'Here lies a man who knew how to put into his service more able men than he was himself.'" Peter Drucker

"Success and rest don't sleep together." Russian proverb

"You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion." E. S. Raymond

Todays image: Vine Grapes by Elenapaint. Outstanding. Thank you!

Paradigm

Let's revisit one of those words. The difference today is we will employ the considerable intellect of two gifted guys. First, Gary Hamel, to wit:

"Modern management isn't just a suite of useful tools and techniques; it is a paradigm, to borrow a sound bite from Thomas Kuhn's overused argot. A paradigm is more than a way of thinking - it's a worldview, a broadly and deeply held belief about what types of problems are worth solving, or are even solvable. Listen to Kuhn on this point: '[A] paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that...can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent these are the only problems that the community will...encourage its members to undertake. Other problems...are rejected as metaphysical...or sometimes as just too problematic to be worth the time. A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that are not reducible to the [familiar] puzzle form because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools which the paradigm provides.'

We are all prisoners of our paradigms. And as managers, we are captives of a paradigm that places the pursuit of efficiency ahead of every other goal. This is hardly surprising, since modern management was invented to solve the problem of inefficiency." From Gary's new writing - The Future of Management. Highly recommended. (Amazon info here).

Second, Michael Rosenblum. Michael writes...

"There is an old expression that says ‘necessity is the mother of invention’.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What happens in fact is that invention comes along, and it messes up everyones way of doing things, so they want it to go away. They bury it. It wrecks their lives. Executives in corporations put off dealing with new inventions until their tour of duty is over. “Leave it for someone else… I don’t really understand it” they say.

Ice, of course, is our classic example.

Once a massive industry, it was rendered obsolete in a stroke when refrigeration was invented.

No one in the ice business wanted refrigeration, and almost no one in the ice business ‘got’ refrigeration.

All they ‘got’ was unemployed."

Read Michael's entire post Frozen Assets here. Put Michael's blog, here, into your reader. Highly recommended.

"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to." George Allen

"Play the game for more than you can afford to lose...only then will you learn the game." Winston Churchill

"All the sugar was in the bottom of the cup." Julia Howe

Todays image: Last Shot in the Life of a Lens by Thomas Hawk. Awesome. Thank you!

It's that time of year when we get involved in helping clients imagine the new year just ahead. This year we are suggesting teams consider management innovation. Dr. Gary Hamel, our favorite business strategist, is writing and speaking on this very subject matter. From HBR last year (Feb 06)...

The Elements of Management Innovation

In most companies, management innovation is ad hoc and incremental. A systematic process for producing bold management breakthroughs must include

1. Commitment to a big management problem
2. Novel principles that illuminate new approaches
3. A deconstruction of management orthodoxies
4. Analogies from atypical organizations that redefine what's possible

To maximize the chances of a management breakthrough, you need to start with a problem that is both consequential and soul stirring. If you don't have such a problem in mind, here are three leading questions that will stimulate your imagination

1. First, what are the tough trade-offs that your company never seems to get right? Management innovation is often driven by the desire to transcend such trade-offs, which can appear to be irreconcilable...Your challenge is to find an opportunity to turn an "either/or" into an "and."
2. Second, what are big organizations bad at? This question should produce a long list of incompetencies...Push yourself to imagine a company can't-do that you and your colleagues could turn into a can-do.
3. Third, what are the emerging challenges the future has in store for your company?...If you scan the horizon, you're sure to see a tomorrow problem that your company should start tackling today.

Gary Hamel's new book is a must-read. The Future of Management (Amazon info)

Congrats & cheers: Dan Mason, Jennifer Donohue, Brian Thomas, Lenny Bloch, and team on a game-changing trend at WCBS-FM. Vinny Brown on a killer trend at WBLS. Drew Horowitz, Jerry Schnacke, Greg Solk and team Bonneville-Chicago on another incredible trend.

Photo: Ron Fell

Great image.

Thanks Ron!

"...change has changed. No longer is it additive. No longer does it move in a straight line. In the twenty-first century, change is discontinuous, abrupt, seditious...for the first time in history we can work backward from our imagination rather than forward from our past." Gary Hamel

Two topics, two outcomes leading off.

Programming and sales.

Ratings and revenue.

Enjoyed a terrific conversation with Bob Griffith yesterday. Prior to his current post with Google, Bob served with distinction in a variety of executive positions. A storied broadcaster, Bob is now playing at the top of his game helping broadcasters to understand and play in the brave new world of digital.

