“One can only conclude it’s going to be a very, very challenging ‘09.” Petry’s Val Napolitano on how 2008 isn’t setting any records for TV sales.

“…between superficial, hyped news content and the commercial/promo glut, is it any wonder viewers are abandoning local TV news?” Dick Kurlander in an TV Newsday letter to the editor.

Gordon Borrell and his team are out with a new report about the dim future for Yellow Pages directories, and it contains some remarkable and telling information about who is selling the Web locally. The evidence reveals a situation for print Yellow Pages publishers that is “eerily similar” to what newspapers faced when they began losing classifieds revenue to the Web.

But this report, more than any I’ve seen from the company, absolutely nails the reality that is online sales at the local level, so it’s actually about much more than just Yellow Pages or directory sales. In terms of feet-on-the-street, the local newspaper and the local directory companies dominate, accounting for 84% of the overall online sales force at the local level.

While these people are competing against each other, the bigger picture is actually quite different:

This army of local online reps is fighting against robots — the fully automated online ad selling machines that have been deployed with considerable success by companies that have no local sales reps. These systems are pulling billions of dollars out of local ad budgets without anyone actually talking to the advertisers. Their sophisticated user interfaces are designed to give advertisers — small and large — the ability to design, purchase, place and monitor their online ad campaigns without the expense of personal help. Google is the preeminent but by no means only example of this approach. The interesting questions here are how many more SMEs are left that are willing to take on that level of daily ad management, and whether face-to-face selling can pry many early adopters out of the robots’ clutches.

In an email this (Wednesday) morning, Gordon Borrell told me that beating these robots is a safe bet.

When it comes to local ad sales, feet on the street will kick robots’ tin asses every time. That’s because every small advertiser has a nagging case of Wannamaker-ism — that is, he believes that half of his advertising works and half of it doesn’t, and he can’t tell which is which. Enter the friendly local salesperson, whose son plays soccer with the businessman’s son, or whom he sees at the Kiwanis Club meetings or at church. Those midnight credit-card transactions on Google buying up keywords like “Albuquerque plumber” or “Used cars in Duluth” will fall victim to the same feeling — that half of those Google words don’t actually work. Local advertising is sold on trust, and it takes people to cultivate that trust.

He added that yellow pages publishers are ideally suited to take back some of the money going to robots.

The yellow pages publishers have made some good strategic moves on the Internet in the past several years, including acquisitions and cross-training of its sales force. But the secret weapon that they really have is all those front-line salespeople who know how to sell to the millions upon millions of small businesses. It’s an efficient, compelling, low-priced sale pitch — as opposed to a heavily prepared, glossy, high-priced pitch that the newspaper and TV salespeople are trained to make. We think a lot of the higher-level ad spending from major advertisers has already fallen to the net, so the next big thing is the smaller local advertiser. Reaching them is going to be difficult unless a sales staff is prepared — from sales psychology to compensation structure — to sell a lot of $1,500-a-year contracts.

I’ve been part of two attempts by local TV stations to get into the directory business. Both fell short of expectations, entirely because the media companies weren’t able to put together a sufficient sales force to make the dynamics work. And attempts by such companies to automate the sales process — to create their own robots — have all failed. I still believe in the model, but I think the database from which the directory draws needs to be beyond a simple search for addresses and telephone numbers.

I also recommend to clients that they look at the local yellow pages sales force when hiring online sales people, because they are the most logical pool from which to draw. A little money from a lot of sources adds up, but it’s hard to see that when you’re only accustomed to staring at big numbers. The local yellow pages sales force doesn’t suffer from this blindness.

(Originally published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

What’s good for Yahoo isn’t necessarily good for the newspaper consortium, and so I read with interest the press release from Yahoo touting the milestone of driving “100 million visits to consortium member web sites.” This milestone, while seemingly significant, is a net positive only in the sense that Yahoo can move pure eyeballs to the newspaper sites, but the point of local media is to garner LOCAL eyeballs.

