By Christian Munson

CNN needs help. The one-time cable-news king trails Fox News, and February ratings show CNN trailing MSNBC, too.

Proof that ex-NBC chief Jeff Zucker has his work cut out for him. Zucker took the reins at CNN just over a month ago, firing talent and, according to the New York Post, calling on reporters and editors “to broaden their definition of news and include a greater selection of topics.”

Good advice, but no wonder ratings are dropping if the results of change are:

• All day coverage February 14 of the Carnival Triumph’s tug to port – that’s eight hours of “poop in plastic bags.”
• Yet another Piers Morgan interruption party with gun rights advocate John Lott Jr. February 27.
• HOURS of coverage and panel discussions on the Jodi Arias trial – umm, who is that again? And panel discussions?
• While others covered political news, CNN covered Beyonce’s Super Bowl press conference where she proved she could sing and lip-sync.

Zucker, halting the ratings slide at CNN will take tightening the definition of news, not broadening it to… this?

Get the CNN brand back to what’s missing from primetime cable news: news for grownups.

How refreshing would calm, measured, professional, unbiased broadcast journalism be for the primetime demo?

By Erin Hurley-Brown

Dear Marissa Mayer,

On Monday, February 25^th, CNN Money released this article regarding your new HR memo to all Yahoo! employees:

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,” the memo said. “That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”

Marissa…I have two words for you: Girlfriend, please.

We all know that by banning telecommuting, you are desperately attempting to rescue Yahoo! from lacking to adapt with growing technology, generate meaningful user content (unless “What one’s favorite color signifies” is what you dub as meaningful content) and the inability to connect advertisers with your audience. (If you need a few other reasons why your company will continue to flounder, you can read all about it on Forbes…here OR here.)

If you are trying to set a new precedent for employees at major corporations in the U.S., in my humble opinion, I feel that you are holding out a giant middle finger to every hard-working parent in this country who is trying to achieve the ultimate work/life balance.

Were you aware that the average cost of daycare is $250 a week for one child, which equals up to $13,000 a year? In some cases, daycare costs exceed the monthly rent. You may want to revise your Yahoo! Family Child Care Program (line #4).

What kind of discount will you now offer those employees who have to suddenly account for daycare costs when they balance their already over-stretched checking accounts? Especially  those who worked from home full time and were successfully managing the work/life balance for no additional cost?

Marissa…it is possible to have it all. This past year, my husband made the move to work from home full time, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Granted, his days are very busy, and he’s usually glued to the home office chair. However, he’s able to be home and provide a watchful eye over our 12-year-old when he gets off the school bus every day at 3:20 p.m. He’s also able to provide at-home supervision on teacher work days, snow days and sick days. This also allows me to focus on my full-time schedule at my job and allows me to save my vacation time for exactly that…VACATION! Not to mention, use the funds for what would otherwise go to daycare costs into other important things…RETIREMENT!

And what about your employees’ salaries? Will they now receive more than the average annual salary increase of 2-3 percent? For those with growing financial responsibilities (such as DAYCARE), what can you give your employees – to retain great talent? And since the entire world is watching, why don’t you set a new precedent for pay increases, since most middle-class family incomes haven’t risen for more than 20 years.

What’s a working gal to do if she can’t ask for a $13,000 pay raise, or can’t afford to relocate (especially during a real estate crisis when most average households lost 40 percent of their wealth during the recession)? Remember, the majority of us working women are not wealthy CEOs and don’t have the support we would need to swiftly return to work two weeks after giving birth or the clout to build a personal nursery next to their office at work.

Marissa…be smart. Revise your new no-work-from-home policy. Your staff will love you. After all, whether they work in their pajamas or in khakis at the office…it boils down to doing one thing.

Do work, Son…do work.

Sincerely,

Another hard-working woman with solidified and flexible workforce rights at a wonderful company.

By Scott Davila (@scottdavila)

A few Sundays ago I reached the tipping point.

