That was a discussion question posted online by a smart, tech-savvy entrepreneur and media expert. And it got me thinking: are we surprised about any place a person or company advertises these days?

So many people used to question the value of advertising online, because it was either overvalued, overpriced or the ROI was non-existent. Now, the traditional forms of media, like radio, are having their value questioned. Interestingly, it is because radio is somewhat cost-effective, undervalued and the ROI is thought to be difficult to determine.

The truth of the matter is, while traditional media still outstrips digital in terms of reach, we cannot even think of advertising in terms of technology or form of media. We actually have to think of media in a more singular tone and realize that by NOT using all techniques together whenever possible we are really limiting the effectiveness of our own efforts.

Today’s technology enhances the effectiveness of all media. And in the years ahead, the expansion of mobile networks and satellite will take what we think of radio today and shatter it completely. Just imagine if you are a small, cable-casted and/or Internet streaming station? And we go from 4G to the next generation in wireless? People will be able to get Internet feeds in their cars. This potential alone connects to advertising in ways that are not realized, but soon will be.

In 5 years, voice recognition, Internet streaming via subscription and the like will enable even the smallest station or lone individual to reach an unlimited audience, deliver targeted marketing message via SMS and wireless (to a car or mobile device – though, cars themselves might be considered the ultimate mobile devices soon), and then track user activity to gauge the effectiveness of such a marketing campaign.

All this brings me back to the original questions.

1) Are we still amazed that there advertisers on the radio?

2) Are we surprised about any place a person or company advertises these days?

I think the answer is clear: We should not be amazed. Unless, of course, we are talking about newspaper!

The latest evening news ratings for the 2009-2010 season only support this shift. Compared to last year (2008-2009 season), “NBC Nightly News,” ABC’s “Word News” and the “CBS Evening News” (yes, CBS still has news) lost a combined 739,000 viewers (over 330,000 were in age group 25-54, leaving 400,000 -25 and +54). That is a pretty staggering number of people who are no longer getting news from one of three traditional networks.

Granted, last year’s data does include coverage of the 2008 presidential election, perhaps one of the most significant moments in recent memory. However, the drop off does demonstrate that traditional networks need to do more to gain competitiveness with other forms of media and captivate audiences.

In places where this data has been released, it is extremely interesting to view the comments threads. A majority of posters believe that network and cable news programs are biased and largely rhetorical. Instead of providing information that is newsworthy or insightful, many believe news channels contain pure commentary. What this means for networks is that unless they specifically align themselves with a doctrine and build around securing a specific demographic, they are going to continue to lose share to other networks and providers.

The alternative to special interest stories, commentary and light news, which is what the traditional networks specialize in today, is to actually change their programming model to include robust news coverage or to stop being considered as a news source altogether. Either approach may seem like utter lunacy to the networks today, but as audience erosion continues and advertising dollars dry-up, the time experiment and make a new model work is now.

The Xinhua News Agency in North America is based in New York City, and has nine sub-bureaus in the United States and Canada. The agency has more than 120 bureaus around the world.

By the look of their personnel needs (click here to view the release), Xinhua is expanding the scope of its US news coverage. Though this is not a surprise by any means, given the growth China is experiencing, it comes at a time when many traditional news organizations are cutting the size of their domestic bureaus or eliminating them altogether.

Click here to view the release, which includes the positions the Xinhua News Agency is seeking to fill.

The approach acknowledges, at least in theory, that the traditional mass media organizations realize they are not really about mass media anymore, and that they need to specialize and direct their news and coverage and perspective to a specific audience.

Of course, as I wrote back in March, this does have its advantages – particularly in competitive media landscape we find ourselves in today – by enabling an organization to not be all things to all people and instead use limited resources to provide the highest quality product to its target audience.

This is provided, of course, that there is transparency from the broadcaster / news source. Without transparency, you run the real risk of being exposed as dishonest and end up alienating more people than you would have if you simply acknowledged your perspective or slant from the very beginning. A slant or an angle is one thing, but when you act like you have something to hide, people often think you do. And if people feel you are trying to deceive them – your slant is irrelevant, because your entire report is now questionable.

What is fascinating about this is how it relates to ABC and its coverage of the health care debate and President Obama’s plan. If you recall, back in June, ABC provided President Obama with a lot of time to discuss his health care proposal during ABC’s Primetime and on Nightline. Many dismissed the program or were critical of it as nothing more than an infomercial, because no opposition perspectives were included in either program. Not even an opposing commercial. At the time, ABC defended its approach. Even Nightline host, Diane Sawyer, said that ABC’s format and focus on the health care issue had little to do with the marketability of Obama.

Sawyer’s comment is a bit disingenuous.