IBS has had a distribution arrangement with Yahoo for years for local news created by its partners, and Yahoo has similarly been able to deliver visits from outside the markets these stations serve. The GM of one large market station — an IBS client — once told me that during a month when there was a major news event in his market, 70% of the traffic to his site came from outside the market. “I can’t sell that to local advertisers,” he said.

So while this consortium of newspapers and Yahoo pat each other on the back, I simply ask, “What’s the strategy here?” Inevitably, it’s an archaic pageview strategy that suits the network and Yahoo in terms of national and perhaps regional sales, but it’s a net liability for any of the members’ local media efforts. I’d be a fool to turn away national ad dollars, but my concern here is the extent to which this lulls the staff into thinking they’re actually doing anything. Moreover, the inventory crunch is significant, and one that demands more, more, more in terms of page views.

Since the beginning of this, I’ve been on the record as saying the consortium benefits Yahoo far more than it does the members. Now that the first year glow of HotJobs has worn off, I wonder if others will begin seeing it the same way.

A noteworthy event in the new media world took place this week with the launch of a daily webcast by The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. Noteworthy, not because it was another webcast, but because Jeff Jarvis and Michael Rosenblum have been involved. It naturally has gotten press in both the blogosphere and elsewhere, and this has not gone over well with the people in broadcasting. We get all defensive when a newspaper tries to do television, and this tends to bring out some of the worst kinds of condescension.

The basics are these: The paper hired Rosenblum at the behest of Jarvis, who took various members of the news department through his VJ boot camp. Rosenblum is a lightning rod in the local television business — mostly among photographers — because they feel he’s trying to take their jobs away. This is all couched in deep concern for the “quality” of television news, but it’s really just fear in the guise of anger.

So when Lost Remote writer Don Day went after the webcast as being just another boring newspaper webcast, it brought out comments both helpful and hurtful. Despite the negative tone of some of the commenters, people from the paper got in on the conversation and took the criticism as constructive. Good for them.

As webcasts go, this one isn’t bad, and it’ll only get better. The evidence suggests these things don’t “work” in terms of gathering an enough audience to justify the expense, but let’s wait and see. I was pretty pumped with the efforts of the Roanoke Times, but that didn’t last. The problem, I think, isn’t the quality; it’s that the web audience for news isn’t best served by this method. I can consume the news (at work) a lot quicker myself than by having somebody read it to me. Besides, there’s that “audio in the cubicle” thing.

But the issues of whether it’s good or not and whether it will work for the Star Ledger or not are overshadowed, in my opinion, by this continuing mindset that only broadcasters can do television or do television right. This is called contempt prior to investigation. Let’s see what happens in Jersey before passing judgment.

The first comment in the Lost Remote story was from someone impersonating Michael Rosenblum. It was taken down by the site’s manager, Cory Bergman, something he rarely does. Michael is a friend of mine, so consider the source here, but I’m pretty sick of the embarrassing levels to which some of these illiterate and ignorant people will stoop to vilify a guy who’s changing the way television is being created. And those changes are making the big time, too.

Mark Glaser wrote today about a simple kicker story that made NBC Nightly News last Saturday. It was a story about a little penguin that was created for the Web by an experienced NBC producer and an associate producer. That’s right, a producer. Not a cast of union thousands. Just a producer. Romenesko hit the angle of a web story moving to Nightly News, but Glaser’s article points out something even more significant.

The penguin story began as a web package created and reported by “Nightly News” producer Clare Duffy. She and an associate producer on the show shot, wrote and edited the piece a few weeks before. As she had done in several other web stories, Duffy narrated and even appeared in a short standup.

Even more remarkable: Though Duffy has been producing for “Nightly” for years (and even appeared in on-air crosstalks when she worked in Moscow 18 years ago), she began shooting and editing only this spring, after a few weeks of on-the-job training, and in addition to her usual day job as a traditional “Nightly News” producer.

So here we have a producer (of all people) shooting, writing, editing and appearing on camera, and it made it to NBC Nightly News! Oh, the immorality of it all!

Folks, get over yourselves. In a few more years, we’ll all be doing video the same way. Those who refuse will cling to their Betacams all the way to the bottom of the tar pits.

