>> rose: welcome to our program, tonight, with the president of china coming to washington for a state visit in a couple of weeks we look at the state of the relationship and what might be gained in a conversation with abigniew brzezinski. >> we are increasingly trumpeting the notion that china's becoming a threat, that it's engaging in a massive military buildup. the chinese are denouncing us for interfering in asia, for opposing china's rise, etc., etc., etc. and there are of course some fundamental philosophical differences between us. so if there is no improvement in the relationship as a consequence of this visit, there is the risk that in the longer run it might drift towards mutual antagonism, which is not yet the case. >> rose: shifting to the middle east, we talk about palestinian statehood with rashid khalidi of

columbia university and aluf benn of the israeli newspaper "ha'aretz." >> the problem here for israel is that if... theoretically if the united nations recognizes the state of palestine within the pre-'67 border, that means that any israeli presence beyond that border-- the settlements, the military patrol or be it the jewish person praying near the western wall in the old city in jerusalem-- is a trespasser. and therefore it amounts to giving the palestinians a license to go to war to liberate that territory against the trespasser. so you have to ask yourself whether such recognition is going to bring stability or is it going to be just another recipe for another crisis. >> people will really... i think will not any longer tolerate israel's bad boy behavior and the united states enabling of it. now, the world can't stop the united states and that's really the problem. but i agree with you.

i think's a degree of exasperation which has encouraged the palestinians. the problem is the palestinians are divided and you have the most right wing, most pro-settlement, most uncompromising israeli government in power in modern history. so i don't think that this necessarily is going to get us very far. >> rose: we conclude this evening with david carr, the media watcher for the "new york times" on media in a new age. >> everybody's got video. everybody's got text. everybody's got audio. so these days when now i'm going to make a television show, now i'm on the radio, now i'm in print, it's all getting mashed together so that the sort of historical verticals of media-- what's the television business, what's the web business-- i think they're going to start going away. >> rose: a state visit from china, the search for palestinian statehood, and news media in 2007 when we continue.

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>> rose: we begin evening looking at the relationship between china and the united states. the president of china, hu jintao, is scheduled to visit washington later this month. it's being regarded as the most important encounter between the two countries since deng xhou ping's historic visit 30 years ago. the meeting takes place amidst growing uncertainties about china's geopolitical aspirations. joining me from washington, dr. abigniew brzezinski. he wasize iner in the carter administration and in an opinion piece in the "new york times" today, he urges china and america to overcome their rivalries and cooperate. i am pleased to have him back on this program. welcome.

>> good to be with you, charlie. >> rose: this is, everybody understands, the most important visit since deng xioping which was very important. what might come out of this? what are the specifics that might be achievable? >> well, first of all, nothing may come out of it. and that would be too bad. i don't anticipate that the relationship would be worse because nothing came out but it would be a significantly missed opportunity. because, in fact, both countries are under some pressure, domestically particularly, to move towards a more antagonistic relationship. we are increasingly frum petting the notion that china is becoming a threat, it's engaging in a massive military buildup. the chinese are denouncing us for interfering in asia, for opposing china's rise, et cetera et cetera, et cetera. and there are, of course, some fundamental philosophical differences between us. so if there is no improvement in

the relationship as a consequence of this visit, there is the risk that in the longer run it might drift towards mutual antagonism, which is not yet the case. >> rose: many people believe that the chinese are feeling obviously economically more powerful but more aggressive, especially in the region leading to some fear on the part of their neighbors that that is happening. do you accept that? >> i accept that it's a fact. i think they perhaps are realizing the fact themselves. that is to say, i sense a kind of a pullback from the excessively triumphalist and occasionally belligerent tones of the chinese mass media and of some official pronouncements. you know, at one point, for example, the chinese press which is governmently controlled said that vietnam was playing with

fire when it was opposing the chinese claims to some disputed islands and when vietnam in effect kind of encouraged the united states to taken a interest in the issue. but also the fact is on our side we are already trumpeting the alleged military threat of china which, if true, is some significant number of years away and which in any case was almost humorous when one compares the military resources of the two countries and the amounts of money that both countries commit to. we have a military budget of about 700 billion dollars a year. more than all the nations of the world combined. they have a military budget perhaps one seventh of that. >> rose: but they're also... it is increasing and it's clear that they want to build up their naval presence which is a way of exerting your power beyond your

