The High Cost of Mediocrity

Back in the days when free agency was new to baseball and Bill Veeck owned the Chicago White Sox Veeck once commented that it wasn’t the salaries that were being paid to the stars that made operating a ball team expensive it was the high cost of mediocrity.

Veeck believed the big name players, the ones at the top of the salary scale, pay for themselves. Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and a few others are the guys who actually bring people into the ballpark. Whether they are actually worth the amount that they’re getting may be another matter but that’s between the ballclubs and their accountants. What inflates the cost to the ballclub is having to pay the utility infielders, fourth outfielders and LOOGys (Lefty One Out Guys) a lot of money to be, largely, interchangeable parts. That’s been going on, spiraling upward, for over 30 years. Until this winter.

Suddenly even the stars are having trouble getting the big bucks and there’s a lot of other good ballplayers, the interchangeable parts, signing for a lot less money. If they’re getting signed at all. Baseball is seeing a huge market correction. Andy Pettitte turned down $10-million a few months ago then signed for $5-million. I’m sure Andy and his family will get by on $5-million if they eat more casseroles, shop carefully, clip coupons and do the rest of the things some of us must do to get by in these difficult times.

The market correction appears to have begun in baseball just as it has on Wall Street but, and this is pretty astounding, baseball would appear to be getting the message well ahead of the financial folks. Manny Ramirez, arguably the best hitter in the Major Leagues today, opted out of a deal that would have brought him about $20-million this year in hopes of getting $25-million or so for several years. It’s getting close to spring training but so far there are no takers.
Meanwhile from Wall Street we keep hearing of bonuses being paid to people who helped the institutions they work for do a thorough job of screwing up their own companies, America’s economy and the world’s economy. The argument in favor of the bonuses for screwing up everything this side of gravity is that they’re the best people in the business and if they don’t get the big bucks and the big bonuses they’ll go to a competitor.

Well, let’s see. These wizards did such a great job that you had to borrow money, my money, to keep your financial institution afloat. Your competitor is at least as bad off as you are. And by the way you’d like some more of my money when I can get it to you just to keep you functioning.
Look, I can lose money hand over fist for half of what you’re paying the imbeciles you have now and I won’t even ask you for a $1.1 million makeover of my office.

I’m no financial genius but just off the top of my head I would think that if my guy does such a whiz bang job that my company is bleeding red ink from every pore like it has the Ebola virus, and the guy who led my company into this situation is spending money like a drunken sailor in a whore house, I don’t believe I’d be too upset if he got stolen by the people across the street.
I might even help. “John Thain is so valuable to us,” I might say over dinner with J. P. Citicorp-BancoGroup, “I don’t know what we’d do if you guys ever got a guy like that. You know J.P. we’d really be screwed.” Then I would accidentally leave a cocktail napkin on the table while I went to the men’s room.

On that napkin I would leave John’s home address, land-line and cell phone numbers, email address(es), the name of his wife, her favorite perfume, the names of their children and all of their birthdays. Of course I’d be prepared to bemoan John’s loss when the J.P somehow managed to steal this most valued and valuable player in our company. I would wonder aloud for the Wall Street Journal’s benefit whether our institution would be able to muddle through without him.

Then I would quietly recruit some reasonably sharp business school graduate, make sure he or she met our minimal moral standards (about on a par with a feral cat), give him or her a reasonable salary and tell the ingénue, “If we all make money you’ll make more. If we all lose money you’ll be looking for work. This isn’t kindergarten. Not everybody gets a trophy. We’ll pay real money for real results. We won’t pay for mediocrity”

Shovel Ready

I’m writing this on a Tuesday and on Wednesday it’s supposed to snow. Quite a bit as a matter of fact. Some say as much as a foot of new snow from this storm. This is a major inconvenience to many and most especially to me but you know what it isn’t? It isn’t news. This is New Hampshire. It’s January. It snows. I don’t much like it but I’m used to it. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s not really out of the ordinary. But it’s been the top story on the local T-V station’s newscasts since Sunday.
Now I understand that we all want to know when it’s going to snow and how much. That’s why there’s a weather segment in the 30 minutes of alleged news that we get here.
Once the snow comes intrepid reporters will be on the air live from several points around the state showing us where it’s snowing while telling us that state officials say we should stay off the road unless it’s absolutely necessary to travel.
So, essential travel includes talking hairdos criss-crossing the state to give us graphic proof that it is indeed snowing not just in our town but in cities and towns all over the state! Lately these people have taken to demonstrating to us what the snow looks like by throwing some at the camera when they’re giving us their (praise be to Jesus!!) LIVE REPORT on the conditions created by the snowfall. The only thing funnier is when they go for a (praise be to Jesus!!) LIVE REPORT on the conditions from the station parking lot. That’s modern broadcast technology at it’s most impressive.
I guess with the economy in the dumper and people in constant migration to new places to try to find work we could have a whole new crop of, say, Mississippians among us who’ve never seen snow before and have absolutely no idea what it is and how it affects things like driving and walking. If you’re one of those people from Mississippi whoever is reading this to you needs to stop now and tell you that it gets slippery outside when it snows. Same thing if it sleets. Even more so for freezing rain. Once you get that into your mind you’ll be fine.
The rest of us know it snows here. It has every winter that we’ve been on the planet and even with global warming it probably will for the rest of our lives. But it does make for good pictures and TV is all about that.
Then there’s the live shot from, well anywhere, that serves no point but to keep cameramen employed and reporters on the street. So let’s say the state legislature passed a major new law today. Tonight at 11 we’ll go (praise be to Jesus!!) LIVE to the State House for a report! Okay, but is there anybody AT the State House at 11 o’clock? Of course not. The legislators, the governor, the attorney general, the janitor and everybody else but the night watchman went home hours ago. But we get a (praise be to Jesus!!) LIVE REPORT because…ummm…because they can. And because “live at the State House” just sounds so friggin’ cool!
I’m all for full employment of cameramen, reporters and announcers (especially radio announcers) and I’m hoping there will be something along those lines in the stimulus package from the Obama administration. I know the programs that get funding have to be shovel ready but let me assure the voters and taxpayers of this great land of ours there is not a special interest group in America that is more shovel ready than those of us in the communications industry.
If we can do live reports from the front steps of empty office buildings and make people think that we’re doing something relevant then we are about as shovel ready as you can get.
Speaking of shovels, you better get yours ready. I hear it’s going to snow. In New Hampshire. In January. Good thing I watch the news, huh?

