Paul Douglas's New Forecast

Likewise, the content providers to whom those advertising dollars flow—in this case, mostly TV news operations—might be paid only for the number of their segments that viewers pick. But they would get paid, Douglas points out, meaning that they would gain a new revenue stream to offset the cost of their news production.

In what turned out to be a prophetic conversation shortly before his own firing, Douglas said: “There is such a sense of gloom and doom in the legacy media. I love television broadcasting, but I see this malaise all around me. Margins are dropping. Audiences are shrinking and becoming fragmented.”

Douglas’s own sons, ages 17 and 20, don’t watch the 10 o’clock news. Why should they, when they can go on line and get the information they want on their own schedule? “What is going to pull 20-year-olds back into watching the news?” their father asks. “Our theory is that you personalize it, customize it, and give them custom ads. My oldest son loves music and guitars. If he could get guitar ads—for the latest Gibson, something from the Guitar Center—he’d watch that every day.

“I think that we’re in the right place at the right time with the right technology.”

Who Runs It?

Douglas and his partners aren’t certain how NoozMe will operate long term. Would a single company—Google or Yahoo, perhaps—want to buy the operation outright and act as gatekeeper for Singular Logic’s technology and patents? Or should Singular Logic try to license its technology to hundreds of national, international, and local TV news outlets, each running its own NoozMe service, forming its own alliances with other content providers, determining how many ads the viewer must select in order to see a certain number of news segments?

In the short run, Singular Logic will test the opt-in concept on a national basis with its own NoozMe portal, expected to launch before year’s end. Details are confidential for now. Weather information, presumably, will play a featured role, but the principals suggest that other “publicly available content” will be included as well.

However the operating structure evolves, much will depend on NoozMe’s appeal to broadcasters and advertising agencies. Among those to whom Singular Logic has presented the concept is John Rash, senior vice president and director of media analysis for Minneapolis ad agency Campbell Mithun and host of The Rash Report, a WCCO-AM radio show on media and pop-culture trends.