Last year, The New York Times introduced a feature called Times Cast that was about a six-minute video look at the top stories of the day. It began with video from the noon front-page meeting in which the top stories of the day were pitched for the front page. It was “news as process.”

If my memory serves me, the concept of “news as process” was developed by the Willis-Duff-lead news consultant AR&D. AR&D in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s was the second-largest news consultancy group behind Frank Magid & Associates. AR&D’s largest client was the ratings-challenged CBS Television Station Group (CBS owned television stations in large markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Louis).

Magid- and AR&D-consulted TV stations’ news programs had epic battles of perfectly coiffed anchors, glitzy news sets, and slogan-led promotions that featured “the News 4 Local Team” or “Eye Witness News” (if it bleeds, it leads). What really mattered from a differentiation perspective was the rapport between two diverse anchors (avuncular white male and perky black female, e.g.), the color combination of the set and the promotion spots (always blue, red, and white with some mix of emphasis), active-voice writing, a jocular weatherperson, a sports jock who was an enthusiastic homer, live shots, and news you could use. Externals mattered, quality journalism or insightful analysis didn’t. Come on, it was television.

One of the externals AR&D came up with was “news as process.” The consultancy recommended it to the CBS O&Os, most of which had an open newsroom in which you could see people working in the background—presumably staying on top of the news.

AR&R consulted WOR-TV (channel 9) in New York used the ultimate “news as process” gimmick at one time in its 10:00 pm newscast, which was up against powerful programming on network affiliates. So it had to do something gimmicky to gain attention, and the opening of the news program showed an edited and taped version of its rundown meeting in which the anchors, the producer, and news management discussed the stories that were airing that evening.

AR&D’s research showed that viewers were fascinated with the process of making the news sausage they saw delivered by smiling news readers such as the handsome Roland Smith. But not that fascinated; WOR-TV never ascended in the ratings — a nice way of saying that virtually no one watched.

The New York Times tried the “news as process” approach more than 20 years later in its TimesCast videos with similar results. The “news as process” part had a relatively short life. Today, The Times does not show the front page meeting and does not have editors talking to reporters about an important story. Instead, The Times refers to its videos as just plain “Video,” often seen in two places on the front page – at the top of the middle column and in a section labeled, guess what, “Video.”

The videos are OK, but are nothing special – often packages done by Times reporters who demonstrate why they are writers and not TV personalities. It’s evident The Times’ video strategy is evolving.

So what is The Times going to do to improve its video offering to satisfy TV news video packages of car chases, wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, and floods? Talking heads, no matter how smart or knowledgeable, are not action, not exciting, not good TV or video.

What The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal The Atlantic, the New Yorker, and The Economist need is some type of dynamic software platform, such as the one developed by Hans Rosling and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden. You can see Rosling use this software in one of several TED Talks. Or you can see more spectacular uses of the software at the website Gapminder.org.

I think what Rosling and Gapminder do could be called conceptual modeling. They take an idea, a concept that has lots of data associated with it and explain it with a dynamic graphic representation. What journalistic newspapers and magazines do today to compete with the action and excitement of breaking events is to provide in-depth analysis and understanding of news – they deal in ideas and concepts more than action-packed events.

The problem that newspapers and magazines face is how to do a video of an idea, of a concept, of an analysis. They need to make concepts visual, moving, dynamic, colorful. They need to find a way to make the concepts and ideas they present as compelling on video as Hans Rosling does in this TED Talk about when China and India will catch up to America in income per person and life expectancy.

The TED Talk has a sponsor for the Hans Rosling video and there are sponsors waiting for conceptual graphic modeling videos from major newspapers and magazines.

The Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO compensation survey shows that half of the top 10 and top 12 most highly compensated CEOs are in the media, replacing Wall Street and financial services sector CEOs as the most outrageously overpaid in America.

The top six of the top 12 in 2010 were: Viacom’s Phillip Dauman ($84.32 million) at #1, CBS’s Les Moonves ($58.88 million) at #3, Direct TV’s Michael White ($32.64 million at #5, Walt Disney’ Robert Iger ($27.22 million) at #8, Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes ($26.01 million) at #10, and Comcast’s Brian Roberts ($24.9 million) at #12.

In 2007 at the height of Wall Street and the financial sectors’ arrogant and overarching greed, the 2008 Wall Street Journal’s CEO compensation survey revealed that six of the top 10 highest paid CEOs were from Wall Street and finance: Merrill Lynch’s John Thain ($78.52 million) at #1, Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein ($68.5 million) at #2, American Express’s Kenneth Chenault ($46.23 million) at #4, Lehman Bros.’s Richard Fuld ($40 million) at #5, American Finance’s James Cracchio ($29.57 million) at #6, and State Street’s Ronal Logue ($21.2 million) at #8.