own borders. >> of course, you're absolutely right. the issue is are we the only nation in the world that's entitled to have the worldwide naval presence? a presence which incidentally is literally right on the edge of chinese territorial waters. how would we feel if we had chinese warships patrolling near san francisco? now, i don't want to be making a case for the chinese, but my point is if we want to have a long-term stable, noncompetitive certain nonantagonistic relationship with the chinese, we have to look at this problem in a wider perspective and a longer range view in mind. china is getting stronger. china is more assertive. china is also more successful. we have to find a way of fitting their success into a world in

which we are still and i hope will continue to be preeminent. >> rose: i'm always impressed with the idea-- or at least sometimes-- that these kinds of issues come down to wanting to communicate the idea that we until our case are not... do not want to stand in the way of their own growth and their influence. because the chinese feel that we do. >> well... and if you read the editorials in our newspapers some of the speeches by some of our legislators, are they entirely wrong? i think we have to get accustomed to the idea that the 20-year-long period of total american supremacy in the world was in a sense an anomaly. that this was not a normal long-term enduring condition. we have to find a way of accommodating the reality that a country of 1.3 billion people

with a manufacturing capability which now exceeds ours, with a really impressive history has to have some sort of legitimate place in the world that gives it respect and honor and some room. now, i'm not saying that we ought to simply lie down and pave the way for chinese petroleumsy. far from it. but i don't think we need to replicate the cold war because there are some fundamental differences between china of today and the former soviet union of yesterday. >> rose: so what should we do? >> well, if you read my op-ed i tried to take a stab at it and i think one way to begin is to use the obama/hu visit to try to create at least a framework. a framework in which we understand the issues, in which we outline ways of addressing problems together, in which we begin to lay down the rules of

the game. in which we outline some common objectives. bearing in mind, in fact, that these common objectives should not just be bilateral but be also responsive to the fact that the world is much more interdependent than it has ever been. but a great deal of stability in the world will increasingly depend on the stability and normality of the american/chinese relationship. i think that is what the visit ought to do. and this is why i think some sort of a charter negotiated by them and announced by them regarding these issues might be a good way to begin. >> rose: you say in your on said "president obama and president hu should make a serious effort to codify in a joint declaration of the historic potential of a productive american/chinese cooperation." is that what the chinese want? >> i have no idea. i have not consulted the chinese on this.

but it seems too me if one takes a long view of global change, if one looks at the problems that in different ways both we and the chinese confront i think some attempt at establishing rules of conduct maybe even rules of non-antagonistic competition between us-- because it is a competition, it is a rivalry-- would be a major step forward. >> rose: suppose that president hu says to president obama "mr. president, what role do you want your country to play in the region that we are dominant? what is the role that you would like to play?" what should the president's answer be? >> i think the president should say-- at least this is what i would have urged him to say-- that no part of the world today can be considered an exclusive zone of preponderance or domination. but there is a sphere of

influence and obviously the united states has a role to play in asia, especially since even the chinese would not wish it. a great many countries do wish it. and i would hope to chinese would also recognize-- and i think to some extent they do-- that it's useful for them, it's good for them that we play a role within china also. look at the impact, for example, the positive impact, of our technology. of our educational system. we have more than 100,000 chinese students in our universities. so the notion of america not being part of some asian age of cooperation, of regional institutions is, in a sense, past history. it's post-historical. the world isn't that way anymore. you know, working together doesn't mean that they have to follow our lead entirely and it doesn't mean that we have to accommodate their point of view, either.

this is the tricky part of that relationship. we have become accustomed to being the number one in our own part of the world and then the last 20 years in almost the entire world. well, this is not going to last indefinitely. >> rose: don't you think we know that? >> i think we're beginning to learn it but we resent it and this is why on the one hand we tend occasionally to exaggerate the longer range potential threat of china rand beginning to present it as it was already existent. and to some extent we also take refuge in wishful thinking namely, well, the chinese will have some bust-up, their system will break up, their economy will falter, the problem will, so to speak, disappear on its own. i don't think that it's going to happen, either. >> rose: there is this point of view as well. the chinese are saying to themselves and to the world "listen, for the next 25 years

we realize how strong we are and we obviously are more confident than we've ever been and we get more confident everyday, but for the next 25 years, for the next 15 years, between now and 2025 we just want to grow. we want to expand our capacity, we want to expand our domestic market that enhances our ability to find more markets for our products. we'll decide after 2025 when we have grown to a place that we want to grow and have satisfyeded certain domestic tensions what kind of role we want to play in the world. is that... do you hear the? >> well, yes, except i don't think it's this mechanical. because, you know, you can't sort of plot for 25 years think that in the process some effects will not be felt by the outside world and then all of a sudden you change gears and you begin to act differently. i think one of the problems in the relationship is the difficulty of synchronizing the

