Book Expo America is the large annual convention of the book publishing industry.  For the past few days, thousands of people descended on the Javits Center in New York for the annual ritualistic gathering of the tribes of this 500 year old business.  As regular readers know, this year I have attended the Consumer Electronic Show, the NATPE television convention and the Chicago Auto Show.  Once again I found myself navigating an annual convention of a business that targets the consumer [BEA is primarily for the ‘trade’ or consumer part of the book publishing industry].  I look …

Last week it was reported that the ratings board of the motion picture industry is now going to factor in cigarette smoking as part of the overall rating of a film.  Films with excessive smoking will now certainly get a PG-13, if not an R rating.  The goal is to cut down on the influence on teen smoking behavior.  There is clear correlation between the glamorization of cigarette smoking on screen and people smoking.

While this development is certainly to be applauded from a public health point of view, it does seem to be off the mark if the goal is …

It is often valuable to have a grasp of history when looking to the future.  Too often those that don’t have a historical perspective think that everything is new when in many cases what is new is a refurbished version of a past success model. 

The other day Clear Channel Communications announced that a station it owns in Dallas, KZPS, was going to stop airing 30 and 60 second commercials.  Instead of running lots of commercials, the station will have advertisers sponsor an hour of programming.  During each hour the DJ will spend about two minutes speaking about the sponsor or …

In my post on predictions for 2007, I made a specific prediction that the current Internet 2.0 boom would continue and that eyeballs, dollars and influence would migrate from old media to the Internet.  Now this isn’t crystal ball stuff.  Media and advertising professionals live this reality every day.  Just look at your own life.  How much more time do you spend on-line that you did 10, 5 or even 2 years ago?  The debate is around how fast and how much, not if or when.

I read a news item the other day that was, for me, a historically …