Julius and Julian

Capsule:  Apple's share price hit $204 last week on the possibility of a March 2010 tablet debut supporting an Apple networked internet TV service. The New Year promises to dazzle us with more transformative media news.  Beyond the stock market-friendly headlines, will 2010 bring new media business models that actually work?  A 360-degree-review of the last decade reveals more laggards than stars.  Even the best have destroyed as much commercial media value as they've created--an unfortunate reality we've been taught to accept as part of the creative destruction accompanying technological evolution. Would we be better off acknowledging new media as an extension of what came before? Could the sustainability of the media as a whole be more important than the sum of its parts?  Viewed in their proper perspective, could builders like new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and legendary Comcast Vice Chairman Julian Brodsky be as important to our future as Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt?

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In her nearly-perfect Q4 2009 new movie release "Julie and Julia," author and movie-maker Nora Ephron profiles culinary and broadcasting legend Julia Child (Meryl Streep) through the eyes of new media writer Julie Powell (Amy Adams.)  In Ephron's movie, based largely on real events, blogger Powell uses Child's magnum opus "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as the inspiration for a loving tribute to the master chef.

Through brilliant craftsmanship, Ephron lets us watch modern-day Julie Powell (circa 2002) master the art of writing by preparing and writing about the creation of each of the legendary Julia Child's 1950's and 60's culinary masterpieces.  Interspersed with a personal story about Powell's growth into maturity, we watch Child's past brought to life on screen, including a recreation of her early broadcast cooking shows depicted as beautifully relevant even in today's multiplexed top-chef TV world.  The artistic dance between past and present is beautifully actualized; the borders are softened for us to see the cohesive whole of human experience in the unity of these two characters, as complementary as we may yearn for them to be.

How will the internet dominated media world of our new decade look back on the relevance of what came before?  New FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski can exert a strong influence on the memory prism we all use to look back on digital media's critical evolution.  Comcast and its founders may also have a substantial say in how we view our modern media reality.  In initiating the purchase of NBCU from GE at the close of the decade, Comcast has made an inexorable claim on the beginnings of the 21st century media landscape.

Genachowski's biography is a rich romantic combination of historic symbolism and forward-looking ideals.  Genachowski's father and mother are Eastern European Jews who survived the holocaust.  One of his cousins is an Orthodox rabbi.  His wife, Rachel Goslins, is a documentary filmmaker.  He was a "notes editor" at the Harvard Law Review when President Barack Obama was its editor.

Genachowski's career is more wide-ranging and at the same time determinedly focused than seems possible for a 47-year-old father of three.  He's an old hand at analyzing the legal implications of FCC rules, having served as Chief Counsel to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in the 90's.  Before his long-running FCC service, Genachowski clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices David Souter and William Brennan.  He also worked for Senator Charles Schumer when Schumer was a Congressman on the select committee investigating the Iran-Contra Affair.

Genachowksi also earned stripes in the business sector, most notably as Chief of Operations and a member of the Office of the Chairman at Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp.  He has served on the Boards of Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Ticketmaster and Common Sense Media and as an advisory board member to Environmental Entrepreneurs.

In his role as FCC Chairman, Genachowski will be asked to reconcile the burgeoning growth of a handful of today's new media companies with the stability and scale of their traditional media counterparts.  As is often the case in industrial evolution, the newest internet-based media products seem to be overtaking traditional media, having created a new scale of consumerism--audience measurement and engagement--that favors digital technology.  Once again, in the name of progress, the game has been changed.

Unfortunately, the pace of technological innovation is moving so fast as to shred evolutionary progress in favor of displacement.  Our minds can't keep up with the realm of possibility.  The sweep of technology encourages almost religious devotion to exploring every digital possibility in the form of new media products, regardless of their value or sustainability.  We've thrown the narratives that we use to understand the world aside because the stories can't quite keep up with the rapidly changing historical context.

Comcast may provide a helpful bridge between past and rapidly changing present with its persistent presence as a content and distribution giant.  Founded in 1963, Comcast franchised, built and bought its way to the top of the US cable industry.  Today, the company provides cable television, broadband internet and telephone service to millions of residential and commercial customers.  Comcast is commonly ranked on the top rated lists of US destination workplaces.  The company is well-regarded by Wall Street, growing revenues by a 6x multiple between 1999 and 2009 and nearly doubling its share price in the decade.

Comcast's incredible growth story powered the company to 25 million television subscribers, 15 million internet and over 6 million residential telephone subscribers--making Comcast the third largest US telephone company--serving 39 of 50 states.  The Roberts family assisted by Julian Brodsky, as Vice Chairman and CFO in the early years, orchestrated Comcast's growth by buying and assimilating a Who's Who list of traditional broadcast, cable and telephony media brands including parts or all of: Group W, Storer Communications, American Cellular Network Corp., Metrophone, Maclean-Hunter, AT&T, Vulcan Venture's Tech TV, MGM/United Artists, Adelphia Cable, Susquehanna Communications, Patriot Media, the Platform and Plaxo.

What new role might Comcast play in the interplay between digital and traditional media?  In its assumed ownership of NBCU, Comcast will likely have a chance a year from now to change the culture of a company with more traditional roots than its own.  Comcast has the size and influence to move NBCU into the position of a digital content buyer, growing in the same way Comcast grew--through a financially conservative but interpersonally aggressive deal-making strategy in a new media commerce field with relatively inexpensive content choices.  Since Comcast has the best distribution position in the media today, it will attract content deals looking for distribution advantages.  Depending on the direction of management and the economy, NBCU could find itself in the most enviable content seat of the decade, firmly in the ranks of Disney and Fox.

If it does, US media policy and the industry itself may benefit from the representative presence of a new media company with firmly entrenched roots in traditional business values.  Comcast could make a success of its latest gutsy choice, especially if it keeps its customers and prospects as a priority equivalent to its balance sheet.  If it does, it may earn the increased gratitude of the equity and debt markets as they reconstitute and advance. And Julius Genachowski and the FCC could have a context marker to learn from, exemplifying a pure evolution play, with reasoned controls applied to the media's characteristic disintermediation and collateral damage.