We know what the overpaid CEOs did to earn their unconscionably high compensation in 2007, they propelled the country into the Great Recession with their greed and self-interested, highly risky manipulation of complex debt instruments. They thought they were smarter than everyone else and that regulators were lazy, stupid, and in their pockets, which why they got away with their chicanery.

What did the media CEOs do in 2010 to earn their unconscionably high compensation ? Well, they didn’t cause a financial meltdown, but they certainly didn’t help us get out of the recession with any notable public service activity, enlightening news coverage that helped bring to justice anyone guilty of fraud, help explain the meltdown, or create massive jobs.

The most notable accomplishment Phillip Dauman can claim for his $84 million is MTV’s hit show “Jersey Shore,” which could certainly be considered a cultural recession – a low point in taste, meaning, and worth. Robert Iger did a lot better for about a third of what Dauman made with Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” a high point in taste, meaning, and worth.

Like the Wall Street moguls of 2007, the media moguls of 2010 think they are smarter than everyone else and that regulators are lazy, stupid, and in their pockets. Programming is worse in 2010 than it was in 2007, e.g. “Jersey Shore,” TV and cable viewing is down as viewers switch to mobile devices, and the FCC approved the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. Shortly after the merger one of the FCC commissioners who voted to approve it went to work as a high-paid lobbyist for Comcastin Welcome to the pocket.

The blog Deadline New York got it right with its post “Media Moguls With Out-of-Whack Pay Compensation” and “Media Moguls With Pay Compensation NOT Out-of-Whack,” when it indicated that the companies that gave the media moguls such outrageous pay packages broke SEC rules.

Here’s what Deadline New York’s Executive Editor David Lieberman wrote on April 21:

This is exactly the kind of information that shareholders of Big Media need to know but rarely see. It’s considered a red flag when any public company pays one of its bigwigs — usually the CEO — three times more than the average for the four other top executives which the SEC requires them to list. So I’ve taken proxy statements and done the computations and discovered that at least 16 of 35 companies failed that test. Often miserably. Nearly half of the media company compensation packages disclosed so far for 2010 show a startling degree of hero-worship as boards of directors pay their top dogs sums that far exceed what the pay was for other top execs in the company.

If you’re a stockholder of any of these media companies, or an ordinary citizen, you should be outraged by these excesses and show your outrage by boycotting the products (programming and distribution) of those gluttons in the Greed Zone.

Unfortunately, that’ s easier said than done. I know I don’t have the willpower to stop watching live baseball on ESPN (owned by Disney), and most Americans seemed similarly hooked on some form of addictive entertainment. No wonder the media moguls make as much as drug lords; they sell the same addictive products and live lavishly in the Greed Zone as a result of providing their customers junk.

I just sent the following email to the head blog editor at The Huffington Post:

You may take me off your list of bloggers and delete my access to the posting platform. I will no longer be blogging for The Huffington Post because you didn’t post my blog criticizing Keith Olbermann and the blog that was slightly negative about the AOL-Huff Post deal.
You can dish it out, but can’t take it.

Jack Myers, on his Media Biz Bloggers, rarely (if ever) throws darts, and he can take it. He also has never censored any of my blogs and, on occasion, suggested improved headlines or angles.

By refusing to blog on the Huffington Post, I am reducing my audience potential enormously, but I feel better about myself. Several years ago, I asked a friend with influence to introduce me to a Huff Po blogging editor, which he did, and I got access to post my blogs.

I wanted to get wider distribution; my oversized ego got the better of me. I thought I could influence more people and build a reputation. I was wrong. Some of my blogs bashing Fox News got top play on the Huff Po Media vertical at times, but the comments were largely inane and uninformed, often from wing-nuts.

As I look back on it, I would guess that about ten percent of the comments to my Huffington Post blogs were intelligent or thoughtful or added to the conversation. And those that were intelligent were on more thoughtful topics or posts, such as “The Media Are Schrodinger’s Cat.” The best distribution I got was when Jason Hirschhorn picked up a blog form Media Biz Bloggers for his MediaREDefined – a much better, more thoughtful, more relevant audience for me.

Because of the inane comments and because I saw The Huffington Post loading up on more tawdry, celebrity content and pimping for Arianna, I felt more like a famewhore myself every time I posted. So, I’ll feel a little holier than thou now and a little better about myself.

Now I can be candid, free, and boring, which is probably another reason my blogs weren’t being posted on The Huffington Post.

So be it. Thanks for sticking with this old guy, Jack.

News sites (I don’t read papers) and blogs are full of the financial implications of the AOL-Huffington Post deal and who the immediate financial winners are and the possible long-term financial losers will be, but none I’ve seen discuss the political and journalistic implications.

AOL’s surprise purchase of The Huffington Post for $315 may increase the web traffic and revenue for both, but it will also increase the country’s political polarization.