change between us and the chinese and even among the chinese. for example, the government frequently says-- the chinese government-- that all we want is a harmonious world and this we're really not ready to play a major role in it because we still have such a long road towards modernity and development. that so many chinese are still not part of this transformation and therefore we are really not in any way a competitor. and yet increasingly the official media in china talk about china as a great power, america as a declining power. they talk about chinese world role. there is a triumphalist tone in at least part of the chinese elite which gives you food for thought and which also, i think, increases the validity of the argument that i make: namely, it's time for really serious discussions aiming at some shared definition of the

underlying character and the basic principles of this increasingly complex relationship. >> rose: it is also argued in some quarters that the military in china-- people's army-- has a certain... a different attitude about the west than the leadership does. is there a difference? >> i think there are some differences. some of the sort of more advanced chinese military publications where strategy is discussed occasionally do have rather strident tones. and i have sometimes wondered whether the communist party begins to faulter in china, whether the p.l.a.-- the people's liberation army, the chinese army-- might not become an increasingly important political institution. and that could be troublesome. >> rose: how does the united states address that? >> i think we're trying to develop a more active

military-to-military dialogue. if i'm not mistaken, the secretary of defense is planning to be leaving for china later this week and i think that's all to the good. especially since he's not only so to speak the head of the military establishment but he's very savvy politically. i think we need more of this kind of dialogue between our militaries. but ultimately the role the p.l.a. will play in domestic chinese affairs depends on the degree to which the ruling political system is successful or falters. and this may be another reason why we shouldn't be wishing that the present leadership fragments and begins to dissipate its capacity to give china a sense of political direction. >> rose: what do you know and have you met the new anointed successor to hu jintao? >> i have met him but i don't have a deep knowledge of him. i met him in two brief meetings.

but i have to say, knowing the chinese leadership quite well over the last 30 years and having known all of the top figures with some in some really extensive and repetitive meetings that so far they have managed to maintain the quality of that leadership. so without knowing too much about him, i assume there's not going to be too much of a change between him and his generation and president hu jintao and his generation who in a couple of years or so will begin to leave the political scene. >> rose: well, the present generation of leadership is primarily... they're primarily engineers. is there any kind of cultural evolution taking place in terms of the kind of people who are mayors and governors in the provinces of china? >> you begin to see increasingly for example, the mayors of some very success. major metropolitan centers you do have some people who have been deeply involved with the

youth movement and are more also in touch with what is happening in the chinese universities. but i think you're hinting at something very important which is, of course, the question mark; namely, is there a danger that the pace of social change will outpace the pace of political change in china? and that will be a serious dilemma for china if the gap between the two became too wide. >> rose: what do you mean by "social change"? >> expectations, standards of living, exposure to the rest of the world. just think how different when you think of these words the situation is of today's so-called middle-class and of its equivalent ten years ago, even more 20 years ago, and even more 30 years ago when there was hardly any middle-class. >> rose: you wrote a book after... which basically looked at the u.s. policy after the fall of the berlin wall, over

the next 20 years beginning of the iraqi war and basically suggested that american leadership missed an opportunity when it had that kind of power to shape and transform a new attitude around the world. am i correct? >> you're absolutely correct. i think we had 20 years of unprecedented opportunity. we frittered away the first ten years having a good time, basically, and we wasted the last ten years by antagonizing much of the world and plunging ourselves into unwinnable wars. does that sum it up? (laughs) >> rose: it does. but i read today, speaking of that, that the chinese... someone was quoted... whether it was wikileaks or somewhere saying, you know, we're pleased to see the united states spend its fortune on wars in afghanistan and iraq while we go about the business of building up our country. you've given us opportunity. >> absolutely. and i think it's not only the chinese who feel that way.