According to research by the National Center for Public Policy Research, revealed in Amy Ridenour’s Newsbusters story, “ABC News Advertising Review May Explain Why Conservatives Were Locked Out of Health Care Shows”, commercials run on ABC were dominated by member companies of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade association. PhRMA is a significant backer of President Obama’s health care plan.

In point of fact, in the 98 broadcast days of ABC World News the National Center determined that ABC’s World News featured 1,102 commercials, 597 (almost 55%) of which were placed by PhRMA members.

If we assume that media companies are targeting specific demographics now for their media coverage (a directive that comes from its executive leadership), it stands to reason they are going after advertisers that appeal to their audience, just as they will offer programs and special reports that meet the interests of both their target audience and advertiser base. Naturally, if their advertisers are behind an initiative – why wouldn’t ABC tap into the most marketable spokesman of that cause in an effort to appease their advertisers and their audience? It’s a win-win for all sides.

So, at the end of the day, ABC’s decision to air the pro-Obamacare programming had everything to do with marketing and the station’s effort to secure a specific demographic of viewer.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that!

The problem I have is that Diane Sawyer and executives at ABC were not honest or transparent about what they were doing. ABC could have aired the program, discussed the issues and disclosed their financial stake in the plan. Instead, the network fell into a classic trap. ABC was so concerned that people would not perceive the network as an unbiased and credible source of news (remember, people were calling these programs infomercials), that it tried to act like a mass media company and dismiss what everyone saw in the hopes that no one would see it. It ended up making ABC look worse in the process.

ABC has a financial stake in the success of Obama’s health care plan. ABC also has a strategy to reach an audience that is largely favorable to left-wing policies. So, ABC should have no problem airing a program with Obama about his plan.

But by pretending to be something they are not, ABC is not fully adapting to its new mission or to become appealing to the type of viewer they ultimately want to reach.

The decision by the Times does not prevent both sides from reaching an agreement, and is being described by many in media circles as a tough negotiation tactic designed to push the unions to meet Times management demands. According to the AP both sides have agreed to return to the table for talks in about 2 days.

But the bad blood between both sides that I talked about during yesterday’s radio program and that has been published widely in different reports is only growing worse. The Globe unions have called the approach by the Times as “bullying” while others have openly questioned both the management skills of their parent company and their own level of sacrifice. Not exactly the building blocks to a long-term future.

With that said, no one should forget that the NY Times is in a world of financial hurt themselves. Not only have they cut salaries and reduced staff, they have mortgaged their property, borrowed over $200 million, and are believed to have over $1 billion in debt. With diminishing circulations and ad revenues, there is not a lot of positive news in the short term for the newspaper industry as a whole, but especially for the Times and Globe.

The best advice for the Times still remains to either consolidate operations with the Globe, adopt a more defined multi-platform strategy, or to dump the Globe as soon as possible and try and stop the bleeding. In either case, the road is not an easy one – but one has to question the business logic of keeping a division that stands to lose over $85 million this year and will certainly lose money for the foreseeable future.

This kind of bad blood could be the kind of thing that destroys a corporation’s unity and damages its ability to succeed over the long haul. That, of course, would assume that such unity existed previously and that success was something probable in the foreseeable future for either side. In both cases – neither appears true.

Never the less, with this recent extension to Sunday at midnight, it appears that the Globe unions are very close to striking a deal, which will help in the short term, but do nothing to address the structural challenges facing both the Globe and the Times in the long term (if we can call a year to a year and a half long term).

The Globe lost around $50 million a year ago, and was on pace to lose roughly $85 million this year. But with circulation and advertising in a downward spiral (The Globe’s average weekday circulation, for example, fell 14 percent to 302,638 for the six months to March 31 from a year earlier, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations), as more and more people cut costs and get their news and information from other sources – the unions should consider the $20 million to be a gift.

The truth is really stacked in favor of the Globe being shut-down.

For starters, the New York Times cannot find potential buyers (apparently local Massachusetts politicians have struck out as well) because no one sees value in the Globe. Even local patriots to the area (pun intended to the Kraft family) ran away after reviewing the balance sheets.

Another possibility, consolidating newsrooms and resources to help streamline the operations of both the New York Times and the Globe, has been rejected by Times management.

This means the options are few. Either, find some ways to cut costs now and keep the paper on life-support for another year, or shut it down now and stop the bleeding.

Of course, the obvious pinch for the NY Times is that if the unions stand firm and refuse to find $20 million and they do not shut down the Globe, they will look weak to investors. And if they do shut down the Globe? They are admitting a $1.1 billion purchase (The Globe’s sale price a few years ago) of the historic Boston rag was a colossal bust.

