Chris Albrecht Implodes: Can we go back to the Carnivale?
My favorite television show for the two short years it was on was Carnivale on HBO. The show was, in my opinion, a sterling example of the pinnacle of television story-telling art. It had the quality of a motion picture with the extended and interesting character development that is possible in a serialized teleplay. The richly textured world it created was fascinating. I was pleased that HBO could lavish the attention and resources on the show to make it the glory that it was.

The primary criticism of the first season was that it was too slow, too deliberately paced, that things took too long to develop. I would expect nothing less from the addled attention spans of my peers — I chose to savor it. The second season did pick up the pace a bit, but I felt that they could since they laid such a solid foundation in the first season. Then, in the latter part of the second season, things accelerated, events started happening quickly and, in the season finale, a much-anticipated confrontation occurred and several major plot lines were left unresolved. Shortly thereafter the series was canceled.

Chris Albrecht, CEO of HBO, explained that the show was too expensive for the ratings it received. He marveled at all of the angry emails he received from fans of the program. I canceled my HBO subscription and told the cable company and HBO why: "No Carnivale, no HBO." HBO has since killed Deadwood, another expensive production with sinking ratings and is committed to another $120 million season of Rome, even though ratings aren't great there either.

I thought Carnivale was exactly the sort of "boutique" program that HBO could support for an extended period. At least long enough to tell the whole story and to pick up a passle of Emmys along the way. Does GM make billions on the Corvette? Does Chrysler make billions on the Viper? They are products that draw us in to the show room. A lucky few of us actually get to buy them, the rest of us leave with something decidely less flashy.

Did Albrecht even bother to find out if production costs on the "expensive" Carnivale could be reduced? The rumor is that the show cost $4-5 million per episode. At one point Albrecht said that is the show were a $2 million show it would still be on the air. What gets made for that kind of money today? Is that Arliss money? That piece of crap was on the HBO schedule forever.

While I don't want to indulge in schadenfreude overly, I must say that I hope that Chris Albrecht's recent departure from HBO provides some small sliver of hope that Carnivale might someday return to the schedule. I am shocked that HBO paid hush money years ago the last time Albrecht beat up a woman — I'm pleased that current management has apparently revisited past decisions and decided it would be better if Albrecht wasn't around. Maybe we can convince them to revisit the past decision regarding Carnivale and bring back one of the best shows ever produced for television.

Foxy Dow Jones
So Rupert Murdoch has made a "surprise" bid for Dow Jones. I say "surprise", because it has been common knowledge for years that Mr. Murdoch has coveted Dow Jones and its premiere publication, The Wall Street Journal. From previous posts, you may know that I am a former Dow Jones/WSJ employee. What do I think about a potential sale of Dow Jones?

Rupert Murdoch could hardly do more damage to Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal than the Bancroft family has over the years. They should take the money and run -- something they have excelled at over the years. This past year Dow Jones earned $88 millions dollars and then paid out $80 million in dividends to, guess who?

When I worked at the firm, the big scandal was that CEO Peter Kann had married an insider, Karen Elliott House, and promptly boosted her career into the stratosphere. We'd just shuttered a printing plant (one of 17) and began the first of numerous ad sales office closings. The paper had just started printing color advertisements -- color having been a recent invention, at least to those running the show. The main hang up was, of course, the need to spend capital on the production equipment needed to support color. Circulation has continued its downward trend in the years since, but the firm has one of the what must be a very few profitable charged-for newspaper web sites. Friends of mine have faced layoffs, the company's reluctance to spend capital on improvements essentially handed the wire-service and custom electronic news segment to Bloomberg. Recently the paper itself has shrunken to weekly reader size (covered earlier in my blog) on its relentless trek towards Charmin two-ply size and quality, no doubt.

In short, the business has been managed in order to maximize profits, while minimizing capital expenditures. What's so bad about that? Well, the Bancrofts seem to want to claim some special protectorship role for the "public good" that is Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. What a laugh! They've run the business like any other and haven't done all that great a job of it. Staff morale, at least outside of the Pulitzer prize-winning newsroom and the rarified air of the opinion page offices, is in the crapper and has been for years.

I say, sell the whole thing to Rupert Murdoch for a king's ransom and shake the old place up. It has needed it for years!