THEN I REALIZED, THIS WILL HELP ME WITH MY DOCTORATE....

This week, I've been directly working on the culmination of 2 research studies I commissioned for the studio. The first study is a Media Landscape overview of 1 European country and the other is a platform, consumer behavior, and channel profile study of an emerging technology in 5 European countries. Cumulatively, I've spent over 70 hours working on the first study and 100 hours working on the other study. The results of both studies are very encouraging.

1. We're getting good, actionable information for both studies. 2. Ultimately, my boss is pleased, and that makes me very happy. 3. All of this data should be ready for presentation during LA Screenings, which is perfect timing. 4. I feel strongly enough about the data to present to corporate management at the studio.

I like utilizing research to give actionable sales data, it only makes the research more valuable. But then it hit me on my way home from the gym last week....the relationships I'm cultivating now in the research community will definitely help me when it comes time to write my doctoral thesis. I made a promise to myself that as soon as I paid off all my student loan debt from getting my MBA, I would immediately start applying for my PhD. I need to find a PhD program that allows me to work full time while spending a few years writing my thesis. My thesis will definitely be rooted in the international media/television industry. Actually, what I would like to do is prod both of my parents into all of us working on getting our doctorates at the same time. Now that would be incredible. I know both of my parents want a doctorate.

I'm excited to get started, now I need to pay off this debt faster.

THE POWER OF MADONNA

I have to agree with my boyfriend on this one, The Power of Madonna Glee episode definitely deserves an Emmy Award. Director/Writer Ryan Murphy really pulled it off with this episode. The structure of Glee is to find the songs that match the characters "inner voice," like all good musicals should. As a series, Glee succeeds on many levels. I personally think of it as a satiric comedy with some musical numbers. I laugh more than I sing during each episode. Regardless, from a production standpoint, this has to be one of the hardest working casts in TV production today. They have to learn their lines, choreography, songs, and record all at the same time. Also, the producers of the show have no small task basically staging an hour long musical every episode.

Mr Murphy's episode succeed on many levels. It would have been the easy way out to just take some Madonna songs and have the actors just sing through them, but Ryan took the entire message of Madonna and wrote it into the episode. The women were to be empowered. Madonna's songs are all about being strong and independent no matter your gender. And from there, the theme of Madonna, the songs of Madonna all moved the story of the characters forward. The staging of the musical numbers was great. And every song consistently worked throughout the show. It was a great Glee episode first, and an homage second. I'm sure Madonna loved it. And Mr. Murphy also gets credit for faithfully recreating the Vogue music video almost shot by shot, and shooting it in the middle of an episode already packed with 3 big production numbers. Mr. Murphy should get the Emmy Award for Best Directing. Mr. Murphy should get a matching Emmy for Best Written Episode. He used his script and the music to make the episode better with the 2 combined rather than using great writing or a great song and give one more weight that the other. Ryan is also doing a great job balancing a large cast and fully utilizing all of their talents.

I think if you can write a CSI episode, you can pretty much write almost any criminal procedural show. And writing for TV is hard. But not every TV writer can successfully write an episode of Glee. I was glad I pre-downloaded the entire album.

I'LL MISS YOU GRANDPA

Sadly today, my grandfather passed away. At 86 years old, he was born in 1921. My grandfather was your typical hard working son of an immigrant who literally help build the United States of America on the blood and sweat on the back of his entire generation.

Like many men in the early days of the 20th century, my grandfather worked 2 full time jobs for most of his life to raise his family of 6 children. My grandfather worked for the Department of Water & Power for the City of Boston and for General Dynamics building military ships for the Navy (Boston has always been a port city and the one of the birthplaces of the U.S. Navy). My grandfather was a very smart man, but he support his family through hard, grueling manual labor. Like every generation, he didn't want his children to go through their lives performing hard manual labor like he did. And in those days, the only ticket out of labor was the dream of every American - a college education. A college education was a direct road out the middle class and into the upper class of society. My grandfather basically handed my grandmother the task of making sure her children got all A's throughout ones entire academic career. A "B" or a "C" in any subject was absolutely unacceptable. And not just for 1 child, all 6 children "A's" in every subject.

My grandfather and his generation believed in the sanctity of marriage. My grandfather met my grandmother, they got married and they were expected to, and did stay married and together for over 60 years.

