Sinclair Drops Nielsen For Rentrak In 4 Cities

The broadcast group owner opts for StationViews Essentials rather than renew contracts with Nielsen in Salt Lake City, West Palm Beach, Providence and Austin. It says it will consider "similar moves in other markets when our contracts with Nielsen come up for renewal in the near future.” TVNewsCheck, June 26, 2012 11:23 AM EDT Sinclair Broadcast Group announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Rentrak Corp. to replace its expiring Nielsen Media Research service with Rentrak’s StationViews Essentials service at the stations Sinclair recently purchased from Four Points Media Group:

The 5 stages of leadership development

CBS MoneyWatch By Steve Tobak May 24, 2012 COMMENTARY Everyone goes through the same stages of human development on the road to adulthood and maturity. Unfortunately, some of us get stuck in one stage or another, stunting our growth and rendering us dysfunctional. We look just like ordinary adults, but we actually behave a lot more like children, acting out, throwing tantrums, and generally making life miserable for everyone around us. It's pretty much the same thing with executives and business leaders. The only difference is that, instead of just messing up their own lives like ordinary people, dysfunctional leaders influence the lives, livelihoods, and investment portfolios of hordes of employees, customers, and investors. 7 signs of a dysfunctional boss How to deal with a bad boss 7 signs of a dysfunctional company If I took a virtual snapshot of all the boardrooms I've been in over the years, I'd estimate that maybe a quarter of the executives and directors I've worked with have gotten themselves prematurely stuck in one of the following stages of leadership development: Stage 1: Sponge. You listen and learn from everyone and every situation as you try to figure out how things work in the real business world. Just like a baby learning to walk, you look really cute stumbling around like the clueless neophyte you are. The good news is you have no real responsibility, so you're not in a position to cause any real damage. You just fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again until you get it right. Stage 2: Proof-of-concept. Believing you're actually capable of accomplishing something besides making a complete fool of yourself by promising the world and delivering next to nothing, you set out to prove yourself worthy of the management title that, in all likelihood, you've already been granted. Stage 3: Delivery. Congratulations, you've somehow managed to deliver the goods and succeed in doing something that can credibly be viewed as a business success. In other words, you made money for somebody and got rewarded with a nice fat bonus. You think you've finally arrived. Won't your spouse be thrilled? Stage 4: Reset. A little full of yourself, you try a repeat performance using the same tricks that worked the first time and realize--too late--that you're going to need a bigger playbook to consistently make it in the big leagues. Failure doesn't sit well with you. In fact, it's downright depressing. So you set out to make sure that never happens again. Stage 5: Maturity. After a few iterations of the third and fourth stages, you finally begin to get how the real world works. You realize you're just like everybody else, meaning you succeed at some things, fail at others, and learn from everything. It slowly dawns on you that being a mature leader isn't that much different from the first stage, except experience has given you confidence and, with any luck, a sense of humor and humility. Win or lose, you look good doing it -- and deserve that bonus, right?

