Sony's Sir Howard Stringer | CBS 60 Minutes Interview

[Liberal_B]

Hey people, I didnt know where to post this but Howard Stringer was just on 60 minutes and I recorded it on my dvd recorder. Right now I have it in VOB format (just gotta figure out how this Philips recorder truly works, seems the VOBs are separated in weird pieces), I was thinking of converting it to Divx 6 and maybe give it to the administration here so all can see. I missed the first minute of the piece basically where the reporter introduces the topic sitting in a chair with the story name behind them (the typical 60 Minutes intro).

the piece is 12 min 46seconds:

"Sir Howard Stringer: Sony's Savior?"

by Lesley Stahl

Edited January 12, 2006 by Ishiyoshi

[pata2001]

Please do. Would be great for us who don't pay attention to TV. You might want to reduce the resolution and bitrate to keep the file-size bearable. The only problem is to find a space to host it.

[guyj1]

Podcasts of "60 Minutes" episodes can be found on Itunes. Convert it to atrac and you can listen to it on your MD.

[Ishiyoshi]

Hey people, I didnt know where to post this but Howard Stringer was just on 60 minutes and I recorded it on my dvd recorder. Right now I have it in VOB format (just gotta figure out how this Philips recorder truly works, seems the VOBs are separated in weird pieces), I was thinking of converting it to Divx 6 and maybe give it to the administration here so all can see. I missed the first minute of the piece basically where the reporter introduces the topic sitting in a chair with the story name behind them (the typical 60 Minutes intro).

the piece is 12 min 46seconds:

"Sir Howard Stringer: Sony's Savior?"

bu Lesley Stahl

What's the total file size of the VOB file? You can pm it over to me or kurisu - perhaps we can encode it into MP4 or AVC file.

[Liberal_B]

I merged the VOBs into one mpeg1 file (resolution 320x24) and file size is 130MB, then ran it through Divx6 using its handheld profile and now the file is 23 MB (176 x 128 resolution)

when i used divx 6's portable profile got a filesize 57.2 MB (resolution 320x240)

using the home theater profile, filesize and quality are the same it seems

now to get it to you people.

hmmm......

Edited January 9, 2006 by Liberal_B

[Liberal_B]

What's the total file size of the VOB file? You can pm it over to me or kurisu - perhaps we can encode it into MP4 or AVC file.

oops, didnt see your post before i made mine, ishiyoshi, the vob file was weird, i recorded it on a dvd recorder than had another program saved and the first part of the vob was the other program and then was the 60 minutes, so i dont exactly know the true size of the vob, weird recording way it made them, i dont recall this recorder making vobs mixed like that

curious

[pata2001]

QUOTE(Liberal_B @ Jan 8 2006, 08:38 PM) ←

when i used divx 6's portable profile got a filesize 57.2 MB (resolution 320x240)

This is a good size, and 320x240 is stil watchable. See if you can have Ishiyoshi/kurisu to host the file for you.

Another great idea is to convert the video to (as Ishi said) PSP compatible MP4, but could alienate those who are not familiar/don't have the software/hardware to play it. It would be hilarious/ironic watching Stringer on a 5G iPod.

Edited January 9, 2006 by pata2001

[Liberal_B]

I dont really want turn this into an encoding thread and bore the heck out of everybody. I want to get it small becuase my upload speed is capped, usually get 40 to 50kb/s (thus the huge VOBs would take forever to get to Ishiyoshi at that speed). It is odd using a Philips dvd recorder and Ahead Nero and Divx softwares to get a video about SONY out.

Edited January 10, 2006 by Liberal_B

[Ishiyoshi]

I want to express my thanks to Liberal_B once more for sharing the Stringer video with the community. Anticipating heavy download traffic, we've decided to use rapidshare to distribute the video to the community instead.

Enjoy!

click to download video --> CBS 60 minutes | Sony's Sir Howard Stringer [DivX Video]

click to download video --> CBS 60 minutes | Sony's Sir Howard Stringer [AVC Video]

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The Transcript

Sir Howard Stringer: Sony's Savior?

Jan. 8, 2006

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(CBS) At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the CEO of Sony delivered the keynote address. That’s no surprise; what is surprising is who that CEO is: Sir Howard Stringer, the first westerner ever to lead this epitome of “Japan Incorporated.”

In the ultra-competitive electronics business, Sony has stumbled badly. Once a nimble innovator known for the coolest gadgets, it became a bloated, bureaucratic conglomerate. In 2004, Sony actually lost money for the first time in a decade.