Bob related a recent conversation with Dwight Case. Dwight said radio was missing an opportunity by being focused on content. Radio should instead be focused on programming. He said there's a material difference between content and programming. He's right. The dynamic Dwight, a person I'm blessed to call a mentor, once said radio was a simple business. "Get the ratings, sell the advertising." The Bob Griffith take away is "Play the hits. Sell the spots." Wiser than a tree full of owls those two. Lest my friends and colleagues working in TV sense an affront, let me add the difference between radio and TV really comes down to the cost of separating the commercials and little else.

On to some related loose ends. Topics previously lost in the press of daily affairs.

Two popular myths: American youth are no longer listening to radio. US radio is failing to create programming for young people, almost every station is targeted 25-54. These generalizations may not be patently false, however, they are not entirely correct. I remain a glass is half-full guy.

One need only look to Milwaukee and the results of the Winter book. No question, the youth of Milwaukee have a favorite station and it's clearly WXSS, 103.7 KISS FM. Brian Kelly and team have done it again. 18-34 pers total week, KISS is #1 delivering a 14.4, second place posted an 8.8; 18-34 women total week, KISS is #1 scoring a 19.9, second place putting up an 8.6; every daypart is #1 in the station's target demo (18-34 women): AMD 17.8, MID 19.0, PMD 21.8, EVE 24.4; let me add, his KISS team is also #5 25-54 women total week. Brian's other station, 99WMYX, also delivered exceptional numbers finishing #4 25-54 women total week. No need to post KISS' incredible teen numbers. Want to learn how he's doing it? Brian is holding a clinic on the air this Friday evening beginning at 6pm central. Don't miss it if you can, listen live online.

Please keep in mind, hits are not the norm. Hits are anomalies. Brian Kelly and team are a wonderful anomaly!

The complete job description for PDs can be reduced to six words. Deliver numbers to the sales department.

Back to the countdown. Are these same youth also failing to watch TV? No shortage of folks fronting that case. But, again, let's look at the facts. Idol, the #1 TV show again. On the last day of voting this season - 74 million votes. Cumulative voting total is now 609 million. Something tells me Bob Sillerman is going to be eating better than you and me this weekend.

It's a shame these pesky details get in the way of all the elegant arguments about the death spiral of TV. Of course none of this is meant to suggest things are not changing. As Dr. Hamel has suggested, it's much bigger than that - change has changed. The velocity of change today is practically impossible to grasp. The facts are youth targeted broadcast is getting fewer at bats. Seems to me that's a front office problem.

Let's keep the myth ball rolling: The oldies format is dead. My thought is one, all or some combination of the following players are at work. The unproductive sales department, the incompetent PD, the timorous GM and the group guy not invested with average intelligence. These are the principals in format euthanasia. Occasionally the voluble consultant or research genius is also culpable. Listeners don't kill formats managers do. As PJ says "In all of art it's the singer not the song." The oldies format is dead where it is being done badly. Execution is the issue.

While it is true that listeners can stay away in droves, management is still responsible when listeners fail to show up. Sometimes new formats just don't work no matter what the research suggests. Getting listeners into the tent is a station job. First, one must have a credible show on offer. Spending money to promote a poor or me-too product (i.e., a bad show), is simply wrong headed and yet it happens.

How many times have you watched a TV show debut, walked out at the end of a movie or spent thirty minutes listening to a new format and said "What were they thinking?" or "What was that?" The audience will find a good show; the show itself is the best possible promotion. Investing resources to advertise a show before it's ready is an error of strategic significance. Too often the hype, promos and creative driving the ad campaign is actually better than the show. The trailer that is better, more entertaining and interesting than the feature may get you a killer opening, word of mouth will rule and punish on merit thereafter. Raising expectations and inducing trial too early can be fatal. The recent case study would be Couric.

Good advertising makes a bad product fail faster as the brilliant Bill Bernbach famously said.

Getting folks to give your show a second chance, another trial, is almost an impossible mission. You only have one chance to make a first impression; initial perceptions and the related associations can be lasting. People value, trust and defend their own data.

Fast forward, a sneak preview: Get Sharpton into the bullpen. It's coming and our pal Al is the perfect guy to pitch this one. How the people meter killed Urban (if not ethnic) radio. Hearing this one on a daily basis now. Short my Radio One.

What we need is effective leadership. Wanted: The intrepid PD, the indefatigable DOS and GSM, the courageous GM, the supportive group executive that understands their job is serving the field. Required: Intense, industrious, dedicated, pathologically competitive warriors.

