Charles Warner is an active blogger at Media Curmudgeon.com and teaches in the Media Management Program at The New School and at NYU. He is also the Goldenson Chair Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

He was a Vice President of AOL Interactive Marketing from 1998 through 2002 and taught at the Missouri School of Journalism from 1988 to 1998. Before that he was VP and general manager of WNBC-AM, New York; WMAQ-AM and WKQX-FM, Chicago; WWSW-AM and WPEZ-FM, Pittsburgh; and CBS Radio Spot Sales.

Charlie is the author of Media Selling, which you can buy on www.mediaselling.us. You an also download his book Media Sales Management from the same website.

Blog Entries by Charles Warner

Victims, Victims Everywhere on Time Warner's HLN

Posted November 5, 2009 | 10:15 PM (EST)


Last week when I blogged about CNN falling into fourth place in the cable news channel ratings, I became a victim of my blogging - I had to watch CNN and HLN to see why HLN might beat CNN in the 25-54 ratings.

Watching CNN was numbingly boring, but not...

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The New York Times and Bloomberg Act as Stenographers for MSNBC on Anti-CNN Coverage

13 Comments | Posted October 29, 2009 | 04:22 PM (EST)


On Tuesday, October 27, New York Times reporter Bill Carter wrote an article titled "CNN Last in TV News on Cable" in which he gave 25-54 ratings and rankings in prime time for the four cable news networks. He did not indicate where he got the numbers.

Sarah Rabil...

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The Media are Schrodinger's Cat

5 Comments | Posted October 22, 2009 | 12:54 PM (EST)


The media today are like the visitor (a dybbuk?) in the opening scene of the Coen brothers' new movie, A Serious Man - no one knows if it's alive or dead. Or, it could be, like Schrodinger's Cat, (a mathematical problem referred to in the Coen movie) in a...

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Rush Thrown For a Loss

51 Comments | Posted October 14, 2009 | 06:56 PM (EST)


Rush Limbaugh was thrown for a loss by the NFL players union when NFL Players executive director DeMaurice Smith "made a move to solidify the union against a bid by conservative talk show radio host Rush Limbaugh as part of a group that aims to purchase the St. Louis Rams,"...

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Google, Group Polarization, and Jon Stewart

Posted October 8, 2009 | 05:01 PM (EST)


A vast majority of people use Google to search for information, and those searches can contribute to group polarization and extremism.

In the October 12 issue of the New Yorker, Ken Auletta, in an article titled "Searching for Trouble" about Google, quotes from Nicholas Carr's book The Big...

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Lots of Content Is Good for Democracy

10 Comments | Posted September 30, 2009 | 02:11 PM (EST)


One of the 6,387 themes in Dan Brown's new best-seller, The Lost Symbol is that God is not an external force or being, but is within each of us. The same might be said of content.

In my last blog, titled "Content Is Not King," I made the point...

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Content Is Not King

6 Comments | Posted September 23, 2009 | 01:44 PM (EST)


Content in not king, unless your first name is Stephen.

In an article in the October issue of The Atlantic titled "The Moguls' New Clothes" authors Bruce Greenwald, Jonathan Knee, and Ava Seave write:

Media executives lament what the Web has done to their business. But...

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What I Learned From Jay Leno's Prime Time Debut: Part III

3 Comments | Posted September 21, 2009 | 09:06 AM (EST)


I watched Jay Leno's prime time debut Monday night and learned: 1) Don't watch Jay Leno's new prime time show; it's dull and overly scripted. 2) Don't watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it's not entertaining. 3) Don't read about TV in the New York Times; its coverage...

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What I Learned From Jay Leno's Prime Time Debut: Part II

3 Comments | Posted September 18, 2009 | 08:37 AM (EST)


I watched Jay Leno's primetime debut Monday night and learned: 1) Don't watch Jay Leno's new prime time show; it's dull and overly scripted. 2) Don't watch prime time terrestrial network TV entertainment programming; it's not entertaining. 3) Don't read about TV in the New York Times; its coverage is...