In one of the smartest traditional media moves I’ve seen in recent years, Gannett has apparently bought into the live-streaming company Mogulus with a $10 million investment. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting the deal, and I think it’s pretty huge. Mogulus is a marvelous piece of technology that allows anyone with an air card or wireless connection to stream a live video signal to the Web. Rather than try and invent its own solution, Gannett has wisely gone after the market leader, and this portends good things for both Mogulus and Gannett.

Mogulus allows upstart video bloggers like Sarah Austin to host live video shows on a shoestring budget. But it also facilitates serious journalism. In May, for example, controversial statements made by Hillary Clinton on a Mogulus stream led to nationwide media coverage.

Gannett gets this. And i assume they’ll find ways to enable their reporters around the world to start using Mogulus to get video footage to the web as fast as possible when news breaks.

The Web has become increasingly video-centric as bandwidth has permitted it, and live is the next real challenge. YouTube is said to be working on a live solution. But Mogulus already does it well, so look for the their technology to be built into Gannett’s many traditional sites. And, perhaps more importantly, Gannett will be involved in the streaming of videos that go beyond its own traditional wants and needs, so it’s really a very smart investment for the company.

You were an inspiration to us all.

Duncan Riley poses an interesting argument in “Television will be the first traditional media medium to fall” via The Inquisitr. The Australian Riley is a prolific writer and observer of technology and was one of the lead guys at TechCrunch before moving to the Inquisitr. The point is he’s a smart guy and generally spot-on, but he misses the mark by a mile in this piece.

His argument is simple: television is the most vulnerable to technological and behavioral disruptions. Newspapers will survive, because journalism will survive. Radio will last longer than TV due to listening in automobiles. As any good web writer does, Riley sources his facts with links, which allows the reader to concur with or deconstruct the argument. Here’s an example:

The television switch off is real. In the United States, 2.5 million viewers switched off in the spring on 2008 compared to the same time in 2006. Statistically this is only a small percentage of the overall viewing audience, but among those still watching television, the amount of television they watch each day is declining.

The problem here is that the source material doesn’t support the conclusion. Television viewing is up, according to Nielsen. The link above references a decline in viewing on the major four networks in the spring of 2007. Those losses have been more than made up by growth in cable viewing. The second link references an IBM study — also from last year — that examined DVR usage and online use in the home. While declaring TV and the Internet to be on equal footing, the study does not definitively state that “television” viewing is declining.

After a few commenters made note of Riley’s absolutism, he backed off in an update at the bottom of the article and “clarified” his argument by saying, “I am not suggesting that the experience of sitting around a large screen TV watching sport or other content is going to fall. It never will, but content delivery via broadcast television (ie television networks, or collectively the television media) will fall.”

I have argued for years that the historic network model is history, so it’s pretty hard for me to disagree with what Riley is saying. The networks just don’t “need” the affiliates like they used to need them, and the Web gives them a way to connect directly with viewers. I do believe that on-demand viewing will be a big future model, but there are serious questions as to how that will be supported through advertising. The 30-second ad model — the one viewers are escaping through the use of those DVRs — pays for a ton of quality (and perhaps even more not-so-good-quality) programming, so before one can declare viewing to be “dead,” there must be in place a mechanism for replacing all that money.

I’ve had numerous health issues this past month, so I’ve spent a lot of time in front of my bedroom TV set, and I can tell you that my biggest problem is not finding something good to watch but keeping track of the shows I really do like to watch in a fragmented marketplace.

Sorry, Duncan, but I think broadcast television will outlive both newspapers and radio, and I’m reminded of Robert Metcalfe’s famous 1995 prediction that the Internet would suffer a catastrophic collapse in 1996. He literally ate his words later. The affiliate system is surely in trouble, but broadcasters have the ability to create and serve local programming to large, local audiences cheaply, and this advantage cannot be stripped away easily. That’s not to say that broadcasters can rest on their laurels, because we all know there’s much work to be done. But putting broadcast television in the grave by 2018 is, well, just folly.

