Forbes Goes Outside the Family for President, CEO

In a major break with tradition, Forbes Media named publishing vet Mike Perlis as its new president/CEO—marking the first time a non-Forbes family member is running the 93-year-old company.

Steve Forbes, the chairman and editor in chief of Forbes Media, will give up the CEO title. His brother, Tim Forbes, will relinquish the COO title while remaining chairman of Forbes Digital, a member of the Forbes Media Board and what Steve Forbes called “one of the company’s chief strategists.”

Perlis most recently was a general partner at SoftBank Capital, a venture cap firm focused on digital businesses after a traditional print media publishing career that included stints as president, CEO of Ziff-Davis Publishing and president of the Playboy Publishing Group. His appointment begins Dec. 1.

The brothers reportedly started looking for new leadership early this year.

“This is an unprecedented time in the media business that demands bold moves,” Steve Forbes said in an announcement.

It’s been a year of major changes for Forbes during turbulent times for its print business. Earlier this year, the company bought True/Slant and hired its founder Lewis D’Vorkin to overhaul the namesake magazine and Web site by giving advertisers and unpaid contributors a bigger voice.

Oprah earns four times more than other TV stars

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When it comes to what pays on U.S. television, talk doesn't come cheap -- nor apparently does a loud mouth.

Financial magazine Forbes on Thursday published a list of the highest-paid TV celebrities, with daytime talk show host Oprah Winfrey leading the way by earning an $260 million between June 2006 and June 2007. Nobody else came close.

Second in the list was Jerry Seinfeld earning $60 million.

Winfrey was joined at the top of the list by another talk show host, David Letterman, who landed at No. 4 by raking in $40 million in the same period from his "Late Night with David Letterman."

Simon Cowell, the arrogant and harshly critical judge on top-rated talent show "American Idol" earned $45 million to land at No. 3, and Donald Trump, whose boisterous exclamation "You're Fired" from reality show "The Apprentice" became part of the pop culture lexicon, was No. 5 with $32 million.

The list shows that in the media arena, it pays to own and produce either all or part of your shows, like Oprah.

That notion becomes abundantly clear in the No. 2 slot, where Jerry Seinfeld sits with $60 million earned mostly from reruns of his co-owned 1990's sitcom "Seinfeld."

Despite the fact that prime-time TV shows win awards and critical acclaim, Forbes Senior Editor Lea Goldman noted that daytime TV and news is where stars rake in the dough.

"Daytime personalities dominate our list of TV's top earners, with most competition among morning and afternoon talk show hosts," said Goldman.

Barbara Walters, another star who owns and co-produces her daytime show "The View," landed at No. 18 with $12 million.

The remaining top 20 is as follows;

6. Jay Leno, $32 million

7. Dr. Phil McGraw, $30 million

8. "Judge" Judy Sheindlin, $30 million

9. George Lopez, $26 million

10. Kiefer Sutherland, $22 million

11. Regis Philbin, $21 million

12. Tyra Banks, $18 million

13. Rachael Ray, $16 million,

14. Katie Couric, $15 million

15. Ellen DeGeneres, $15 million

16. Ryan Seacrest, $14 million

17. Matt Lauer, $13 million

18, Barbara Walters, $12 million

19. Diane Sawyer, $12 million

20. Meredith Vieira, $10 million

Print Media Should Emulate Google, Says Consultant

Newspapers need to develop a technology that will replace the traditional printed paper and compete with Google's pay-per-click advertising, writes David S. Evans, founder of management consulting firm Market Platform Dynamics in a Forbes commentary. "Anything less will only accelerate the industry's decline."

The newspaper business has a simple model: charge advertisers for getting access to readers whom you attract with relevant content and cheap prices. That's been a great model for a few centuries now, and it is far from dying. No reason to depart from it--and, in fact, that's precisely the model Google is using to sweep a path of destruction through every advertising-supported media business there is (more on this momentarily). It's the physical method that newspapers use to do this--what business types call the "form factor"--that's the problem, the Achilles Heel of the industry's current business model. Printing content and displaying ads on paper is going to go the way of the vinyl record and perhaps even the CD.

Here's why. Traditional media sell advertisers a pig in a poke. Advertisers don't know whether a reader actually looks at their ad much less buys anything as a result. And they can't really target their ads beyond picking a type of newspaper and section to focus on in the hopes of reaching a particular demographic group.

Google and its ilk only charge advertisers when a viewer clicks on the very page containing their ad and perhaps, in the future, only when the viewer actually buys something. Plus, they can use all that information collected from past searches and other information they’ve gleaned about viewers to target ads with an increasing degree of accuracy. The technology is a different as a Schwinn one-speed bike is from a Porsche 911 turbo.

So, if anyone is going to save the newspaper industry, it isn't any of the moguls who think they can breathe life into a dying technology. It is more likely to be someone like Steve Jobs who can devise a really appealing way to make newspapers available digitally.

Sony, Microsoft and others have tried to come up with digital readers but so far most people aren't that excited. But suppose someone invented a digital newspaper, connected wirelessly to the Internet, that people actually enjoyed reading over coffee in the morning or taking along their morning train ride. Then newspapers could insert advertisements that people could click on, or advertisements that were tailored to knowledge about the person reading the ad. They would be playing on a more level playing field with Google and similar firms.

Unfortunately, this is a tall order, and the newspaper industry may not have time to wait. In the interim the online world is sucking so much advertising from the newspaper industry that it may be going into a protracted death spiral. As advertisers desert, newspapers cut content and raise prices to readers, as the New York Post did this week when it doubled its newsstand price to 50 cents. All this could lead to fewer readers and to even fewer advertisers. This will only be compounded as advertising and content also shifts to mobile phones--screens that almost everyone now carries every minute of the day.

Make no mistake: The only way to stop the slide of the newspaper industry into oblivion is to replace the traditional paper "form factor" with a technology that can compete with pay-per-click, per-per-action and contextual advertising. Anything less will only accelerate the industry's decline.

David S. Evans, visiting professor, University College in London , is founder of Market Platform Dynamics and co-author with Richard Schmalensee, Dean of the MIT Sloan School, of Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies, to be published by Harvard Business School Press next month.