Don't threaten birds, they know how to tweet.

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday October 12, 2012

Tweet tweet. This is the message that is coming loud and clear to American presidential candidate Mitch Romney after last week's TV debate. Certainly a majority of pundits are giving the laurels to his performance. But there is a little slip he made in his enthusiasm that is starting to peck the back of his head. The sharp yellow beak of Big Bird.

You might have seen him joke casually that among the programs he would stop funding once in power, was the Public Broadcasting Service, PBS. This is the employer of moderator Jim Lehrer. "I'm sorry Jim...I like PBS, I like Big Bird, I actually like you too, but I'm not going to...pay for it."

With which millions of middle class moms across America saw their mid-morning coffee break, as the kids watch Sesame Street, go out of the window. Boy did they Tweet.

If you're in business - especially the business of politics - you can't afford to toss out casual statements without thinking through their effectiveness. And without thinking through how far the words may travel.

Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz says the debate was the most tweeted about political event in U.S. history. Certainly Romney's comment set records: within minutes someone started the @FiredBigBird account on Twitter. Within hours it had 10,000 followers.

I don't have to dwell at length about Alan Jones - everybody else already has - but here is an example of how a casual thought, dropped in after a fine cabernet, can end up costing millions. Literally.

Jones might complain that he was filmed secretly. But in these days when every phone in everybody's hand is a movie camera, and an instant worldwide information distributor, how private can anyone be?

Now our politicians and lawyers are talking about strengthening privacy, libel and slander laws. Sorry folks, I have to tell them that's a joke. In a world where thousands can be contacted in seconds, who you gonna sue?

As for the angry moms, for all their support of free enterprise, Americans still treasure the government subsidised PBS. A recent measure of "public trust" ratings placed them at 26 per cent - way ahead of commercial TV at 8 per cent. Mind you the least trustworthy organisation was Congress at 4 per cent.

To prove that they are actually on the ball, PBS in turn ad-bought the phrase "Big Bird" on Twitter, leading clickers to an ad which says: "PBS is trusted, valued and essential." Then it directs users to a website full of statistics about the network’s reach, public service initiatives and how it only costs taxpayers $1.35 a year.

Here in Australia we are used to this argument - it's a regular complaint to every government, that funding for the ABC is never adequate for what it is expected to deliver.

Now the multiplicity of ABC channels and all the internet and smartphone media they need to service, have created a huge growth in the program time to be created. With our smaller population to pay for it, the head cost is higher - about $52 a head, so now the slogan should be "14 cents a day".

In Australia, surveys reveal over 80 per cent believe the ABC "provides a valuable service to the community". In America, when asked "which type of television is very important", 24 per cent named the commercial networks. But 31 per cent said PBS.

So beware any politician who comes up with the bright idea that cutting state-supported TV would save budget money. They'd risk being pecked to death.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com