At the end of the day, the worst possible outcome for the Globe and the NY Times is if the Boston unions pull their heads together and find the $20 million in cost savings. It does not take a rocket scientists to realize that if you lose $50 million and then lost $65 million (instead of $85 million), you are still… losing money at an unsustainable rate. The question the Times has to ask itself is, regardless of what the Boston unions do – why are they doing this to themselves?

Of course, if you have tuned into my radio show over the last few weeks or talked with me about the situation, you will know that for once in my life I am actually rooting for NY to take it to Boston. This is not an easy thing for me to admit, because when you grow up in the Boston area, everything that is New York is despised.

Never the less, the Boston Globe has until Friday, May 1, 2009, to slash $20 million or it faces closure. I am hoping they do not find the money and the New York Times management decides to close them down. But part of me really wonders if the NYT has the guts to go through with it.

For starters, the Globe lost about $50 million a year ago. This year it is reportedly on pace to lose around $85 million. The very idea that $20 million in cost cuts is going to help save the paper or keep it running for more than another year or two seems ridiculous.

To add insult to injury, the union is refusing to eliminate benefits to reach the $20 million figure, including lifetime employment guarantees to a large number of people in the Globe’s workforce. The NYT is refusing to simply integrate newsrooms between the two papers or find other ways to reduce expenses.

For a company that was remored to have only $30 some-odd million in the bank to $1.1 billion in debt (enough cash analysts predict to last 4 more quarters), one would think the New York Times would cut its losses and let the Boston Globe turn into dust.

Sound familiar? These are the typical buzz words to describe activities in the social web: engage, visible, share, viral, and… free…

But it was about more than just words. We all grew to hate the recording industry for going after people who downloaded music off the Internet. The same became true of video. In short, the Internet and all of us helped to create an ecosystem where content was king, great content was supreme, and all content was free.

Of course, not ALL content is free. If it were, musicians would not make money, authors would not sell books and Hollywood blockbusters would be measured strictly in audience and not in terms of ticket sales and dollars.

Enter the newspaper industry (or print publications a whole if you will). Advertising revenue for newspapers is disintegrating before our very eyes as segmentation means there are too many channels and so companies need to spread-out their advertising dollars. With the economic downturn, even less advertising revenue is headed towards newspapers. To make matters worse, newspaper circulation is declining and their readership going online.

Yet, the newspaper industry is angry and looking to strike back against villains it sees as part of the reason for their falling revenues: websites that use their stories without paying for them.
In a way, I totally empathize with the newspapers. Bloggers and others in the publishing business should not be allowed to steal content from others. The acceptance that exists in the marketplace for theft in some cases and not others is a direct result of how we are being socialized.

However, the issues plaguing the newspaper industry go far beyond some of the content copyright issues being complained about by newspaper and association executives.

According to the Newspaper Association, 2008 was the worst ever for the industry with print advertising revenue falling 17.7 percent and even online advertising revenue dropping — by 1.8 percent. Some newspapers have seen drastic declines in circulation and advertising revenue – some losing as much as 20% or more. Of course, newspapers have been losing ground for years as online and mobile technologies have grown at tremendous rates.

While defending copyrights is an important step for newspapers (and probably something they should have done a long time ago), the real issue at stake for newspapers is that they are often too one-dimensional. They need to develop multi-platform strategies in order to survive. In short, they need to be less of a newspaper and more of a new media company.

Also, while in many copyright cases they may have legal ground, the question ultimately becomes: will there be enough newspapers after cases work there way through the courts to have made the battles worthwhile.

The politicization of reporting is just an example of how media organizations are scuttling the mold of “neutral observer” and identifying more with ideologies as a means to attract specific demographics of viewers. This has tremendous advantages, but it also is contrary to the typical mass-media model. Focusing content and specialization are all traits of the digital age, something mass media does not completely fit into… at least, not in its current form.

The bottom line is – people gather information to gain insight and discern the truth. One of the most important components of that process is to know from what perspective their news is being delivered.

Of course, the dirty little secret we don’t like to tell ourselves is that mass media has always been biased. It just lacked the transparency of intent, and instead built trust on a false perception that it had no other purpose than to serve the common good. Now that their pool of consumers have more options for content, mass media has no choice. The pie is getting smaller, so the need to specialize and find a niche becomes even more critical for survival. Reporting for the masses just does not work anymore.

This is why more politicized news anchors are a good thing. They demonstrate that the system is indeed changing and changing for the better. Consumers will be better able to evaluate the news because the broadcasts will be more specialized and the reporter’s perspectives will be transparent. This will actually help restore some measure of trust in both reporters and their news organizations.