I suppose I’m a tad luckier than most that I haven’t had to deal all that much with folks I know dying before their time. When it has happened recently, I’ve tried to go out of my way to at least show up at their memorials if they are open to the public. It’s called paying respects for a reason, and if I have little else to cling to as a moral code I feel strongly I should at least make a reasonable attempt to give the deceased that much.
We were prohibited from doing that when my (legally at the time) brother-in-law passed away in July 2020; a COVID victim who sadly was an early non-believer with a highly compromised body. He was a complicated person to say the least, and the other day I learned from a mutual friend who I’m still close to that he was gulty of a few more indiscretions with him during a brief and ill-informed “business venture”. My friend to this day is still angry about the experiences he put him through, and it reminded me that often he was guilty of treating my ex and I much the same way. But I was nonetheless upset when I learned that he died, bevause my bottom line is that no one–and I repeat NO ONE–deserves to die before their time.
It’s this sort of zen perspective that I am choosing to guide my reaction to the much more public news of the passing of a business colleague that hit several trade publications yesterday, including this one from DEADLINE’s Peter White:
Radha Subramanyam, who was chief research and analytics officer at CBS, has passed away at the age of 55. Subramanyam died on January 5 after a battle with cancer.
Subramanyam joined the Paramount-owned broadcaster in 2017 and was promoted within 18 months of joining…In her role at CBS, she oversaw day-to-day research operations, including audience measurement, program and ad analytics, marketing research, program testing, social media measurement, ROI measurement, attribution and advertising research. The company said her “brilliance lay in translating complex metrics into meaningful insights that shaped programming and strategy”.
TV/CABLE NEWS’ Adam Jacobson was even more eloquent and personal in his story:
It’s been a while since we’ve offered an “observation” — something that during Radha’s iHeartMedia days was a signature feature of this online publication and print newsletter. But, Radha deserves a fitting tribute. I’m just utterly gutted, learning that a 55-year-old genius has had her life extinguished by f-ing cancer. It’s not fair.
Yet, it allows us to take a pause to remember the life of an individual deeply passionate and committed to her work and to an industry she loved, going all the way back to those days off of Raymond Avenue as a teacher of broadcast media before joining iHeartMedia and, ultimately, CBS.
Paramount Chair of TV Media George Cheeks calls Radha a “true force of nature” as CBS said her “brilliance lay in translating complex metrics into meaningful insights that shaped programming and strategy.” We could not agree more. Subramanyam is survived by her husband, Joseph, and children Tara and River. We mourn for them as we celebrate a life worthy of a star.
I cite all of this because I’m sorry to say that my most recent dealings with her, especially in her most elevated role, were not as positive as perhaps Jacobson’s were. You might recognize her name from a musing I authored during the most recent Media Insights Conference I was able to attend. At the behest of the conference’s leadership for whom I was working for, I wrote what I believed to be a highly favorable biography rift with personal anecdotes that the conference utilized in their attempts to sell memberships. She was in and out of the conference in mere hours and had no time to follow up as she had promised the conference she would and didn’t even offer a thank-you by e-mail to any of us.
More recently I learned of her illness from a longtime friend who worked for decades at CBS with great success until in one of her first acts as head of his department got on a plane and fired him on the spot in front of his longtime loyal staff. Personal differences, he was told at the time. We still get together occasionally so when he dropped this bombshell on me I asked “Do you have any feelings about this?” He confessed “I’m not exactly sitting up at night crying, but I don’t wish death upon anyone”.
No one is perfect no matter how valuable or successful they become, and I’m sorry to say my friend was hardly the only person I knew who wasn’t all that complimentary about the tactics, attitude and corporate shenanigans she played to eventually reach the heights she attained. Those of you who knew her better than I probably know those stories; you might have been impacted by them yourselves.
But I know if my friend could somehow find it in himself to forgive if not to forget, so can I, and I would strongly advise anyone else potentially conflicted to follow suit. Because no one, and I mean NO ONE, deserves to die prematurely. If nothing else, the longer one lives, the greater the likelihood they might wake up one day and vow to be a better person. I’m truly sorry she won’t have that chance.
Until next time…