Just Rewards

Capsule:  As business leaders reexamine their results against the economic collapse and its aftermath, what can we say about media lessons learned?  Content and distribution were both victims of the economic tsunami that withdrew $11 trillion in American wealth.  What have we learned?  Equity market penalties are inescapable, so you might as well do what you think is right.

Forbes

Forbes just released the "Thinkers 50" ranking of today's "Most Influential Business Leaders."  The "Thinkers 50" process employs leadership consulting firm CrainerDearlove to survey 3,500 people around the world who identify a pool of the 100 top business thinkers which is then groomed by a panel of business experts to rank the top 50.

The academicians, business wunderkinds and economists who've traditionally made the ranking have been shuffled a bit because of what Forbes refers to as "economic turbulence."  While a University of Michigan Business School professor named C.K. Prahalad--the management guru who first used the term "core competencies"--heads the list for his second year, 13 new thinkers are in the top 50, including Mohammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate, founder of the Grameen Bank and the author of "Banker to the Poor."  Yunus is the new Number Six.  And Number One Prahalad's work is cited through the example of "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" showing how business can play a role in overcoming world poverty.

At the same time, Michael Sandel, a political philosophy Professor at Harvard University, has seen global participation in his "Justice" course flourish through streaming videos and podcasts as well as a book.  "Justice" examines current events, including the global economic collapse and its aftermath, against ideals of fairness using the construct of how societies distribute the things we prize: income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honors.

It may be that ethics and morality are becoming more relevant in our thinking during work and after hours.  Is it possible that doing things that are good for others can also be good for real long-term business gains?  We might hope so, because the sentiment pendulum has swung.

What role might the media play in spreading the new information age wealth beyond the American plutonomy?  Here are five ideas for stronger media participation in the global debate on lessons learned.

Innovate.   When the broadcast and cable television industries first formed, they knew how to expand through invention as well as replication.  Broadcasting innovation brought us radio station formats that varied according to music, news and sports tastes.  TV broadcasting brought us media forms as integral to our expanding knowledge base as Walter Cronkite and as whimsically important as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. 

Cable exploded the myth of broadcast centrality and split our focus with new TV networks, from CNN to MTV to Comedy Central, Bravo and HBO.  Regional sports expanded dynamically with whole channels devoted to local teams. National sports expanded beyond broadcast to ESPN.  Rather than forced confusion, cable's ingenious business system of distribution supported by differentiated content expanded our minds and our TV enjoyment.  
 
Where is today's content innovation?  While increasing the number of networks, we seem to have reduced our choices. More and more, each cable network is aiming at the same thing: big ratings.  Is this natural selection leading to greater media efficiency?  Is that good for the media's health?
 
Cable TV networks are duplicating each other's mission with TV entertainment and news.  This competition may introduce good original programming and great reruns, but the value of each individual network is compromised when it hangs its shingle on one or two series (or less) of note.  The value of our news networks are compromised when they descend into hyperbolic commentary and incomplete analysis in order to win ratings wars.  How inefficient can 24-hours of narrowcast programming get when we keep broadcasting the same messages?
 
Is there a new content form that cuts through the clutter? The combination of internet and VOD content with traditional network programming may be the future, but it must be the right combination--not the extra footage and out-takes that should have been permanently excised in the original edit.
 
The new content form may require a new distribution format. Look to Bloomberg TV for a clue. Bloomberg Enterprise Services just introduced "Bloomberg on Display," programmed via Stratacache: a "digital out-of-home news content and advertising service for retail financial clients." Bloomberg will combine Bloomberg TV segments--the products of a highly valued cable business news enterprise--with new live and on demand content and advertising.  
     
Given that a substantial portion of the Bloomberg business is programming business data terminals, upgrading some cross-section of local office screens to video and, ultimately, programming directly via the internet to home and office TV's can't be far behind.  In the light of this potential, it's a worthwhile exercise to imagine the hundreds of TV channels and VOD choices on the cable "dial" becoming the background of cable content, with a foreground dominated by a handful of new networks that combine IPTV and traditional TV on demand.  For the innovator, working on a new network form could be a fertile endeavor while the rest of the world is sleeping off the economic collapse.  It would be nice to innovate like it's 1981.