the russians feel that way certainly because they resent the fact that we ended up standing at the end of the cold war and they weren't standing anymore. there are some other countries: india, iran certainly who benefit from the fact that our performance in the last few years has been wobbly. now, what i really liked about obama when he first started running for president was that he seemed to understand these international challenges and to have a much more refined and historically appropriate grasp of what the 21st century expects from us. i think the domestic problems and the necessity of coping with them and being absorbed by them have created a gap between his understanding of these issues and the ability of american foreign policy effectively to address them. but i hope the gap will be closed. >> rose: okay. but you're basically saying your expectation of what he'll be able to do because he had a genuine understanding of the way

the world was changing has not happened and you're disappointed that he hasn't done but you give him a kind of pass because he's had enormous domestic issues to take care of. >> yes. and i think that's a very legitimate, so to speak, explanation or even excuse. but it still is too bad. i think we see it in a variety of places. it's not only in asia. we see it in the middle east. we see it a little bit in the drift apart between us and the europeans. we certainly see it in our relationship with the russians and so forth. >> rose: i appreciate you coming. >> always good to talk to you, charlie. thanks. >> rose: you as well. happy new year. >> happy new year. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: we turn now from china to the middle east and the stalemate in the peace process. for almost two years, the obama administration has tried to guide israel and palestinians into direct talks. those efforts collapsed in december over the issue of settlements. the palestinians are now mining a diplomatic offensive to gain

international recognition for a palestinian state. many in the region fear another outbreak in the conflict if there is no progress. joining me now is rashid khalidi. he is the professor of arab studies at columbia university. joining me by phone from tel aviv is aluf benn. a columnist in and editor at large at the israeli newspaper "ha'aretz." i'm pleased to have both of them back on this program. rashid, i begin with you. this... i just did a conversation down in washington with the former foreign minister zippy livni of israel and the prime minister of the palestinian authority. he has said that he's building up from the ground palestinian not idea but presence with institutions of government. so that by september of this year they will seek to establish a palestinian state and then go

about the process of the negotiations over the specifics of borders. right of return. east jerusalem. what do you think of this idea? >> well, palestinian statehood is 62 years overdue. it should have happened at the time of the partition plan. a jewish state, an arab state. it's 44 years since the west bank and the gaza and jerusalem were occupied and we're still waiting for a peace process that is going absolutely nowhere. in fact, has made things much worse. i would say anything that will move the situation off of the downward track that it's on would be good but i am not sure that simply declaring statehood-- which actually the palestinians did back in 1998... >> rose: this was yasser arafat. >> this was yasser arafat. >> rose: but this seems to be different this time.

there's a difference in terms of the temperature around the world vis-a-vis this. also there's exasperation. >> right. i mean, people are absolutely fed up with the fact that this process has actually taken this long. there is less and less tolerance of israel's behavior. we're getting this in american public opinion, we're getting this in the american jewish community and outside the united states we're getting it more and more and more. people will not any longer tolerate israel's bad boy behavior and the united states enabling of it. now, the world can't stop the united states. and that's really the problem. but i agree with you. i think there's a degree of exasperation which has encouraged the palestinians. the problem is the palestinians are divided and you have the most right wing most pro-settlement most uncompromising israeli government in power in modern history. so i don't think that this necessarily is going to get us very far. >> rose: would you like that see the palestinians go i head with this? >> i don't think it will hurt except i think that in the absence of a palestinian consensus on this-- which you

don't have, off palestinian authority in gaza, in the absence of an effort to explain why this is so overdue... >> rose: wait a minute. a palestinian authority in ramallah and off hamas there gaza? >> it's an elected palestinian authority, just as the one in ramallah is elected. neither of them is legitimate because these were interim self-governing authorities that should have gone out of business way back in the 1990s according to the terms of the oslo accord. >> rose: let me go to aluf. tell me what the israeli position is and how much they are concerned about it. >> their position... the israeli position is that any outcome of this peace process or any outcome towards a minuteian state should be negotiated. and and since there is no negotiation going on at this point and since the palestinian authority refuses to deal with prime minister netanyahu and his government we can live with that stalemate until something

changes. but i think the whole thing here is trying to attract or embarrass the united states. the palestinians are trying to force the united states into some sort of supporting or abstaining or not taking part in the vote at the security council if it's not full recognition of a state then at least something which says the settlements are illegal. the problem here for israel is that if theoretically if the united nations recognizes the state of palestine within the pre-'67 border, that means that any israeli presence beyond that border-- be it the settlements, be it military patrol or be it jewish person praying near the western ball that the old city in jerusalem-- is a trespasser. and therefore it amounts to giving the palestinians a license to go to war to liberate the territory against that