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What I Learned From Jay Leno's Prime Time Debut: Part I

17 Comments | Posted September 17, 2009 | 04:45 PM (EST)


Monday night I watched the Yankee game on the Yes network in New York. It was an exciting game highlighted by good pitching, timely hitting, excellent base running, and savvy managing. It was great television because it was unscripted and, thus, had an unknown and surprising outcome.

During commercials and...

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The Verizon-Citi Visa Scam

13 Comments | Posted September 9, 2009 | 05:16 PM (EST)


My BlackBerry 8830 died a painless (to me) death this summer, so I went to a Verizon wireless dealer in Rhode Island to see if it could be fixed. No. So I got a new BlackBerry 9630, which I really like, especially because I got a $100 rebate - until...

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A Hippocratic Oath for Media Executives

5 Comments | Posted September 2, 2009 | 09:34 AM (EST)


This week, as I prepare to teach my first graduate class, Media Sales and Sales Management, I'm recording the first two presentations I give to students: "What Is Selling" and "Sales Ethics."

I begin the semester with the ethics presentation/lecture to reinforce the vital importance of being honest...

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Beck Not Worthy of Sanction

117 Comments | Posted August 26, 2009 | 02:27 PM (EST)


Liberal readers were outraged and conservative readers were supportive of my blog post advocating that advertisers not pull their advertising from Glenn Beck's program on the Fox News channel in response to a proposed boycott of their products.

The comments and debate have been filled with intelligent...

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Get Real Blodget; News Corp. Won't Fire Glenn Beck

15 Comments | Posted August 20, 2009 | 09:06 AM (EST)


In the lead post Wednesday on Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget wrote a blog titled "News Corp. Should Fire Glenn Beck."

I'm a regular reader of SAI and think that Blodget often has penetrating insights into and analysis of internet and media companies. However, I think his emotions...

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Advertisers Should Not Cancel Ads in Glenn Beck's Program

145 Comments | Posted August 19, 2009 | 11:05 AM (EST)


Last week commentator Glenn Beck lost several advertisers in his Fox News program after he said President Obama was a racist with a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture," according to the NY Times.

According to THR.com "Color of Change, an African-American online political...

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O'Reilly, Beck, Olbermann and Maddow: Venomous Snakes?

132 Comments | Posted August 12, 2009 | 03:45 PM (EST)


In a blog last week titled "Murdoch and Immelt: Business Is Business," I wrote:

Thus, Fox News and MSNBC have huge investments in their stars O'Reilly, Beck, Olbermann, and Maddow. They created these venomous snakes, they have long-term contracts with them, and most importantly, they depend on them...

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Murdoch and Immelt: Business Is Business

53 Comments | Posted August 5, 2009 | 08:47 PM (EST)


According to a Los Angeles Times story by Joe Flint, News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch and GE's Jeff Immelt met in June to discuss the vitriolic on air sniping back and forth between the Fox News Channel's nasty conservative Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's nasty liberal Keith Olbermann.

Here's what Flint...

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Media Health Care Coverage Is Unhealthy

4 Comments | Posted August 2, 2009 | 11:32 AM (EST)


Most of the dinosaur media's coverage of the government's effort to reform the nation's broken health care system is inadequate and unhealthy. Much of the news coverage concentrates on strategy -- the horserace -- not on the issues. Many media organizations are covering the health care debate like they cover...

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The Economist Eats the WSJ's Lunch

38 Comments | Posted July 22, 2009 | 02:27 PM (EST)


Because there is so much information available on the internet free and because more and more people are using the internet as their main source for information, consumers of information content are becoming more discriminating. Interesting, well-written, thoughtful content thrives and boring, poorly written, mindless content gets little or no...

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The NY Times Made Me Do It

7 Comments | Posted July 16, 2009 | 02:42 PM (EST)


I wrote a blog titled "MBAs Are '...a Menace to Society.' George Bush and Katharine Weymouth Are MBAs" after I read an article in the New York Times by David Carr titled "A Publisher Stumbles Publicly at The Post." The first paragraph read: "Katharine Weymouth, the relatively new publisher...

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