In is book, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide, Cass Sunstein writes:

In a wide variety of experimental contexts, people’s opinions have been shown to become more extreme simply because their initial views have been corroborated and because they have been more confident after learning the shared views of others.

Thus, Fox News polarizes because conservatives who watch it have their initial views corroborated and MSNBC polarizes because the same thing happens to liberals.

In the flurry of business and technology reasons for doing the deal, observers seem to have forgotten that Arianna Huffington had primarily a political reason, not financial reason, for creating the Huffington Post – she wanted to promote a liberal, progressive agenda in order to counteract the right-wing, pro-Bush conservative agenda promoted by talk-radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Thus, the Huffington Post began as a politically oriented website which featured blog posts by liberals, including, of course, Arianna herself.

Arianna has become the leading media light for blogging, and her constant appearance on panels, in the media, at conferences, and in her own books, have been primarily as an advocate for blogging and for a liberal point of view.

I’m pleased to see some serious bucks (one estimate is that Arianna made $100 million on the deal) go to a liberal instead of going to Rush, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, or, of course, the emperor of right-wingers, Rupert Murdoch.

However, part of the deal was that Arianna will now be the editor in chief of all AOL content. As a progressive myself, I guess I’m pleased with the prospect that all AOL will have an avowed liberal heading editorial, but I’m not sure it’s good for fair and balanced journalism.

Fox News has completely corrupted the notion of fair and balanced news, as has MSNBC, to a lesser extent. MSNBC, outside of its prime time programming that features Chris Matthews, Larry O’Donnell, and Rachel Maddow, does try to be fair and balanced. However, their star personalities don’t; they conspicuously try to counter Fox News and correct, on air, some of the factual mistakes Fox News makes (obviously, they couldn’t correct all of the factual errors, it would take a full 18 hours a day).

So I think MSBNC is the journalistic equivalent of being “a little bit pregnant.” There is no such thing. “Pregnant” is an absolute word – you either are or you’re not. Just as “unique” is an absolute concept – something is either unique or it’s not. Something can’t be “very unique.” Journalism is an absolute concept. It’s either fair and balanced content or it’s not. Thus, MSNBC is not a cable network driven by journalism; it’s driven by opinion, as is Fox News. As is the Huffington Post.

And it’s opinion that is currently popular…and at the same time polarizing, corroborating our initial, often unexamined, views. The Huffington Post got much more popular when it morphed is emphasis from political blog posts to aggregating news stories of a more sensational nature, in other words to, let’s admit it, tawdriness.

When George Bernard Shaw was asked to compare himself to the great playwright Ibsen, Shaw compared Ibsen to a lion tamer who tries to cure a sick lion by trying to open its jaws and force a pill down the lion’s throat – the tamer gets mauled in the process. Shaw compares himself to the lion tamer who cures the sick lion by putting a slit in a big, thick steak and then placing the pill in the slit in the steak and throwing the steak to the lion who gobbles it up and gets well — the tamer (nee audience, public) is unharmed and happy.

I guess the public does need their messages concealed in vaudeville, circuses, and steaks, but the question is, who decides what the message is. On Fox News it’s Roger Ailes and, ultimately, Rupert Murdoch. Now on AOL it will be Arianna Huffington. Is this good for political discourse and journalism?

Arianna may be able to provide an alternative to the bloviating of Rush and the craziness of Glenn, Sean, Bill, and Sarah – a good thing. But in doing so I believe she will run the risk of increasing political polarization in the country – not such a good thing. However, it may be inevitable in this age of polarization when fighting fire with fire is the only viable defense.

But as the Green Bay Packers demonstrated in Super Bowl LXV, it takes a balance of defense and offense to win – please take note, Arianna.

NOTE: I sent the above blog post to Jack Myers, who distributes my blog via his well-read Media Biz Bloggers. Then, I got the following e-mail from Jack:

Charlie –
Good blog, but just for context less than 15% of HuffPost content is political and just slightly more than 15% of their audience is for political content. The vast majority of their views are to their entertainment, divorce, business, sports and other non-political content. They have something like 17 content sections now, and lead the market in several.
Jack

I replied to Jack with the following:

Yes, but editorially the Huff Po is clearly liberal and uses aggregated content to promote 1) Arianna and 2) a liberal agenda, which is fine with me. However, I worry because The Huff Po didn’t publish the piece I submitted titled “Olbermann: Good Riddance,” I guess because they like Olbermann. You published it in MediaBizBloggers. You, from my viewpoint, are for free expression more than the Huff Po and Arianna is.

So, will we see stuff on AOL that disagrees with Arianna’s world view? This worries me.

On Friday, January 21, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announced on his “Countdown” program that it would be his last one and that “all that surrounded the show – but never the show itself – was just too much for me.”

