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Souce:  Ad Age Bob Garfield’s ‘Chaos Scenario’ A Look at the Marketing Industry’s Coming Disaster By Bob Garfield Published: April 13, 2005 Meet George Jetson, circa 2020. He doesn’t have a personal hovercraft or a food computer, but the rest of the future is more futuristic than he thought. Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs are out of business. Digits are the new widgets. What happens if the traditional marketing model collapses before a better alternative is established? Bob Garfield dares to confront the question. TV is gone Over-the-air network TV is gone, along with program schedules, affiliate stations and hotel demand in Cannes in the third week of June. George, Jane, Judy and Elroy get their entertainment, and their news, any way they wish: TV, phone, camera, laptop, game console, MP3 player. They get to choose from what the Hollywood big boys have funded and distributed, or what the greater vlogosphere has percolated to their attention. ABC, NBC and CBS are still major brands, but they surely aren’t generating radio waves. Three initials never uttered, however, are CPM. They’ve long since been supplanted not just by ROI, but VOD, video on demand; P2P, the peer-to-peer Napsterization of content; DRM, the allocation of royalties for digital distribution of content; VOIP, Internet telephony; and RSS, the software that aggregates Web content for easy access by the user. Branded Entertainment has long since been exposed as a false idol, because consumers got quickly fed up with their shows being contaminated by product placements. Satellite radio is a $4 billion 8-track tape player, stored on a high shelf in the garage, pushed aside by podcasting, which is free. The Upfront Market is an exhibit at the Smithsonian. The Super Bowl survived as the No. 1 pay-per-view event. Survivor didn’t. The space-age family of the future can still watch CSI, any episode they want, whenever they want, but not on any advertiser’s dime — unless they choose for their viewing costs to be subsidized. Yet advertisers know everything about them and understand virtually every move they make. Marketers aren’t adversaries And the Jetsons don’t fight it. In 2020, consumers understand that marketers aren’t adversaries; they’re intimates, sharing info for everybody’s mutual benefit. Yesiree, by George, it’s a brave and exciting new world that the near future holds, a democratized, consumer-empowered, bottom-up, pull-not-push, lean forward and lean back universe that will improve the quantity and quality of entertainment options, create hitherto unimaginable marketing opportunities and efficiencies and, not incidentally, generate wealth that will make the current $250 billion domestic ad market seem like pin money. Alas, the future — near or not — doesn’t happen till later. So let’s return to contemporary business reality in the digital revolution, already in progress. Because in the intervening 15 years — or 20 years, or five — there are three more initials to consider: SOS. Because revolutions by their nature are neither seamless nor smooth. Collapse of old model Because there is no reason to believe the collapse of the old media model will yield a plug-and-play new one. On the contrary, there is nothing especially orderly about media’s New World Order. At the moment it is a collection of technologies and ideas and vacant-lot bandwidth, a digital playground for visionaries and nerds. So what happens when 30 Rock and Black Rock and the other towering edifices of network TV are rubble, and the vacant lot has yet to be developed? Undeveloped and unprepared. Unprepared to lawfully deliver CSI. Unprepared to absorb $4 billion ad dollars, much less broadcast’s $42 billion. Unprepared legally, technologically and even socially to pick up the pieces of the old world order. Hold on. Let’s change metaphors. Forget the construction site. Make it a space-age treadmill, cycling too fast for George Jetson to keep his footing. "Jane!" he pleads. "Stop this crazy thing!" But Jane can’t stop it. Nobody can stop it, and nobody can quite hang on. Ah, yes. The Chaos Scenario. Downward spiral The statistics are already getting tiresome, but let’s review a few of the more salient ones, shall we? According to Nielsen, network TV audience has eroded an average of 2% a year for a decade, although in the same period the U.S. population increased by 30 million. In the last sweeps period, for the first time, cable commanded a larger audience than broadcast. The cost of reaching 1,000 households in prime time has jumped from $7.64 in 1994 to $19.85 in 2004. A 2000 Veronis Suhler Stevenson survey showed that Americans devoted an average of 866 hours to broadcast TV annually and 107 to the Internet, a ratio of 8:1. The projection for 2005 had the TV/Internet ratio at 785 hours to 200, or just under 4:1. U.S. household broadband penetration has gone from 8% in March 2000 to an estimated 56% in March of this year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. 70% of DVR users skip commercials Five percent of U.S. homes are equipped with TiVo or other digital video recorders, and not only does time-shifting of favorite programs render network schedules irrelevant, 70% of DVR users skip past TV commercials. Complicating problems, consolidation in the telecom industry and potential re-regulation of DTC drug advertising threaten billions in network ad revenue, jeopardizing the supply-demand quotient that has propped up network prices for five years. Meanwhile, there is the sword of Damocles called "cost." The reality-TV fad has enabled networks to fill their ever-more-irrelevant schedules and cast for hits with cheap programming. But how much longer will they last? Westerns and spy shows, superheroes and hospital dramas all once burned bright. Then they burned out. What’s ominous about that is not the inevitable end of the latest hot genre; it’s the inevitable end of the profitability that has gone with it. And the downward spiral could begin at any moment. In fact, to switch metaphors once again, Shawn Burns, managing director of Wunderman, Paris, looks at the 2005 upfront and sees "the last strand of the rope bridge." Mr. Burns, of course, makes a living preaching the wonders of segmentation and the bankruptcy of mass marketing. No wonder he observes with barely camouflaged glee that the efficiency pendulum has swung. "There’s been research," he says, "that real cost of obtaining 30 seconds of the consumer’s attention is the same in 2005 as it was before the invention of television." Fraying rope Emphasis his. Yes, he has a vested interest in being a doomsayer. He is by no means, however, the only one who sees the rope fraying. "I still love and enjoy TV and believe it is very effective for advertisers," says Association of National Advertisers President Bob Liodice. "But we’re killing it. We’re gradually killing it with cost increases, the level of clutter, the quality of the creative that is out there." "How can they continue to ask for more and more for fewer and fewer faces?" asks Geoffrey Frost, chief marketing officer of Motorola. "I don’t believe that is sustainable. I believe there will be disruption. There’s already disruption." "It’s an inevitable kind of slow collapse of the entire mass media advertising market," says J.D. Lasica, author of Darknet: Remixing the Future of Entertainment and president of the Social Media Group consultancy. "What we’re seeing is that not only does television have to reinvent itself from the content point of view, it has to reinvent itself as an advertising medium." Primitive standards No mystery as to how, either. As technology increasingly enables fine targeting and interaction between marketer and consumer, the old measurement and deployment standards are primitive almost to the point of absurdity. "The industry’s key currency is basically reach, frequency, exposure and cost per thousand," says Rishad