Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Everyone is worried that it's a very bad time in America for Jobs.

That's nonsense.

Jobs had another very good day yesterday. Very good. In fact, Jobs prospects have never been better.

Of course, I'm speaking of Steve Jobs.

Weinergate

I watched the press conference yesterday, and the subsequent coverage and recapping of the press conference.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger who broke the story, was crowing because he actually got this story right. As Stephen Colbert pointed out last night, that makes Breitbart correct in 1 of the 4 big stories he has broken. (The others: NPR, ACORN, and Shirley Sherrod were incredibly dishonestly presented). Don't scoff. Breitbart's now batting .250. That's good enough to start at any position for the Cubs this year.

But to me, the one show I wanted to see handle the subject was Eliot Spitzer's show on CNN (for obvious reasons). Here's how that went.

Spitzer said the press conference was "cringe worthy" (which of course it was), but added something none of us could have added: "Believe me, I know. I've been there."

New Demos

I don't excited about a lot of radio news, but I must say I was excited when I saw this in Tom Taylor's Radio-Info.com column this morning...

"“Alpha Boomers” – adults 25-64 – become a standard demo in Arbitron’s TAPSCAN Web 10.8. That should make some classic hits stations very happy – and perhaps lead to greater interest in the 55-64 demo, the leading edge of the Baby Boomers. The narrower 25-54 demo has been the most-used demo for years, and it’s easy to forget that at one time, the most-bought demos were teens, 18-34 and 18-49. It took years of work by radio to get 25-54 accepted as a benchmark – and then it really took over. Now with those 55-64s going “out of demo”, classic hits, classic rock, AC, sports and talk stations are interested in keeping them in the minds of advertising agencies and media planners. After all, those folks are sitting on a bunch of disposable income."

Amen brother Tom. It's the biggest demo in America and media buyers were ignoring it. I hope this changes things for good.

Roger Ailes

In the past two weeks I've provided links to two pieces about Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. The first one in New York Magazine was a pretty solid piece in my view, and the second one from Rolling Stone magazine was a little cartoonish and over the top.

Today one of the sources of both pieces, Michael Wolff, "corrects" the impression of Ailes. For my money, Wolff is a pretty pompous windbag, but he did have unprecedented access to the Fox News world while he was writing his Rupert Murdoch book.

If you're interested in the subject matter, I'd say this morning's piece in Adweek is worth a read.

Journalism's Underbelly

The story of Weiner's Wiener gets even weirder.

This time it's not the behavior of the Congressman, it's the behavior of the "journalists" from the New York Post, and the lengths they went to "interview" the woman that received the tweet. She's pretty outraged by the entire experience.

Not exactly how they draw it up in journalism school. Ask the victim, she's a journalism student.

Bono the Hitchhiker

I thought this was an interesting story this morning in the RAMP newsletter...

Edmonton Oilers center Gilbert Brule and his girlfriend Kelsey Nichols just happened to be passing by in a driving rain storm and saw a hitchhiker. Brule did a double-take, swearing that the rain-drenched guy they just passed was Bono, but Nichols wasn't convinced, as she later told CTV. "I didn't want to stop, but they waved, and Gilbert yelled, 'That's Bono!'" Nichols recalled. "I said, 'No, we're not picking up a hitchhiker. We're going to die.'"

Cooler heads prevailed, and Brule picked up the soaking wet Bono, who rewarded the couple with tickets and backstage passes to U2's show in Edmonton. According to published reports, Brule asked Bono where he wanted to go, and Bono replied, "Just take me to where The Edge is." Bono recounted his experience on stage in Edmonton the following night, telling the audience, "I like ice hockey, because people who play ice hockey are the kind of people who pick up hitchhikers," he said. "I know this from personal experience."

Larry Wert

Robert Feder speculates in his column this morning that my former boss and current NBC-Chicago boss Larry Wert might be in trouble now that the Comcast folks are taking over. I just saw Larry a few weeks ago at a Loop reunion party and was surprised to hear that he has actually been at NBC longer than he was at the Loop.

Whatever happens at NBC, I'm sure Larry will land on his feet. He always has.

Weiner calls the cops

One of the big uproars about Anthony's Weiner's wiener-gate scandal is that he didn't call the cops to investigate his account being hacked. Well, he finally called the cops yesterday, but not to investigate the hack.

He called the cops to get rid of a reporter.

This is not going well for him.

Another Tribune Lawsuit?

The amount of money that lawyers are making on this Tribune bankruptcy is setting all sorts of records, and will continue to do so.

Here's the latest twist.

Now Tribune retirees (who lost their retirement) are suing the shareholders that made the original deal with Sam Zell because they knew it was a fraud that would send the company into bankruptcy. On the surface it looks like they have a point. Those original shareholders walked away with millions, and all they did to earn that was to destroy the company to such a level that only someone like Sam Zell would take a shot at owning it.

Not sure how they stand legally. I guess we'll find out a few years from now. I wonder if universities will start offering a major in suing the Tribune. It seems like an actual industry.

Pandora's IPO

They're still projecting that they'll lose money in the short term, but it really looks like the Pandora IPO will be coming very soon, and will be priced in the $7-$9 range. According to this morning's Tom Taylor column, it will be the fourth biggest radio company in the country...