trespasser. so you have to ask yourself whether such recognition is going to bring stability or is going to be just another recipe for another crisis. >> we've been sitting for 44 years with these territories occupied and nothing has moved israel. i'm not sure this is going to work. i'm not an enormous fan of this idea. >> rose: i can tell. >> but i have to say the idea that israel can sit pretty, fine let israel sit pretty. jiz now going to become a minority jewish presence in an arab majority territory that israel controls. it's the only sovereign authority, the only state, it's the only power between the mediterranean and the jordan river. as far as i'm concerned, if the israelis are not happy to give the palestinian statehood within the '67 frontiers, give the palestinians equality within the frontiers of the state that they have created which exfriends the jordan... >> rose: and you expect them to do that? >> they're not going to have very much choice. stoon the people the world over are not going to put up with a state that has one set of rights for one people-- jews-- and another set of rights for

another people. i mean, the fiction that the occupied territories are a state under palestinian authority is threadbare. you just have to go there. spend 20 minutes driving around and seeing... >> rose: but that's going to change on the ground in ramallah. >> ramallah is like a green zone. ramallah is one of the most prosperous places in the middle east. it reminds you of dubai... not quite... >> rose: a growth rate of about 8%. >> you go 20 kilometers northeast or south and you're back in the third world. so ramallah is an express zant on the backside of palestine in a sense. it where's all the money styx. it where's the elites that have been bought off by aid money and by external backers congregate. and it's been separated from the body plic of palestine. ramallah is in great shake. i was there a couple weeks ago. you can get a cappuccino for 12 bucks. >> rose: all right. this is what you said in one of the columns you wrote for "ha'aretz". you said "netanyahu has in effect concluded his term in prime minister. it's all downhill until the next

elections without achievements or agenda, passing the time buying political calm and deflecting diplomatic pressure instead of initiating, leading, netanyahu will engage in fruitless, holding actions until he falls from power." >> well, i thought this time around unlike that two previous times when israel and the palestinians try to negotiate a peace in 2000 and then again in 2007/2008, in both previous cases the israeli and american leaders involved with lame duck, on their way out. and this time we've had both the israeli prime minister was very popular and strong and has a very stable coalition and the new american president was really committed, at least verbally, to resolve this conflict. and i thought it was a missed opportunity. but when president obama suggested to netanyahu to freeze the settlements for 90 days and then speed negotiations of

borders in order to find out where the future palestinian state is going to be and take it from there, netanyahu backed off. and then... now it's coalition is starting... making the noises, the countdown towards the next election and we know that in the middle east there's no vacuum. it cannot really hold the status quo and just drink your cappuccino for long. it's a recipe for trouble. >> i think you ought to look at some of the stuffs coming out from wikileaks according to the swedish press. predictions by general ash kin nazi speaking to... the chief of staff of the israeli army speaking to an american congressional delegation saying israel is preparing for war both on the lebanese and gaza front so there is an army plan according to this revelation:. >> rose: well, there are army plans for everything as you well know. >> according to the way the u.s. embassy and tel aviv wrote it, it sounds like this is quite serious. so it's not there may be a

bubbling up, i agree with aluf benn. if there is not rapid change in this situation it will get much, much worse and it could degenerate. but i don't think the degeneration will be spontaneous. i think the fear is israel just acting whether in lebanon or gaza or elsewhere. heaven forbid iran. >> rose: you actually interviewed the general before... leaving his job, did you snot >> i wrote about his ideas about peace with syria. general ashkinasi is, contrary to the image that might be drawn from that wikileaks cable-- appears to be a moderate force within the... within israeli leadership. one of ms. ideas that he's been promoting sort of off the record meetings recently is that the way around israel's strategic problems. but when israel looks around it sees iran gaining strength, it

sees iran's proxies-- hezbollah and lebanon, hamas and gaza-- amassing more and more and more rockets and missiles aimed at israel. it sees turkey drawn from losing its alliance with israel and replacing it with closer relationship with iran and syria so one way around that according to general ashkinasi is relaunch the syrian peace track and pull syrian yah away and closer towards the west. or at least forcing it so choose and giving it a decent enough offer. both sides rather than play them against each other. >> rose: there's also the idea of having the turks involved in this, is there not? >> the turks were involved in mediating between syria and israel in the last months of the previous israeli government, the

