Robert Paterson's Weblog

What would you do?

Unlike Canadian Banks, Canadian Media was allowed to concentrate and is now in dire trouble. CanWest, CTV and CBC are are hemorrhaging. It is clear that many of their stations, titles and programs will fold.

I read that CTV offered its station in Brandon to the CBC for $1.0 and that the CBC passed.

This has got me thinking. If I was offered our local paper or say the local CBC station (The Guardian is our paper owned by the sickening Transcontinental Group and may well be on the block soon - If CBC was to cut back - surely CBC Charlottetown would be first to go?)

What would I do?

I have been thinking about this all day and so far I have no answer other than I would not take them on as they are - even for only $1.0

So with no other thought than that - what do you think we could do - for while this is a thought experiment today - it has every chance of being a real question before the end of 2009.

How could a community such as PEI or your place take back its media power from the wreckage of the dying system?

Do great minds just happen to think alike or have I been copied without attribution? By the Economist at that!

Will Pate pointed me to this article in the Economist Today

Here is my recent review on Fast Forward and here is my first article on the topic in 2004.

Is this just a happy coincidence? What do you think?

How a newspaper dies - The staff tell the story of Rocky Mountain News

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo. Will this happen to your paper? Might happen here on PEI with the Guardian.

Canwest Global - A Case Study of all that is wrong with our system

Today the Asper family have to find $100 or start to lose control of their holdings.

This story I think reveals all about what has to be fixed in our system today and as it is so topical is worthy of unpacking.

• Leverage - The heroes of the bubble  did not have to be smart - they needed access to leverage. This is true not only for the Aspers who borrowed just under $4 billion - but also for bankers who claimed they were so clever to earn so much money for their bank. Without the access to the leverage they earned nothing - it was the gearing not the smarts behind the bet that made the money. All the more reason to make the right bet which they did not!

• Not understanding the new web reality in media - Like Sam Zell, the Aspers made the big bet into traditional media at exactly the Wrong time. They did not understand the forces that were turning a license to print money into a vortex of value destruction. Their bankers were equally as blind. All would not see that the web would break the business model. None saw how the web was going to kill the traditional model not only in print but also on TV.

• A failure in regulation - Concentration - Allowing concentration in every part of society is proving to be very damaging. Banks and Car Companies too big to fail mean that the nation and the new and better opportunities are held hostage. We spend too much on keeping the Zombies on life support that prevents the alternatives from getting enough space to emerge. Allowing concentration in media erodes the foundations of democracy. The whole focus of the Asper or the Zell empire now is to push cash flow up to the holding company to pay the bankers for the deal. So titles like the Gazette or the Winnipeg free Press, that have their own struggles are weakened further by their need to serve the Aspers personally

• A failure in regulation - Ownership - The Aspers like many who used leverege for their own ends have an ownership of the group that gives the family all the control. There are many organizations that have this structure. Is this right or helpful? Maybe the greatest failure of modern capitalism is the idea of "ownership". We have the fake public ownership of the Canwest type. We have the fake ownership of many public companies where massive liquidity means that shares are merely flipped by traders. We have the reality of many companies where the managers have no stake and merely loot the enterprise such as Enron - you can think of many examples of this I am sure.

• Not understanding the bubble - Many say that they could not have seen this coming. Well many of us did. The signs were clear since 2006. Many took action. To say that they could not see the bubble is to admit that they were blind. To think that we can get out of this mess by 2010 is equally naive and suggests that those who say this have not done the intellectual and emotional hard work to understand what is going on.

An important reason why the Canadian Banks are doing so well relatively is that the leverage and the concentration issues are well looked after  by regulation. No one can own more than 5%. None can lever by more than a certain level.

These regulations have kept them from being really dumb like their competitors and has now made them among the most resilient in the world

Real diversity is what is required to have a resilient system. Regulation is one way of getting this.

Give the media back to their cities or to proprietors who will care for their property.

Break up the food cartels that keep our farmers in bondage, that treat people in processing plants like slaves, that drive the destruction of the landscape and that feed us with crap.