Six months ago, Sir Howard was given the job of turning Sony around, and he’s already shaken it up in ways his predecessors never could, precisely because he’s not Japanese. But, as Lesley Stahl reports, that is also what makes his job so hard.

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Why did he take this job?

"I thought about taking this job for well over a week because I knew that the reason I got the job was because it was in financial difficulties," says Stringer. "And so I knew that I would have to use every personal skill I had to persuade and cajole and convince that for the greater good of the company, we might have to do some tough things."

Some of the tough things include firing thousands of people, something Sony’s Japanese executives, so entrenched in the tradition of jobs-for-life, could never do. In Howard Stringer, they saw a guy who would cut like hell, but somehow be nice about it.

Stringer has announced a new restructuring plan which calls for the elimination of 10,000 jobs, and 11 of 65 factories.

Stringer has only named some of the 11 factories slated for closure.

"I mean, we know what they are. We’re taking care of the employees before we take care of the press," he says.

"So you know what they are. And you’re just not going to tell us?" Stahl asks.

"Yes! I’m not gonna tell you, no," says Stringer. "It doesn’t mean I’m not gonna do what I’ve announced I’m gonna do. But it does mean I’m gonna do it carefully. It’s not as easy to be cavalier about people’s jobs as one can be in the United States."

But it’s also not easy to run a company where you’re never quite sure what the heck people are saying.

Sir Howard doesn't speak Japanese and just standing up makes him stand out: he’s a foot taller than everyone.

The two weeks a month he spends in Japan are filled with cultural disconnects. Whether it’s a shaky interpreter during a speech, or an upside-down business card exchange, or a just-not-done peck on the cheek for a factory worker, it’s clear that Sony has never had a leader quite like Howard Stringer.

The company has 150,000 employees, $70 billion in revenue and products ranging from movies to music to all things electronic. Sony long defined the leading edge in gadgetry, transistor radios in the 1950s, Trinitron TVs in the 1960s and, in the 1970s, the revolutionary Walkman.

But if Sony had the market cornered for 25 years, it took Apple just months to steal it away.

Stringer admits that looking at one of Apple's iPods hurts, a major symbol of where Sony went off the tracks.

"There’s no question that the iPod was a wakeup call for Sony. And the answer is that Steve Jobs was smarter at software than we are," he says.

Stringer says Steve Jobs came up with the iPod and iTunes, a simple system for people to download music — while Sony, worried about its record company — wasted precious time trying to figure out how to keep people from stealing songs.

"We tried to have a secure device. And that was a myth," says Stringer. "And a mistake. Sad for the music company, mind you."

It’s not just the iPod. Samsung hurt them in flat screen TVs and, in videogames, Microsoft’s Xbox challenged the PlayStation.

One could get the feeling that Sony is no longer the coolest, but Stringer says, "You can take iPod and beat us over the head with it, but it’s only one product. And we have a thousand products. Apple has two or three."

But that “bigness” is Sony’s problem. Too many divisions full of managers and bureaucrats not talking to each other.

"So, all of a sudden, the entrepreneurial company over 60 years has become this big elephant," says Professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, the dean of one of Japan’s most prestigious business schools. "I don’t know if you heard Steven Jobs’ speech, the title of which was 'Stay hungry, Stay foolish.' ”

And Sony, Takeuchi says, wasn't "as hungry or as foolish."

The man Sony is counting on to fix that — and foster unity and cooperation — is an unlikely choice and not just because he’s a Sir rather than a samurai.

He doesn't have the typical CEO resume and doesn't hold an MBA. Does he view himself as a rare bird?

"Odd, I think, is probably the word," he says laughing. "And I don’t have a financial background. I mean, I never, I used to deliberately say that I never want to be in management. I still don’t know how I got into management in the first place."

Born in Wales 63 years ago, he lived in a house with no electricity, then won a scholarship to a fancy boys’ school in England, and went on to college at Oxford.

At age 22, Stringer came to New York, got a job, and was then drafted to fight for the United States in Vietnam.

"I would use the word ‘fought’ loosely," Stringer says. "I served."

He wasn't an American citizen at the time. Why did he do it?

"Because I’m too stubborn. I was too stubborn to go back," he explains. "It was my great adventure, coming over to America with $200 in my pocket and looking for work all on my own."