Tobaccowala, president of Internet media shop Starcom IP. "I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong but that’s currently the currency. And where the currency ought to be is about outcomes, engagement and effectiveness. Because right now all I’m doing is I’m measuring how cheaply or how expensively I’m buying the pig. I’m not figuring out whether the hot dog tastes good." None of this is lost on any sentient being in the media and marketing business. Any lingering denial most likely evaporated when Procter & Gamble Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel — he of the $5.5 billion marketing budget — faced agency heads a year ago at the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Media Conference and declared the existing model "broken." But it’s not just the ad model; it’s the content model, as well. Writer and former venture capitalist Om Malik looks at TiVo and the video-on-demand horizon and is prepared to call in the backhoes for the institution of the prime-time schedule. "Hasn’t it collapsed already?" asks the author of Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist. "Look at their viewership. Isn’t it going down every day? I mean, we can pick and choose what foods we eat, what car we drive, what clothes we wear and what colognes we use. And some guy sitting in New York decides how I should watch?" Consumer control Point taken. As more control has been placed in the hands of the consumer, the consumer has shown every intention of exercising it. Especially in the coveted 18-34 cohort, viewers are fleeing TV and going online, where nobody need have their content dictated to them. But as to Mr. Malik’s rhetorical question — hasn’t the old model collapsed already –the answer happens to be: No, it hasn’t. Network TV spending went up in 2004, by 10.7%. According to Jack Myers Report, last year’s upfront market yielded a 15.4% increase across the four majors, and Mr. Myers projects a 4% increase for the top four in 2005. Yes: increase. There are many possible explanations for the phenomenon. One is habit; gigantic institutions tend not to rapidly adapt. Another is greed: the self-interest of the comfortably situated old guard to preserve the status quo. The third is supply and demand, upward pricing pressure from Viagra, et al, which engorged the marketplace with billions in new spending. The main factor, though, is that network TV audiences remain coveted, because — shrinking though they are — they represent the last vestige of mass media and marketing, or, as Motorola’s Mr. Frost calls it, "the last surviving conglomeration of human beings in the living room." Precisely, says David Poltrack, executive vice president of research at CBS, who sees incremental revenue opportunities in video-on-demand, but no end to the dominance of broadcast TV in the foreseeable future. "Unless the advertising community finds something to replace television advertising, I think the relative value of the top-quality inventory is always going to be appreciating relative to all the other options," he says. "Unless someone can come up with a more effective way of introducing a new product than broad-based advertising exposure, I think that business is always going to be there." Which is why Motorola, whose nifty palm-sized Razr device represents the Jetsons’ media future today, mainly used TV to introduce the gizmo to the world. Because there are still a few programs that catch the imagination of enough human beings in enough living rooms to represent a mass-marketing opportunity. "I still believe in TV," Mr. Frost says. "People still watch it, and I love being associated with the right kind of programming that is different, that is appealing, that embodies the kind of innovation we want to stand for as a company." ‘Teetering ecosystem’ On the other hand, he acknowledges that the financing of the "right kind of programming" — not to mention the overwhelming majority of flops –depends on network revenue streams that could dry up quickly. "The teetering ecosystem behind all this stuff that allows people like us to sort of cherry-pick" for exceptional programs, he says, "may begin to find itself in serious trouble." So while the old model hasn’t necessarily collapsed, new-media gurus could be forgiven for seeing the beginning — or middle — of the end. Steven Rosenbaum, pioneer of citizen-produced TV and founder of MagnifyMedia, envisions a world of content created by and for individuals over broadband. He snorts at Mr. Poltrack’s defense of the status quo. "These guys," he says, "their job is to postpone the future." Viacom split Another skeptic apparently is Sumner Redstone, chairman of CBS parent Viacom. One week after Mr. Poltrack spoke to Ad Age, Mr. Redstone announced his plan to split the company in two, presumably to reduce the drain of CBS and its other broadcast properties on the stock value of the company’s faster-growing media assets. So for the moment, let’s assume that there is indeed major trouble ahead, that the law of diminishing returns will eventually kick in, that advertisers who’ve paid more and more for less and less will not pay indefinitely for nothing. Marketers will begin to abandon network TV. Ad prices will fall. Profitability will disappear. Program development will suffer, leading to more advertiser defection, and so on in a consuming vortex of ruin. But wait. The network refugees will not flee empty handed. They’ll draw carts bearing steamer trunks stuffed with a quarter trillion dollars. Then what? In the short run, obviously, more boom times for cable, and then: Payday for the New World Order. "A bit of it will go to this new emerging network which will be on the mobile phones," says Mr. Malik. "The next thing, you will see is the emergence of more Internet-based video advertising. … There’s going to be a lot of hit-and-miss in this but I think that’s another area you’ll see a lot of progress made. A third channel is … Internet-enabled cable services. They’re not home runs by any means but they’re definite solid singles and doubles." Economics of scale No dingers? So what? The whole point of new media is small ball. Quit playing for the three-run homer and amass the singles and doubles. Because, says Starcom’s Mr. Tobaccowala, "the key thing is economics of scale is going to disappear. That’s really what the issue is. Our business has been built on the economics of scale. And instead we’re going to go into the economics of re-aggregation. Which is how do you get 10, 20, 30, 40 thousand people instead of taking in 250 million and making them into 12 and 30 million dollar segments. How do you re-aggregate one at a time into the tens of thousands?" Fragmentation, the bane of network TV and mass marketers everywhere, will become the Holy Grail, the opportunity to reach — and have a conversation with — small clusters of consumers who are consuming not what is force-fed them, but exactly what they want. Producers and broadcasters capitalized with billions of dollars will be on approximately equal footing with podcasters and video bloggers capitalized with $399.99 12-months same-as-cash from Best Buy. And just as DailyKos, Instapundit, Wonkette and Wil Wheaton have coalesced large followings in the cacophony of the blogosphere, some of the citizen-video programmers will find not just a voice but an audience. Wait. Did I say "will find?" Make that "are finding." "All of that is happening," says Drazen Pantic, founding member of videologging Web site unmediated.org, "In the last two or three years, we’ve had a silent revolution of consumer electronics. And broadband is coming. It’s a huge proliferation in the last two years. And so people are going to start broadcasting from home and so on. You will have zillions of people, broadcasting for the audience of 10." Except when it’s much bigger than 10. A month ago, a little girl named Dylan Verdi posted a home movie on her father’s Web site. PressThink.org’s Jay Rosen dubbed her