News, what news?

I’ve been doing it since the days of Huntley/Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Hell, I used to sit next to my Dad and watch John Cameron Swayze do the Camel News Caravan and Douglas Edwards read the news on CBS. My point is I’ve been watching TV news pretty much from the beginning. And maybe I’m just stepping into the cranky part of my dotage but it’s getting harder and harder to do. Watch the news I mean.

First of all if it’s a Saturday or a Sunday you have to FIND the news. If there’s a football game, basketball game, golf tournament, tennis tournament or just about anything else that requires a jock strap (that leaves out soccer, unless we want to include tampons) the networks will often as not either delay or pre-empt the news on the weekend. When they do bother to broadcast it at all it’s usually pretty thin stuff. And it’s becoming more style than substance by the minute. Take last Saturday for example.

On ABC I found the news being anchored by one David Muir. He may be a competent journalist but I’m not sure I could prove that easily. And there’s the problem of his looks. He looks like he just climbed down off a wedding cake. A 1959 wedding cake. That Brylcreem look is one I find somewhat disturbing. Kind of like the Eagle Scout who took an axe to his grandmother.

So I tried CBS. Over there was a young man named Jeff Glor. From the bio on his website we can insinuate that he is about 30. Trouble is he looks like, even though it’s only 6:30, he should call his mother RIGHT NOW so she knows where he is and won’t worry about him not being home for supper on time.

Now I don’t necessarily have to get the news from somebody who looks like he (or she) went to school with Zeus but do they all have to look like they just showered and blow-dried their hair after cheerleading practice? It’s not that I think they should all look like Quasimodo or even Benicio Del Toro but is having finished no lower than first runner up at the pageant necessary for good journalism?

So I settled on Lester Holt over at NBC. Now Lester at least looks like he’s been around the block a few times…it’s an open question whether he had to stop and ask for directions but they’re all starting to strike me that way. I’m getting information from people who literally don’t have sense to come in from the rain…in a HURRICANE!

Anyway I settled down with NBC, the network whose legacy includes Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw. And a few minutes into the “news” they start in telling us about Air Force One. Not the movie, that was a whole different kind of stupid. The President’s plane.

There was no new information about the plane that you probably couldn’t have found on Wikipedia if you were interested enough to look. So the point of the alleged “story” was really to let us know about a program that would be on the National Geographic Channel the following night. These are called “promos” in the broadcasting business and there’s too many of them in the news as it is but when the promos pretend to be news content that frosts me.

On the weeknights I had to give up watching NBC Nightly News because of Jay Leno. Remember when NBC announced that Leno would be appearing on prime time 5 nights a week when he moves on from the Tonight Show? Well that was worth about 5 minutes of conversation during the Nightly News between Jay and Brian Williams. I don’t know what that was but it wasn’t news. And ever since then I haven’t felt the same way about Brian. He seems like a funny, fun guy (he used to show up on Imus in the Morning and he was very funny there) but at the anchor desk he’s just too earnest. Like somebody who wants to be my friend so much he makes me nervous. Come on, I’m not that cool. Truth be told I never was cool at all. If I were a girl he’d be the boyfriend I dumped who just never went away. He’d keep showing up to wash my car and make like Eddie Haskell with my mother.

Then there’s Charlie Gibson. Does smarmy sound about right to you? Yeah, me too. Like a greasy uncle. Probably sells used cars, BMWs but used BMWs. “Excuse me,” he’d insist, “we call them ‘pre-owned.’” Oh, so nobody who owned it before actually used it? What’s the matter, wouldn’t it start?

And now we come around to the CBS Evening News. Which, in terms on content, may just be the best of the three but I just can’t watch it. I never liked Katie Couric when she was with the Today show over at NBC. She was cute and perky I guess but I’m not big on cute and perky. I guess I like old and a little grumpy.

Luckily, it turns out I’m available.