February 7, 2018--Rupert Murdoch's Boys

Rupert Murdoch, worth at least $13.1 billion, owner of various news outlets and TV stations, including in New York, the salacious Post and, nationally, the Wall Street Journal (known for its Neanderthal editorials and high-quality reporting), entertainment companies such as F/X and the National Geographic channels, and of course the nefarious Fox News Channel, home to the likes of Bill O'Reilly (gone but insufficiently forgotten) and Sean Hannity (still awaiting his ultimate fate), Rupert, now married for the 10th or 11th time (kidding) to Mick's Ex, Jerry Hall, approaching 90, with at least half his marbles (enough to talk to Donald Trump almost nightly offering advice and encouragement) has for the past couple of years been dividing and turning his empire over to his two adult sons, James and Lachlan--the entertainment division to the former and the news operation to the latter. 

This represents an opportunity, perhaps even hope, especially for his media holdings in America as son Lachlan is reputed to be of a more liberal persuasion than his father (he pushed vigorously to fire Roger Ailes when his sexual harassment behavior was exposed) and might, just might be inclined to calm things down at Fox by dumping the evening opinion shows (right-wing rants) and while he's at it the insipid morning show, Fox&Friends, which Trump watches religiously and from which he gets many of his most corrosive and paranoid daily talking points.

But then again, Lachlan's half of the pie is the most profitable part, netting the Murdochs nearly $1.0 billion a year in net profit.

Though the money keeps pouring in, Fox News's viewership is aging out and dying off. Their 3.3 million daily viewers are on average 68, almost old enough to be required to begin drawing down their IRAs.

With these trend-lines there's no real future for Fox News as it's currently configured while for Lachlan, only 46, it is too soon to be presiding over such a geriatric operation.

Then, though he holds dual citizenship (he was born in England but lives in America) he is more American than Brit and thus to have a life in New York and Aspen, where he owns a sprawling mansion, to live a cosmopolitan life, presiding over Fox News as it spills hate out over American airwaves, to be responsible for Sean Hannity, is a cultural and social problem. And not to forget, these mesmerized viewers led the spawning of the Trump constancy. No Fox, no Trump.

I can see the possibility of son Lachlan guiding Fox in a still conservative but moderate direction. There is a younger viewership for that and so the bottom line, over a carefully staged transition, would not be undermined. The Fox News channel would remain a cash cow.

On the liberal side, the Washington Post and New York Times (both at the time, as Fox, family owned) over a decade morphed from outlets for traditional Republican editorial policy into liberal institutions. (The New York Post, another example of generational transition, was for many decades very liberal, at times, socialistic, and then along came Rupert Murdoch.)

So there is precedent. Above all, one cannot overemphasize the propensity of children, when inheriting businesses, to want to put there own stamp on things. (That's the Trump story, isn't it?) Of course, children (sons) thinking they're smarter than the "old man" frequently wind up bankrupting the family business. (That's the Trump story, isn't it?)

In regard to Fox News, if that were to happen, I could live with it.

The Murdoch Boys

December 9, 2016--Donad Trump As Lady Gaga

I never reprint entire articles but am making an exception today because Wall Street Journal Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger wrote something the other day, "Donald Trump as Lady Gaga," that captures an essential part of Donald Trump's appeal--something I have been attempting to write about for more than a year-and-a-half in part to resist that appeal and even to counteract it.

Since Henninger does this so much better than I, I could not resist passing his column along in its entirety  Especially note the sentence I set in italics.

It is 12:13 a.m. and the president-elect of the United States, who has just named retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as his Secretary of Defense, is watching “Saturday Night Live.” Alec Baldwin is impersonating him. The president-elect tweets:

“Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable!

Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad.”

Twenty minutes later, from the SNL set, Alec Baldwin tweets he’ll stop if the president-elect will release his tax returns.

How is it possible that a man who selects Jim Mattis for Defense on Thursday can be in a tweet smackdown with Alec Baldwin Sunday morning?

The answer is coming into view. Donald Trump is Lady Gaga.

He is a performance artist.

He is challenging what we think is normal—first for a presidential campaign and now for the presidency.

He’s Andy Warhol silk-screening nine Jackie Kennedys. You can’t do that. Oh yes he can. Currently Donald Trump is silk-screening American corporations: Ford, Carrier, Rexnord,

Andy Warhol called his studio The Factory. Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon are now in Donald Trump’s Factory. Like everyone else, they’ve got to figure out what’s coming next.

Lady Gaga once talked about the doubters in an interview: “They would say, ‘This is too racy, too dance-oriented, too underground. It’s not marketable.’ And I would say, ‘My name is Lady Gaga, I’ve been on the music scene for years, and I’m telling you, this is what’s next.’ And look . . . I was right.”

Who does that sound like?

In “The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump described what he was up to: “I play to people’s fantasies.”

Anti-Trumpers will say: Precisely. We can’t have a performance artist as president of the United States.

That’s irrelevant now.