This is a lovely use of archive video to create a long-tail business and something I’ve been advocating since day one. Congrats to KXLY.com in Spokane, Washington. Broadcasting is so accustomed to the idea of instant obsolescence (what we do today doesn’t matter tomorrow) that we miss opportunities for niche videos. This station hasn’t. All it takes is a little up-front work. Kudos.

There’s this gem from an interesting CNET report today on how Hollywood is warming to YouTube.

Hulu may have already hurt YouTube and Google in one significant way, according to one media executive. The portal has helped to establish revenue splits between online video distributors and content owners.

“The days of the 50-50 split between content owners and Web sites are over,” said the executive. “Content owners are not going to take less than 70 percent anymore and some are getting 90 percent. In Hulu’s case, 70 percent goes to the content owner. Hulu takes 20 and the Web sites who have distribution deals get 10 percent.”

These aren’t close to what Google was willing to accept in the past, but the search giant now appears more willing to compromise, said two studio executives.

I think this is part of a bigger trend that we’ll see developing in the next 24 months, as the revenue pendulum swings in favor of publishers. ESPN started the ball rolling by declining to take ads from the ad networks anymore, choosing to do its own ad serving. In so doing, it announced to the world that it and it alone would determine the value of its content.

As Doc says, there is no market for unwanted messages. Of course, you can’t tell that to the mass marketers of the world. The next thing you know, they’ll find a way to sneak messages into your cell phone’s voicemail.

Ack! Hold the presses! It’s in “beta,” and it’s being sold as a way to avoid the “embarrassment” of actually speaking with the person at the other end of the line.

Oh crap.

In the news today is word that an old friend of mine, Tom Van Howe, is coming out of retirement to help a station in the Grand Rapids market during a time when its main anchor is on military leave. Tom and I worked together in Louisville in the 1979-1980 time frame, and he’s a straight-up guy with a fun nickname: Tom Van “How do I look?”

Anyway, good for Tom and good for WWMT-TV.

So what’s got me all pissed off? An article in the Battle Creek newspaper sticks its nose in history’s basket and drags out a drunk and disorderly conduct arrest (not conviction, mind you) from 2002. Go read the article and view the comments. I hate this crap, and it’s what gives all of journalism a bad name. You want to know why people don’t trust us anymore? It’s unsigned garbage like this.

Editors at the Battle Creek Enquirer should be ashamed of themselves.

I was fortunate enough to participate in a panel discussion and Q&A session over the weekend in Washington, D.C. at a conference of the country’s public radio news directors. The topic was blogging and how NPR stations can use blogging to help connect with the people formerly known as the audience (TPFKATA). Attendees represented every level of acceptance regarding the importance of the Web in their news lives, and this made for a sometimes heated give-and-take.

One man (”I’m a news director, man!”) was especially antagonistic. Jeff Jarvis, who was on the panel with me, wrote about it after the session for his blog.

Terry and I were almost through with opening tap dances when a hotheaded curmudgeon in the third row interrupted — which is fine; we like conversation — to go on the attack and save the world from these horrible blog people. He spat out all the usual lines, including how terribly busy he is being a news director (his italics) and how this is such a nonsense and a bother. My favorite sputtering: “I have a job. Do you have jobs?”

…I have decided I’m not going to waste my time anymore with lazy, rude, self-important, self-delusional, intellectually dishonest, closed-minded curmudgeons who bark against the full moon of change. It has all been said before. I see no reason to waste my time, nor that of everyone else in the room. My new policy has been that I’m going to fight curmudgeonliness with curmudgeonliness. I told this fool that if he didn’t want to see the opportunities to do things in new ways, fine.

And then we proceeded with a very nice discussion of practical questions about blogging in news organizations, a discussion that continued later in the day. Everyone else I heard wanted to explore these new opportunities and had plenty of questions and doubts to deal with — as well they should — as well as experience to share; they welcomed change or at least know they couldn’t scare it away.

Meanwhile, the curmudgeon acted like a child sent to the corner and refused to look forward at the panel for the rest of the event. My goal was to get us past the growling as soon as possible and onto a substantive discussion. That is, I think, how to deal with curmudgeons. You can always find reasons not to do things. Then fine, don’t do them. Far more interesting and useful is to explore what might happen if you do them.

