• by Joe Mandese , February 5, 2010

Worry not. I am still here. Writing columns. The occasional eulogy. So what's with the title of this one? Well, I'm not taking any chances. You see, I have learned that someone befitting a genuine epitaph has passed away, and so too, apparently, from our collective memory. Bill Rubens, the former research chief at NBC, died Jan. 29 at the age of 82.

But nobody seems to remember him. At least no one at NBC, the place he worked for 35 years. They have no trace of the poor fellow. No yellowed executive bio, not even a sepia-hued corporate headshot.

That's sad, obviously. But I also think it says something bigger -- more profound -- about the state of things. Or at least the state of how we remember what, and who, is important to us.

If Evan Williams, the 30something wunderkind CEO of Twitter, were to kick the bucket tomorrow, I guarantee you his passing would be the story of the day, blowing the state of the economy, the situation in Haiti and the rest of world affairs off all the front -- er, home pages -- that tell us what is supposed to be important to us.

You know it's true. I mean, come on -- last week, when the lame duck CEO of Sun Microsystems tweeted his resignation, he became the story of the day. OK -- he tweeted it in haiku, but still, the story of the day?

There is something going on here, and it's little things like the forgotten memory of Bill Rubens that remind me of it. Maybe it's bigger than we can comprehend because we're living through it, and cannot see its creeping momentum shaping and reshaping who we are. Maybe it needs someone like a Bill Rubens to conduct the kind of long, "longitudinal studies" he was known for, in order for us to step back, think, reflect and nod our heads "a-ha."

One of the real ironies here is that Bill Rubens has been forgotten by the media he spent so much of his life trying to understand and put into perspective. Mostly, they were perspectives that helped influence the outcome of seemingly trivial media matters. Things like Nielsen ratings, advertising sales, or TV programming and scheduling decisions.

But sometimes, they were perspectives that helped us understand how media was shaping who we are. Among Rubens' most important contributions was researching the effects that violent TV programming was having on the development of America's youth. He co-authored the influential book "Television and Aggression."

That kind of research is one of the reasons I fell in love with media -- and feel fortunate to have spent my life covering it. And the truth is, I've always found the people who researched the effects of media more interesting, in many ways, than the ones who were creating and programming it.

It began with my first exposure to Marshall McLuhan when I started reading about media in the early 1970s. And it has continued through Neal Postman's seminal works in the 1980s to the writing that author and Wired editor Chris Anderson has been doing recently. It's all about understanding how this thing we call "media" mirrors who we are, and how we think about ourselves.

I have the most profound respect for those people who have taken the time to step back and research its effects. And frankly, I think there is no better time for someone like a Bill Rubens to step forward to help us figure out what we are doing to ourselves, before it is too late.

Because there are two concurrent trends going on right now that make me wonder if we're heading in the right direction. One is the focus the media has on what matters. The other is our focus on which media matter most.

It's something I think about all the time, but I was really struck last week when the Pew Research Project For Excellence In Journalism released its latest weekly "new media" news index, with the headline: "State of the iPad Outpaces State of the Union.". OK, so the headline was slightly misleading, and the Pew Center's newsletter writers probably wouldn't qualify for their own excellence criteria, but it sure got my attention.

Of all the really important things going on in the world last week, it amazed me how much Apple's release of the iPad dominated the media. As it turns out, the Pew analysis found that the iPad blew President Obama's first State of the Union address off the "pages" of Twitter, not the New York Times or, well, NBC News.

Why the Pew Center treats Twitter as a news outlet is worthy of a column in itself, but the fact is that Twitter's "news feeds" overwhelmingly focused on the iPad, followed by the economy, the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, gays serving in the military, and lastly, Obama's address.

Among bloggers opining in the blogosphere, Obama's address did relatively worse, failing to rank among the top five stories of the week. (The BBC's airing of the first film [that we know of] shot entirely by chimpanzees ranked first.) If this isn't worthy of a longitudinal study by the likes of a Bill Rubens, I don't know what is.

I first learned about Bill Rubens' passing from Nicholas Schiavone, another former research chief at NBC, who is now retired from the network. After unsuccessfully pursuing NBC for information about Rubens, I joked to Schiavone that he had better hurry and write his own obituary to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to him.

He replied by sending me the complete lyrics to the Bee Gees "Staying Alive" -- you know, the one playing in the background as Tony Manero bops down the street, pizza slice in hand, in the opening of "Saturday Night Fever" -- and no other comment.

Alan Wurtzel, NBC's current research chief, told me he was stunned to learn the network had no information about Bill Rubens, but conceded this is the same network that "erased Johnny Carson's early shows so they could reuse the videotape."

"Bill was a major player in the TV research biz, and his memory certainly deserves recognition," Wurtzel said, referring me to some others who might have more information about him.

One them was longtime industry researcher and Statistical Research Inc. founder Gale Metzger, who knew Rubens well and who paid for a death notice in the New York Times remembering Rubens.

Metzger reminded me that in addition to overseeing all of NBC's research, Rubens served as head of a number of important industry groups, including chairman of the Advertising Research Foundation.

"He was head of research at a time when NBC basically had one-third of the audience on the air," Metzger recalled, calling Rubens a "thoughtful" and "well-trained" researcher who was "very concerned about the quality of the data."

But one of his best attributes, Metzger said, was that "Bill was always a very plainspoken guy. You didn't have to worry about what he was thinking, because he'd tell you."

So in the spirit of Bill Rubens, I'd like to keep my own epitaph plain and simple. In fact, I think I'll write it as a haiku, because who knows -- maybe somebody will tweet it. And then I will be remembered, if only for a nanosecond.

My Epitaph

By Joe Mandese

Trade hack took a whack
Will anyone recall me
Not at NBC