Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Seems to Drop Acid as Newspapers Fail

NewsBusters ^ | March 17, 2009 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishes it final print edition. So what kind of advice are newspapers getting from people whose job it is to help them remain in business? If they are relying upon advice from Lee Abrams, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company, the future of newspapers is indeed bleak. The advice offered by Abrams sounds like nothing more than the street corner rantings of an aging hippie who has endured way too many acid trips. Is your humble correspondent perhaps exaggerating a bit? Check out the latest Lee Abrams memo via The Daily Pulp and you be the judge:

THINK PIECE: CHANGE

First off, WGN-AMERICA is going through a significant redesign:

There's a great deal of excitement behind the scenes with the evolution of WGN-AMERICA. Below is a little sneak peek at the attitude. Sean & his group will certainly be filling everyone in on the details, but we thought you might like to check out this brief preview.

It should be noted that all of the rebranding has been done over a period of a few weeks. Amazing audio logo...sonic treatments...graphics, etc...

THE NEW AMERICA

WHY "AMERICA"? Because there's more to life than Hollywood and Manhattan. The channel will speak to Middle America. TV for the average person living in the average community. Interesting and exciting, but on Middle America terms.

THE PROGRAMMING: As diverse as America itself. From Wrestling to Star Trek to the Beverly Hillbillies. All over the road...and proud of it!

THE LOOK: America. From the inside out. Capturing the span of America from the urban factory to the small town motel. This is America. A video postcard of the American vista.

[PJ-Comix]

Keep in mind, this is the guy who is advising newspapers on how to improve so as to stay in business.

[PJ-Comix]

PING!

[Da Coyote]

Are you sure he’s not also advising the White House on the side?

[PGR88]

Full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

[Panzerlied]

“Are you sure he’s not also advising the White House on the side?”

Naaaah. Compared to them, this is lucid, sage advice.

[abb]

Rush has a catch-all word to describe this stuff: Psychobabble.

[Arkinsaw]

All over the road...and proud of it!

Isn't that what every cable channel is trying to do? Wrestling on "SyFy"....no music on "Music Television"....reality shows on every channel.

[Psycho_Bunny]

lol....What the hell is this guy prattling on about?

[M1Tanker]

Personally, the best season of television recently was the writers’ strike. With no new mind-numbing drivel to watch, more than a few people realized how stupid and trivial Hollywierd and TV were.

After my tour in Europe, with one AFN channel, I barely even watched TV for years and was much happier. No matter what stupidity these clowns push on us with their “holier than thou” arrogance and elitism (if one could not see that in that moron's ‘memo’ above), less and less people will want to see their filth.

Maybe Hollywierd will go the way of this moron's other clients...

[Designer]

From Wrestling to Star Trek to the Beverly Hillbillies.

Now THERE"S a winning format for sure!

He sure has Middle America pegged!

Or not.

[franksolich]

This is slightly off-topic, slightly on-topic, but I recently read a long book about the history of televison during the 1950s, and came across something new to me.

In the early 1950s, Milton Berle had the highest-rated television show, but then he suddenly and unexpectedly faded away after the mid-1950s.

Milton Berle had been a borscht-belt comedian, and apparently a very good one.

What was going on was that in the beginning of television, sets and stations were concentrated mostly in the eastern coast big cities and out in California, where significant pluralities of the public were familiar with, and liked, borscht-belt comedy.

But television expanded to the southern states and to the vast interior of America, where borscht-belt comedy was an unknown phenomenon, and so that part of the general public wasn’t into it. And “that part” became an increasingly larger and larger portion of television viewers.

Apparently Milton Berle reached a very high height, and then tumbled down the very steep side, very quickly.

I’m wondering if the fate of the print media could be explained this way, too; that as the dissemination of news became more widespread, the part of the public who wanted news, and not ideological pandering, grew by leaps and bounds, and got bored or irritated with the old product.

[PJ-Comix]

Simple. In the early years television was a novelty and there was little competition. After a few years, Berle wore out his welcome.

It was like the early years of eBay. Almost everything sold...and at good prices. I was getting up to 40 bucks for Ren & Stempy T-shirts. Why? People loved the novelty of buying online. Then when the novelty wore off, prices plunged.