Gordon H. Smith Quotes

History shows that pay-TV subscribers flee in droves to alternative providers when there is even a rare service disruption - demonstrating a quantifiable value for 'must-have' broadcast programming.

If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters.

New York's niche is content, and content is becoming more valuable. Just think about what is more valuable: MTV or the cable system that you use to get MTV? Howard Stern or the radio station you use to listen to him? Ultimately, technology becomes a commodity, and content - real, true branded content - becomes more valuable.

There’s not a single question about television that can’t be answered in one word: money.

The budget on cable television is dramatically less than network television.

The idea that content is king has long rested on the notion that distribution - in whatever form it takes - is a low-margin commodity, and the biggest share of profits flows to the creators of original programming, who can sell to the highest bidder.

There's too much bad. The worst is mediocre. Bad is easy. There's high quality, there's pornography, and then there's bad.

When you have a TV show or when you are running a magazine, you have to remember that your audience isn't rich. They're not made of money.

The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.

You might not believe it, but there are times when I feel the TV and radio shows demand more of me than those Sunday afternoon games.

I don't watch TV but occasionally I'll read the Washington Post. I will say that sports are the only "real thing" on television.

We'll keep writing and if it hits our standards we'll go with it. We're not here to destroy anything. It's as precious to us as it is for someone who's followed us for years.

To me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise. The web model is just so much more complicated, and involves this third party of advertisers, and all these other sources of revenue that are sort of provisional, but haven't been proven yet.

At what price do we get our news? The role of economics in defining the nature of contemporary journalism has never been better explained. A valuable, important book for those of us who watch, read, or listen to the news.

Audience interest is directly proportionate to the presenter's preparation. You better spend time and energy on any presentations where the stakes are high. If you are trying to close a large sale or speak at a conference to an audience of potential clients, you better be ON your game. An audience can tell how much energy you spent on your presentation, which is a reflection of how much you valued their time. If they gave you an hour of their time, you need to make it worth it to them by treating their time as a valuable asset by making the content valuable to them.

Emphasizing and rewarding length over quality results in worse writing and more reader abandonment.

Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates...

You can get away with breaking all of the other rules at least once in a while, but you can't get away with breaking this one. Readers will accept almost anything from you if you don't make them feel they have wasted their time and money. Remember, you can bore readers in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily take a dearth of action; too much action can get you the same result. Everything in writing, like in life, requires balance.

Content may by trivial. But I do not think that any person may pronounce either upon the weight or upon the triviality of an idea before its execution.

Bloggers intent on self-expression which renders no service to readers don't get read.

The cable industry has risen to new heights in their apparent willingness and ability to gouge the American consumer. Cable rates [have] increased an unbelievable five-and-a-half times faster than inflation.

The curse of the cable industry over all these years as an operating reality is that every year the debt goes up (and) all the money generated gets reinvested, and then some.

If you really care about content, you should pay for it.

Television as we have it isn't an art form - it's a piece of furniture that is good for a few things.

The YouTube video maker gets more out of making a video than you get out of watching it.