This man was saying out loud what we’ve all felt at one time or the other, and I suspect he’ll change his tune in the seasons ahead. But it gives me a chance to repeat a theme that you’ll always hear from me — in media, the Web is your TOP priority. This statement is debated even within companies, and I’ve seen it played out in strategic decisions by media companies over the last few years. In the minds of many managers, it’s a hard position to embrace, when the overall bottom line is how they’re being graded. “I’ve got bigger problems than the Web,” one manager shared with me, which was a polite way of saying “thanks, but no thanks.” This is a very dangerous place to be.

The problem with this thinking is that we’ve crossed from a place where the Web was adjunct to our primary purpose to a place where the Web is now determining how we think and behave in the “real” media world as well. And that says nothing about how the people formerly known as the advertisers are continuing to move money to the Web.

Why has this happened? It’s the consumers, baby. The appetite for unwashed, news-as-a-process is enormous and so much so that it eats away at the foundation of our “finished” news products. Few people wait for the 6 o’clock news or the morning paper to get their news anymore, and smart managers are feeding this appetite hoping to actually drive traffic to their offline products. That’s the right strategic approach.

TMZ.com built a TV show this way.

And I’m hearing more and more from the sales side that agencies are buying online and asking that offline be included as “value added.” Even though research clearly shows that TV is still the cat daddy in terms of advertising, a chink in that armor is revealed anecdotally in the day-to-day trenches of web sales.

As money shifts and consumers shift, what choice do we have but shift with them? None. The Web is our top priority. There is no downside to experimenting and creating online, but there is a huge downside to the opposite, for smart internet pureplay entrepreneurs are already taking nearly 60-cents of every LOCAL web advertising dollar.

A lot of experienced news people — whether broadcast or print — feel like they’ve been baited and switched, that they were trained and hired to do one thing but are now being required to do something else. That’s understandable, but it’s also completely irrelevant. We all need to just deal with it and turn the page.

(Originally posted in today’s AR&D Media 2.0 newsletter)

The blogosphere appears to be slowly maturing and evolving as time goes by. Some A-listers are moving on to other interests, while professional media companies and group blogs are moving in to occupy the top spots among blogging’s elite (yes, there is a blogging elite). Jason Calaconis dramatically announced that he was quitting. Nick Carr is taking the summer off. Robert Scoble is spending more time with FriendFeed. And so it goes.

Last week, Rafat Ali’s PaidContent.org was acquired by The Guardian for an estimated $30 million, and now Alley Insider has raised a large chunk of cash to move its model to the next level. There’s talk of other acquisitions by mainstream companies of big, A-list blogs.

Stowe Boyd is transitioning his blog into a media company by adding others to create a mix that suits his interests.

Meanwhile, a look at Techmeme reveals the growing presence of mainstream media company blogs as contributors to the online conversation that is news. Individual voices are being pushed to the side, prompting some to speculate the the blogosphere is history. It’s not, but it makes for a nice story.

These changes are visible and clearly something is happening, but I don’t think it means as much as some observers suggest. It was just a matter of time before traditional media companies awakened to the reality that blogging and blogging software is just a much better way to communicate information online. I always remind people that blogging was not invented by traditional media; it was created by the tech community, which explains why every form of stand-alone blogging software shakes hands so perfectly with the Web. It’s clean and uncluttered, and RSS is the end game. Search engines are pinged, comments are automatic, trackbacks are allowed, the simple creation links is built-in, and posting is a breeze. Traditional media company online publishing software typically has had none of that, because it was created to be one-directional.

And so when I see mainstreamers entering the blogosphere, I rejoice that professional journalists have finally caught on to how important it is to be a part of the conversation instead of simply assuming a conversation-starter role. As important as that is, it’s vastly more important, IMO, that everybody participate in the conversation that is news.

In his post on these changes, Fred Wilson gave his reasons for blogging, and they’re both personal and professional.

This blog is me and I am this blog. It’s mine and will always be mine. I understand why many of the individuals who made blogging what it is are either moving on or turning their blogs into businesses. That’s the way it is. But I am fortunate that this blog is totally integrated into my business and provides great value to me and my partners. So it’s sustainable from an emotional and economic perspective and I plan to keep showing up every day.

