Jerry Maguire's Coming Megadeal: Buy MSNBC

Steve Jobs, Barry Diller, Ted Turner, Mark Cuban, Leigh Steinberg, Herb Allen, Dan Rather, George Clooney, Al Gore, Michael Ovitz: Who will be the next Citizen Kane reaping profits with conscience and class?

Which will happen first: Lou Dobbs standing at the Mexican border with a machine gun? The cancellation of the entire prime time MSNBC line-up of talking corpses except for superstar Keith Olbermann, who gets it? CNBC figures out that infomercials pitching vacuum cleaners are an absurd undervaluation of air time? Or.......

Remember the days of the music business suing twelve year olds and granny, while Steve Jobs stepped into the void with the brilliant pro-consumer capitalism that has made him the single most powerful (and profitable) player in the music business?

Warren Buffett says the reason Wayne Gretzky was such an incredible hockey player was, he figured out where the puck would go next, and got there first. With MSNBC, the cable industry, and the socially enlightened internet masses its back to the future, the original vision of MSNBC polluted by blue suits and talking corpses, which was the potentially powerful mutual synergy between cable television and the higher quality and mega-eyeball communities and content found on the net.

Question for Jeff Immelt and the Board of Directors of General Electric: if Olbermann ratings skyrocket above 400,000, and Joe Scarborough's "Hollywood Hates America" Fox Lite imitation languishes in insignificance, every GE Board Member who believes the Scarborough model is preferable to the Olbermann model, raise your hands?

This is not rocket science, folks.

Pardon my pun, but to understand how to make money in this business, let's give the devil his due and understand his business model. Fox News has a brilliantly conceived strategy, a brilliantly executed plan, and a brilliantly produced product. Setting aside our views of its bias, what Roger Ailes has done is create a marketing, publicity and eyeball driving synergy between the potential power of cable television, conservative talk radio, conservative publishing and the kind of external outreach into the grassroots conservative movement that Air America should have done, on its side, long ago, but has not, to this day.

That's not rocket science, either.

The history of the entertainment business is the history of the marriage of vision with daring.

The greatest mind in the history of the business was the great Lew Wasserman, who aimed at where the puck was headed and saw the power of talent management, then the power of corporate conglomeratization, and the power of translating business from radio to television to motion pictures.

The greatest entrepreneur in the history of cable television was Ted Turner, who saw the puck headed towards high quality, 24 hour news that escaped the chains of the network prison.

The greatest thinker in the history of political communications was Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who emerged from the production of motion pictures and with Jack Kennedy dominated the medium of mass market television that only began with the 1960 campaign.

One of the greatest entrepreneurs in the history of entertainment, as well as the greatest talent who ever walked the stage was Frank Sinatra. How many times did Mr. Sinatra offer this advice to the countless young artists he so generously supported: "Sing the great songs, kid! Sing the Gershwins and the Berlins and do it well and great audiences will find you".

The true genius of the modern music business is Steve Jobs, who empowered the consumer to choose their own great songs, to buy the music they loved at a price that is fair, and created a monetization machine that changed the industry forever.

It is a great history as old as Irving Thalberg as Louis Mayer, who built an industry of studios supporting stars, doing motion pictures the world would remember, and as new as Leigh Steinberg, who invented a new form of sports agenting combining mega-million dollar contracts with young superstars learning about character and social conscience from a master.

The turmoil at MSNBC will set off a chain reaction that will rock the cable industry. Within weeks to months, I predict that while Keith Olbermann's stock will skyrocket, the entire prime time line-up on MSNBC will be wiped off the map, and the when the real battle for content and eyeballs is waged, the real opportunity will be seen, and valued, and the voice of the consumer will be heard once again.

We are a nation that demands more than insider baseball television, Fox Lite television, smear and attack television, vacuum cleaner infomercial television, and Hollywood Hates America television. We live in an age of vastly underserved and ignored audiences, where many of us ask so often "how come we get 100 channels and cant find anything worth watching". We are entering an age of the empowerment of the eyeball, where huge and giant audiences are turning away from the daily newspaper, for better or worse, and ignoring low rated cable shows whose ratings are lower than many family dinners....

In fact, today, there are multiple under-served audiences waiting for a home, ready to reward the Citizen Kane with conscience who gives them respect, gives them product, creates a home for their eyeballs and hearts and a destination for their money through advertising that is worthwhile and memorable, ratings points that make future historians wonder why cable execs today dealt with vacuum cleaner sales pitches and shows with viewers that barely number 200,000.

I have written here that the potential alliance between Dan Rather and Mark Cuban could create a new era of news and information that combines the power of the internet and its audiences, with the power of television in new media and old. My only worry is that Cuban doesn't fully appreciate the power of the model, or Rather sells his talent too cheap.

When Rather finds his Bill Paley, who gives him the time to consummate his ultimate vision of television news, like Washington crossing the Delaware, we will cross the great divide and create a new rennaisance of news that turns the information superhighway into an information superpower.

Imagine 20,000,000 internet news consumers who don't scorn Rather watching Clooney do Murrow, as "unnamed" CBSers told the Washington Post, but view this a badge of honor and would flock to Rather's ultimate vision of what network news could be without the chains of corporate interference, political pressures, or Guantanano-magnitude time prisons that make serious journalism difficult to impossible.

Imagine millions of progressive activists who dont really want liberal news or progressive news, but find repellant the saturation of smear television where disagreements of democracy are labelled treason, or insider pundits imitating bad dinner parties, parroting conventional wisdom to each other, as though the rest of us aren't there.

Imagine giving some cable voice to the many serious internet journalists, many of whom alone bring more eyeballs than Rita and Joe combined, increasing cable ratings, then, by this well earned exposure, bringing more eyeballs to their excellent sites.

Imagine Leigh Steinberg participating in a show where his superstar athletes each get a special hour to talk about the issue they care about the most, the cause they generously donate money to, and with this huge eyeball drawing machine, get greater exposure to internet sites that will stimulate sales of their licensed merchandise with affinity donations to their favorite charity.

Imagine giving Creative Artists and the great entertainment stars top production talent and an hour to discuss, with passion and depth, the issues they care about the most, and their support for groups providing help, whether its Cher supporting the troops, Al Franken and Robin Williams supporting the USO, or Clooney not just bringing Murrow to the screen, but BEING Murrow for an hour, on genocide or whatever issue he chooses.

Imagine using cable television and internet sites, united in purpose, organized by project, to mobilize the great religions and the great talent for a special series on fighting hunger, or mobilizing tens of millions of veterans and military families in a battle to end homelessness among veterans, and bring supporters and opponents of the war together, in the great American family, the true answer to the politics that attacks and demeans, and the media that trivializes and distorts.

Imagine ratings measured in increments of half millions, not tens of thousands; imagine associations of internet eyeballs to monetize their worthy sites and support their worthy causes, creating new promotional machines for the motion picture, publishing and music industries while they attract slumbering corporate advertisers to audiences that matter, and consumers who care.

The possiblities are endless, the business model is clear, the great huge vast audience of under-represented citizens, patriots and eyeballs await the next Citizen Kane who will reap enormous profits with conscience, as Thalberg did with film, as Turner did with cable, as Steinberg did with sports, as Jobs did with music, as Wasserman did with agenting, as Sinatra did by always knowing that even the greatest voice reaches the truest heights, by always singing the great songs. email: [e-mail]