Millennial Management 101

Smartblog on Leadership Events, General Management By Brooke Howell on May 30th, 2012 Generation Y is here, and it’s integral to business’ continuing success, Jennifer Kushell, president of Young & Successful Media and founder of YSN.com, told business owners attending America’s Small Business Summit in Washington, D.C. Also known as Gen Y, the millennial generation and the millennials, this group is between 12 and 31 years old and represents the youngest segment of the workforce. Many of its members are business owners. And — as the business owners in the room for Kushell’s session on “The Next Generation: Changing Business as We Know It” demonstrated through questions and comments — its members are often a source of frustration for employers and older colleagues in the workplace. “The young generation may drive you crazy, but understanding them will help you be less frustrated,” said Kushell, who outlined some of the challenging traits that many members of Gen Y tend to demonstrate. •Many are struggling to figure out what to do with their lives and with the potential they know they have. •They haven’t been taught how to operate in the world of work, and it takes them time and guidance to learn. •Assuming individual ownership and individual responsibility in projects can be hard because they have been educated to work in teams and operate as a group. •They haven’t learned that it’s not what they do to follow the pack that makes them succeed, it’s what they do to stand out and to go above and beyond. •Instead of moving straight from college to career, they make this transition over the course of a decade or so; a period that has been dubbed “emerging adulthood.” •In their mid-20s, they often experience an identity crisis, called a “quarter-life crisis,” because life isn’t turning out the way they had hoped. While they might present challenges, millennial workers also bring a lot of advantages and benefits to the workplace that can help make a business more successful, Kushell said. •Young workers are constantly connected to technology, and it’s part of their culture because they’ve grown up with it. Businesses can leverage this technology prowess and save time and money. •They are great people to hire to start and manage a social media presence, something many business owners are too scared or busy to do themselves. •They’re not only members of the workforce, but also members of your customer base. Some are buying from you now, and others are influencing their parents’ purchasing decisions. •They can help businesses innovate and remain relevant. •They want to do well on the job. The key to conquering millennials’ shortcomings and capitalizing on their strengths is talking to them as individuals and getting to know each one who works with you, Kushell said. Other strategies: •Focus on development because young people need a lot of coaching and mentoring in the early stages of their careers. •Give them interesting work and show they’re a valued member of the team so they don’t get distracted by boredom. •Demonstrate integrity because Gen Y values integrity and wants to work for companies and organizations that show it. •Focus on what they accomplish not how they get the job done because young workers don’t want to be micromanaged. •Demonstrate a clear career path because young workers want examples and explanations of how you move up in business. This is something they haven’t been taught in school. •Offer opportunities for growth because millennials want to keep learning, developing and being interested in their work.

GM Abandons Super Bowl Advertising to Push New Vehicles for 2013

DETROIT -- General Motors' top marketing executive said today the automaker will plow savings from a recent decision to drop Super Bowl advertising into other ads and marketing efforts to support a slate of vehicle launches planned in 2013. In his first public comments since GM confirmed two weeks ago that it plans to pass on advertising during the 2013 Super Bowl, GM global marketing chief Joel Ewanick said he has "started reapplying those dollars to other very efficient ways of doing the same thing." Among the vehicle introductions planned for 2013 -- GM's busiest launch schedule in many years -- are the Chevrolet Impala sedan and the next generations of its Chevrolet Silverado, Cadillac XTS and GMC Sierra full-sized pickups. The pickups are expected to go on sale sometime in the spring; followed by all-new full-sized SUVs based on the pickups later in the year. Time to get friendlier with your GM client....Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Dish’s Networks' Hopper Digital Video Recorder has an Ad Eraser.