MSNBC responded with a terse announcement “MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”

What the announcement left out was the massive sigh of relief from the MSNBC and NBC News brass. Olbermann might have led the news network to huge ratings gains, passing CNN as number two behind Fox News and spearheaded a long-needed focus as the liberal answer to the right-wing rantings of Fox News, but he was a constant thorn in MSNBC’s management’s side.

His bloviating was as uncivil and biased on the left as his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly, and others on Fox News were on the right. Obermann was smarter, his arguments better reasoned, and his writing at times bordered on brilliant, but he was too often over the top, venomous, and, certainly, uncivil.

After the shooting tragedy in Tucson, Olbermann as much as admitted his excesses by suspending his “Worst Person in the World” segment temporarily, much like Fox News boss Roger Ailes did when he asked the Fox News personalities to “tone it down.”

Olberman’s departure reinforces the fact that what self-absorbed, narcissistic opinionators such as Olbernann, O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh are all about is themselves. They are entertainers who have dreams of grandiosity, fame, and, most of all, wealth.

They think they can do no wrong. They never question their beliefs, opinions, or facts. They think the world revolves around them, like the Church before Galileo believed that the sun and planets revolved around the earth. They will do or say anything to get attention (which translates into ratings, and, thus, into money). They know that in America today, the best way to get attention is to be outrageous, angry, and uncivil.

MSBNC is well served that Olbermann is gone. It can now be more reasonable, more civil. It can re-craft its image to being a balanced, fair news source consistent with the reputation of NBC News. Their on-air personalities such as Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Ed Schultz can focus on the issues instead of wasting time publicly brawling with Bill O’Reilly, which Olbermann often did and which does nothing so much as increase O’Reilly’s already large ratings.

I’m sure there are no tears at MSNBC or at Comcast, which will own NBC Universal as of January 28, over Olbermann’s departure. I’ll bet they’re saying, “Good riddance.”

America, especially progressives and independents, need to hear the conservative views of such media mouthpieces of the right as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Fox News in order to see how partisan and nutty they are.

And, according to several recent polls, the more Americans, in the aggregate, know about these conservatives, the less they like them.

For example, a headline in a Huffington Post story read “Fox News Most Distrusted Name in News: Poll.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/fox-news-most-distrusted-_n_811471.html The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/01/our-second-annual-tv-news-trust-poll.html and showed that in the past year Fox News has become the least trusted broadcast or cable news source, with 46 percent of the population polled distrusting the conservative news channel. This was an increase of four percentage points from last year – a significant change.

The polls didn’t suggest why Fox News’s trust numbers were down. Perhaps it’s a credibility problem, perhaps it was because the personalities were too nasty and strident, uncivil. We don’t know if the viewing public in the aggregate thought Fox News had gone over the top, but after the Tucson shooting, Fox News chief Roger Ailes told all the personalities on Fox News to “tone it down.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/10/fox-news-ceo-roger-ailes-_n_806952.html

If Ailes believed, as Sarah Palin did, that his news team had done nothing wrong, or wasn’t over the top, he wouldn’t have asked them to “tone it down.” Ailes is smart enough to know when to calm down the rhetoric.

Sarah Palin isn’t that smart – not even close. She and her staff in essence admitted they were over the top in placing targets on Democratic candidates, including Gabrielle Giffords, because they took down the offending targets the day of the Tucson shooting (except on Facebook, where posted stuff lives forever).

Sarah’s approval ratings have also dropped considerably since the Tucson massacre, especially after her nasty “blood libel” video on YouTube.

Also, Glenn Beck’s ratings are off this year vs. last year according to the blog TV by the Numbers. http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/02/glenn-beck-ratings-tumble-vs-last-october/70550 People seem to be getting tired of the ranting.

Rush Limbaugh appears to be holding his audience numbers, but we don’t know if anyone pays attention to him or if he has any influence. Virtually every candidate he has supported has lost. In 2008 Rsuh constantly trashed Obama, who went on to win in a landslide. Media Matters for America http://mediamatters.org/ keeps close tabs on Rush and daily calls him out on his lies, outrageous exaggerations, and verbal muggings, like his recent mocking of Chinese President Hu’s translated speech.

If Rush, Glenn, Sarah, and Fox News weren’t around, middle-of-the-roaders, independents, and progressives wouldn’t know what the crazies on the right were saying, they would have nothing to compare their political thinking and reasoning to. They wouldn’t know if they were smart and rational unless they could compare and contrast to the dumb and irrational.

Let’s face it, Rush, Glenn, Sarah, and the Fox News crew aren’t journalists, political strategists, or deep thinkers, they are entertainers. They are trying to make a buck by pleasing an audience that likes their form of vaudeville.

I mean, consistently, among the highest rated regular programs on cable is WWE Wrestling. Yes, there are people who believe professional wrestling isn’t highly scripted, that it’s real – many of the same people who believe that Rush Limbaugh’s ideas are real and rational. WWE Wrestling is pure entertainment, as evidenced by the fact that on the program guides and rating results it is listed as WEE Entertainment.