In four years it may be possible to say that making a performance artist president was a mistake. But that will only be true if he fails. If the Trump method succeeds, even reasonably so, it will be important to understand his art from the start.

So far, the media and the comedians are stuck in pre-Trump consciousness. You’d think the comedians would get it, but getting laughs from left-wing audiences has taken a toll.

Consider two Trump tweet performances:

Jill Stein commences her preposterous recounts and the press analyzes the threat to the Trump electoral-college victory.

Suddenly, the president-elect tweets that “millions” voted illegally for Hillary. The press pivots from Jill Stein to prove, across several days, that the Trump claim is “bogus.”

Like any smart performance artist, he’s made the strait-laced audience part of his act.

One day later, @realDonald Trump tweets: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Now he’s the Queen of Hearts. Off with their heads! And like terriers chasing another tossed ball, the media ran down every case on the subject to prove, “court rulings forbid it.”

That is true. The courts forbid it. But if it is important to comprehend a president’s mind and intentions, it will be pointless if the media does nothing more the next four years than consider its job done if it microscopically fact-checks and flyspecks everything Donald Trump tweets.

Donald Trump treats the truth as only one of several props he’s willing to use to achieve an effect. Truth sits on his workbench alongside hyperbole, sentimentality, bluster and just kidding. Use as needed.

Another important distinction: Performers merely entertain. Performance artists challenge, subvert and alter. They may be slightly crazy, but they’re crazy serious, though usually a little unclear about where they’re going.

Donald Trump’s voters believed the country was going in the wrong direction—the most powerful metric in the election. They thought he was the one person who shared their sense of wrong direction. These voters wanted to move from point A (Obama) to point B (post-Obama), and they were willing to see the facts bent if indeed they could arrive at point B, such as an improvement in their economic well-being or escape from the politically correct alt-left.

Treating the presidency as political performance art has multiple liabilities. An initially exciting performance can turn tedious. I’ve talked to Trumpians, die-hards from day one, who think the tweets worked in the campaign but not for the Oval Office. An overworked exclamation point loses its meaning!

Will Donald Trump, like Madonna, be driven to ever more outrageous public performances (“Cancel order!”) to keep the world’s attention trained on his persona? From Beijing to Washington, he’s got the world’s attention.

Some of America’s most charismatic presidents were also public performance artists who challenged and overturned status quos: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan. All of them knew that a successful American presidency would be measured by a totality greater than their public performances.

May 14, 2015--"Mobile Is Now a Magic Word"

Thus proclaimed the New York Times yesterday in two articles above the fold about Verizon's $4 billion dollar deal to acquire AOL.

Remember AOL's dial-up days? Well, that remnant of AOL's business wouldn't be worth $4 bill, but its lesser-known mobile and advertising technology is. At least to Verizon.

We'll see. Remember the Time Warner-AOL merger? From that disastrous situation Verizon should beware.

It appears that this time the deal is all about mobile. Since people are turning more to their mobile devices (smart phones and such) than their clunky PCs and laptops, everyone in the IT business is trying to figure out how to make money off those tiny screens. Traditional ads don't work so well in five-inch formats so what to do?

In Verizon's case scoop up AOL. In the case of traditional news companies and magazines, both of which are turning quickly into dinosaurs, it appears that they are scrambling to move as fast as they can beyond their digital offerings (like the NY Times on line) because these, though making some money, are not making enough to sustain high-cost operations such as the Times beyond the next few years.

So with newspapers such as the Times and the Wall Street Journal and networks such as NBC News realizing that young people especially--the Holy Grail for some reason for advertisers--are getting most of their news from places like Facebook, they are trying to figure out what to do--even at their potential peril. And so they are moving to make deals with Facebook which would allow them to publish some of their products--articles in the case if the Times and WSJ, and video content in the case of NBC. With or without ads since the reason NBC and the Times are agreeing to do this is the hope that mobile users will see what they are missing by not reading the whole NY Times or tuning in to the Nightly News to watch whomever will wind up replacing Brian Williams.

Traditional media have no choice because, as the Times reports, "That's where the audience is." The fear, of course, is that Facebookers will read one feed on Facebook from the Times and rather than race to subscribe to the paper's on-line edition, will feel that they got enough. They now know more about what is going on in Saudi Arabia but have no interest in anything else. So why pay the Times a monthly subscriber free when they can get what they want for free via Facebook.

The Times already represents from 14 to 16 percent of all Facebook traffic--amazing and counter-intuitive--and so they are gambling that this new arrangement will net them more direct readers.

Again, we'll see.

Facebook already plays a gatekeeper role in regard to the news available to members. Including what they choose to put on line from the Times. So who knows what the result of all this reconfiguration will be. It could work for the paper of record or accelerate putting them out of business.

So where does that leave me? I've been running Behind the (New York) Times for nearly 10 years. Thus far I've published 2,582 posts. Will this mean that if I want to try to keep my blogging going for another decade, with the Times relegated to spot appearances on Facebook, that I'll be needing to call what I do something else?

Say Faceless.com or Saving Face.com or, my current favorite, Face It.com.

All suggestions are welcome.