the world’s youngest vlogger. The link went viral and, as her father Michael reports on his own videolog, "24 hours later 2,000 people had downloaded her video." It would have been much more, but he had to shut his site down so he wouldn’t wind up penniless from bandwidth charges. Web proves it can outdraw TV The Internet has also demonstrated its ability to outdraw TV. JibJab satirical animations have been downloaded by the millions, for instance. And even TV programming has drawn better online than in its native habitat — such as when comedian Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire to assassinate Tucker Carlson live on cable. "That episode got, what, 400,000 viewers maybe on big old powerful CNN?" says Jeff Jarvis, president of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, and author of the media blog BuzzMachine.com. "Well that same segment was copied onto the Internet, where it got at least 5 million views. So what’s more powerful, the network CNN owns or the network no one owns? So now suddenly the distribution is exploded. Now on the Internet we can all swim in the same pool as content created by, you know, Universal or Disney. The tools are cheap and easy." It is a beautiful thing: the total democratization of media, combined with the total addressability of marketing communications. We, the people, cease to be demographics. We become individuals again. "Choice is a good thing," Mr. Jarvis says. "Choice is a proxy for power. The more choice we have the more power we have. The most important invention in the history of media was not the Guttenberg Press, it was the remote control. It gave us control over the consumption of media. Then came the cable box and the VCR and the TiVo and now come the means of creating content. Now I can create a radio show and put it on the Internet. Nyah, nyah, nyah." Maybe it’s "nyah, nyah, nyah — take that Big Media." Or maybe it’s "tra la, tra la — what an empowering new world." Either way, it’s underway. Straight-to-Internet campaigns On the advertising side, Google last year generated $3 billion in revenue, about the same as The New York Times Co. No surprise that Vonage, the Internet telephony carrier, is using the Internet to find subscribers, but Procter & Gamble put its money where Jim Stengel’s mouth is by launching Prilosec OTC with 75% of its budget allocated off TV. American Express allocates 80% of its budget off the airwaves. The new Pepsi One campaign will use no TV whatsoever. (Not Capital One. Not Purina One. Pepsi One.) In the new-media laboratory called South Korea, where universal broadband is social policy and its penetration exceeds 80%, the Internet’s share of ad spending is twice that of the U.S. TV, meanwhile, accounts for only 34.4%. In the wake of BMW films, such diverse U.S. marketers as Amex, Burger King, Lincoln-Mercury and Motorola have created an ever-expanding universe of content/advertising hybrids, Webisodic short films to reach younger prospects online. Mercury’s "The Lucky Ones" is so barren of product and brand messages it is scarcely advertising at all. Netcasting, of course, also delivers pure programming, too. From the top down was the streaming, on Yahoo, of Kirstie Allie’s new show, Fat Actress. From the bottom up, video logs — or vlogs — like Dylan Verdi’s are being generated every day. At Rocketboom.com, chirpy, irreverent host Amanda Congdon delivers oddball news and snarky observations in a primitive studio (or maybe a one-bedroom). At J.D. Lasica’s alpha Web site Ourmedia.com, citizen journalists and producers post their own news reports, animations, music videos and whatever else amuses them free of charge. So that should be the answer: the seamless transition from TV to online, from mass media to micro media, from mass marketing to permission marketing. But not so fast. George Jetson does his vlogging in 2020. Om Malik says he believes the scenario could just as easily take place by 2010. But this is 2005. What if the rope bridge finally snaps, say, next year? Or the next? It better hadn’t. Because the future isn’t quite ready. Think: Yugoslavia. Perhaps you are familiar with it. It used to be a country, ruled by an authoritarian criminal. Then it began to fragment. There went Slovenia, and Croatia next. Then Bosnia. Kosovo made its move, and in the ensuing madness, the regime collapsed. The unshakeable Slobodan Milosevic, who had fomented four wars in the name of Greater Serbia, was overthrown. Democracy! Empowered individuals! A new model! And, five years later, unemployment is 32%. The average monthly income is $336. The prime minister was assassinated by organized criminals and the country’s most notorious war-crimes suspect is at large. Unmediated.org’s Mr. Pantic, formerly of Belgrade’s freedom-fighting radio station B92, is only too familiar with the problem. "There is no way," he says, "to make the transition into anything that is different or new or whatever without chaos. Because as with democracies you need five or six newly elected parliaments, you need to replace people who have ties with the old regime." Change doesn’t happen overnight Likewise, he says, in the transition from old media to new: "The new paradigm is not going to be established overnight." There are too many obstacles. BROADBAND PENETRATION It has catapulted to nearly 60%, but that is still a long way from 100%. In South Korea, where penetration exceeds 80%, online advertising does indeed have twice the share of the U.S. online industry, but it is still less than 5%. CAPACITY "I don’t think the interactive community has sufficient capacity to handle a seismic change in a transition from network to online," says the ANA’s Mr. Liodice. "I don’t think that’s gonna happen." Online-marketing consultant Joseph Jaffe agrees. The author of the forthcoming Life After the 30-Second Spot doesn’t believe there will ever be a dollar-for-dollar transfer of TV money to the Internet. But even 10% of all money now allocated to TV would more than double the total online spending. "You’ve got a handful of publisher properties that may be able to kind of cope initially," Mr. Jaffe says, "and then be able to at least kind of sustain that increased demand. But for the most part, when the tsunami hits, all hell’s gonna break loose." QUALITY Dylan Verdi is a cute little girl, but once the novelty of world’s-youngest-vloggerdom wears off, there is no reason for anyone outside of her immediate family to watch her iMovies. "I mean you can put a lot of bad video clips that you shoot with your camera phone on the Web," says Mr. Malik, "but how many people want to watch that? If you’re going to create a product for passive consumption it has to be good. I mean look at all the shows that fail. There is very low tolerance for bad television." FINANCING "Where," Mr. Malik asks, "does the money come from to produce the programming of high enough quality to reach the audiences that are obviously going to be smaller than the status quo?" In a video-on-demand universe, networks may send along free samples of new shows to paying customers of existing ones, but absent vast reservoirs of ad revenue, the risk of program development may well be prohibitive. A collapse of the old model could create a Hollywood dustbowl. LEGISLATION. Peer-to-peer software such as BitTorrent, which permits affordable transfer of large video files, also enables video piracy, and could be legislated or litigated into oblivion by a beleaguered Hollywood desperate to preserve the value of its backlist. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, last year introduced an anti-p2p bill called the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act of 2004 (Induce Act). COST. As pricing in the search business has amply demonstrated, any influx of spending into the online space will drive prices upwards, potentially erasing the efficiencies promised by even the most ultra-targeted media buy. The metrics of reach may change radically, but not necessarily those of frequency. As Mr. Tobaccowala puts it, "Millions of people arrive at the Yahoo Homepage. What people don’t realize is that they arrive one at a time." SUITABILITY Content will be enormously diverse, agrees Forrest Research research director Chris Charron, but will it constitute a legitimate advertising medium? "A lot of people talk about these social networks and blogs and the blogosphere as being great ways to attract consumers and attract eyeballs and potentially good advertising opportunities, but history shows that is not the case, even recent history. Remember GeoCities? I think they were bought by Yahoo for $3 or $4 billion. Well, it never became a very viable advertising outlet and that’s because it wasn’t a great context for people to place ads. Advertisers weren’t interested in putting it on a personal homepage for Chris Charron for my friends and relatives to see." CONTENT DIVIDE Convergence means not only technological and economic disruption; it means social disruption. Cost of broadband and VOD programming will surely exceed $100 per month for each household, and most likely twice that, disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans and changing the dynamics of a shared popular culture. The idea of a vast digital underclass mocks the Internet’s promise of the democratization of media. Then, of course, there is the biggest monkey wrench in the works: the absurd lack of preparedness for anything other than the most deliberate evolution into a Jetsonian future. "Even if all the technology were in place and scaled up to size," says Mr. Tobaccowala, "what isn’t ready really is either clients, agencies, or the media companies. Because in effect what we have to change is the way we do business." Oh, preparations are underway. Earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. retained McKinsey & Co. to figure out how to transition to this Internet thing — which is something like nailing plywood to the windows when the hurricane makes landfall. News Corp. no doubt feels safe enough, because Fox network customers are still lining up to buy, partly because they know how to do that. GRPs are buggywhips that just feel so familiar and reassuring in their hands. No wonder Mr. Stengel is showing up at the 4A’s revival tent preaching salvation: "If we believe that there’s life beyond the 30-second spot," he demanded, "why are we still dependant on reach, frequency and advertising pre-market scores?" Yahoo’s gambit So don’t storm the Bastille just yet. Even the revolutionaries aren’t quite organized for the revolution. Among those not quite ready for the end of prime time is Yahoo, which hired ABC programming chief Lloyd Braun to develop whatever content will be when content will come from the likes of Yahoo. "The key for us," he told an iMedia Brand Summit in February, "is to be able to come up with that unique, signature, compelling content for the Internet, the way television has been able to do over the years." Duh. As to what that might look like, he was a little bit fuzzy. "What I’m not saying is that we’re just going to be doing television shows on Yahoo, and we’re going to be streaming them, so we’re going to do our version of Lost, or our version of Alias. There’s going to be a big place for video streaming and all of that, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t believe ultimately that the future of Internet content is by doing on the PC, or on mobile devices, what you can already get on your living room television set. We have to really get our arms around what those expectations are. What is the audience looking for when they go on the Internet?" Yes, that would seem to be the question. But nobody has definitively answered it. That’s why there are hand-wringing Cassandras like Jim Stengel and giddy opportunists like Wunderman’s Shawn Burns. But what if you are a direct marketer in what promises to be the Golden Age for direct marketing and a historic opportunity knocks and you lack the manpower to answer the door? Under the current circumstances, Mr. Burns says he’d first advise clients to scale up their Web capabilities by a factor of 10. But he concedes that in a Gold Rush economy, he doesn’t know where all the Web designers would come from to do the work. That, of course, is the essence of the Chaos Scenario — a critical shortage of resources and infrastructure. It’s almost comical to hear Starcom’s Mr. Tobaccowala talk about the marketing landscape of the very near future. "Expect to see a lot of event and store-based marketing," he says. "Expect people to actually go completely away from electronic media to experiential media, if you can call it that. So expect for instance Starbucks, bars, all kinds of things — bathrooms, OK?" Bathrooms? Jim Stengel has $5.5 billion burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s supposed to invest it in bathrooms? "That’s exactly the point," says John Hayes, chief marketing officer for American Express. "There isn’t the off-the-shelf capacity today. You have to create it. You have to build them. You have to come up with the ideas. To access the talent, you have to basically construct solutions." Hence Amex’s Jerry Seinfeld/Superman Webisodes and sponsored concerts Webcast to prospects. If the old model is broken, Mr. Hayes can’t just sit around waiting for somebody else to fix it. "As in any industry," he says, "those who are unprepared for change will obviously suffer the consequences." That warning has to be pried from Mr. Hayes’ lips, but it is a warning nonetheless — sort of a reciprocal to another sort of warning. David Poltack, of CBS, may or may not be the spokesman for the status quo, but you can’t miss the "You’ll be sorry" quality to his caution about his notion of the chaos scenario should marketers abandon network TV. An economic downfall? "If they do," he says, "then the entire marketing system that perpetuates this economy will be weakened. And this is not a problem for just the broadcast television networks. This is a major problem for everyone who markets a product to the consumers in this country. Because there has been and there is not currently on the horizon anywhere near as effective a way to market products to the mass consumer marketplace. And if in fact that current system deteriorates to the point that advertisers and marketers abandon it, I don’t see anything that’s going to replace it and the entire marketing infrastructure and the economy is going to be diminished. And that’s a lot bigger problem than just a network television program." In other words, what’s good for CBS is good for America. The other possibility is the opposite: that what’s bad for CBS, and for ABC and NBC and Fox and Conde Nast and the Gannett Co. is very good for America, because what emerges from the ruins will be superior in every way to what it replaced. Better for marketers, better for the economy and especially better for Mr. Jetson, who won’t have a robot maid but very likely will have a million-channel universe. As Rishad Tobaccowala elegantly concludes, "Those who come to destroy TV are those who are eventually going to save it." And the world will rejoice, happily awash in electrons. But before the liberte, fraternite and egalite, beware. This is revolution, and first we will be awash in the blood of the old guard.

Hi5 raises $20M in funding By Rhiza Sanchez | July 22, 2007 – Source:  http://www.901am.com/ Hi5 was reported to have raised $20M in funding with the help of Mohr Davidow Ventures. Struggling to compete with social networking giants Facebook and MySpace, Hi5 has about 30 million members to date, serving up to 200 million pages a day. Compared to its counterparts, what makes Hi5 different is their conscious effort to regionalize their network across different major languages including Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Portugese, and Romanian. Because of this, Hi5 has gained popularity in Latin American countries.