The highest rated program on cable’s MTV is the reality show “Jersey Shore,” which many people believe isn’t highly scripted, that it’s real – many of the same people, I suspect, who think Sarah Palin is a smart cookie with good, rational ideas.

The motto of these conservative entertainers and entertainment programs are KISS, “keep it simple, stupid.” They know that if they spout complex, nuanced ideas that their audience will scratch their heads and turn back to pro wrestling.

If Glenn and Sarah’s ratings continue to plummet, perhaps these entertainers will resort to mud wrestling and watch the TV ratings soar. If I were WWE Entertainment, I’d pay them more than Fox News to get down in the mud and wrestle with each other.

Their America would love that.

The Wednesday, December 15, 2010, edition of the New York Times featured a story titled “Bloomberg to Publish Editorials,” and read in part: “The mayor’s company, Bloomberg L.P., said on Wednesday that it would begin publishing editorials across its vast media enterprise in an effort to broaden the company’s influence on national affairs.”

Bravo for Bloomberg News and its publications such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek.  The nation needs a sane discussion of important issues to reinforce the sensibleness of Jon Stewart and to counteract the insane and senseless extremism screamed by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh on far right and Keith Olbermann on the left.

The Times story indicated that:<blockquote>… the endeavor, called Bloomberg View, is intended to channel his [Mayor Bloomberg’s] personal philosophy and worldview.

“I think it’s very important that everyone understands that our editorial page is going to be, for sure, consistent with the values and beliefs of the founder — even if he happens to be mayor of New York City,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News. “I fully expect us in our Bloomberg View always to reflect those values. In fact, I want people to come away from reading the Bloomberg View infused with those beliefs and values.” </blockquote>

And we know what those values are, because on December 13, Mayor Bloomberg gave a speech announcing his commitment to the No Labels movement that is the reasonable, middle-ground, independent antithesis to the virulent, rage-driven partisan politics from the right and left that is crippling our government and our country.  These extremists are throwing stupid partisan tantrums while our infrastructure, educational systems, climate, and a basic sense of decency deteriorate.

The current political tantrums are thrown mainly by narcissists who are good at manipulating public opinion to gain fame and wealth – entertainers who are not in the least bit interested (and rarely understand) the complex issues they rant about, but merely care about getting what they want: approval and money.  The last thing they want is to change the world; they like it the way it is – a celebrity obsessed (not idea obsessed) world more interested in fiddling than putting out the fires of hate that are burning down a social order of reasonableness.

Michael Bloomberg has proven that he is a reasonable, pragmatic, yet idealistic Mayor, who will fight for social justice and fiscal responsibility.  He’s the rare politician who does what he thinks is right and is best for the city, and he doesn’t need approval or, certainly, money.

He praised the No Labels approach when he spoke at the organization’s inaugural convention.  Here’s what Matt Bai wrote in the New York Times: <blockquote> Mr. Bloomberg brought some star power to the inaugural No Labels convention at Columbia University, which also featured speakers like Joe Scarborough, Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida and a smattering of congressmen and senators. No Labels aspires to become a counterweight to ideological groups like MoveOn.org and the Tea Party movement — a network of activists devoted to pushing politicians from both parties toward a nonpartisan consensus on vital issues.</blockquote>

I suspect hissoner’s appearance was orchestrated to coincide with the announcement that Bloomberg News would be publishing editorials.   He’s no dummy.  But whether he’s launching a third-party presidential bid or merely trying to inject some sanity and respect into the political dialogue, the Bloomberg Views editorials are a welcome addition to the national dialogue, which has become way too strident.

Also, the editorials fill a gap in the national dialogue as newspapers close and as radio and television stations abandon serving the public interest for increasing ratings and shareholder value (and moguls’ income).

Bloomberg Views, count me in.

The trade press was pleasantly surprised by the announcement by Clear Channel Communications that Bob Pittman had made a personal investment in the company and would be head of its Media and Entertainment Group, which includes its digital and radio operations.

Media stories of the announcement have cited Bob’s successes at MTV, Six Flags, AOL, and Time Warner, but have under-reported his successes in radio, which is typical of media coverage of radio, the Rodney Dangerfield of media.

Bob will change that perception and get radio some respect — and it already has gained some traction in the respect category just by the fact that a media icon, who Advertising Age honored as one of “Ten Marketers Who Transformed American Culture,” has come back to radio.

Interestingly, the initial media coverage had Pittman coming to Clear Channel to oversee digital – radio didn’t get any respect – because that was Pittman’s perceived expertise due to his AOL success.  Media memories are short; they forget that Pittman was one of the greatest programmers in the history of radio.  And I can make a reasonable case for claiming he was best radio programmer ever.  He won big and quickly in a variety of formats.