New York Times By BRIAN STELTER Published: May 16, 2012 Broadcast television executives came to New York this week, as they do every year, to talk up their new TV shows in front of advertisers. This year, they are having to talk about yet another technology trying to tear them down. The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary. Some reviewers have already called the feature, named Auto Hop, a dream come true for consumers. But for broadcasters and advertisers, it is an attack on an entrenched television business model, and it must be strangled, lest it spread. “How does Charlie Ergen expect me to produce ‘CSI’ ” without commercials? asked Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of the CBS Corporation, in response to questions from reporters on Wednesday morning before his annual upfront presentation. Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, struck a similar note at his network’s presentation on Monday, calling the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. “Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always,” he said. Unlike the music and news businesses, television has been mostly successful at fending off technological challenges. Several network owners worked together to start Hulu, an online streaming Web site intended to curb piracy. This year, when a start-up called Aereo introduced a service to stream New York TV stations via the Internet, the stations banded together in filing two lawsuits to stall it. The lawsuits are pending. The Auto Hop is noteworthy because it originated not from a start-up but from a satellite distributor with longstanding ties to the rest of the TV industry. Dish Network regularly negotiates with the networks for the rights to rebroadcast programming. Without that programming, subscribers would switch distributors. Yet Dish has still decided to promote its ad eraser, which comes with the Hopper, a new DVR that can record all the prime-time programming on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC simultaneously. As network executives tell it, Dish Network is a friend turned foe, once preserving the advertising model but now threatening to turn on a doomsday device. (It didn’t help Dish’s cause that it gave the networks less than a day’s notice before announcing the feature last Thursday.) So they are closing ranks to try to stop it. At least one of the network owners, News Corporation, is no longer accepting Dish’s new DVR ads on any of its television properties. It and several other owners are examining whether they can sue Dish, the same way they sued a maker of DVRs a decade ago, according to several people with knowledge of the deliberations, who insisted on anonymity to speak freely about the internal discussions. James L. McQuivey, a vice president and analyst for Forrester Research, said that “with Dish’s aggressive move to please the end customer rather than advertisers, it’s clear that in the fight for TV revenue the gloves have finally come off.” He continued: “The fact that Dish would be willing to anger some of its most important content partners just goes to show how desperate these times we live in really are.” The desperation stems from the persistent fear that subscribers will forgo paying for television service and turn to Internet alternatives instead. A feature like Auto Hop is a drastic step “to keep consumers interested,” Mr. McQuivey asserted. The technology to automatically skip TV ads isn’t new. TiVo, one of the original DVR makers, flirted with such a feature about a decade ago. Another maker, ReplayTV, actually put such a feature in place, spurring lawsuits from the major TV networks. In 2003, after the owner of ReplayTV filed for bankruptcy, the new owners dropped the feature. A company executive was quoted as saying at the time that “we will take features out because we want to be a positive force in the industry.” TiVo has taken the same approach, promoting ways to deliver ads to viewers even as they’re fast-forwarding through them. “We’ve gone from being a black hat to being more of a white hat,” said Tom Rogers, the chief executive of TiVo. He was an executive at NBC a decade ago when the network was considering making an investment in TiVo. One of the conditions of the investment, he said, was that “they not have an automatic commercial skip.” TiVo’s Web site specifies that its devices “do not offer a commercial skip feature,” though there is a way to turn on a 30-second skip-ahead button. Mr. Rogers said Dish’s all-ads-skipped button takes the notion “to an extreme.” But Dish asserts that the technology actually promotes broadcasting and encourages people to sample new shows.

Persuasion that Prospects Love

CBS Money Watch: Sales Machine May 15, 2012 11:57 AM by Tom Searcy Topics Marketing . (MoneyWatch) I don't know about you, but I am only working halftime: 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm busy, you're busy, and our prospects are busy. Now as a sales person, you want them to make a decision. But the prospects moan, "Who has the time to make a choice?" To help prospects choose you, give them a persuasive mental shortcut. Trust me, they will love you for it. You can gain trust with prospects through a proven persuasive secret called "social proof." The principle of social proof is one shortcut we use to determine what is correct. Humans naturally want to find out what other people think is correct. As a rule, we reason we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. Marketers know this to be true. This is why television sitcoms have canned laugh tracks and commercials use man-in-the street testimonial interviews. Or why we want restaurant reviews from websites like Yelp or hotel reviews from websites like Trip Advisor. Another case in point: You know those cards in the hotel bathrooms that ask you to recycle your towels to help conserve water and energy? Almost all have an environmental message. But one hotel tried a social proof message instead. The card stated: "The majority of our guests reuse their towel to conserve energy and water." That little change dramatically increased the level of towel recycling. The reason social proof is so persuasive is because we are all running on information overload. The ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make automated decision making more and more prevalent. How should you persuade prospects with social proof? The answer is testimonials with measurable results, and here are five ways to do it: Interview past clients to obtain testimonial quotes you can use. Sometimes it is best to get an outside expert like a public relations professional or freelance writer to help you with this. You want to drill down to get measurable results. These include raw numbers (increased sales by $100,000), percentages (improved retention rates to 70 percent, which is triple the industry average) or time (accomplished more in six months than in previous three years). May I please? Get permission to use the person's whole name, title and company name. Just saying, "Sally from Kalamazoo" or Bob from "Cucamonga" just doesn't build trust. If you don't ask, you don't receive. Ask for testimonial letters on client letterhead that you can reprint and use in proposal packages being given to clients. The more you have to choose from, the better. Tell me a story. Ask clients who are willing to be your advocate to record their testimonial stories. One way to do this easily is to hop on a free telephone bridge line and record the call (with their written permission, of course). This can then be used as an audio file on your website or turned into a low-cost audio CD that you can give potential prospects. Be a namedropper. Pepper your selling tools, news releases, website blogs, speeches, seminars and presentations with accounts of individuals who have benefited from your service. Always make the person seem likable, describe the problem in brief and give a measurable result you helped achieve. One of our clients said he helped grow businesses. This became so much stronger when he was able to say he helped grow business by as much as 500 percent. So give your prospects social proof shortcuts. If they are as busy as you are, they will love you for it. PS Dr. Philip Jay LeNoble of Littleton, co knows testimonials om happy, well serviced clients always bode well for renewals and new local-direct revenue development.