It started out as a typical Sunday afternoon. My two sons, inspired by the previous night’s bedtime story of the Avengers, transformed into Iron Man and the “Credible” Hulk to fight evil doers in the basement. My wife was at the store rummaging for milk, school lunches and snacks. We take turns making this weekly run, but never with the boys if we want to avoid Lucky Charms down on aisle five and steely stares from those who aren’t sensitive to the mayhem of shopping with six- and four-year-old boys. So with the Avengers fighting as one, I grabbed my cup of coffee and iPad to catch up on stuff.

Ten minutes in, everything tipped. It wasn’t the coffee cup capsizing when Iron Man decked the Hulk beside me (though it was close). Instead the “tipping” was regarding my ritual of catching up on the score of quadrant four emails from the previous week. I rationalize that most of these emails are educational – alerting me to the latest happenings in PR and marketing. They are from our trades, associations and bloggers that I read to stay ahead, and honestly, to feel guilt-free before the Monday Madness begins again. Those emails that multiply like rabbits – accumulating so rapidly that our ex-Marine IT Czar gets in my face about clogging up the server.

So after those ten minutes, the inspiration to continue reading just wasn’t there. I deleted those emails, powered off the iPad and picked up the New York Times.

Wouldn’t you know it; among the articles I ran across was one by Jenna Wortham: “When Emails Turn From Delight To Deluge.” Was it a sign from above? It was Sunday, after all. That’s my email box, littered with seemingly pertinent, educational information – information that comes in all shapes and forms, from white papers, eBooks, webinars and infographics, by-lined articles and even cartoons – always  tactical and cleverly positioned as “best practices.” Emails with subject lines such as:

How Your B2B Content Marketing and Sales Can Work Hand-in-Hand

2013: The Year of Integrated Digital Marketing

Vine: How can brands get social engagement in six seconds?

Oh, and lest I forget the one that pushed me over the edge…

The USPS is Going to Stop Delivering Mail on Weekends, Should You Start Delivering Emails?

NO! HECK NO!!!

My choice to turn it all off wasn’t because the information wasn’t enlightening or useful. Some of it was. Maybe my frustration had been fueled by an Alfred Tennyson quote that I’d heard the day before:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Sure, Tennyson was talking about religious creeds, but though it was Sunday, it was the PR and marketing creeds (not religion) muddling my inbox that made me question the value of our focus as an industry. It made me doubt that amidst a revolution (really, a repackaging) of the “come and get it” content marketing movement taking place in our industry, we may often lose sight of the strategic and creative side of what we do and how we deliver value. Among the rise of social media platforms that are simply a means to distribute the content, have we become ants marching to the proverbial “this is how you do it?” Are we focused on delivering value or are we just cranking out noise?

We are communicators, engagers and even sometimes, entertainers. But our higher purpose and value to our clients is to do much more than communicate and engage with their audiences. No, what we are in the business of doing is INSPIRING our clients’ audiences. If what we communicate or the ways we engage with our clients’ audiences doesn’t INSPIRE them to an action, well then, it’s just noise. It’s like a status post on Facebook that puts out a plea to like a page in order to reach a milestone of “likes.” If what we do doesn’t inspire or help achieve a business goal (such as to get the public to support a cause, voters to vote for a candidate, employees to be motivated to contribute to their company’s goals, investors to invest in their company, prospects and customers to buy products or services and tell others to do so, etc., etc.), then we have failed.

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THE BOOZE BIN

by Rebekah Polster (@BekinBklyn)

Wine and liquor brands are bombarded just about every week to sponsor an event, whether it’s an art opening hosted by a friend of a friend’s friend or the Grammy’s. These “intimate” events range in grandeur and product amount, but at the end of the day, what does your booze client really get out of it?

This time of year especially, I’m on high alert – I find myself constantly checking out the brands both listed on the step-and-repeats and sitting on tables being sipped by the stars. I’ve spotted wines being poured at Fashion week and anticipate plenty of Oscar party step-and-repeats featuring liquor brands. But I’m in the biz– it’s my job to notice what’s being poured where.

So, do the normal folk actually notice what Champagne sits on the tables at the Golden Globes every year? (It’s Moët Chandon by the way.)

My clients have mostly been sponsors of low-budget events, such as a store opening, something at Fashion Week, or at a friend (of a friend’s) art show. However, big budget events require booze, too. Not only are those events requesting the wines and spirits, but participation often commands a hefty price for the sponsorship. Now, not only are you on the hook for product donation, but also payment, ahem, I mean donation.

