AR&D Reinventing Local Media

Now come the upbeat revenue projections
Bolstered by an improving economy, the Olympics and a Presidential election year, broadcast groups are making rosy revenue predictions for 2004. A report in MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews says station groups like Belo, Scripps and Gannett are all expecting solid revenue growth next year. This is all well and good, but there’s a trap in getting too comfy in our shortsightedness. As noted a month ago, the threat posed to television affiliate groups by the growth of DVRs is a significant and insurmountable obstacle in the long term health of TV station groups. SG Cowen analyst James Marsh downgraded four media companies and lowered financial performance estimates for the seven he tracks, based in large part on the DVR threat. Mr. Marsh told me today that he, too, expects 2004 to be a good ad spend year. Stocks should react well, he said. “But the issue still is DVRs,” he added. “People will get more nervous as penetration rates improve.” Then, he says, the market — which tends to discount future growth rates — will start to look ahead.

Looking ahead isn’t something the TV industry does very well, as noted in my most recent essay, 2004: Time For Action. While we’re basking in the glow of all that money, let’s not forget to use some of it to invest in the years after 2004.

Now come the upbeat revenue projections
Bolstered by an improving economy, the Olympics and a Presidential election year, broadcast groups are making rosy revenue predictions for 2004. A report in MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews says station groups like Belo, Scripps and Gannett are all expecting solid revenue growth next year. This is all well and good, but there’s a trap in getting too comfy in our shortsightedness. As noted a month ago, the threat posed to television affiliate groups by the growth of DVRs is a significant and insurmountable obstacle in the long term health of TV station groups. SG Cowen analyst James Marsh downgraded four media companies and lowered financial performance estimates for the seven he tracks, based in large part on the DVR threat. Mr. Marsh told me today that he, too, expects 2004 to be a good ad spend year. Stocks should react well, he said. “But the issue still is DVRs,” he added. “People will get more nervous as penetration rates improve.” Then, he says, the market — which tends to discount future growth rates — will start to look ahead.

Looking ahead isn’t something the TV industry does very well, as noted in my most recent essay, 2004: Time For Action. While we’re basking in the glow of all that money, let’s not forget to use some of it to invest in the years after 2004.

Now come the upbeat revenue projections
Bolstered by an improving economy, the Olympics and a Presidential election year, broadcast groups are making rosy revenue predictions for 2004. A report in MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews says station groups like Belo, Scripps and Gannett are all expecting solid revenue growth next year. This is all well and good, but there’s a trap in getting too comfy in our shortsightedness. As noted a month ago, the threat posed to television affiliate groups by the growth of DVRs is a significant and insurmountable obstacle in the long term health of TV station groups. SG Cowen analyst James Marsh downgraded four media companies and lowered financial performance estimates for the seven he tracks, based in large part on the DVR threat. Mr. Marsh told me today that he, too, expects 2004 to be a good ad spend year. Stocks should react well, he said. “But the issue still is DVRs,” he added. “People will get more nervous as penetration rates improve.” Then, he says, the market — which tends to discount future growth rates — will start to look ahead.

Looking ahead isn’t something the TV industry does very well, as noted in my most recent essay, 2004: Time For Action. While we’re basking in the glow of all that money, let’s not forget to use some of it to invest in the years after 2004.

Politicizing the news
Cue the whining. The Christian Science Monitor takes a potshot today at the idea that the NRA or Al Gore could get involved in the news business. This naïve and shallow commentary/report distorts history and fans institutional journalistic fears to make a case that this is a bad thing. Citing media “experts” eight times in the article, writer Randy Dotinga provides his own spin on the idea. This is a classic case of the institution (or certain members therein) justifying their stateroom on the Titanic.

To some (Who?), the prospect of networks run by the NRA - or Al Gore for that matter - raises worries about a growing injection of bias into the reports that Americans rely on to make judgments about government and public affairs. (Huh? In your dreams!)

Media experts (As if this justifies not arguing the point…) say that in this harshly partisan era, any new political network is about as likely to air polite and reasoned discourse as it is to rerun old speeches by Adlai Stevenson.

A move toward politicized news networks would be a blast from the past, harking back to the days when American newspapers didn’t even pretend to be neutral. (This is actually correct) “It wasn’t feasible in the early clunky days of commercial presses to make money selling newspapers, so political parties subsidized them,” says Calvin Exoo, a media expert at St. Lawrence University. (This is completely false. Parties didn’t “subsidize” them. They owned them, or at least the publishers were a a part OF them.)

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