Business Strategy | Business Plans: The Curse of the Mogul by Jonathan Knee, Bruce Greenwald & Ava Seave

The Curse of the Mogul

What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies

By: Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave

Published: October 15, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN: 9781591842644
Publisher: Penguin/Portfolio

"The media industry is facing multiple financial and operational crises on an unprecedented scale", write finance and management experts Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave, in their insightful and eye opening book The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies. The authors raise some critical questions about the viability and management decisions made by the major media corporations, and dispel many of the myths surrounding the industry and its well known ownership and CEO names.

Jonathan A. Knee (photo left), Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave describe a media industry, that despite its well publicized and self proclaimed sense of being indispensable, is one that fails to live up to its financial and stock value expectations. The authors point out that the major players in media rarely achieve stock values and return on investment that even matches the average of any of the major stock indexes. Instead of building company and shareholder value, these companies have lost $20 billion from their collective balance sheets. The book describes why the media companies, despite their optimistic buzzword filled press releases, perform poorly in the marketplace, and how their future business prospects look bleak as well.

Bruce C. Greenwald (photo left), Jonathan A. Knee, and Ava Seave describe the major causes of the weak business performance of the media giants. One of the core problems of the industry is the all powerful ownership of these closely held corporations. Household names including Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and Ted Turner dominate their companies with their force of personality. Very often the moguls indulge in wrong headed decision making, blinded by their own sense of importance, and end up with money losing acquisitions that fail to match their promised value. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that media moguls consider their industry to be like no other, and therefore cannot be judged or valuated on the same terms as other major corporations. This myth of self importance and indispensability to the economy, as the authors point, is used by the moguls to defend their weak financial performance.

Ava Seave (photo left), Bruce C. Greenwald, and Jonathan A. Knee portray a world where all powerful media moguls can make brilliant financial and acquisition decisions, and immediately negate that move with another that was ill advised at best, and entirely disastrous at worst. For me, the power of the book is how the authors provide a clear eyed analysis of the root causes of the major media companies' many failures, tempered with fair descriptions of what went right in their boardroom decisions. The book shows clearly that there are both good moguls who operate their companies well and create shareholder value, and their are bad moguls who are ego driven, follow misguided growth policies, and fail to understand the realities of a changing marketplace including the online world. The book also shows a light at the end of the tunnel for the media corporations, and how they can become more profitable and effectively run businesses in the future. Of course, as the authors write, there is no certainty that the media moguls will adopt and follow the best course.

I highly recommend the myth destroying and groundbreaking book The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave, to anyone seeking a well balanced and thought provoking book about how and why the major media moguls make flawed business decisions. The authors dispel the usual mogul supplied myths of synergy, growth, of content being king, and of their ego driven sense of being essential to the industry. The book offers valuable lessons from media companies who made successful strategic business moves, and why they outperformed the other moguls in building shareholder value.

Read the essential and in depth book The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave, and discover how the media corporations can meet the challenges of the internet and build profits, by discarding their traditional mogul driven business models. The demise of the media companies is not at hand, but if they fail to embrace the new realities facing the industry, they will continue to lag behind the rest of the economy. The authors offer the media moguls a fresh vision. It's up to the moguls to accept it and put that vision into action.