Are you as tired as I am of hearing conference calls loaded with graduate level dog ate my homework? Excuses, we don't need no stinkin excuses. The considerable acumen of Nancy Havens-Hasty is not needed to understand radio remains in decline. Man up or stop doing the calls (they are not required you know). Congrats and kudos to Jeff Smulyan. His last call was brutal but he gets major points for veracity. "These are challenging times" he said and later "You always learn the great lessons in adversity." My money is on Jeff and Emmis. They may not win them all but Jeff, Rick and their team are in it to win it.

Which brings me to today's favorite station pinata - the sales department.

In my experience we are expecting too much from our sellers. We have changed process and best practice in every department except sales. We expect sellers to function at the expert or master level of multiple complex disciplines. Transactional. Retail direct. NTR. Online. Non-spot. Event marketing. We too often demand that they produce or they're out without providing the proper prudent investments in training and support.

While it is true, as the great Goldsmith always taught, "If they're not helping you, they're hurting you," leadership has an obligation to improve every sellers' chances for success.

Fred Jacobs wrote this week about the common sport of station folks handicapping how many days their new sellers will last. My opinion is every new hire deserves better. We can start by hiring the right people. Used to be the most under-appreciated person on staff was the traffic director, today that title goes to every new seller and any other seller not making their number.

Before someone emails me about body counts, 25 - 45% seller turnovers and no one being out there please talk to a retailer. Turnover at US retail is running at 75+ percent annually. Retailers never have a good day, I know, I live with one. The job is not hire and fire, the job is hire and develop. That's a very different and much harder job.

Our sellers also deserve a product that can be sold with a straight face. A product they can be proud of representing. Sending sellers into the world to monetize a 1.2 share is what it is. Stop expecting miracles when your ratings suck. You don't need a better sales manager to make your month when your dayparts are in fractions you need David Copperfield. Making your month without numbers is an illusion. In these situations we need to give sellers and sales leadership a better performance, better product and better ratings. Ever notice that the great sellers seem to almost always work at highly rated stations. WLTW has one helluva fine sales organization so does WTMX. Programming has put a good looking, desirable apple on the shelf. Programming has created a market of value. Sales now has something to sell.

Here then, the secret. The code has been cracked. Should you not be winning, should you not be having the best year ever. Look for what's missing and my experience tells me...

What's missing is the fun.

Programming fails when performers aren't having fun on the air.

Sales fails when sellers aren't having fun on the street and returning to a club house that is less than positive, totally supportive and always encouraging. Did we somehow forget? Sales is dealing with rejection. We need to help them through the fire. Daily.

Once everyone understands there are only two departments - sales and sales support, the mission becomes clear.

The team obsessed with driving the top lines of ratings and revenue wins. When they're working harder than they've ever worked before their food tastes better, they get a good night's sleep and they come to play.

Programming and sales.

Ratings and revenue.

The fundamentals: All that's important is what's on the screen(s), what's coming out of the speakers. Everything else is a footnote. Everything.

It starts with fun. Dial yours up to eleven and get into the game. Before COB today, catch somebody doing something right.

Go for greatness!

Bonus: Charlie Munger - The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, a lecture at Harvard Law

Bonus 2: Steven Wright, may or may not be the real Steven. No matter, Twitter on dude! What is another word for Thesaurus? Well worth the jump.

Looking for a really good read? Please permit me to highly recommend: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Thanks for reading. Your comments always welcome. I'm out for the holiday, back next week. Have a fun, safe holiday.

Photo:

Spring

by

Paparazzi Liz

The shot is a beauty.

Thank you!






"First class is only eighty percent more" Johnny Martin

My dad had a way with words. A lateral thinker, great wit and contrarian, he often suggested embracing the paradox: every complex problem has a simple solution. The popular paraphrase of Occam's razor states..."All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." The actual principle translated from the Latin is "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

The temptation is to over-think a complex problem.

It's a trap.

Launching a new morning show is certainly important work but it should not be confused with launching the space shuttle. This is not a life saving hospital, we're not looking for a cure for cancer, it's only a TV station. Gary Hamel was spot-on when he said "Perspective is worth ten IQ points."

Once, excited about a job offer at a big station in a major market, I called my dad for advice. My thought was the situation was unique, different from any other. A bigger-than-life personality and musician who got his start working in black radio he had the ability to see the world in context, the imagination to perceive possibility. He said "It's only a radio station. Stations are all in the same business, only the call letters change. The mission is to get the ratings and sell the advertising at a profit. Most important it's show business and without a show you're out of business."