After Vietnam, the work he found was at CBS News in the 1970s producing documentaries. In the 1980s, he ran the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, which he still says was his favorite job ever.

But perhaps more defining is what happened when he was promoted to president of CBS News. In 1987, he oversaw the first layoffs in the company’s history; he had to fire 200 colleagues and friends.

"Yet, this is the amazing thing: I don’t know anybody who blamed you. Now how did you manage that?" Stahl asks.

"By communication. I did it myself. I mean I didn’t send a memo to somebody and say 'Your job is over.' " he says. "And it was emotionally very draining. And it affected me."

But he had to do it again, and on a much larger scale. Stringer has actually worked for Sony for the last eight years; first winning notice and praise for turning around its ailing North American movie and music divisions.

Stringer eliminated 9,000 jobs and has been dubbed by a newspaper “the affable axe-wielder.”

"I hope I wasn’t chosen because of my axe-wielding skills," says Stringer. "You usually get a job, you’re offered the job, because someone has not done a job well, or there’s a crisis. And boy is there a crisis now: how to restore Sony’s competitiveness in today’s cut-throat global market."

He has already unified his workforce. What Japanese executive would work the rope line at American-style town-hall meetings? And he never misses a chance to get out on the factory floor, to see and be seen.

"There are a lot of young people who say 'Go on shake it up more. Do more.' Talk to me all the time. You know, 'Fight. Get rid of that crust of management. Go on, fight for it,' ” Stringer explains.

Motivating young workers is the easy part; firing some of them won’t be, especially with some analysts saying his cutbacks don’t go far enough.

On the day of the announcement, Stringer got a tepid, if not negative response from Wall Street.

"I think that the tepid response from Wall Street is because Wall Street now always wants more blood than you could possibly deliver," says Stringer.

Still, Sony simply has to change. Profit margins for many consumer products have disappeared, its movie studio is in a slump again — "Memoirs of a Geisha,” which Sony hoped would be holiday season hit, flopped instead — and the music division has a scandal over anti-piracy software it secretly planted on CDs. It seems there’s trouble wherever you look.

"For Sony, they have always been a Yokozuna," says Takeuchi. "Yokozuna is a sumo wrestler who’s the highest grand champion. … "They’ve always been at the top. They’ve always been a rule maker rather than a rule-breaker. Now they have to become a rule-breaker. And that’s going to be tough to do."

Rule-breaking means being bold and innovative. And in electronics, they think they’re on the way. Their Bravia flat-screen TV is a big hit. They hope the new digital Walkman will be just as cool as the iPod and a lot is also riding on the upcoming PlayStation 3.

To tout all his new products, Stringer is in perpetual motion around the world, on the red carpet in Hollywood, in black-tie in New York and at a new Sony facility in India, for example.

Asked what his travel schedule is for the next couple of days, Stringer says, "Well, I go to Los Angeles on Sunday for a movie premiere. I go back to New York on Monday night. I go to Japan on Saturday. … "I then come back to London, go back to London on Thursday, back to New York on the following Monday."

He is in a constant jet lag. "Seven hours sleep is tantamount to a miracle. I celebrate it," he says.

Stringer sees his wife, Jennifer, a doctor, and their two children, a 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, just a few days a month.

His family lives in the English countryside, and Stringer said during a factory town hall meeting, "I don’t see my family very much. My family is you."

Stringer admits there was a sadness in his voice. "This is a tale repeated around the world with all of these globe-trotting business executives. You don’t know quite what I’m inflicting on my children. And so I overcompensate when I’m around them and I tend to walk in with bundles of Sony devices as a sort of social bribery."

If he’s going to pay such an awful personal price, he doesn’t want to feel like just another cost-cutting CEO, totally transforming the company to fit the model of American industry.

Sony, he says, deserves better.

"This is not a company on its last legs. This is a company with great traditions," he says. "I have to look after some of those traditions because that’s why the company was successful in the first place. And I’m not sure that leaping on board an American business model of ruthlessness and viciousness and counter-attacks all the time is a good thing necessarily for somebody else. And, so, taking care of somebody else’s culture is part of the joy and opportunity of this job. I have things to learn from the Japanese. And not just the other way around."

By Rome Hartman ©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Edited January 12, 2006 by Ishiyoshi

[mercury_in_flames]

lol, 8kb/s downloading

correction, 4kb/s...

Edited January 12, 2006 by GregTheRotter

[Ishiyoshi]

Update: AVC and transcript added to post #9.