Wilson’s blog is a powerful bully-pulpit from which he has enormous influence in the tech media space, and in this sense he’s a real competitor to the mainstream press.

As I explained on my “Transparent Terry” page, I blog to challenge my assumptions, and this I find enormously fulfilling personally and useful professionally. I never set out to gather a crowd, so I’m not as concerned about showing up every day as I used to be.

Personal publishing will always be the biggest part of the blogosphere, and niches the Holy Grail. But clearly, blogging has entered the mainstream, and who knows? Perhaps one day we’ll all just be plain old media instead of the “us versus them” that we still find today.

I’m on my way to D.C. to participate on a panel with Jeff Jarvis on blogging and journalism. The audience is public radio news directors, and I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

The organizer has selected a theme of what bloggers wish journalists knew about them and what journalists wish bloggers knew. Of course, the theme suggests a wall between the two, and this is the most important matter to address. With bloggers increasingly setting the news agenda (it’s already that way in sports), the professional crowd is concerned about losing their authority. Add to that the financial pressures on traditional media, and there’s a strong undercurrent that democracy is about to crash and burn. It’s not (and few will actually say that), but there’s still a culture clash between the two groups.

It’s amazing to me that we’re still having this debate, but feelings run deep. The two groups have much to offer each other, and I hope that is the takeaway for the audience. Jeff and I are on the same page about all of this, so it’s going to be a fun give and take.

News last week that people are watching more television and viewing more online streams than ever must have been perplexing for those in leadership positions in broadcasting. How can we actually be facing revenue problems in such an environment?

My latest essay examines the matter by asking if we really understand what the “business” of media is all about. We’re surrounded by disruptions, but the only one that matters is advertising. What do we do about that, if the only ad platform we offer is attached to our own branded content? Could the pooling of our resources in any given market make a difference in today’s business climate? Would it be smart to create a sort of local online shopping mall for news and information? Read on.

Failure at the Top

Some of my best friends and colleagues are succumbing to iPhonemania and switching to the popular Apple tool. Cory Bergman at Lost Remote bid a tearful goodbye to his Blackberry in announcing he was switching. Don’t look for me to be making such a change.

I think the hardware and the web applications are stand-out and game-changing, but I will not give a dime to at&t, or as Dan Gillmor calls it, “the company that calls itself at&t.” I’ve had two horrendous experiences with the company, and that’s about all I give anybody. When I was on Cingular, I experienced relentless and highly irritating dropped calls, so much so, that I actually laughed out loud the first time I saw one of their “fewest dropped calls” ads on TV. Cingular is now at&t. ‘Nuff said.

The second bad experience is more appropriate to the iPhone. When I first moved to Dallas in ‘06, I landed at an apartment complex that had an exclusive contract for at&t to provide “cable.” It took six weeks to get it installed, only to discover it wasn’t cable at all, but a split signal from DirectTV that wouldn’t accept my TiVo. The lack of cable meant I needed an at&t DSL line for the Web, and that also took a month to get installed. The service was awful, and in investigating a problem once, I discovered that the “line” at&t was using actually belonged to Verizon. The point is that at&t was building its business on the backs of others, companies that if I’d had a direct relationship with would’ve given me better service. The only reason I stayed with them was my landlord gave me no other choice. I find this business practice to be deplorable, but I blame the company that calls itself at&t.

So now we have arguably the best mobile device ever to come down the pike married to at&t with overpriced service agreements built on Cingular’s lousy network. I may be nuts, but I cannot bring myself to do business with them.

I’m completely a Verizon guy now. Wireless, landline, and FIOS, and I’m a very happy customer. So while I’d certainly enjoy hands-on experience with an iPhone, I’ll leave that to others until the device supports other carriers.

Of course, there’s renewed talk of a gPhone coming…

According to TVWeek, NBC affiliates are preparing to pay the network for the privilege of being a part of the network. Thus, the Peacock Network becomes the first of the original “big 3″ to go this route, joining Fox and the CW. ABC and CBS won’t be far behind, and soon we’ll have a whole new industry in terms of delivering network television to local markets.