It's all about the show and the show is hard work. The show is fun, engaging, arresting, moving, entertaining, interesting, breathtaking, memorable, informative. The show is evocative, it strikes the responsive chord, it connects, relates and involves the audience. It's the show that gets them into the tent. It's the show that keeps them coming back. It's the show that gets them talking. It's the show that pays the bills; the show creates wealth. It's the show that wins.

All that's important is what's on the screen(s), what's coming out of the speakers, everything else is a footnote. It's the show!

"We found at 6:30 with only 22 minutes of programming time, people basically want you to tell them what happened in the world that day...That's probably the biggest lesson we learned." Sean McManus

The quotation is from the Eric Deggans writing in the St Pete Times here. Amazing.

Michael Learmonth writing in Variety - CBS taps Kaplan to boost news - "His challenge...is to meet the needs and expectations of an audience that already knows the headlines of the day...'The network that is able to service that extra curiosity and answer their questions is going to build an audience.'" Read the entire article here.

Bravo! Scott Shannon and his WPLJ team of merry pranksters offer up a tune about Katie. "It must be tons of stress for the perky news princess" MP3 here. Obvious, topical, local - priceless.

My sense is rather than fight for existing share CBS news would be wise to invent new share, create a new news market space. Yes there is certainly a hole larger than a Boeing 787 between the competitive space at 6:30 now fought over by the big three and the Lehrer News Hour and the contestable space of the cable newsers. My suggestion is to look for what is not there, what is not now on offer. Here's some more thinking from Gary Hamel..."The problem with the future is not that it is unknowable. The problem with the future is that it is different. If you are unable to think differently, the future will always arrive as a surprise...confirmation of what you already believe is a complete waste of time. You must look for disconfirming evidence, for things that don't fit, for things that are ajar. This is hard, because it forces you to write off your depreciating intellectual capital - you must admit not only that you do 'not know' many things but that you 'wrongly know' many things." The good Dr. Hamel is wiser than a tree full of owls. Once more with feeling, please, say it out loud "We have a leadership problem."

The what > The why > The how
We get seduced by the game, the sirens of inside-baseball and toy department fun of how, distracted from the critical precedents of what and why. Too often the green shades get us focused on the numerator and tactics when we should instead be concentrating and obsessing on the denominator and strategy.

Industry inertia is deadly. Best practices, benchmarking and playing it safe are killing innovation in the conference room. "That's an interesting idea Jennifer, what major market stations are using that approach successfully?" Al Primo couldn't get arrested today. When NewsBlues and the watercoolers at TVSpy get more readers than LostRemote you know we have a problem. It was ever thus. There is more passion and serious, candid thinking and discussion going on today in the IT department (e.g., vi vs emacs) than in the news department (i.e., what we're doing now vs what might we be doing now). We need to confront the present with the possible. That giant sucking sound is the urgent consuming all of the oxygen in the room and killing the important.

This same massive failure of imagination can be seen in the ad sales space. Rather than develop their own new business station sales teams use competitive monitoring to target accounts unleashing a swarm of cold calls on defenseless merchants. Picture a pier in early morning light. A bunch of folks with lines in the water. One gets a fish on the line and reels it in. Rather than catch their own fish the unsuccessful others change the game, they drop their lines and run to a fight with one intention... to get a piece of the successful angler's prize.

Developing new competitive space much like developing new revenue streams will require thought, imagination, hard work and risk. To succeed sooner you will need to learn and appreciate how to fail faster. It's about art. Patrons Wanted: 21st century media Medici.

You are reading the new Michael Rosenblum blog, right? He has a great lesson on offer today, Some advice from a giant...

"You decide on a course of action, and of course you get resistance. Rather than stand your ground, you give in a little. Give in a little here… give in a little there. Try to make people happy. You compromise by degrees. One degree at a time. Pretty soon you are nowhere near where you started. In fact, you are going in completely the wrong direction.

One Degree-itits."

Bravo Michael! Read Michael's post here. The post reminds me of something my friend the brilliant Dale Pon was found of advocating, he was very passionate about what he once called "high-definition communication." For the creative to be effective it must be undiluted, free of the clutter brought by too many cooks. Dale creates advertising rich with emotion. A very serious student of advertising, Dale has no need nor want for collaborators. He preaches industrial strength reduction, getting directly to the heart, the essence of the message, preoccupied with what is seen and heard rather than what is said. The secret of his amazing work is its purity, that rare quality bereft of office politics and conference room second guessing. Four words. I Want My MTV. But what did that say about the brand? As it happened, everything.