Source:  PaidContent – Writer:   Tameka Kee – Mon 11 May 2009 05:56 AM PST CPMs are the default standard for buying display, and paid search ads get measured in clicks. But when it comes to valuing a social-media sponsorship, “advertorial” content on a magazine site or even a virtual-world campaign, there’s a growing consensus that neither of those metrics is good enough. Click-throughs aren’t great for ads on social networks, for example, because most people are there to interact with the content—not click on a link that will take them to some advertiser’s site. And with an oversupply of inventory and easily dismissed ad units dragging down CPMs, publishers are pushing for an alternative currency that attributes more value to their audiences. That’s where “engagement” comes in—and there are a variety of ways to try to achieve it. Facebook has its Engagement Ads that try to entice users to interact; Hearst’s digital division is letting advertisers pay to “engage” with Seventeen and CosmoGIRL readers by answering their questions; and video-ad firms like VideoEgg and ScanScout offer “cost per engagement”-based buys. Meanwhile, publishers’ sales teams are increasingly serving up stats like time spent, return visits, and event the number of times a brand gets mentioned in the comments, as proof of why advertisers should pay more for their inventory. The problem is that other than “time spent,” there aren’t any real standards around engagement. That’s partly because all these sites offer different ways for users to interact with their content, but also because each advertiser’s goal will be different. “There’s a consensus that engagement is going to be how we hold online advertising accountable from now on, but we’re still grappling with how to tie it back to real business results,” said James Kiernan, VP and group client director for P&G at Mediavest. “Like, how many ‘engagements’ does it take to drive purchase intent? How do we tie it back to sales?” We spoke with some companies to find out which metrics they’re using to broker their engagement-based deals. —Time spent, the “go-to” metric: “That’s the primary statistic that advertisers look for with our games,” said Neal Sinno, VP of business development at advergaming firm Arkadium. “We can also tell them who’s playing, how many times they’ve played and things like whether they emailed a game to their friends—but they really want to know how long their target is seeing the brand images for.” Arkadium powers the casual games section for sites like myLifetime.com and AARP.com. —Offer a new way to interact with users: Hearst launched Q&A sections on Seventeen and CosmoGIRL in April; advertisers can buy standard banner ads or come in as an “expert” and answer readers’ questions. A brand like Clearasil can buy an expert spot in the beauty section, for example, and pay for overall engagement (in this case, the percentage of users that ask or answer a question), but also on an impression basis. “They can say, ‘we want 100,000 people to see the entire Q&A thread,’ or even get the Q&A as part of a buy across the whole network; the bottom line is that they’re adding value to the audience’s conversation,” said Matt Milner, Hearst Magazines Digital Media’s VP of social media. —Tie engagement to a purchase: IM-based virtual world IMVU is reportedly bringing in about $1.7 million in revenue per month, 90 percent of which comes from the sale of virtual goods (via Virtual Worlds News). And it’s just starting to do branded merchandise deals with advertisers. “There’s no reason that a legit brand couldn’t sell at least 100,000 items over several months,” said IMVU’s VP of business and finance Kevin Dasch. “But we can also give them real-time stats about the number of times a user wears their item, the amount of time they spend looking at their page, as well as the number of groups that have popped up around them on our network. We try and bundle those stats with some standard banner impressions, so advertisers can measure their spend in the ‘traditional’ way, but also get comfortable with this kind of engagement.” Kiernan called other options, like in-game ad units, “very engagement oriented,” since advertisers only pay once a player views the ad at a predetermined angle, for a minimum amount of time. “We’re still buying on a CPM, but it’s a more accountable CPM,” he said. Kiernan added that the majority of buys were still made on a CPM or CPC basis—with engagement metrics bundled in as an add-on. Meanwhile, Publishers Clearing House is tracking the number of people that enter their contests via networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. “We’ve generated about 9,000 contest entries from a pool of about 1,500 fans across various networks,” said Alex Betancur, GM and VP of PCH Online. “That’s 9,000 opportunities to present them with magazine offers—which is how we define engagement.”

For the fun of it.  This is one of his best since he did his (original review 7/12/06) of Craftsteak.  Thank you Frank for your honest review and thank god for your sarcastic wit!  You provide me with the best laughs and the most fun after a really long hard day at the office.  Whoever hired you should get a raise – you are a superstar in my food world. RESTAURANT REVIEW | HARRY CIPRIANI, The Gloss of Opulence By FRANK BRUNI, NYT Dining, Published: November 14, 2007 OVER the years the Cipriani restaurant family and its employees have faced charges of sexual harassment, insurance fraud and tax evasion, the last leading to guilty pleas by two family members in July. Harry Cipriani – No Stars (Poor) But the crime that comes to mind first when I think of the Ciprianis is highway robbery. Based on my recent experience, that’s what happens almost any time Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue serves lunch or dinner. In this gleaming room in the Sherry-Netherland hotel, the Ciprianis charge $22.95 for asparagus vinaigrette — 12 medium-size spears, neither white, truffle-flecked nor even Parmesan-bedecked — and $34.95 for an appetizer of fried calamari. That’s at dinnertime, I should clarify. At lunch there’s a whopping $1 discount per dish. A dinner entree of fritto misto costs $48.95, even though it amounted to an extra-large portion of fried calamari with a few decorative shrimp and token scallops strewn, to negligible effect, among the generic calamari rings. I assure you of the accuracy of those numbers, and of these: $66.95 for a sirloin, $36.95 for lasagna, $18.95 for minestrone. It’s tempting to devote the rest of this review to a price list. Nothing else I can present is nearly as compelling. Besides, prices are the point of Harry Cipriani, which exists to affirm its patrons’ ability to throw away money. It’s the epitome of a restaurant whose steep tariffs justify themselves, subbing