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To: craig crawford who wrote (5441)	1/1/1998 3:13:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27307

Craig, I sold time for the ABC Television Network my entire career, and I was always impressed by the advertising industry's appetite for alternatives to mainstream media. The advertising business is fiercely competitive, and is staffed by folks constantly looking to innovate. Agencies want to be on the bleeding edge of every emerging medium, and the marketing staffs at the client level are hungry to build their reputations by knowing every facet of new media. It's the nature of a business that deals in abstracts. As Peter pointed out the existing advertising budgets of American companies are huge, and the media-department people have broad latitude in their choices. The creative and art departments of agencies are always looking for cutting-edge award-winning work because that's what gets them new clients, and insures that they keep the ones they already have. Right now the declared emerging medium is the Internet. Clients and their agencies are willing to spend disproportional sums of money in the medium to climb the learning curve as quickly as possible, and they will keep spending money without results until they get it right. It's the only way to learn. The same holds true at the client level for website development. The Internet has arrived. I remember back in 1978 when network cable was the new thing. I was amazed by the amount of time and money advertisers were spending on network cable, in spite of the fact that most homes didn't even have cable available yet, the ratings were miniscule, the research infrastructure didn't exist. As a young salesman, I remember asking one of my clients why they were diverting all that money into something so unproven and obviously ineffective. He put it very succinctly. He told me that the future may not be now, but it was well defined...and for the price of one 30-second unit in Happy Days he could fund his cable budget for an entire year while gaining organizational experience and developing best practices. In those days there was no A&E, Lifetime, or ESPN. The first networks were the WOR and WTBS superstations, CNN, USA, MTV and a couple others. Ted Turner was a small-fry in Atlanta losing a ton of money. The industry grew up and now its in the major leagues, and Ted's giving away billions to charity.

To: craig crawford who wrote (5441)	1/1/1998 7:51:00 PM
From: Keith J	Respond to of 27307

r.e. stocks that keep on chugging - a whole different situation, but US Air(ways) has gone up about 15 fold in the past 3 years. Not sure what the largest yearly gain was. Oh, didn't Buffett miss the boat on that one. <G> KJ