Expand.   It's time for big TV distribution to innovate like the cable franchising era (yes, circa 1981.)  Since all of the US and most of the international franchises have been awarded, this means expanding service areas through portable technology.
  
Whatever happened to SlingMedia?  Why can't the core Slingbox concept be re-imagined in a format and with media backers that can make transportable TV work?  The attractiveness of being able to take your TV and internet brands with you, encased in a local cable operator's service skin--or perhaps in a competitive skin--runs deep.  There's an IPTV product in this early idea waiting to be born (and syndicated to planes, trains, automobiles, hotels and offices.)
  
If we have to wait for portable TV, why can't we at least have a pure wireless facsimile? Telecom distribution is working on this with AT&T and Verizon having the most to gain. Yet, the boldest example of future promise may come from Clearwire and its investors, Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House, Intel and Google. Their promised 4G networks will deliver "broadband on the go." While the technology is developed, the products are designed and the brand promise perfected, we can only hope that wireless TV will be something more than a clone of its house brand counterpart. Once again, a handful of original content and distribution forms will resonate with audiences and create the next media windfall.

Compete.  Compete with Google. No one, including Google itself, should cede ground to a single search engine execution. Distribution and content companies can create better navigation companions to Google with real opt-in personalization. Cable companies and phone companies have the customer relationships and the service experience to make new personalized navigation work. They can also make new retail relationships work, particularly those relating to local and regional retailers inside their service areas.
 
With Google, the genius has been the originality of their design and their business savvy in replicating the same design with only slight quality alterations over time. With cable and telecom distribution, the genius can come from customer relationships, which are face-to-face personal for these industries because of their local service connection. Add the wealth of information that service companies can mine--now virtually flushed for the lack of a will and a way--and new opt-in advertising and retail businesses can be born.
 
Integrate.  Integration requires the discipline of collaboration. Most media companies are independent spirits who believe in working hard on their own. How do we create a multimedia news service that has the reporting and analytical depth of The New York Times, NPR, PBS and the BBC?  What about a business news service that combines Bloomberg with the FT, Barron's and The Wall Street Journal?  Wouldn't it be great to tune into a single TV and broadband navigation system that interwove these incredible content brands--or others that you chose to combine--into a symphony just for you?
   
On distribution, how can we create new advertising forms, combining e-mail (and eventually many different internet content sources,) advertising partnerships and the DVR? Would you be interested in receiving an e-mail that included links to relevant videos that you could click on and that automatically were programmed by your cable or telecom or satellite provider into your DVR?  Wouldn't that be easier on a single internet screen than paging through your interactive program guide to find the shows you want on TV?  
  
Why not do both and more? Could Gourmet magazine have been saved if it had used a rich marketing campaign to email its distribution list with upcoming features and suggested videos from advertising partners like the Food Network that could be clicked from laptops into DVR library status? These product integrations don't require a complete business integration. They do require a passion for creating new revenue streams out of the common ingredients of modern media.
 
Ideas as simple as rich content that include multiple brands sharing advertisers as well as enjoying their own advertising exclusives require content companies to work together and to pool resources. Today, that's barely done within the same horizontally integrated companies.  
 
Even richer rewards may come when competitors collaborate. The media stands the best chance of making these combinations happen because of the mashed up way its consumers use media already. Making a better mash may also rescue some cherished brands being pushed into obsolescence before the end of their useful lives.
 
Reward.  Media companies can celebrate business innovation, integration, expansion and competitive wins by acknowledging them inside their financial rewards structures. Resetting executive compensation in the short and long term to focus on more than compounded free cash flow growth might bring about beneficial long-term results.  
 
Media companies can establish their core principles (as opposed to their core competencies) by expanding their minds and reinventing their pay schemes.  How many leaders in the modern management team actually have the power, from budgeting to execution, to deliver profit? There may be a better way to reach those in the media management pyramid who can attend to tomorrow's profit opportunities. And there may be a third way to rekindle media growth by smashing some of the traditional boundaries between ideas that have served us well and ideas that can extend our future.