The Number One Skill

CBS Money Watch May 4, 2012 11:52 AM By Mary Goodman and Rich Russakoff If there was just one thing you could improve upon that is guaranteed to make you more successful, would you do it? Well then listen up. We mean it, really - listen up and listen better. The better we listen, the more others appreciate us and, in return, the more they listen to us. By listening better, we learn more and misinterpret others less. It seems that some people are just naturally good listeners but the truth is listening is an acquired skill. One that, with any improvement, will yield great benefits. Let's take a look at few of the barriers or bad habits that get in the way of effective listening. See which ones you might be guilty of. (We know which ones we're guilty of.) Multi-tasking - Do you ever look at your phone or check emails during a conversation? If you think you can multi-task while listening, then you don't know what you're missing. It's also painfully obvious to the other person when we are distracted. Me, Me, Me - If your major concern is how others perceive you, or what you'll say next, then you can't focus on what is being said. Brain Speed - If our thoughts outpace the speaking style of the person we are talking with, we tend to let our mind wander. Or we interrupt the other person because we believe we know what the person is trying to say but taking too long to say it. What did you Say? - Hearing loss can adversely affect every conversation, from missing out on a pleasant exchange to serious safety issues. It is estimated that there are more than 35 million Americans that are hearing impaired. Less than 30% use hearing aids. If you suspect you have a hearing problem, get tested. If you know you have a hearing problem, get hearing aids. If you own hearing aids, wear them. Line Butting - You're bored with the subject so you interrupt and introduce a new topic. Or worse, you start talking about yourself. So how did you do? If not as well as you liked, here are a few things that you can do that will dramatically improve your listening skills. Paying attention pays off - The first and most important thing you can do to improve your skill as a listener is to give the other person your undivided attention. In the words of Gandhi, "Wherever you are - Be there." Listen with your voice - Say "no kidding", "um hmm", "go on", or by paraphrasing, which, by definition, is the act of restating or rewording what others say. Psychologists call this "Active Listening". Say, "So what your saying is..." Or simply repeat the last thought the other person said. There is no better skill for effective listening then paraphrasing. If you've heard correctly, the other person will generally respond with an enthusiastic yes or nod. If you've heard it wrong, they'll know they need to clarify. Paraphrasing gives them the opportunity to restate what they said so accurate and meaningful communications take place. Listen with your body - Lean forward, put your hands on your chin, or listen with open arms. When your body conveys a listening posture, others become more comfortable and open. If appropriate, take notes. In a business meeting, it shows your interest and helps you stay focused. Nodding is also a key component of your listening posture. And smiling. Smiles are contagious and make others feel comfortable, and the more comfortable we are, the better we communicate. Establish and maintain eye contact. Not only is this reassuring to the other person, but it enables you to read their body language which can convey more than their words. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot by just watching." Button up!! - Don't interrupt. You hate it. So do others. It's rude. Unless you're seeing a fire erupt behind the person speaking, let them finish. Encourage them to fill out their thoughts by saying, "tell me more." When we interrupt, the other person loses their focus and we lose the opportunity to fully understand what they're trying to convey. Make a conscious effort to see how often you interrupt others over the course of a day. Hopefully, it won't be a rude awakening. Ask questions - In the words of Stephen Covey, "Seek first to understand, then be understood. This involves a very deep paradigm shift. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking or preparing to speak." Talk less - A good philosophy is that conversations should not just be about you, but about we. As the Greek sage, Epictetus, observed: "Most of us were born with two ears and one mouth." That's a pretty good ratio between listening and talking. Now - are you ready to listen?