for membership dues and assuring that the spouse, in-law, client or canine psychic being treated to a $16.95 piece of chocolate cake will be impressed. Regulars accept and revel in this, or have bit by bit deluded themselves into believing that the $36.95 spaghetti with tomato and basil has something special to recommend it. (Trust me: it doesn’t.) But what of the uninitiated New Yorker or innocent tourist who sees the Cipriani name, with its connotations of extravagant banquets and extraordinary privilege, and waltzes through the doors expecting something magnificent in return for a king’s ransom? These victims in the offing deserve a heads-up on what they’re likely to find, which is service so confused and food so undistinguished it wouldn’t pass muster at half the cost. During one of my dinners, servers first tried to deliver another table’s veal chop to ours, then began to deliver our entrees before they had cleared our appetizers. Another night servers gave me rabbit although I had asked for duck, and then, after a profuse apology, neglected to bring my companions and me one of our desserts. But what I remember most vividly about that particular night is the potatoes. And I hasten to add that I’m taking it on faith that they were potatoes. That’s what they visually suggested, those desiccated yellow-beige coins that had somehow acquired the texture of Brillo and could almost have been used to scrub whatever pan they had emerged from. They weren’t, in fairness, representative of the restaurant’s other vegetables, like the assortment in a transcendently vapid risotto alla primavera, cooked to a state of depressing flaccidity. But while the veggies can be mush, the empire seems to be solid: bigger than ever and growing all the time. This past summer the family opened the restaurant Club 55, which joined its many other gilded dining establishments in Manhattan. Outside New York the Ciprianis have restaurants in London and Hong Kong, and they’re establishing resort hotels in Miami Beach and Beverly Hills. Of course it all goes back to the 1930’s and to Harry’s Bar in Venice, where the bellini and beef carpaccio were reputedly born. But on this side of the Atlantic, the progenitor and lodestar is the Fifth Avenue clubhouse, which opened in 1985 and was last reviewed in The Times in 1991, when Bryan Miller raised it to two stars from one. It’s a different restaurant now, literally. In June 2005 it closed for renovations, and when it reopened last May, the visible changes included more than fresh coats of lacquer on the lustrouus wood-paneled walls. The bar had been moved to the northern side of the restaurant, a rearrangement that helped make way for about 30 additional seats. The hosts can now cram about 130 people in. And cram they do. At times they place the Frisbee-size tables for four so tightly together that Harry Cipriani seems to be doing an haute impersonation of Prune or the Spotted Pig. It’s a bizarre mix of indulgence and deprivation, the crisp white jackets on the servers communicating an ostentation that’s contradicted by plenty else, including the brusque manner in which those servers sometimes hustle diners through a meal. Even in an enclave this expensive, there are things seemingly done on the cheap. I can’t think of a credible motive other than cost saving for serving an appetizer of turkey tonnato in place of veal tonnato. That’s for $27.95. Although steak Rossini typically involves foie gras, what Harry Cipriani puts on top of a gigantic (and, it should be noted, juicy) filet mignon are chicken livers, chalky when I had them. That’s for $55.95. Among the scores of straightforward dishes, some had appeal. Calf’s liver was flavorful, veal sweetbreads tender and roasted branzino moist. I liked the oil-glossed octopus carpaccio, and cakes were dependably fluffy. But the kitchen’s blunders outnumbered its successes, which were modest in any case. The wan tomatoes beside buffalo milk mozzarella didn’t have a drop of sweetness. Main courses of lamb and salmon were overcooked, as were the meats in several pasta sauces, including an oily veal ragù over green tagliardi. Pasta sauces by and large were washouts, seldom registering much presence or any nuance. An amatriciana had no zest, no zip, and the meat in it looked and tasted not like guanciale or pancetta but like ordinary cubed ham. The selection of wines by the glass — a small carafe, really — is pathetic, and that fabled bellini is $19.95 for a restrained ration of white peach juice and prosecco. But the people-watching is nonpareil. You rarely see blondness this improbable, cosmetology this transparent, wealth this flamboyantly misspent. And while that isn’t cause enough to visit Harry Cipriani, it’s consolation if you must. Harry Cipriani POOR In the Sherry-Netherland hotel, 781 Fifth Avenue, (60th Street); (212) 753-5566.

I used to stay at Monaco hotels — especially the Monaco in SF (http://www.monaco-sf.com/) for about 10 days a month.  In fact, I was personally responsible for several companies making that their prefered hotel.and hosting events and parties at the hotel.  Over the years, staff changes and managers have come and gone, but overall, the "make me feel special" level of service was consistent and appreciated.  How fast can you lose it?  Let’s see. Last month I had business in SF and made a reservation.  It was not too busy a week.  I guess over the years, the process of my arrival has been pretty nice.  My key and check-in has been arranged ahead of time.  If there was a line, someone at the from desk caught my eye and passed me a key.  In addition, the hotel has always updated to a suite.  In addition, there has always been a very nice welcome gift – a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, a basket of fruit. Well — upon arrivral – the from desk was not too busy, but I waited in line.  Then I received the wrong key.  When I got to my room – the gift was a bottle of water and an apple 😦  In addition, the Internet and phone was not turned on, and it took over an hour for them to get that fixed.  For years, it was "Welcome back Mr. Cohen" — now it is "what name,…how do you spell that?" What was the cost — well, I was supposed to stay 4 days – I checked out the next AM (so they lost 3 days of room revenue).  I canceled my breakfast meeting there and set up something down the street.  The hotel I moved to was a better deal (who would have thought the Palace Hotel would be cheaper!).  I will be in SF two more times in the next 45 days — and I won’t be staying there (lost a few more days).  Overall, after 15+ I also have shared this story with a number of people, and now blogged it.  So what do I predict – The Kimpton chain is having problems.  I do not think this experienced was the exception. I will miss the old times.