Regulate the power utilities to serve their people again.

Get behind resilience as a test for regulation.

I think the choice is clear. Regulation that looked at resilience - the banks - has served us all well. Regulation that has served the oligarchs has not. The comparison is not academic.

What is the future of the CBC? Become Vital or Die

Like many media outlets, the CBC is facing a massive ad revenue shortfall - the public figure is $60 million. No help is on offer from the government.

I wonder what the future will be?

To answer that question I think we ed to know what is the central ethos of the CBC?

What I see is that it sees itself as the trustee for Canadian Content on TV. In practice this means shows like Little Mosque or the not lamented Airfarce and surely Hockey!

Surely there can be a higher mission than this? The simple fact is that the ratings for traditional view of content will not be there. People just do not go to a channel to see the best of Canadian content.

So what is a "Public Broadcaster" today? Maybe its not only a "broadcaster"? Maybe it is not a centralized bureaucracy either.

I fear that the Content thinking has limited the perspective of what the CBC can be. The proof of my concern is its response to the shortfall and the government's refusal to help. The CBC is talking about buying more American Shows - suggests to me that content is the fixation. Surely the CBC does not need to compete with the rubbish that fill the dial.

Surely the CBC can use this crisis to re-energize itself and relationship with the country?

What does Canada really need? If we can understand this, then the mission emerges:

• A source of news that can offer us the context we need to understand what is really going on - business as usual, sound bites etc will not help Canadians - we need deep context

• A counterbalance to all the spin we are fed by politics and institutions - never has spin been more prevalent - all the spinners need to be tested and all the silly ideas exposed

• A place where the voice of the community can be heard - a new angle on Canadian Content - less singers and performers more the citizen - there is a wealth of expertise out there. I am not talking about mere comment - I am talking about all the expert knowledge embedded in Canadians

• A place where the best content in the world can be seen - there is room for the "Quality Channel" both on the dial as it were and also for advertisers. Curate and Convene the best from everywhere

• A place where Radio, TV and the Web seamlessly work to support each other

• A real network where the regions become nodes with real local autonomy and develop deep local roots - becomea true network

Such a CBC would be able to defend itself from Ottawa because it would have the support of the people. It would have the votes. It would have the votes because it had become a vital part of their lives.

Nice to have doesn't cut it any more. Only Vital will give the CBC the support it needs.

Now how to start the conversation and with whom?

Clean Coal - A New Film By The Coen Bros

Thanks Gabe - from This is Reality

The Farm of the Future

Before & After

"Farms" like this are popping up all over the western world

Pub Radio and TV - Really Do More for Less in the Support Areas

Many Radio and TV stations are in a financial crisis now with support from all areas including from some States being pulled back.

I have offered a summary of what I have been hearing from many in the system as to how we might work together to turn this around. But I would also like to offer some thoughts today that are more mine about the core of the cash flow issues.

My advice is to avoid cutting into bone - I know of one station where the CFO is also the camera operator - how much leaner can you get without not being able to open the doors! Instead, uUse the network effect to cut costs while increasing capability.

"Support" - Being mainly small, most stations pay the penalty of all small organizations. They have to spend too much on the "support" side of what they do - this includes all their fund raising and engineering. But while they spend too much proportionally for all this support, they don't often spend enough to have outstanding support.

But if each state was to set up a "utility"  in common to serve all the stations in the state - or an even larger one to serve stations in a region - the individual stations would get more for less. They could afford to get more expertise for less allocated cost.

I know there is hesitation here. Who wants to give up control? But having a fund raising operation that is weak or an engineering shop that is over stretched right now is to fail for sure.

This is not a pipe dream. Years ago, the Canadian Banks, who hate each other, put their back offices into such utilities. They work well and truly serve their joint owners.

Can a few good men and women get together and try this?

We buy all this stuff and then.....

Thanks Gabe (KCET)

Many of us are losing a lot these days - How do we cope? David Hoffman shows us how

Thanks to David Moore who sent me this