Yahoo, Yang and company have escaped their unwanted suitor. Analysts are still trying to force the marriage. But now the only possible thing that could make this union attractive to Microsoft/Balmer is the time it would save them in seeking new alternatives. A task they have probably already begun anyway, but still not a welcome one.

The problem Yahoo! faces is much larger. In their desperation to escape Microsoft they explored myriad alternative mergers/partnerships or sales and for whatever reason; money, control, logo size, either Yang or the other party (AOL, NewsCorp, Google…..) found all of them unacceptable.

Now the stock is stuck, faith in the leadership has evaporated, shareholders are suing and their only option is to stand alone. This really is the classic case of “be careful what you wish for.”

Or call Steve Jobs. Ok, it is a mad idea but I can’t let go.

CBS announced their March Madness results and it seems that at least in this contest, the underdog has triumphed. CBS made more per their online viewer than per their offline viewer (let’s say it together, NETWORK TV). Specifically CBS made a $44 CPM online and $42 offline.

A slim margin; but hey this isn’t Vegas we don’t play the spread, this is a real game and when time runs out it’s who is ahead that counts. Online is more valuable media. But we knew that.

As this scenario repeats itself over and over again in the coming year it will be greeted with shock and denial. The denials will be clothed as arguments that each instance is a special exception (there is nothing like March Madness). And the shock, well anyone who is shocked has been in a coma since 2004.

The online audience rates the bigger ticket because of their engagement and their accountability, no matter how imperfect our current metrics. Also and I know this shouldn’t count, but it really does. Consumers, fans, whatever you want to call people, are now reliant to live their lives on the 24/7, moving-in-real time ubiquity of the medium. You can make book on that attraction and it is that attraction that makes most other media irrelevant.

So it costs a little more…get used to it.

Bad news: newspaper circulation is down 9% for the 1st Quarter of 2008. Good news: the papers report online readership is up. Problem: online readers don’t have to pay for their online editions. Where will the money come from?

I should be sympathetic to the plight of the newspapers. I grew up reading The Washington Post every morning and The Washington Star most afternoons. As a little girl, my favorite part of Sunday mornings was curling up on my Dad’s lap with the “funnies.” Just writing this makes me feel very secure and loved.

Mine is a wonderful memory; but this is 2008. The hand writing has been on the wall for hard copy newspapers since 2002 and it’s inconceivable that intelligent people couldn’t read it. They have instead spent years clinging to beliefs in the power of newsprint and that the search for column C12 is easier than scrolling through an article or clicking on a small arrow.

That is the point. The online reading experience is much simpler and convenient than the hard copy. Moreover online news is completely up to the minute, not 24 hours old. The newspapers created these experiences and continue to perfect them.

What barrier did they imagine would stop people from using them? Why didn’t they come up with a monetization model for online a little earlier? Play with “the Long tail?” Explore localization technologies? Invite readers in?

Newspaper publishers want to blame independent bloggers and the like for the demise of their hard copy editions. That’s simply not fair. The newspapers themselves played a much bigger role than Adrianna Huffington. They blindly created their own replacements, but didn’t plan for the ultimate success of that creation. The strange assumption seems to have been that consumers had the time and inclination to support both sources of content.. They don’t- and video content producers should take note now.

I treasure my memories, but can’t mourn the loss of newsprint when something much better has replaced it. I just “pity the fool” who does.

Throughout my youth, I distinctively remember Wendy ads. They stood out from all the many fast food commercials I saw. I always had faith that Dave Thomas was going to edify me with his good burger making know-how, as dependable as a sunrise. But when he died, a black-hole began to appear around Wendy’s advertising. A black-hole that evolved from conformity to just plain mediocrity.

Now Crispin, Porter, Bogusky has set a new style for fast food commercials with their work for Burger King. The Burger King work is odd ball, but more unique from the King through the recent “Whopper Discontinued” Ads. Wendy’s has been required to answer, but instead of something new and fresh was just a bad knockoff. They took Burger King’s style, replaced the BK King with an average Joe wearing a Red pig-tailed wig, who with this wig was supposed to proclaim individuality in the burger making world. This be-wigged but average Joe came to the realization that only a Wendy’s burger could lead him to true salvation. This came off as blatant mimicking of BK’s style. The Red Wig was lost in the shadow of the BK King.

Red wigs are absent from the new Wendy work. Instead there are just normal people enjoying Wendy’s burgers. Whether Crispin’s style of advertising is wearing thin or the consumer saw through Wendys façade, it is safe to assume Wendy’s misses Dave as much as I do.

