Jason Calacanis Responds

The preface here will be lengthy, but I will also respond to Jason’s response. If you can’t wait, scroll down about 9 paragraphs!

I recently took a break from obsessing on NCAA March Madness and Jericho Ratings to write a post about Mahalo’s foray into social networking and the “semantic web”. I posted it here, and although I hadn’t written on this blog in 5 months and I didn’t look at the web stats, I’m pretty sure Jason Calacanis who runs Mahalo was probably the only person to actually *read* the post, and he responded to it as well.

I’ve known Jason for over 10 years, back in the days when he was running the Silicon Alley Reporter in NYC. I admire Jason quite a bit, for the same reasons I admire one of his mentors, Ted Leonsis and for the same reason I admire someone likes of Tony Hung even though I’ve never met him: they are all tireless and their energy never seems to wane.

Ted is among the super rich, while Jason is merely rich enough where he’d probably never have to work another day in his life if he didn’t feel like it. But these guys LOVE what they do. There is no question, loving what you do is about the best thing you can have happen to you. I’ve been fortunate enough to have that experience at least once or twice for more than a fair bit of time. But I never had the energy, or more accurately the proper psychology to maintain the energy.

The Internet has many useful aspects, but one utility I’m sure I never prognosticated about in 1994 was that it can serve as a tool to shame you. Through connections I made years ago, I see the likes of Jason and Ted and Mark Cuban and Fred Wilson and Kara Swisher and now the new breed like Michael Arrington, Om Malik, and Tony Hung. To a man (or woman) they are all tireless, and they all LOVE what they do.

I ask myself if I was a person who was running a startup and some guy whose writing I used to like 10 years ago posted a column on his blog that nobody reads -- would I respond? Even if it was a fairly well thought out post? My answer: probably not. And I ask myself WHY NOT? Why not?

Many times when it comes to the likes of Jason and Ted I’ve asked ‘Why o’ why are you not lazier than I!?’” I know the answer though. And here’s where it gets a little tricky. I love taking stuff apart. I’m a classic dismantler. I can dismantle, Mahalo, or why I think GigaOm’s business model is lousy as hell, but I’m not just hypercritical of everything and anything outside of myself. I’m hypercritical of myself too! I’m not sure whether I have completely dismantled myself or whether I actually did it so thoroughly that I was unable to put myself quite back together.

The reason the likes of Ted and Jason and Cubes and Fred Wilson and Swish all have boundless energy where I don’t is pretty simple really: they all love what they do. And what they really do, what they really, really love doing more than anything is this: competing.

I have not shared their love of the competition, and the truth is, I need to.

Jason responded as follows:

Well, when you see the actuall pages I think you'll see that it's not a bad use of time for us. couple of points:

a) this isn't a huge investment on our part. We've got a solid base of users and allowing them to share their opinions on a search result page is fairly easy, while providing a great experience.

b) you're correct that opinions are personalized per user. You might give your brother advice to watch The Wire and your friend advice to watch Battlestar. However, those individuals also know you and your tastes and can digest what you mean when you review each.

c) we're in the third inning of web search/research and navigation. we believe that combining humans and the social graph with machines is the best model.

d) we don't have to own this social information--we're going to import/sync much of it from other places like NetFlix and GoodReads and Facebook.

anyway, thanks for the feedback... it will give me much to consider over the weekend.

all the best,

Jason

Jason, I agree with everything you wrote. I’m sure it’s not a big investment, and I’m sure it’s very early in the game and that Mahalo needs not own any of the social information and can get it elsewhere. But I’m fairly resolute in this: doing any of that stuff isn’t really very important to or for Mahalo right now. I could be wrong, but as I remember it, like AOL, Google went with the KFC model initially. They only focused on doing one thing right. For AOL it was creating graphical client software that made getting online (and later, on the Internet) easier than what anyone else had going at the time. Google focused on having the best search and didn’t expand into other areas until they were already fairly well recognized as the best search on the Internet.

Since the use case for Mahalo seems to be exactly the same people who are influenced by Taco Bell, Burger King and McDonalds commercials (which is an extremely big market based on the ad spend) trying to tie Mahalo into social networking and the semantic web seems like a complete waste of time.

I wrote the lengthy preface above because I see (a lot of) people take personal pot shots at you frequently. And while not even you have any question that you bring at least some of it on yourself (you are a “bring it on!” kind of guy), and while all of the tactics you use in promoting aren’t always for me personally, the only way you actually rub me the wrong way is by reminding me that I’m a dope for not being more competitive. I can’t hold that against you, and I don’t. Probably the thing I like about you the most is that with almost everything you’re just completely OK with having the conversation right out in the open. I hope that never changes.

