Why Jon Stewart's Business Plan is Winning

(MoneyWatch)  It's that time of year again, time for the BNET Media Industry Award for the Best Political Report on Television, that is, in the Context of the Best Business Plan.

I've been an vocal admirer of Comedy Central's Jon Stewart for several years now, but what he did on Earth Night (April 22) simply went over the top. (Watch video.) At the end of another long Primary Tuesday skipped by the "major" networks, as reported here yesterday, we needed some comic relief.

As usual, we got it from The Daily Show.

But, this time, in addition to the laughs, Stewart presented the only serious national security reporting to be found anywhere on TV, or for that matter, throughout the media universe generally, that night. Why should this matter, in a business sense?

It's simple. While securing the entertainment market is one aspect of a successful business plan for today's media companies, adding in the influential demographic seeking news and opinion can be much more difficult to accomplish.

Stewart does it by crafting a far more entertaining (and therefore educational) way of telling vital stories. In this case, he retold the recent New York Times investigative tome on how military media analysts have been embedded by the Pentagon inside the major TV and radio networks.

You couldn't find a better example of why the transition from old business plans to new ones is happening so rapidly than by comparing Stewart's spoof, courtesy of Media Matters, with the original Times piece, which was so boring as to make sleeping pills outmoded.

(Note to NYT: Couldn't you have presented the facts a little more concisely? Maybe you were too busy attempting to ward off dissident shareholders, plus the challenge presented by Rupert Murdoch -- whose makeover of the Wall Street Journal is documented in a new study released today -- to notice the larger picture?)

Besides, Murdoch's in-your-face challenge to the FCC rules limited ownership in any one media market (he is adding Newsday to a New York media portfolio that already hits the limit of two newspapers and two television stations there) soon will overshadow the Times' reach so substantially that the Sulzberger family may have no choice but to seek additional investors.

Back to my point. If the Times' leaders did have the time to look around, they would be well-advised to explore how to get into a direct partnership with The Daily Show. Notice how Stewart's version of the embedded generals report played up what the Times played down-- that the Pentagon comically calls these fellows "message force multipliers."
What really impressed me in Stewart's report that night was his exclusive coverage of a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) documenting how the Bush administration has utterly failed in its other "war" -- against Al Qaeda, in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

This is usually the stuff of investigative journalism units, of the kind I used to run at the Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc.
Instead, it was on Comedy Central. So this year's BNET Media Industry Award for the Best Political Report on Television -- in the Context of the Best Business Plan ( or BMIAFTBPROT-ITCOTBBP) goes to none other than... The Daily Show.

And, of course the award for the best business plan goes to everybody who's thinking outside of the old media box, which in due time will be recognized as the coffin it is.

[Editor's Note: BNET's PR analyst, Jon Greer, disagrees. He thinks that the Pentagon's coaching of its x-generals is, well, not that big a deal, and poo-poos the media for not finding its own independent sources. What do you think?]