Media is Accounting

Yesterday, I read Seth Godin’s post about media.  He’s shilling for his podcast class but he makes some good points along the way.  By the way, podcasts can be intimidating to start.  We looked at doing it but since there was just two of us and we had a lot of other things to work on, we didn’t get one going.  I started a podcast with TopStep Trader and it’s produced by Griffin Caprio of Dante32.  Even if you take Seth’s class, which wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, I’d give a call to Dante to talk about the logistics of building, managing and operating a podcast.  I’d appreciate your feedback on the podcasts we do in the comments section of the blog.  But, I digress.

Mr. Godin makes that point that established players always scoff at the new upstarts.  They ignore them and by the time they are ready to do something, they are caught flat-footed or respond in a pretty lame manner.  He cites a couple of great examples; the radio shows of the ’10s, ’20s and ’30s didn’t transfer to television and become great television shows.  Network television ignored cable.  Newspapers ignored the internet and really blew it.  They had the best opportunity to take advantage of it.  Their chain saws weren’t sharp.

His post got me thinking.  When I was in business school, I took the requisite accounting classes.  Do you know what accounting teaches you to do?  Organize things and look in the rearview mirror.  Accounting is what was.  It’s what happened.  The organization of accounting helps you make sense of what happened.  We have rules established by the private Financial Accounting Standards Board  (FASB) called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that guide the accountants that tally what happened.

To see the future, you had to use microeconomics.  How you saw the future depended on which variables you chose to emphasize, and how you framed the decision you needed to make or the future you were trying to envision.  That’s how innovation happens and it’s the truly innovative part of business school for those that choose to think that way.

Media is like accounting too.  Except, there aren’t any rules except for the rules that the government puts down.  So, it’s sloppy.  It’s lobbied.  Watch the news any night of the week and they only report what happened.  If they prognosticate, they do it in order to instill fear so you will watch or click, not to inform you so you can make a critical decision.  Seth writes, “Businesses make their own choices and suffer the consequences. The Mutual Broadcasting Network was a powerhouse in radio, but no longer. The problem is that these media businesses also narrate our cultural conversation, and that narration is historically wrong and prevents people from seeing what’s possible until it’s already well underway.”  

Today, our cable media sucks badly.  Many stations are simply unwatchable.  Media is trying to control streaming but does a really bad job with it.  MLB might be the worst experience I have had personally, but there are others.  I think you might understand where Bruce Springsteen got the idea for the song 57 Channels and Nothings On.  In my cabin, we don’t have television.  We brought a TV up with a Chromecast for streaming, but we have only used it twice.  I am not missing it.

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It’s not late

A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on Aug 8, 2019 at 7:28pm PDT