olmert government. >> but their relationship with israel is the worst ever since erdogan decided to switch sides and since israeli attack on the turkish flotilla. >> rose: my impression is notwithstanding everything you just said that very recently there's been some suggestion that they're prepared to do... >> they're always prepared to do it. israel is not so happy about that but unless there's something secret going on that we don't know about prime minister knelt you to this day has not shown signs of taking the syrian threat seriously. every other week there's a story about a messenger. only tonight one of the american jewish leaders went to damascus and met syrian officials and obviously the rumor is that he was sent by netanyahu in a

similar way to... an american jewish leader mediated 12 years ago. but it takes time to see these things are serious. but there is strong voice, especially among the israeli security establishment which says the surest way around strategic problems is making peace with syria. >> rose: but what i hear from both of you is that this idea that i keep hearing with more and more currency, the palestinians at... before the next united nations general assembly august, september of this year that just began pushing for palestinian statehood, have more countries beyond those in latin america endorse the idea, engage the idea, that you both have shooting this down saying it's not going to happen. >> well, i don't think you're going to have statehood until

you end the occupation and ending the occupation means israelis either moving themselves... >> rose: why does statehood come after the occupation. why can't you declare it and if you have nations supporting it... >> statehood means sovereignty. >> rose: i understand that. >> how can you have that when the israeli army picks up anybody in ramallah any time it wants. >> rose: what's wrong with having statehood not withstanding that. >> it's not state hood! it's a potemkin statehood. >> rose: so something's wrong with declare we have a state and this is the borders of our state and this is what we want to do and this is the institutions we've agreed. as long as there's anybody occupying or opposeing that government then you cannot declare it on your own? >> you can declare it if you have the ability to use some leverage to force the opponent and its backer in washington to change their position. palestinians haven't developed that leverage. >> rose: they're trying to put the ball in the u.s. court as... is this whole thing going to rise and fall on whether the united states says it will abstain in the security council. >> rose: it's not going to rise because the effort has to raise

with american public opinion and that the palestinian authorities are not making. it has to be made with world public opinion. >> rose: why aren't they making it? >> they there's no palestinian consensus. there's no palestinian unity on this issue. >> rose: that's exactly what the israelis say. there's no palestinian... >> and unfortunately they're right. >> rose: they say who do we negotiate with? >> they could easily negotiate with this leadership, they just choose not to because they are very happy as aluf benn said, with the status quo. they can sit there and think that the fact that they're a shrinking minority in a country with a growing arab majority is something the world is going to accept. it probably won't in the long term. >> rose: the other thing i hear is that netanyahu goes back and forth in terms of what he might want to do something that he looks at history and looks at it through two difference lens. one is he doesn't want to be the first israeli prime minister to sort of having something happen on his watch. on the other hand he wants to be more than a local politician. he wants to be someone who's done something historic for israel.

>> well, as an historian's son and an avid reader of history and especially biographies of winston churchill, netanyahu took office committed first and foremost to doing away with the iranian nuclear threat. for whatever reason, he did not do much, at least not publicly and he had to trust the united states to lead the international effort against iran. which gains some momentum before but still the iranians are enriching the uranium like never before and nothing had stopped them so far. then under american pressure, netanyahu accepted the two-state solution so it was the idea. but he's bound by the coalition that he built which is very right wing. he's too weak to replace it now and his coalition partners made clear that they're not going to allow him to make any concession and it appears as if he's hiding

behind them. he's not trying to say, okay, i'm going to change history on my own. he's not an initiator. so far he's mostly reactive to whatever... the turkish government or the palestinians are doing. >> rose: thank you for coming. great to see you. >> pleasure, as always. >> thanks. good night. >> rose: the media landscape has dramatically transformed in recent years. the move to the web, rise of social media, services like netflix, new devices like e readers and i pads have all played a part. but a lot more the yet to come. david carr writes about what could be in store for 2011 in the "new york times" today. i am pleased to start the new year with david carr back at this table. welcome. >> nice to be with you, charlie. >> rose: how was your holiday. >> it was exquisite. i went to minnesota. you have to put on a spacesuit to make your way around there but it was air force basely lovely. >> rose: did you sbrun the coen

brothers up there? >> i do not see the coen brothers but i saw the wonderful movie they made with matt damon. >> rose: it's great, isn't it? we call that "true grit." >> you keep thinking there's going to be a frying pan coming out of the side and it's going to turn into some weird wild card... but it's just a straight up wonderful western. >> rose: as someone said it's the dude meets the duke. >> (laughs) >> rose: bridges meets wayne. >> right. >> rose: what do we expect? where are we going? what do you know that you can help us... >> i think there are ways to get a look at where we're heading. i know that you are somebody who looked at the ipad early on... >> rose: here with you at this table. >> yes, but you know to my dad for christmas and i was showing him different applications, one from the bbc and one from the "new york times" and different web sites, your show, etc. and he said "boy, it all looks a little bit the same to me." and i said "well, you're right,