For those who haven’t been around all that long, the networks used to pay the affiliates to carry their programming. It was called “network compensation,” and it’s been shrinking every year. When the nets discovered they didn’t need the affiliates to distribute programming, the day of “reverse-compensation” was inevitable.

It comes at a time when affiliate groups can least afford it, and you have to ask yourself where it will all end. One thought about that is to examine the world of syndicated programming, where the best options go to the highest bidders. If affiliates have to pay for their programming, they ought to have the right to shop for the best that’s available, and that would mean, among other things, that broadcasters with deep pockets could improve their lot in local markets simply by buying the best line-up. Contrariwise, the networks could shop their wares to the strongest stations and negotiate the compensation.

In the long run, however, this is mostly irrelevant, for the direct-to-consumer model is here to stay. Personally, I like to surf, but I know people who only watch that which they obtain online, whether through options like hulu.com or iTunes.

Look, I think the iPhone is a cool tool, but it’s the only thing anybody’s talking about these days in the tech press, and that always makes me nervous. Just like the last iPhone, I have every faith in Apple to make a great product, but I have no faith in AT&T to be a part of something so innovative. As long as the iPhone is married to AT&T, it will be suspect in my mind. Sorry.

The Silicon Valley Insider has a great piece today on the 3G coverage problems that new iPhone owners are going to encounter right off the bat. Can we be honest and say that the thing was really made for non-U.S. markets, where 3G is (and has been) abundant? Take a look at the coverage map in the article and ask yourself if this is something you really want?

Of course the apps are cool and it’s ultra trendy, but in the end, the dead zones are a problem that I think are going to be a pretty big deal.

In a wide-ranging interview for a forthcoming AR&D book, long-time CBS producer (and creator) of 60 Minutes Don Hewitt told us that television news is still stuck in “the 1948 Douglas Edwards model” and that it’s not good enough for today. Brushing aside the matter of objectivity as “reciting what happened today” — “something the cable news networks do all day long” — Hewitt said the audience for evening news is hungry for opinion, and we ought to give it to them.

The stories have been told before they get to them. You can’t tell them much at 7PM that they don’t already know. And I’ll tell you the other thing that I never understood: What really sells newspapers are columns and strong opinions. The only strong opinion that any of the three networks ever put on the air is “Meet The Press,” “This Week with Stephanopoulos,” and Bob Schieffer’s “Face the Nation.” Where is all of the opinion the rest of the week? Most people who buy the NY Times turn from page 1 right to the op-ed page. They want to find out what the columnists are saying. There are no columnists on the news. It’s bland. I love strong opinions. I love to hear two guys having it out, whether its Bill Safire or Tom Friedman — you know, with different points of view. Can you name one place where you can find it? Other than Sunday morning?

…Of course (opinion is appropriate in an evening newscast). What’s it doing in a newspaper? Newspapers actually endorse candidates! Newspapers run all kinds of opinions, everyday, and you never find any opinion on television. Unless you get it on CNN, you get it on FOX, you get it on MSNBC. You may not want to get as much of Keith Olbermann as you get; maybe you don’t want as much opinion of Lou Dobbs as you get; but they do it, and they do it very well. There ought to be a roster of great broadcasters with something to say, who appear on the evening newscasts with some provocative thought that gets people in the audience, when the show is finally over, to sit down and say “What did you think of that guy?” “I thought he was full of shit, well I thought he was great!” And that’s what sells newspapers. Newspapers are now being sold by the columnists.

While acknowledging that broadcast news does some wonderful things, he believes the industry is stuck in the past and unwilling or unable to move into the future. “They (broadcasters) have not recognized yet there is this thing out there called the Internet,” he said, “and the Internet is running circles around them. The game has changed and we have not changed with the game.”

Don Hewitt is an original and the interview was filled with gem quotes. Here are just a few:

The thing that is keeping television alive these days is sports.

The public eye among a new generation is not television. The Internet is the public eye.

Watch for this material in a major, new book that will be released by AR&D later this year. That’s all I can say about it for now.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)