I always knew him as my Grandpa. Nana was the one I always communicated with, but Grandpa was always there, listening, watching, and reading the Boston Herald. What's so funny is that all of the women who married into our family were intimidated by him. To me, since I was born into this family, so I always knew Grandpa as Grandpa. I was never intimidated by him, and I was too young to understand why anyone else would be. But he was a fearsome man who's approval you wanted. And everybody loved Grandpa.

I have a lot of great memories of my grandfather from when I was a kid. I remember him singing at the top of his voice in Italian to the songs on the radio driving around Boston. I remember him making me eggs and bacon for breakfast when I would come over to visit. I was his first grandchild, so I always had a special place in his heart. I remember him attending a special mass when I was an alter boy for the Archbishop in Amesbury at Sacred Heart Church. I remember him coming to both my high school and college graduations. I remember him at my First Communion and my Confirmation. I know he was there for my baptism. My Grandpa was there for me at all the important moments in my life.

I'm so happy that I got to see him one last time last weekend for Easter. I love and respect him so much. A lot of the gifts and pleasures of the life I get to lead are built on the back of the foundation and values he laid out for his family. He determined the high standards and work ethic that leads us, the Puopolo family, to succeed today.

There are 2 favorite stories about my Grandpa. The first one happened last Wednesday when my Dad & Mom were staying overnight at my grandparents house. My Dad told me the story about how he was there and my Dad was helping my grandfather into his chair and he looked at my Dad and said, in one of his lucid moments, "I love you." My Dad was very touched by what his father had said to him and what's so great is that moment is a memory that my Dad will always treasure.

The second story was happening during one of the famous Puopolo family Christmas parties when we were all in Boston and would get together to open family Christmas presents on Christmas night. This was an especially good time for me because I would get both my Christmas and birthday presents on the same night, which was always a bonus for me. (Everyone says having your birthday and Christmas so close together sucks, but come on - double presents? Sweet!) The family started coming into our Uncle Stevie's house slowly as everyone was travelling in from different parts of the state to all come together as a family for Christmas. While many of us were sitting around the table waiting someone asked when our Uncle Joey would show up. And without putting down his Boston Herald, Grandpa said, "He'll be here. Just like death and taxes." It was just so funny that this man of very few words actually made a joke. We laughed around the dining room table that night before enjoying another Christmas together.

I will miss my Grandpa. He was a great man. God Bless you Papa.

HOW IS THIS A SCIENCE?

I really liked the economics courses I took for my MBA. Both the micro and the macro economics parts of the class I found very interesting. But I have never in my life come across a scientific and mathematic discipline that is so wrong so often.

As a science, it seems odd to me that economists use 19th century formulations to measure a 21st century globalized world. What other science is constantly revised, can only be looked at every 3 months and cannot be accurately measured?

As a researcher whose entire career is based on correct numbers, if I was wrong and revised as often as economists are, I would never be read or believed by my senior management.

Economists need to get together and get some consensus on how to properly and accurately measure in REAL TIME, exactly what's going on with the global economy. Come on, if astronomers can measure galaxies, why can't economist accurate measure 1 planets net inputs and outputs?

IS PENMANSHIP DEAD?

Is writing about to go the way of the cassette tape? I imagine if I had a child today, he would be using an IPad from a very young age, maybe at age 3 or 4 playing with games, music, interactivity and no internet connection. At 7 or 8 I would likely give Little Michael III his first smartphone. And really, almost everything he learned from a very young age would be done on a computer.

Would I ever need to teach him how to write or should I just start him off learning exclusively how to type. It's 2010, in 15 years, when he would be a sophomore in high school, will he ever be writing anything? Notes will be on laptops or IPads. Projects done entirely on computers, electronic grading of homework.....

If you had a child today, would you teach them how to physically write? Is a child considered illiterate if they have a perfect understand and can type anything in English (incredibly fast I would think), sentence structure, grammar, everything, but he would be considered illiterate because he doesn't know penmanship?

THE REAL REVOLUTION IS THE APP STORE

The Applications Store by Apple is an unparalleled daily revenue generator and truly a game changing concept from Apple. When the App Store first launched just 2 years ago in 2008, no one could have predicted just how successful it would become. Now it doesn't matter whether you're Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, or any other telecom company in the world, if you sell a smartphone today, you have to have applications to run on the smartphone.