Wendy’s Tactic

BK’s Tactic

The Yahoo!/Microsoft saga will no doubt drag on through Yahoo’s 1st Quarter Earnings Report, and then some. When it ends, it will be neither pleasant nor as profitable as it could have been for Yang and company. Balmer will prevail without mercy.

If only Jerry or at least Sue had read a good old Bodice Ripper, say The Flame and the Flower in their well-spent youths. Then they would understand how this type of narrative works. The unwanted suitor appears with a not unfair, if unwanted offer. He will not be refused. But in succumbing, albeit ever so unwillingly, to the first embrace there lies a guarantee, after many plot twists, to a much happier and lasting marriage.

Well we have had the plot twists, but, clearly the YahooCrew never dappled in this particular literary genre. Now they must pay the penalty. They have a very angry, powerful and determined suitor and their ending is more likely to resemble that of the princes in Shakespeare’s Richard III than of a romance heroine.

For the rest of us, it’s just been a winter of discontent.

Yesterday Siliconalleyinsider.com reported that MediaVest is going to be moving $100 million of some Client(s) money into Cinema Advertising. Their answer to the lower TV viewership.

I don’t know what kind of butter they are putting on their popcorn or what else could make them think this a good way to spend valued Clients’ money. More critically are their Client going to fall for this?

What Brand wouldn’t want to own an environment where they are positioned between an audience and what they have paid for: a movie? A movie that is 2 hours of content designed to ideally make an audience forget what happened right before it. And please don’t start the “what about previews” argument. They are not analogous to commercials. If they were people would call them movie commercials not previews or trailers.

For years media planners have known that Cinema Advertising is a low impact media vehicle to be used only to augment a huge campaign or to show off particularly “important” creative; think the American Express/Seinfeld spots of several years ago.

A fine medium within those parameters, but not the solution to the $100 million “What to do about TV” question. Cinema Advertising doesn’t solve the loss of “must see TV”, not even close.

What it could save is budgets; justifying the production expenses associated with video. Hey if you are going to be on the big screen you need to look good right? It could save jobs; creative departments, production departments – skill sets associated with making commercials. It could give Creative Directors places to run potentially award running ads. It may even maintain Award categories. It delivers the status quo for one more year.

It won’t save Client relationships, sell products or hold back the wave of the NEW for much longer than that, but then this is the movies.

Comparing the positions of Jerry Yang (today) versus Steve Jobs (a decade ago) is poignant. Then… Jobs took control (again) of a rotting Apple. Now… it’s an iWorld and Jerry is back at the reins of a limping Yahoo without the results that Jobs has been able to pull off.

Initially Yang’s supporters cited Job’s 1997 return to Apple as a precedent for Yang’s future success. Not so much now – as Yahoo! still appears rudderless, ad dollars fail to match the market and none of the many acquisitions pay out.

Jerry Yang is not the solution for Yahoo!. Yahoo! is now too vast with too much potential advertising revenue to collapse. Who has both the guts and credentials to pull it out of its death match with Google? Who has the vision to transform its user experience into a compelling commerce/content experience unlike anything else online. Who can get “A” talent with a phone call?

Steve Jobs. He built iTunes to sell iPods. He built the iPhone to re-define the browsing experience. He’ll need to control content (not just rely on publishers) to take this entire iVision to the next level. Starting from scratch or in a deal with Disney, is possible. Rebuilding Yahoo! may be much quicker, especially given Jobs’ ability to cut through debris and command the attention of new talent.

Some analyst can run the numbers, but this is the love match for 2008.

It is that time of year that is most politically correctly and succinctly called THE HOLIDAYS. Lists of the past year’s best/worst and predictions of the future abound.

The lists and predictions are unavoidable and the politically correct thing has gotten tiresome along with the current fashion for an ironic, emotionally detached attitude. If you aren’t emotionally connected to the world, why are you writing about it? More pointedly, why should anyone read your writing?

The only alternative seems to be the self-obsession of the Twitter set. Twitter is fine for adolescents or junkies, but otherwise just pathetic.

Sad, really that with so much writing going on, myself included – that so little of it really delivers a thoughtful analysis of the times we live in. But then, the same could be true of newspapers in their heyday (when NYC had 13). Quantity and Quality seldom go together.

Perhaps that is something important for us all to aspire to as we continue to write in the year ahead.