"The greatest danger to journalism is a newsroom or a profession where everyone thinks alike. Because then one wrong turn can cause an entire news division to implode. We must respect and encourage diversity of thought and speech in the newsroom." Roger Ailes (from his acceptance speech RTNDF 1st Amendment Leadership Award)

Closed circuit: Attention readers. The legendary Chicago raconteur and uber-cool renaissance man Fred Winston has changed his blog address. His blog has moved here. Please make a note of it.

Bonus: Obviously

Bonus 2: Words at Play (hint: you'll need audio on and up, and please keep in mind play like news is a verb)

"Any fool can carry on, but only the wise man knows how to shorten sail." Joseph Conrad

Yesterday The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held their second hearing on the Digital Future of the United States. While the session was billed as "Future of Radio" it quickly became the future of Mel's merger and little else. In his opening remarks Mel talked about the "confusion" about pricing and repeated his merger "will not result in higher prices" pledge. During house testimony last week he made references to the $12.95 price point and it sounded like for that price consumers would be able to get some blend of the two services. He also said other lesser than $12.95 pricing options would be made available. Turns out the present combined charges for both services, $25.90, will be the price point reduced ("substantial reduction"). So, if I may use Mel's favorite opening word, So that means while you would now have to buy two radios and sign up for two services for $25.90, post-merger you will only need one radio and pay something less than $25.90, got that? Hey wait, what happened to cutting some bucks off the $12.95 that subs are now paying? What happened to more for less? Stay tuned. Pricing schema will no doubt be a part of future hearings. It may be safe to say those wanting the best of both services will pay more than $12.95 but less than $25.90 and because he has not mentioned video services it might also be safe to suggest video would be a separate and additional charge. Who knows? Nothing has been presented on the record yet.

So, what did we learn after three hours and thirty something minutes? Mel will subsidize and bring to market an inter-operable radio ("post merger'), he is prepared to be accountable, the services billed $60 million in combined ad dollars and KDKA started in 1926. While some might jump to correct Mel saying he missed KDKA's sign-on by some six years I say let's give the man a break. With so many hours of on the record hearings yet to come the odds are good his mouth will get him into much deeper and far more interesting waters. You may watch the archived video here.

Congrats & cheers: Chuck Tweedle and staff make history. KOIT bests KGO and takes first in the trend. It is so very cool that this happened during the last days of Chuck's watch and Bonneville's ownership.

Michael Rosenblum from his post Crap TV...

"How it is possible that we spend so much time, effort and money and continually produce such a mediocre product?...When television first arrived no one knew what to do with it. Radio was the big play. The best people worked in radio. No one wanted to work in TV. TV in 1948 was like the web in 1992 - a small corner with a bunch of screw ups buried in the basement. No one would imagine that TV would eat up radio. No one can imagine that the web will eat up TV."

Bravo Michael! Read Crap TV here. Bonus: Check out Michael's keynote, a tour de force, at the recent Public Media Conference 2007 here. Highly recommended!

Michael's writing reminds me of the wise words of my favorite business strategist Gary Hamel...

"Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount. The temptation to stay on a dead horse can be overwhelming...The companies that are creating new wealth are not just getting better; they're getting different - profoundly different...the future is not an echo of the past...history suggests that top management has an enormous capacity for denial. Most senior executives grew up in a world where industry boundaries seemed inviolable, where business models aged gracefully, and where incumbency was often an overwhelming advantage. That world is gone. Get over it. Anyone who fails to recognize this fact puts his or her company's future success in grave jeopardy. Executives and employees in every company have a set of lies they tell themselves to avoid having to deal with the reality of a faltering strategy. Like an alcoholic who claims to drink only socially, managers often claim a dead business model is only sleeping. Here are some of the most used lies:

• It's only an execution issue
• It's an alignment problem
• We just have to get more focused
• It's the fault of the regulators
• Our competitors are behaving irrationally
• We're in a transition period
• Everyone's losing money
• We're investing for the long term
• Investors don't understand our strategy"

From Gary Hamel's brilliant writing Leading the Revolution. Amazon info here.

As has been said here before broadcasting (radio and television) is a romantic notion. The problems that broadcasting is having today can be traced to one source - leadership. We have a leadership problem exacerbated by a massive failure of imagination. It's not about radio it's about audio, it's not about television it's about video. All that's important is what's on the screen(s), what's coming out of the speakers, everything else is a footnote.