http://BaKaForumblog2010.wordpress.com
There is a 24 year old Paul Simon song that comes to mind in anticipation of BaKaForum 2010, now just one week away. It is Boy in the Bubble, the first song on the Graceland album.
"These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all"
That refrain is heard repeatedly throughout the song. The rest of Boy in the Bubble uses words and music to evoke images of technology being used for lifesaving medical purposes along side acts of terror and war. Whether the camera follows us in slo-mo or normal speed, these days, cameras are everywhere. How we choose to use the cameras is a bit like the juxtaposition of images in Simon’s song.
Neil Postman, a communications scholar and commentator on culture, described technological change as “a Faustian bargain.” According to Postman “Technology giveth and taketh away, not always in equal measure.” In its own way, Simon’s song captures this idea rather well. Which brings us back to BaKaForum.
Images of the worlds we live in today are the building blocks of stories captured and presented at BaKaForum. The various screenings, sessions, and workshops while practical in purpose, convey a point of view that is designed to increase “cooperation in a world of cultural diversity,” a clearly stated theme of BaKaForum. This positive approach, to storytelling and the technologies that make media’s current incarnations possible, is encouraging.
But the realities of Faustian bargains in many parts of the world are also captured with a sense of realism in much of the work at BaKaForum. Somehow it seems a fitting metaphor for a conference convening in the land of Goethe, 
the great storyteller and probably Faust's best known expositor. Goethe artfully used the tools and media of his day to explore the complexities of life.
So in these days of miracle and wonder it is refreshing to come together, with storytellers from all over the world, for four days in a quest for cooperation in all its diversity.
How does NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker keep his job and keep getting promoted? Maureen Dowd very publicly raised those questions in her New York Times column, on Wednesday. The headline on the column was “The Biggest Loser.” Many of us who have worked in television, especially those with NBC experience, have been asking the same questions for years.
An inescapable part of Zucker’s legacy will be the failed experiment of moving Jay Leno to prime time. Now, just four months later, NBC is going to move Leno back to the traditional Tonight Show time slot following the late local news.
Perhaps less obvious to those outside the business has been the erosion of NBC’s local news operations. Once thriving stations owned by NBC now struggle in their markets. Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Diego, no longer enjoy the news ratings success they did ten years ago. For years, TV stations have been doing more with less, then even more with even less; in the process many truly lost their way. This shrinking budget syndrome, followed by falling ratings, is not exclusively the problem of NBC; others, too, have had similar losses. What is distinctive about NBC is that very little has been done to replace popular shows or improve the stations. The once proud peacock now shines mostly on big events like the Olympics and Superbowl. “Must see TV” has become mundane.
During my time as an NBC news director in San Diego I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff Zucker when he was executive producer of the Today Show. I found him to be friendly, thoughtful, and extremely creative. His later success did not surprise me. Like much of the industry in the last decade NBC had to adjust to changing technology and demographics. But rather than concentrate on building for the future NBC cut whenever it could and reacted only when it had to. The mantra that owning a TV station was a license to print money became drowned out by the ever-louder litany of doing more with less. Eventually people noticed and stopped watching. And when younger “customers” started to trade in their TV remote controls for laptops and text enabled smart phones nobody seemed very concerned.
For NBC and its TV stations to make a comeback will require renewed focus on building something of value and a clear understanding that cutting costs alone will not improve the assets. The media ecology is changing rapidly and only the nimble will survive. Playing it safe, doing things the way they have been done before, only more cheaply, has been a prescription for failure. Most important, commitments to presenting stories that matter about a station’s community must again become central to the way stations operate.
Jeff Zucker has a lot of company when it comes to leaders of failed or struggling media enterprises. Once mighty newspapers have folded and upstart hyper-local websites are trying to fill the gaps. Local television should have an important place in the new ecology. But leaders who only think about cutting the fat sometimes get so carried away they eventually destroy vital organs. Zucker’s desire to save a few bucks by replacing expensive dramas with the less costly Leno show at ten should serve as an object lesson for anybody who believes the key to success is doing more with less.
ruhe Forum on educational TV, starting in about two weeks. The program alternates each year between Basel, Switzerland and Karlsruhe, Germany. This year it is in Germany. The actual forum, known better by its acronym--BaKaFORUM--begins on January 29th and goes through February 2nd. I attended BaKaFORUM, in Basel, in December of 2004 and I'm delighted to attending this year in Karlsruhe. We are currently building the blogsite for the conference. Take a look, even though it is a work in progress.
the sort of gathering that encourages because it is about building rather than diminishing, both tangibly and otherwise. JTM attracted journalists, community leaders, and thinkers (some crossed all the categories :-)) to envision ways to bring together legacy journalism and newer hyperlocal and specialty media for the good of communities. I had a chance to visit with Tracy Record, of the West Seattle Blog. Tracy and her husband Patrick created one of the more successful entrepreneurial news websites in the country. Tracy and I worked together 18 years ago at KNSD. The good news is that some of these local websites are doing well--some even thriving--both editorially and financially.