everybody's got video, everybody's got text, everybody's got audio. and so these days when, well, now i'm going to make a television show, now i'm on the radio, now i'm in print, it's all getting mashed together so that the sort of historical verticals of media, what's the television business, what's the web business, i they're going to start going away. >> rose: so we won't have silos, everything will just come pouring out, as you said? >> that's a good way to put it because if you think about those folks who ended up with internet-connected television sets for christmas could... good luck setting those up. don't call me. but once you get them plugged in there's a new equivalence between this legacy channel system that we're on right now that has been built up over years and year and years and everything that's on the web. so if you thought 500 channel

universe was complicated wait until you get hello of the infinite universe. >> rose: take this little program that we're on right now. you can see it on pbs, you can see it on bloomberg, you can see it on my web site, you can see it on hulu, you can see it on youtube. >> and it will follow me. if i set an alert, it will... i don't even have to ask, it can show up in my r.s.s. feed. it can follow me around. if there are certain people i like to see you with... my television-- and that's not what it is anymore-- is starting to know what i want to watch. so we're reaching sort of a new place where the old idea of network programming which is 8:00 we're going to build a camp fire called "all in the family" and you're all going to gather around it and you're going to watch it at the same time and we're going to sell you a detergent, we're going to sell you a grocery store, we're going to sell you cars and then the next morning you're going to gather around the water cooler and talk about it. gone. >> rose: percentages show us more and more people are getting

everything from the web and less from television per se, yet the network television business gained a little bit last year. >> my colleague brian steltser wrote a really good story about how television continues to grow. one of the things that frequently happens-- and i think print experienced this as well, when social media came along it's like, well, these people are here too take our piece of the pie. if you look on social media what are they referring to? hey, you've got see this charlie rose show. hey, you've got to... and over and over it becomes a recommendation and for mainstream media and at a times when there there's an abundant amount of clutter, let's face it buck anywhere in four seconds but nowhere at the same time, heavily curating content, content branded with names that you know, content that's promoted through networks which can still gather a very large aud qlens do very well.

i wrote something today about something called long reeds which is a site that will... that has... recommends very long stories that you can push a button, read later and here's the web which we think of a home as a short burst of information pro molting long form content and giving people... part of what's going on is reading has become... if you look at the ipad, i understand why nobody wanted to read a big long thing on a computer. you're hunched over, you're typing. why not go on the net? but on the ipad i was traveling a great deal and i found... normally i'm scrambling to find newspapers. i get four papers at home every single day. when i was gone i noticed you know what? it's... it's a pretty lovely experiences. some of the apps, the "wall street journal" app, "new york post" ann, our ann at the "new york times." or the web sites where you're

able to scan serendipitously and even to a point where you say look at this picture in weddings. this is... or look at this couple, what kind of science project is this? then you turn it off, hand it off to your spouse or your friend. so in a way it's taking us back to a different time. >> rose: let me review one more time this non-linear grid. what's that about now? >> well, right now the primary distribution of this would be public television, k457b8 13 in new york, 20 whatever it is in jersey. over and over. and you would dial in and know exactly at what time the show was going to be on. and so on across both broadcast and cable. make a living telling you when

the show is going to show up. if you look at the cable business, again and again they're getting into the on demand business. so if you want to... let's say that you were skeptical about board walk empire on hbo but then you start to hear your friends say good things about it. you can go right back in and see it... >> rose: episode one. >> right. so you don't... they're not telling you, you're programming your own mediated universe. >>. >> rose: there used to be a thing called appointment television. as you suggest, that will be a relic of the last century. >> the appointments i think will be set in each individual creating their own mediated environment. there still will be big events. there will still be the oscars, pro-football, there's still going to be "american idol". if you look at what fox is doing with x factor, it's... they want to make something so big and so large that you can't ignore it and that when you get to work the next day that you want to be in the know about it but those opportunities are becoming less