So many of my friends expressed their sympathies about what happened.  In addition, I have received a few notes like the one below. Mr. Cohen, the blog you wrote about Shlomo was incredibly insightful and touching. My name is Leah (Silverberg) Rowe. Shlomo and my grandpa are cousins. I only met Shlomo a handful of times but have very fond memories of him. I was lucky enough to see him and his family at their home in Israel during the summer of 2004. What an amazing family! All of them were so full of life and energy. Really, I just want to thank you for writing such an amazing piece on Shlomo. I unfortunately have misplaced their address and e-mail. Please pass my condolences on to Margie. Sincerely, Leah Silverberg-Rowe

So “special access” tickets to the Grateful Dead 50 | Fare Thee Well through CID Entertainment (http://www.cidentertainment.com) went on sale this AM and there was the usual server crash and no phone support.  These tickets and travel packages went from $517 to over $2000!  Tickets for the Dead’s last concert also went on sale via the Dead’s loyal fan base site GDTS Too (http://www.gdtstoo.com), but they were hit with a gazillion requests with people sending in envelops and money orders and jumping through what is a pretty straight forward process – except you know we are talking about Deadheads that are not know for their ability to follow process and read instructions — and forget about deadlines.  YIKES!  And tomorrow will be ticket master sale of tickets for Chicago’s Soldier Field – July 3, 4, and 5.  So what will probably be a stupendous last hurrah for the Dead will be stressful for many long time fans looking for that last taste.  I’m wishing for my miracle just like 10’s of 1000s of other fans.  Over the years, I have had an extra ticket that was always gifted or sold at face value.  Gifting was always fun since you made someone so happy.  But I do not think there will be much gifting for this concert. Last week if was Burning Man.  I’ve been going to Black Rock City on and off for over 10 years, and what started out with tickets for less than $200 now cost alms $400.  The servers crashed and there are stories of hacking and all sorts of “unburner” type behavior.  The last couple years Burning Man (www.burningman.org) has attracted a new audience and there is only so much room.  So again, people wanting to go — new and old-time burners will just need to deal with uncertainty and frustration and hope that everything works out. Last is the recent incident at a yoga class I go to that is taught by my favorite teacher Kat (http://yogakatfitness.com) resulted in a near fight on getting into a class — yogis fighting?!  So unzen.  So not cool.  And the result of that debacle was having to sign-up in advance, having a pass, and all sorts of stuff that are not conducive to getting into your happy place.  So what happened next really was crazy — the next week, some people got in without their little plastic pass or sneaking in the back door, and that resulted in a few complaining to the front desk (tattle tales) — and the manager of the club had everyone leave the room and wait in line and checked for their name.  So not a good way to start the day. I do not know what the answer to these situations are.  Take a breath, do not worry.  Accept the reality that more people are seeking an experience and there just isn’t room for everyone.  One way or another life goes on. So if anyone does have an extra ticket to the Dead 50, please let me know. (smile) Links: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/hacking-burning-man-tickets/ http://www.gdtstoo.com http://www.cidentertainment.com/events/gratefuldead50/ #greatfuldead50 #gratefuldead #CIDEntertainment #GD2015 #deadtix #burningman #blackrockcity  #brc2015 #burningmantickets #HomewardBound #NoFurthur #yogakatfitness #GDTS #GDTSToo #Dead50 #faretheewell #DeadTickets #CIDEntertainment #GratefulDead50 #GDTSToo #homewardbound #burningmantickets #Burningman #NoFurthur #burningmsantickets #blackrockcity #brc2015 #FareTheeWell #Yoga #GD2015 #dead50 #YogaKatFitness #GDTS #GratefulDead

This may be a year we need to pass, Robert is getting married in Italy and has invited Madeleine and I — and the wedding is May 5.  But it is possible we go the first weekend.  Looks like a great start to a terrific festivle. JAZZ FEST ANNOUNCES 2007 TALENT LINEUP FOR NEW ORLEANS’ PREMIER MUSIC EVENT, APRIL 27-29 AND MAY 4-6 Harry Connick Jr., Rod Stewart, Steely Dan, Norah Jones, ZZ Top, John Legend, Van Morrison, Brad Paisley, Jill Scott, Ludacris, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, New Edition, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Irma Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis, Counting Crows, Allman Brothers Band, Allen Toussaint, George Benson, Pharoah Sanders, George Thorogood, Stephen Marley featuring Jr. Gong, Better Than Ezra, Joss Stone, Banda el Recodo, Calexico, Taj Mahal, Johnny Rivers, Lucinda Williams, Branford Marsalis, Richie Havens, Soulive, Cowboy Mouth, Percy Sledge, Tony Joe White, Gillian Welch, Bobby Jones & the Nashville Super Choir, T-Bone Burnett, Rebirth Brass Band, Galactic, Mose Allison, Marcia Ball, Roy Hargrove, Chuck Leavell, Arturo Sandoval, The Holmes Brothers, Snooks Eaglin, Dr. Lonnie Smith, The New Orleans Social Club, James Carter, The Radiators, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Lucky Peterson, Darrell McFadden, Sonny Landreth, Danilo Perez, Ivan Neville, Dottie Peoples, Davell Crawford, Ba Cissoko of Guinea, George Porter, Jr., Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, Tab Benoit, Les Amazones of Guinea, World Saxophone Group, John Mooney & Bluesiana, Buckwheat Zydeco, Anders Osborne, Elder Baab & the Madison Bumble Bees of Winnsboro, Eddie Bo, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, Rosie Ledet, Amanda Shaw, The Iguanas, Marva Wright, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Deacon John, Donald Harrison, Nicholas Payton, Terence Blanchard, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews & Orleans Avenue, Bob French, Elysian Fieldz, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers, Ellis Marsalis and over 500 more groups will gather in New Orleans for the 38th annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, April 27-29 and May 4-6, 2007.

With the Sequester upon us, I think this is probably the best analysis of the challenges of reducing government spending.  This is NOT a democrat or republican thing – this is a how do you change the way elected officials act, how departments and agencies re-act, and why it is so difficult.  Comments welcome. The Culture of Bureaucracy Firemen First or How to Beat a Budget Cut by Charles Peters Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly. Since parsimony is becoming almost as fashionable among politicians today as patriotism was in the 1940s, a wave of budget-cutting seems likely at all levels of government. The results could be salutary, but might be disastrous. To avoid the latter possibility, it is essential to understand how the Clever Bureaucrat reacts to the threat of fiscal deprivation. The very first thing C. B. does, Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly when threatened with a budget reduction, is to translate it into specific bad news for congressmen powerful enough to restore his budget to its usual plenitude. Thus Amtrak, recently threatened with a budget cut, immediately announced, according to Stephen Aug of The Washington Star, that it would be compelled to drop the following routes: San Francisco Bakersfield, running through Stockton, the home town of Rep. John J. Mcraucnman the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee. St. Louis-Laredo, running through Little Rock, Arkansas, the home of Senator John McClellan, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Commit tee. Chicago-Seattle, running through the homes of Senator Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader, and Senator Warren Magnuson, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. And in a triumphant stroke that netted four birds with one roadbed, Norfolk-Chicago, running through the home states of Senator Birch Bayh, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Transportation subcommittee, Senator Vance Hartke, chairman of the Commerce Surface Transportation. Subcommittee, Rep. Harley Staggers, chairman of the House Commerce Committee, and Senator Robert Byrd, Senate Majority Whip. The effectiveness of this device is suggested by a story that appeared in the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette a few days after Amtrak’s announcement: Continued Rail Service Byrds Aim “Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-WVa, has announced that he intends to make an effort today to assure continued rail passenger service for West Virginia. “Byrd, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he will ‘either introduce an amendment providing sufficient funds to continue the West Virginia route or try to get language adopted which would guarantee funding for the route for Amtrak.’ ” In the Amtrak case, C.B.’s budget cutting enemy was President Ford. Sometimes it is a frugal superior in his own department. C. B.’s initial response is much the same. If, for example, a Secretary of Defense from Massachusetts insists upon eliminating useless and outmoded bases, the Navy’s C. B. will promptly respond with a list of recommended base closings, led by the Boston Navy Yard. Another Bay of Pigs An irate constituency is, of course, a threat to all elected officials and to every other official who dreams of converting his appointive status into one blessed by the voting public. Even a small irritation can suffice. Thus, Mike Causey of The Washington Post tells of a National Park Service C. B. who, confronted with a budget cut, quickly restored congressmen to their senses by eliminating elevator service to the top of the Washington Monument. Every constituent whose children insisted on his walking all the way up was sure to place an outraged call to his congressman’s office. Similarly, a Social Security Administration C. B. faced with a budget cut is certain to announce that the result will be substantial delays in the mailing of social security checks. Whenever possible, a C. B. will assert that the budget cut is certain to result in the loss of jobs. The threatened employees are sure to write emotional protests to their congressmen. And, as the National Rifle Association has proven, even a tiny minority, if sufficiently vigorous in its expression of opinion-vigorous meaning that they make clear they will vote against you if you fail to help them can move a legislator to take the desired action in the absence of an equally energetic lobby on the other side. C. B. concern about loss of others’ jobs is a deeply personal one. He knows you can’t be a commander unless you have troops to command. Not long ago Jack Anderson dis covered that the Navy, trying to ad just to less money than it had requested, was depriving the fleet of essential maintenance, while continuing to waste billions on useless super-carriers and transforming small Polaris submarines into giant Tridents. The reason of course is that the more big ships with big crews we have, the more admirals we need. Rank in the civil service is also determined in part by the number of employees one super vises. Thus a threat to reduce the number of one’s employees is a threat not merely to one’s ego but to one’s income as well. In its first flush of victory after the 1960 election, the Kennedy Administration embarked on two ill-fated missions. One was the Bay of Pigs. The other was an effort to fire 150 AID employees, all of whom wrote their congressman, as did their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and in all probability their creditors and the creditors’ relatives. The 150 were, of course, reinstated. If a Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan does become President, he might also ponder the lesson of Gail Parker, who found that to keep Bennington College afloat she would have to deprive teachers of tenure and rehire them each year on the basis of their merit and of what the college could afford. The threatened faculty stirred up such a storm that the Board of Trustees, which had originally backed Gail Parker, deserted her and she had to resign. The tenured employee can even go to court. A recent decision by the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a college that fires a tenured professor because too few students are taking his course to pay for it must find another job for the professor, even if it requires dis missing other more competent but untenured professors. Firemen First On the other hand, there are the teachers we don’t want to fire-those in the public schools, for example, where teacher-pupil ratios of 1 to 40 are common. These are the ones C.B. always says he will have to fire when he is menaced with a budget cut. This tactic is based on .the principle that the public will support C. B.’s valiant fight against the budget reduction only if essential services are en dangered. Thus, C. B. always picks on teachers, policemen, firemen first. In the headquarters bureaucracies of the New York City and the Washington, D. C. school systems there are concentrated some of the most prodigious, do-nothing, time-servers of the modem era. No administrator threatens to fire them. If they are “the fat,” and if he is to fight the budget cut, it would of course damage his cause to admit their existence. He must concentrate on threatening a loss of muscle. Similarly, the Army, when faced with a budget cut, never points the finger at desk-bound lieutenant colonels. The victims are invariably combat troops. This is particularly unfortunate, since in government, as in human beings, fat tends to concentrate at the middle levels, where planning analysts and deputy assistant administrators spend their days at tending meetings, writing memoranda, and reading newspapers. Sometimes, however, the C.B. will be deliberately non-specific about the jobs that might be cut. When the City Council of the District of Columbia recently proposed a $67.2-million cut in the city’s budget, Mayor Washing ton responded with an announcement that he would have to fire 4,000 city employees, but with no indication of exactly where the axe would fall. This tactic is designed to arouse all city employees who don’t want to be among the 4,000-which of course means all city employees-to write the City Council protesting the outrageous cuts. Another approach, which might be called “How Can You Guys Be Such Scrooges,” was tried on the Council by Joseph Yeldell, the director of the city’s Human Resources Administration, who proclaimed that yes, he knew exactly what’ the budget cut would do to his department, it would mean the cancellation of the foster parents program for 2,000 orphans. But such appeals are guaranteed to work only during the Christmas season. The more reliable year-round tactic is to threaten the loss of essential services that affect almost all voters. John Lindsay was a master of this technique. Confronted, for example, with a 1971-72 budget of only $8.6 billion, he said he would have to fire 10,000 policemen, 2,500 firemen, 3,600 garbage workers, 12,000 hospital workers, and 10,800 teachers. In the end, he didn’t have to fire anyone. Abe Beame was not so lucky. He threatened to fire 67,000 similar ly essential employees, and-when the bastards actually cut his budget found that he really had to drop 35,000. There’s the rub. If we really cut the budget of the C.B. who has bluffed by saying that he will have to fire essential employees, he may-to preserve his credibility-actually have to fire them, instead of the middle level newspaper-readers who are the real fat. We could end up with a government of planning analysts, friends of congressmen, and trains running to Bakersfield via Stockton. Original article published in the The Washington MonthIy/March 1976 (credit to my friend J. Ellis for the original posting of this article — it appears that the only place on the Web that it appears was in a scanned format and very difficult to read, so I converted it here to share – please excuse any typos that may have occurred) #CharlesPeters #budgetcuts #sequester #TheWashingtonMonthly #governmentspending #TheCultureofBureaucracy #FiremenFirst #FiremenFirstorHowtoBeataBudgetCut

Love this effort by Dan Hosek. The Life Cube Project Friend created this logo for The Life Cube Project. View original post

Civil Air Patrol honors members at ceremony June 11, 2009 More than 130 area members of Civil Air Patrol gathered to congratulate New York state’s first General Carl A. Spaatz Award recipient since 2005. Cadet Natasha Cohen of Dobbs Ferry was honored in a ceremony at Wing Headquarters at the Westchester County Airport. Named for the first Air Force chief of staff, the award is Civil Air Patrol’s highest cadet honor. The evening also celebrated the lengthy career of White Plains resident Lt. Col. Johnnie Pantanelli as a local leader of influence in this volunteer organization. The evening culminated in the renaming of the North Castle Composite Squadron in her honor. The General Carl A. Spaatz Award is a rare national honor, presented to cadets who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, character, fitness and aerospace education. http://www.lohud.com/article/20090611/NEWS02/906110339/1216/NEWS0204