For smartphones (a concept pioneered by Apple with the launch of the IPhone), I give Apple a lot of credit for out of the box thinking on the business model for Apps. Apple knew they had neither the resources nor the personnel to devote to keeping applications within Apple's walled garden environment (ITunes Store). Rather than keep it as an internal software division, Apple agreed to a 70/30 (the developer gets 70%, Apple gets 30%) of the revenue from what is basically micropayments on a software license. Apple has created a business boom in the middle of a recession. There are now a lot of mini-applications start up companies whose business model is entirely built around ecommerce and not advertising. (Hey, that's how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started their company's). And Apps are wildly successful. With over a 1 billion downloads, I wonder how much money Apps contribute to Apple's total revenue.

Now with the launch of the IPad, Apple will be charging more money for the apps and people will pay it. I was IMing a friend of mine who works for Apple, and he said that the Apps will really make the IPad standout from its competitive netbook devices, and he's right. In fact, with Apps going from IPhones to the IPad, what consumers are really signalling is that Apps could be the new way consumers interact with the web itself. Currently consumers interact with the web by typing an address into a browser, but more and more consumers are pressing an app, inputting information and getting a customized software response. As Tim Reilly put it, "cheap sensors are ushering in an era of user interface innovation."

Personally, I still have not paid for any of the apps on my IPhone, but I would if there was one I really liked or wanted. Who would have thought 2 years ago that apps would be the rage that they are today in the technology industry? Like my IPhone and the DVR, I can't imagine digital life without them.

THE NIKE CHANNEL

My early prediction for the 2012 and 2014 Summer & Winter Olympics is that ABC/ESPN (Disney) is going to make a bid to televise the Games. ESPN is such a money maker for the Walt Disney Corporation, that they are almost completely autonomous within the conglomerate and the head of ESPN reports to the chairman, Bob Iger, not the head of Television (Anne Sweeney).

And there's no doubt about it, no sports network does it better than ESPN. I was just thinking the other day how from 2005 when Monday Night Football went off the air on ABC to 2010 when Dancing With The Stars and Castle with all 3 shows bringing equally large audiences to ABC's Monday night, that no other network had transitioned a from an all male to all female demographic so successfully. Now on Monday nights, ABC has all the Women, ESPN has all the Men and Disney captures huge amounts of revenue from the CPMs for advertising on both broadcast & cable, cable subscriber fees, online revenue, and makes all that money from just 1 evening a week on television - Monday night. ESPN's Monday Night Football brought the largest audiences that have ever been to any cable network anywhere in the United States with over 21 million for some of its top games.

Needless to say, if the Walt Disney Company buys the Olympic rights, they'll have the Olympics in theme parks all over the world and the Olympic Committee can't buy that kind of publicity. The Walt Disney Company can use that leverage to keep the Olympic rights costs down to a reasonable level for Wall Street and still make a healthy return on the rights investment.

ESPN has to be leading the charge internally and tempting Bob Iger, who has already grown out of the shadow of Michael Eisner to be a worthy successor to run the only blue chip entertainment company.

While there is no clear current competitor to ESPN, only FOX comes close with its U.S. regional networks and the FOX Soccer Channel. So what other company could challenge ESPN with a rival sports cable channel? Only NIKE has the global brand recognition to do it. The Nike Channel can challenge ESPN. They have the money, can use the brand extension to grow the company and basically have a barker channel to sell all their sports equipment and apparel.

Anyone else think this is good idea? If Portland wants me to head up this venture, I'm looking at all reasonable job offers.

ORIGINAL THOUGHT

Besides successfully transferring to LA from Miami, and building a strong International TV Research Department, my best professional accomplishment has been becoming a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Having recently completed my MBA in December 2007, going from student to teacher was a good transition for me. The graduate students impressed me with the directness of their questions and what their thoughts and opinions were on issues in media today.

Of course with all teaching goes grading. And while no one failed the 4 short answers section of the final (in fact everyone got over a B at least, deservedly), I couldn't help but notice that the 1 distinct characteristic about 95% of the answers is that they were pure regurgitation, no original thought. In the age of Googling and note taking, I wonder most about student is who can have an original thought? Repeating what you heard isn't learning, it's just repeating. The professional who is most able to have an original thought and self generate working solutions is the person who will succeed the most in any business, not just show business.