Giant Media Conglomerates mean Big Trouble for Little Guy

In one day, ABC invested in the future and cashed in on its past.  Disney had negotiated a $26 million production deal with Pixar in 1991, which grossed $4.6 billion in box office and video sales from animated features like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles.  When that happens you buy the company.

Citadel, the medium-size chain that merged with ABC Radio, did so because it wanted to play with the big boys. Now they’re in third place, right behind Clear Channel and CBS Radio.

The deal put Disney’s ABC radio chain and network assets into a new company, If Citadel’s shares dropped, Disney could initiate a clause in the agreement that would increase the payout they received.  Buyer’s remorse set in when its shares fell 27 percent.  Now, the hornswaggled Citadel has to pay out additional hundreds of millions of dollars to the Mouse House.  Here’s the punchline: It was the poor performance of ABC Radio’s assets that brought Citadel’s stock price down. Such a deal!  Brooklyn Bridge, anyone?

CBS Radio, suffering from plunging ratings and revenue, had to unload some stations at bargain basement rates to raise fast cash for their coffers.  CBS owns four properties in our crumbling city of Cleveland.

Clear Channel, home of the father, the sons, and the holy roast, owns over 1,200 stations nationally. There are five licensed here in the Poverty Capital; three in Akron, and another five in Canton and its adjoining suburbs. Add ‘em up and you get an unlucky 13 – for us.  The charlatans that control the company’s fortunes for their kith and kin just completed another executive reorganization to reward failure.

Cleveland radio employs several talented and creative people that understand the future and how to deal with it but aren’t allowed the autonomy to do so because they’d upstage their clueless bosses. Mike Trivisonno, please disregard this message.

Fear not, we’ll always remember terrestrial radio. Dinosaurs leave big foot prints.
 
The zeroes are adding up on the wrong side of the ledger for satellite radio, too. Both XM and Sirius claimed they’d break even once they reached four million subscribers.  They’re long past that mark and still hemorrhaging red ink.  You ask how they plan to attract more subscribers?  Stop me if you heard this one before. They’re tightening their playlists.

Behold the madness that is the troglodytic newspaper industry with its vanishing readership and revenue.

The Plain Dealer’s new publisher Terrence C. Egger gave notice that volunteer buyouts are available to anyone who’s over 50 and there for 20 years.  The PD’s new slogan is “don’t trust anyone under 50.”

Two weeks later, the new owners of the Akron Beacon-Journal slashed 25 percent of its newsroom staff. The layoffs were based on seniority; last in, first out.  It used to be that when a ship was sinking, the rats were the first to leave.

This self-proclaimed ethic cleansing is not limited to our gloriously depopulated metropolitan region.  The Washington Post eliminated 170 positions, The Dallas Morning News eradicated 85, The Chicago Tribune is exterminating 120 jobs, and The New York Times has slaughtered its printing operations staff by 250.

Old media dumbed down while new media smartened up. What radio, television, and print has lost, the Internet has gained. They feared change and remained in denial for most of the nineties, resisting opportunities to marry themselves to the Internet.

Those running old media today aren’t entrepreneurs.  They’re hired guns with a salary, an expense account, an axe, and a two word vocabulary: Chop, chop!

We join newspaper web sites in progress. Once beleaguered by bureaucratic roadblocks, they’re now learning how to be relevant and become part of the public consciousness.

Radio’s Internet presence is a joke.  Pick a web site; any web site.

TV’s starting to get it. The networks and cable channels recognize the need for direct linkage to the Internet. Disney’s fronted the pack by putting its shows on line and also making them available for downloads.  Others are following.  They’re playing to where the mass audience is going.

Reality check. By 2008, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max will make the Internet a completely portable and mobile medium, which will bring Internet radio, television, and news services to cars.  Then there’s that new-fangled iPod dock option car dealers are pitching.  The automobile, the last bastion of what both terrestrial and satellite radio believed would cause forced listening to its product, has been fully compromised by new media.

The old media geezers should check Mapquest for directions. The only road to the future is through the Internet.