Most of the great radio programmers, such as Todd Storz, Bill Drake, Paul Drew, Rick Sklar, Tom Donahue, and Buzz Bennett were one-trick ponies who won in a single format.  But Pittman won in many formats: Hot Hits (WPEZ-FM), Country (WMAQ-AM, the biggest and fastest turnaround in major market radio history), Album Rock (WKQX-FM), and Top 40 (WNBC-AM in some demos).  He programmed WKQX-FM while he was also Program Director of sister station WMAQ-AM and he also recorded his mid-day shift (the station was automated, which was unheard of for a winning station at that time), and, furthermore, he starred in the TV commercials for WKQX.  He did it all — he knows how to win in radio, just like he knew how to win in TV and on the Internet.

The Pilot Group investment fund, of which he is the founding partner, purchased a relatively small radio group, Double O Radio.  So what did Pittman do to try to increase profits for the group?  He didn’t cut expenses drastically, he didn’t try to program the stations himself, he didn’t cut rates in order to try to get a higher share of market revenue for his stations; instead he did the smarter and much harder thing – he tried to increase the size of the radio revenue pie.

Bob gave speeches around the country about the value of radio advertising – high reach, high frequency, and low CPMs – an incredible media bargain.  It was the same sort of hard-hitting, fact-filled, persuasive, brilliantly delivered presentation he did for the under-appreciated online medium in 1996-2000.  Yes, he sold AOL, but he first sold the value of the medium in order to increase the size of the online pie.   More than anyone else, it was Bob Pittman who sold the Internet as a viable, effective advertising medium in those nascent years.

So, radio is lucky to have him back where his heart, and now his money, is.   He will increase the size of the radio revenue pie and the rising tide will lift all radio boats.

Comedians John Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s rally of reasonable people was hugely successful, drawing massive crowds to the Mall in Washington.  Billed as a Rally to Restore Sanity, it was, in fact, a rally meant to boost the ratings for Stewart and Colbert’s programs on Comedy Central and to diss Fox Cable News’s and MSNBC’s credibility and, hopefully, lower their ratings.

Jon Stewart’s closing speech was a modern masterpiece of reasonableness, sanity, and news-media bashing destined to become a classic, along with Neil Postman’s <i>Amusing Ourselves to Death.</i>

Long-time blogger and CUNY Journalism School professor Jeff Jarvis went to the rally and posted an excellent account, as did The Huffington Post’s Jeff Linkins, where you can see a video of Stewart’s stirring speech.  Both blogs are worth reading to get a flavor of the excitement, sanity, and reasonableness, and don’t miss watching Stewart’s speech.

One of my favorite quotes from his speech is: <blockquote>“The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker–and, perhaps, eczema. And yet… I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror–and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.”</blockquote>

But don’t forget that wingnuts are seething.  Nothing could piss them off more than sanity and reasonableness and decency, to say nothing of dissing their insane, unreasonable, and indecent idols on Fox News.  They are waiting to celebrate their gains in Congress after Election Day, and will mistakenly believe that the outcome will confirm their obsessive hatred of Obama, big government, and taxes.

So, thank you, Jon and Stephen, for pointing out the stupidity of the bloviating pundits on cable news and asking for sanity, even if it was basically a promotion to boost your ratings.

NEW YORK, NY, October 25, 2010– Nick Ehrmann, CEO and Founder of Blue Engine, a transformative urban education startup, announced today the addition of veteran educator and consultant Charles Warner as Senior Advisor.

In making the announcement, Ehrmann said, “We are delighted to have Charlie Warner as a member of our team to help us craft our strategies for responsible growth.  His deep experience in management, education, community service, and online marketing will invaluable as we work towards proving our model and expanding our reach.

In accepting Blue Engine’s appointment Warner said, “The film ‘Waiting for Superman’ brilliantly portrayed the crisis in urban education in America.  It depicted some effective solutions, including the Harlem Children’s Zone and the successful KIPP charter schools.  I believe that Blue Engine’s unique approach that utilizes one-year fellowships similar to Teach for America and works with experienced public-school union teachers in their classrooms holds exceptional promise.  I’m excited to be part of this dynamic organization and to be able to help evangelize its measurement-based teaching system.”

About Blue Engine

Blue Engine is America’s next-generation educational service project.  Beginning in New York City in 2010, Blue Engine offers one-year urban education fellowships to recent college graduates, who, after extensive training, deliver high-dose tutoring in small, in-classroom, homogenous groups that are evaluated daily – a method that accelerates academic achievement and prepares students to transition into higher education with the skills they need to avoid remediation and complete their degrees on time.

Contact

For Blue Engine: Nick Ehrmann –  nick@blueengine.org

Silicon Alley Insider wrote on October 18: “Speaking at Y-combinator event over the weekend, the real Mark Zuckerberg said that the biggest difference between the movie and real life stems from the fact that movie-makers ‘can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.’”

