Monday 11 April 2011

Hollywood Babble On & On #709: How To Succeed In The Media Without Actually Succeeding

Katie Couric is getting ready to leave her job as the anchor for the CBS Evening News, ending a run marked by viewership numbers going down, and the few remaining viewers being old enough to remember "Taftonomics," while they wonder why Walter Cronkite is looking so dag-gum effeminate lately.

You're probably thinking that her career prospects are pretty dim right now because of that failure.

Well, no.

Currently reports and rumors say that she's fielding offers to work on 60 Minutes with CBS, NBC, ABC, and even a daily talk show with former Today Show co-host Matt Lauer, masterminded by former NBC-Universal CEO Jeff "Screw It Up Royally" Zucker.

So why are the major networks running to hire someone who had done so poorly?

Well, it's not because to succeed in major network media, you don't really need to be successful, you just have to be important in the world that the TV network decision-makers dwell. The folks who do the hiring and firing at the big networks and media companies live in a world that is smaller and more insular than even Hollywood. They literally only know each other, and if you are important in their social circle, then they assume that you must be important to the rest of the planet.

Sure you might have a reputation of being hard to work with, you might be really expensive to employ, and you might not be able to attract the ratings making the hassle and expense worthwhile, but that doesn't matter. If you're one of the chosen few belonging to the right boards, committees, and clubs, you're in and only the most extreme, disastrous, putrescent failure is going to get you out.

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