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By Jeff Wilson, APR (@wilson0507)

Don’t call it a comeback. We’ve been here for years.

There was a time – not so long ago – when many of my colleagues wouldn’t go anywhere without their BlackBerrys. After all, BlackBerry was THE smartphone of choice for the serious-minded business executive.

Even when the iPhone made its triumphant debut in 2007, loyal BlackBerry users scoffed. While iPhone users were off playing around with apps, BlackBerry users were “handling their business.”

A CNN article from 2010 said it best, “The BlackBerry is the get-things-done phone. It’s not designed to run flashy applications, for playing games or for uploading pictures to Facebook and Twitter. It started out a business-minded device, and RIM has continued to market it as a business-friendly device.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to the boardroom; iPhone found a seat at the table.

And iPhone’s growth has been nothing less than meteoric. In the fourth quarter of 2012 alone, Apple sold a record-setting 47.8 million iPhones, helping the company report a staggering $13.1 billon, the second highest profit ever earned by a U.S. corporation.

And it’s not just the iPhone luring away business users. The first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008. And now, Android is “the world’s most widely used smartphone platform and the software of choice for technology companies who require a low-cost, customizable, lightweight operating system for high-tech devices without developing one from scratch.”

Back to the Future

But could BlackBerry (formerly known as Research in Motion) be poised for a comeback?

In January, the company announced two new smartphones – the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10. Both will run the new BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system. The phones will launch in the U.S. in March. The BlackBerry Z10 looks a lot like iPhones and Android devices. And the Q10 has the keyboard that hard-core BlackBerry users still covet.

But the question remains, will the new BlackBerrys be enough to lure back business customers who defected to other devices?

So far, the BlackBerry 10 has gotten mostly high marks from early reviews. BlackBerry 10′s features include separate work and personal profiles, time-saving ways to multitask without closing applications, video chat with live screen-sharing and more than 70,000 available apps.

However, BlackBerry has a tough hill to climb.

“(BlackBerry) faces steep challenges in launching the new OS. Accounting for just 4.6% of the smartphone field in 2012, the BlackBerry platform has hemorrhaged so much of its once-considerable market share that there’s little ground left to cede,” writes Michael Endler for InformationWeek.

A Full-Court Press

BlackBerry has put on a full-court press to launch its new phones, even buying air time during the Super Bowl – a first for the company. However, its first foray into Super Bowl advertising was received with a bit of a head scratching from the advertising community.

AdAge writes, “Really, BlackBerry? ‘In 30 seconds, it’s quicker to show you what it can’t do.’ Really!? You’re in a battle to the death against feature-laden phones from Apple and Samsung. You’re releasing a phone that got some half-decent tech-world buzz last week. And you’re going to drop millions on a 30-second spot that doesn’t offer one gee-whiz feature that would separate you from the smartphone pack?”

Take a look at BlackBerry’s Super Bowl ad and judge for yourself.

Even iPhone has had to work to hold on to its coolness factor, trying to fend off advances by Samsung and its Galaxy S III. Some of my co-workers who first defected from BlackBerry to the iPhone have now defected to Samsung.

Not satisfied with just taking pot shots at iPhone, Samsung has now set its sights on BlackBerry’s business customers.

“There are those who make cruel jokes about BlackBerrys. They suggest that people who still use them are the sorts that listen to CDs,” writes Chris Matyszczyk for CNET. “For myself, the only people I still see with BlackBerrys in hand are those who haven’t stopped focusing on climbing the corporate ladder since 2004 – and are still in middle management positions.”

Ouch!

Here’s Samsung’s pitch to business users.

But don’t count BlackBerry out just yet. Some early sales data suggests that BlackBerry may be seeing some strong demand for the Z10.

“According to channel checks conducted by Jefferies & Co., pre-orders in the United Arab Emirates and Canada have so far been ‘solid.’ More encouraging, though, are early reports from the U.K., where Z10 sales are evidently off to a good start,” writes John Paczkowski for All Things D.

For now, I’m holding on to my iPhone 5, but I can promise you, I’ll be keeping my eye on BlackBerry – just in case everything old is new again.