Zuckerberg’s comment reflects a few of the points made by Daniel Pink in his brilliant book Drive: The Surprising Truth About Motivates Us that most normal people are not motivated primarily by money except when they do repetitious, routine tasks, but they are motivated by autonomy (self-direction), mastery (getting really good at something), and purpose (doing something worthwhile).

For those who can’t take the time to read Drive, check out this excellent summary of the main points in the book on YouTube by RSAnimate.

Of course, Hollywood and Wall Street types aren’t normal people.  In these arenas of twisted values, fueled by the most addictive drugs of all – power and money – winning isn’t everything, greedy lust for the two-headed devil of power and money is everything.

In “Social Network” Mark Zuckerberg is depicted as a computer programming nerd who is vindictive and greedy – he wants Facebook all for himself and tries to cut out his friend Eduardo Saverin of  the vast majority of rightful ownership of Facebook.  Zuckerberg is portrayed as duplicitous and greedy by the Hollywood producers, director, and writer of the movie.

This story line is certainly to be expected from Hollywood.  In psychology, it isn’t called a story line, it’s called projection, the tendency of people to project their own negative characteristics on everyone else.   The thief thinks everyone is trying to steal from him because that’s what he does.   Politicians accuse other politicians of lying all the time.  Ummm?

So Hollywood can’t understand a story of a young software genius (the movie does depict Zuckerberg as a genius) who builds Facebook because he wants to do something cool that will help young people connect and enhance society.  Like Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) in “The Princess Bride,” I can hear the Hollywood types screaming, “inconceivable!”, or repeating yet again Jack Warner’s line, “if you want to give a message, send a telegram.”

These greedy, self-absorbed types think the purpose of a making a movie is to make them rich, just like most Wall Street types and media moguls think the purpose of a business is to make a profit.  They never read “the father of modern management,” Peter Drucker’s, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker piece of wisdom that “There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.”

“Social Network” is based mostly on a sensationalist book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal,  by Ben Mezrich in which the author takes the side of Eduardo Saverin and makes up a good story.

Respected journalist and FORTUNE magazine senior editor David Kirkpatrick’s well-researched book The Facebook Effect portrays Zuckerberg as an idealistic software genius and Saverin as a pampered son of a Brazilian businessman bully of a father.  Kirkpatrick’s Saverin is not a sympathetic character because he is more interested in making money on Facebook than creating a cool product that has an easy-to-navigate user experience like Zuckerberg wants.

Kirkpatrick’s Zuckerberg seems to take a concept from the movies, the iconic “build it and they will come” from “Field of Dreams” (appropriately), while Saverin seem to take the opposite concept from the movies, that “greed is good” from “Wall Street” (appropriately).

Those, like Joe Nocera of the New York Times in his “Talking Business” column,  who think that Ben Mezrich’s view of human nature is more accurate than David Kirkpatrick’s and that Zuckerberg and most human beings can’t be motivated by a meaningful purpose and are greedy, should probably look very carefully in the mirror – or perhaps in the eye of a projector.

Last week Sirius XM Radio shock jock Howard Stern warned his listeners that he might not return to the satellite radio service after his current five-year, $500-million contract is up at the end of the year.  But hardly anyone noticed or cared, especially Sirius XM stockholders because their stock was up 74 percent so far this year on a steady uptick in subscribers, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

What a difference five years makes.  In 2006 the foul-mouthed Stern, who is most heavily fined broadcast personality by the FCC ever, vowed to leave the public airwaves because he couldn’t be filthy enough to please his listeners, and joined Mel Karmazin’s Sirius Satellite Radio, which at the time was locked in a mano-e-mano battle with XM Radio.

Stern’s move to Sirius saved the company’s bacon and brought an estimated two million new subscribers to the money-losing satellite radio service, making Karmazin’s $500-million bet on Stern appear to pay off.

However, tastes and technology changes – you might say grows up – and with the introduction of internet radio into cars, more and more young listeners turned from the 56-year-old Stern’s stale potty humor to internet radio, which provides virtually an infinite variety of programming.

Thus, Stern has become expendable and almost irrelevant except to a shrinking audience of aging slobs.  So, what is such a rich has-been going to do?  He should join another irrelevant, trash-talking, rich has-been, Don Imus, on the Fox Business Network.

The 70-year-old Imus airs mornings on the Citadel Network, which includes WABC-AM in New York, and is simulcast on the Fox Business Network (FBN).  If Howard Stern were to join FBN, he would be reunited with Imus, and the two could renew their spat with each other, which began at WNBC-AM in New York in 1982, as dramatized amusingly in Stern’s movie “Private Parts.”

Both Imus and Stern belong on FBN because both personalities, like FBN, are conservative (Imus voted for McCain and Stern backed Republican George Pataki for governor of New York) and create entertainment that is intended to rile up anti-authoritarian, anti-government, anti-intellectual know-nothing television addicts.