Kurt Hanson says “Pandora’s AQH audience is roughly equal in size to that of a 3.0-share FM station in every market” – and its audience is growing rapidly. He figures that “Pandora's market capitalization at this share price would equal the total of the market caps of such pureplay radio broadcast companies as Entercom ($330 million), Cumulus ($180 million), Saga ($150 million), Radio One ($120 million), Emmis ($40 million) and several others, combined.” So Pandora, valued by this IPO at around $1.3 billion, would come in at #4, behind Sirius XM, Clear Channel and CBS Radio – and not that far behind CBS.

A quick translation for non-radio folks: A 3.0 share FM station in Chicago, for instance, would be one of the biggest stations in town. In a smaller market with fewer stations, not so much, but still a legitimate player. On the other hand, they're still not making money--which makes me wonder.

Sky Daniels

I remember Sky Daniels well in Chicago from his time at the Loop (and met him a few times), so this notice today in Tom Taylor's column at Radio-Info.com caught my eye...

Sky Daniels circles back to Los Angeles to program, this time at Cal State-Northridge-based adult alternative non-com KCSN (88.5). Sky's worked extensively in major-market radio (San Francisco's KFOG, Seattle's KISW, Chicago's "Loop" WLUP), in the record biz (at Universal Music and Sony Music), and been National VP/Entertainment at Best Buy and GM of Radio & Records. Sky comes in talking about the potential reach of KCSN (three million people) and the opportunity of working "several media platforms."

When you play it, say it

Sometime back in the 1980s radio station disc jockeys were told to stop identifying the names of artists and titles of songs, because programmers became obsessed with ending "DJ Chatter." (I remember it well--I was a DJ at the time)

Of course it was a terrible idea, because people actually like to know the name of the song they're hearing and/or the artist that is performing it. CBS Radio is taking steps now to correct that twenty year mistake. Dan Mason, the head of CBS Radio, had a chat with the New York Times to explain it.

I realize he's only doing it to soothe relations with the music industry because they're trying to get more money in royalties, but I don't care that the motivation isn't pure. It's still the right thing to do. Every now and then radio lucks into a good decision because the economics call for it, and this is one of those moments.

The Tribune Soap Opera

I've been reading all about the shakeup at the top of the Tribune company, and the ridiculously long bankruptcy case, but without knowing the people involved it's sometimes difficult to connect the dots.

Robert Feder did a great job of that this morning in his Time Out Chicago blog.

Rob is never better than when he calls out the powers that be.

DC Comics to revamp classic characters

The details are in USA Today.

Basically they are renumbering the comics (to create all new #1s), and are trying to make their classic characters like Superman and Batman more relevant for the 21st century.

How will they be more relevant? Here's what the writer says: "What's the human aspect behind all these costumes? That's what I wanted to explore."

Sounds like he's got the finger on the pulse of today's youth. Less action. More character study.

Olbermann announces his staff

I know that Keith Olbermann has a reputation of being a bit of a jerk, but when I read this piece about the staff he hired for his new show, it made me wonder whether or not that is true. Most of these people have worked with him before, and many of them have worked with him for many years.

Take it from someone who was part of a show staff. You may work with a jerk once, but there's no way you'd do it again unless you were absolutely desperate or they were offering you a TON of money. These people were already employed, and Current isn't paying anyone a ton of money.

Stop Following Her

Sarah Palin is driving reporters crazy because she is not allowing any questions and she isn't giving them any information about her bus tour across the country.

Note to reporters: Stop following her.

Right now she's just a Fox employee, not a candidate. If she becomes a candidate, she will have to answer questions, and if she's still too gutless to answer, the American public gives you permission to absolutely hammer her. You can't run for office without answering questions from the press. It's the reason we have the press. Otherwise an election is a pointless PR exercise.

But until she announces, she's under contract not to answer your questions. You're just giving her free publicity for no reason at all. Pictures without substance. It's exactly what she wants.

Roger Ailes

Rolling Stone does a profile of Roger Ailes.

Judging by the title of the piece ("How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory") and the subtitle of the piece ("The onetime Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America's Unfair and Imbalanced Network"), I'm guessing he's not going to like it.

Viacom defends executive pay

I always get a kick out of stories like this one. After the news got out that the three highest paid executives in entertainment all work for Viacom, they had to come out with a reason why.

The pay: CEO Phillipe Dauman--$85 million (149% pay raise)
COO Thomas Dooley--$64.7 million (139% pay raise)
Chairman of the board Sumner Redstone--$35.3 million

Dooley's pay, by the way, is 6-times higher than a typical CEO--and he's only the COO.

Read the article and judge for yourself whether or not that is reasonable compensation. I think you know where I stand.

Pandora

They plan to offer an IPO very soon, and expect it to go through the roof, but I keep looking at statements like this from their CEO: "We expect to continue to incur operating losses on an annual basis at least through fiscal 2012," and I wonder why in the world people are going crazy for it.

I guess I just don't understand high finance. (Although I suspect I know why they call it "high" finance.)

Weinergate

If you weren't paying attention to the news this weekend (like me), you may have missed the incredibly strange story of Weinergate.

The full story is here.

It involves a hacked twitter account, a photo of a man's fully aroused underwear, a college coed, Representative Anthony Weiner, and a conservative blogosphere that took the story and ran with it long before any facts were revealed.