and less and i think it's going to be a very difficult environment for the generic sit comes, the police procedurals when you can grab and pull anything you want at any time you want. >> rose: how is social media going to meet television? >> well, i had this hair-brained idea that i wrote about in the paper today. if you think... i happen to be a fan of the... of mtv's jersey shore. i'm not proud of that, but there it is. and part of the reason that i enjoyed it is the whole time the show was on i was on twitter cracking wise with all my friends and talking about how high could snookky's hair go, what kind of mayhem was going to ensue when they went into a certain bar. what if instead of having a laptop in my lap and a television screen up there that when i was saying, what my other friends were saying was right there on the bottom at the very

same time? i think we're moving into a time when there's going to be a hybrid media product. >> rose: everybody's talking about this now. corey booker snowed in newark, new jersey, as it did in new york city. corey booker their mayor was tweeting and people were responding to him and he would say i'm going the corner of so and so. people would say "meet you there with a shovel." that kind of thing. he had an exchange with lots of people in this resulted in very positive benefits in terms of his communicating his presence on the scene. i especially see it as most of the other folks, i live in new jersey, they were on vacations in very warm places. >> rose: like florida. (laughs) like disneyland. >> yes. in between typing 140 characters he was moving a lot of snow. and the opportunity to broadcast out not only your whereabouts but your intentions you can

create your own... instead of great big maypoles, they're smaller and smaller verticals around certain individuals who are... who become quite influential. if they get behind a book, they get behind a t.v. show and imagine if you're watching a t.v. show and you see something you really like and follow a great deal on twitter, it could be corey booker who says hey, i like watching "jersey shore" too. >> rose: here's the thing i would like to do for this show. this is one of my goals of 2011 is for everybody that watches the program to create a kind of social network so that the dialogue... i can have a dialogue with everybody who watches this you can do this by tweeting or facebook or otherwise so that there is a kind of community about the program so that the people who watch the program have influence so that they... i can raise questions with what's going on in terms of the kinds of things we do so that we cast a broader

network and a broter net looking for conversations around the world now. >> plus you end up with this table being the start of a conversation. bouz hamm times have you done a show or somebody's been on your show and somebody comes walking up and says the smartest thing you've ever heard. why didn't you ask him about... >> rose: exactly right. and what's going to be important is that there's going to be a high sort of noise-to-signal ratio. there are going to be a lot of people weighing in. but over time the people who are really smart, really know, say, their middle east history or know their... they'll get nominated up and up and up through some kind of algorithm, through some kind of... like voting where they become sort of gatekeepers and spokesperson. i know that if you look at like a media site like gawker...

>> rose: right. >> how much of gawker's value is tied up in their commenters. their commenters are splendid amazing people and they cure rate them... you know, the ones that are most visible are the ones that are most... and the idea of well, here's the megaphone, i'm only going to speak through it. no, you're also going to be listening through it as well. and it's going to lead to better programming decisions, more conversation, more engagement. what it's going to do to mass media is going to be interesting to watch. are we going to atomize into... >> rose: the oprah winfrey network, own, began on january 1. this is the... everybody believes is the future. personalized television. someone a big brand name that can fill an entire channel. >> we're all sort of programming our own universe. we're getting up everyday as we just talked about and deciding what we're going to make but we're not oprah winfrey and oprah winfrey is going to be i

think the first example of an attempt to taken a individual brand and spread it over 24-hour cycle and do it with which is non-cynical, live your own best life. it will probably blow a whistle that i won't hear but that doesn't really matter. there's a huge demographic. if you look... what is the one successful magazine launch large scale in the last ten years? >> rose: oprah winfrey! >> that's it. >> rose: oprah winfrey! >> that's the answer to most media questions. she's got the most fun jibl powerful media brand you can think of. >> rose: that's another thing we're going to do over the next year. we are going to produce whether... whether we hatch it within this program is definitely 24 hours a day and i only have one body to give, some sense of being able to say this is our conversation. this is the conversation that defines who we are.

this that's the brand, charlie rose. and other people will do that in areas of their own expertise. >> rose: well, you're describing oprah's plan exactly. which is she's cutting back in terms of her personal sort of time that she's going to be... short of cloning technology really can't come up with that and saying you know what? i'm going to give you my esthetic and my friends and whatever your brand means in terms of the certain level of rue diggs or or sort of up on the news. should be able to stretch out over beyond you and within this... we've been locked in the four corners of the television and meanwhile all the conversations have been occurring around what if those two worlds start to merge and they're the same thing? it's fun that we live long enough to experience this whole mashed up world. it might roll over us and kill

us but it might make us stronger. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> absolute pleasure. >> rose: happy new year. >> happy new year to you. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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