The Fox Business Network makes no attempt to be a business news outlet (note that its name does not include the word “news”), and by hiring Imus to do its morning program, it reaffirmed that it presents TV vaudeville, not news.  FBN is an outlet for right-wing, Republican, Tea Party propaganda, as evidenced by its programming after Imus on Tuesday, September 21, in which its overweight anchor kept repeating the headline and storyline for the morning, “Biggest Tax Hike in American History,” and trashing Obama (a constant theme), MSNBC, and Keith Olbermann.

An Imus-Stern trash-talking on-air food fight would fit in perfectly in the FBN public-interest-be-damned, truth-be-damned environment.  FBN and Fox News president Roger Ailes, who resembles and thinks like Jabba the Hut, would love such a food-fight – he could pick up the leftovers.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivered an emotional special commentary on August 17 about the mislabeled “Ground Zero Mosque” in which he was on the right side of issue, wrong to inject too much emotion into his comments, and delusional – thinking he was Edward R. Murrow.

See for yourself:

Keith Olbermann\’s Special Commentary

Olbermann ends his intelligently crafted, emotional diatribe with Edward R. Murrow’s legendary sign-off, “Good night and good luck.”  Was this a reverential attempt to evoke the memory of Murrow or a delusion that he had transmogrified into Murrow?

Having a sense of Olberman’s gigantic self-absorption, I suspect the latter, which creates an equally gigantic dilemma.  I want to despise Olbermann for being so egotistical as to compare himself to the rational journalistic icon and crusader Murrow, but I also want to love him for his brilliantly crafted and argued commentary in which he correctly debunks the simplistic, stupid, polarizing, intolerant, repressive wing-nut label and position on the Lower East Side community center.

As a New Yorker, it’s so offensive to have wing-nuts from Alaska and Georgia trying to tell us who can worship where in our city.  Their position is so blatantly anti-Obama, anti-religious freedom, anti-American partisan and political as to be ridiculous.  But of course, calling wing-nuts’ positions ridiculous is an oxymoron.

Olbermann’s commentary would have been more effective and persuasive if it had been delivered in Murrow’s calm, rational, authoritative style.  When you watched Murrow, you didn’t know he was angry by the tone of his delivery but by the force and logic of his argument.

On the other hand, Olberman’s most obvious and visible message is rage – raw emotion that becomes the message and which means, unintentionally, that he is playing the O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity, wing-nut game.  Therefore, when a viewer looks at Olbermann’s commentary, the first reaction is to the anger, to the emotion (after all, it’s TV) and not to the rational argument.

And that’s the problem with TV, the medium and, thus, the emotion is the message.  The wing-nuts have mastered the medium with their simplistic, stupid, polarizing, intolerant, repressive messages, and when Olbermann plays their emotional, angry game, the logic of his words is lost.

Too bad, because he’s absolutely right on the issue.

J. Craig Venters’s seriously overreached when he claimed last week that his lab was the first to create synthetic life. Television has been creating synthetic life on a massive scale for decades and video games have been doing it for years.

What could possibly be more synthetic than family life in “The Honeymooners,” “I Love Lucy,” “Father Knows Best,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” or “Leave It To Beaver,” or “The Waltons?” That’s easy – the longest running sitcom in television history is also the most synthetic (it does even use live actors, it’s animated) and the most injurious to the image of fatherhood – “The Simpsons.”

Because television has always been in the advertising-delivery business and interested only peripherally in its effect on culture and society, it pitches the appeal of the majority of its entertainment content to the largest segment of mass consumers, lower- and middle-income women 18-49.

Is it no wonder that the heroes of this entertainment eye candy are savvy, long-suffering, loving, and sometimes funny women who show up their clueless, often childish, self-centered husbands? And as the years go by, it seems like the men get dumber and more helpless until we finally get to the ultimate stupid loser, Homer Simpson.

Network television entertainment programming doesn’t attempt to mirror or even define real life; it tries to embody in a video format the dreams of its primary target audience in order to sell this audience soap. Dreams are not reality, they are a synthetic, fuzzy, exaggerated replays of real-life problems in which our minds attempt a subconscious workout of our daily challenges.

And are television reality programs not synthetic? “Survivor,” “Bridezilla,” and their clones are as synthetic as the sitcoms mentioned above. The ultimate of being synthetic, or, more appropriately, of lying (the two words are have essentially the same meaning at their core) is television claiming that their programs are “reality” programs – it is the same newspeak (words the opposite of truth, as in Orwell’s 1984) as Fox News constantly claiming it is “fair and balanced.”

So J. Craig Venters and his brilliant colleagues in his lab might have created synthetic life, which brings up a few ethical issues, but it isn’t even close to being as synthetic or unethical as most television entertainment programming.