I think the best thing you could do for Mahalo is focus almost exclusively on the best search results possible, at the end of the day that’s all that’s going to matter. If you get that right, you’ll figure out all the rest. If you don’t get that right, no matter what else you do and how well you do it, it won’t matter. Keep doing Mahalo Daily please, though. :-)

Seidman vs. Gorman TVbytheNumbers-style

TVbytheNumbers.com is still in shambles, but you can give it a look at www.tvbythenumbers.com/wp .But man cannot live by charts and numbers alone, so we're toying around with a couple of ideas to be more entertaining. Here's one...

OVER/UNDER

First question. Over or under ONE YEAR before NBCU shows are back on Apple's iTunes?

Robert: UNDER! NBC Universal has a problem. The way the it is set up I believe they will ONLY be able to sell well digitally if someone actually wants to watch it on the iPod. Otherwise, they'll go to NBC's site looking to see where they can buy Heroes and one of two things will happen:

1. $4.99? WTF!?

2. Even if it's $1.99 - HEY! they archive all the shows here during the season! I'll just watch it FOR FREE (there are ads, but only a few with what any of them are currently doing. It adds about 2 minutes instead of 20 you'd see on TV). Under, definitely under.

Bill: OVER! You're insane to think that the executives making these decisions at NBCU are sane, rational people trying to figure out how to make the most money and act in their own self-interests.. It's all about ego, and they can't handle that Steve Jobs is so, so fabulous and they're so, so not. Unless GE & Vivendi fire the dopes at NBCU who made this choice, I'm sticking with OVER.

Next question: Over/Under ONE HUNDRED TIMES that Les Moonves says "Only 45% of DVR users zap through the commercials" during the 2007-2008 season?

Robert: This is a ridiculous question. And a ridiculous statistic that's only true if you squint and ignore the actual data. I'd be prone to go over, even at ONE THOUSAND TIMES. More and more people will be moving to DVR usage and more and more advertisers will be upset about it. Moonves will constantly and consistently try to soothe them while still getting their greenbacks. OVER

Bill: Ahh, the pain and agony of having to agree with you. OVER. I have nothing else to add.

Next Question: Over/Under TEN: Number of this season's new shows that make it to next year's lineup?

Robert: If you include the CW in this mix, which we must because we here at TVbytheNumbers are a very inclusive bunch there are FORTY SIX new shows. I don't want to go over though because I think the number is exactly 10. So I'm going to push and say 10

Bill: The game is OVER/UNDER! We'll have to start changing these questions (e.g. 10.5) to force you into being a man and growing some stones. It's UNDER, it will be around 8 or 9 shows. But this is a dumb question to be asking now because Fox is holding back all their good stuff until January. I can't WAIT for The Sarah Connor Chronicles! Not to mention my favorites 24 and American Idol. No wait, I don't actually like either of those shows, I might give the Return of Jezebel James a try though. UNDER!

Robert: You know you can't wait for ABC's Cavemen! But when it comes to ABC I'm all about seeing my boy Mark Cuban winning Dancing with the Stars and watching Denny Crane (Boston Legal).

I don't know that I'll watch ANY new show. I may even bail on 24, it sucked last year. They say it will be better this year, with a female president. Fortunately I don't have to worry about that until next year. I'm pretty set in my ways.

Bill: You will watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles and you know you're going to watch the Bionic Woman AT LEAST once.

Robert: I'm as likely to watch the Bionic Woman as I am to watch 20/20, which is never. I didn't like it in the ‘70's, I won't like it in '07.

Bill: Admit it, it's already on your Tivo...

Next Question..(p.s. Zap2it has good full coverage of all the lineups).

Over/Under: Seven Weeks that Mark Cuban Lasts on "Dancing with the Stars"?

Robert: OVER, people are crazy if they don't think Cubes is advancing to the finals. I'd say he's going to win at all except for two words: Jane Seymour. C'mon, how am I going to bet against Jayne Seymour? But Mark will crush Marie Osmond and Scary Spice. You just wait!

Bill: Why do you make me suffer through your man-love for Cuban? Are you going to send him "good luck" flowers too? Cuban won't fare any better here than he did with the Benefactor (6 weeks!) UNDER, under, under, definitely under.

Robert: You're insane, but that's a great idea about the flowers! That's it for this week boys and girls...

(this is a complete mockup and may not accuately reflect the opinions of either of us, though that will always be true! The idea is also completely a ripoff of Tony Kornheiser's and Michael Wilbon's fine work on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption).

For those coming from allthingsd.com: About Me

For those landing here because they read what I wrote about the new Nielsen/NetRatings measurements, here's a bit more on my background:

I have been a computer hobbyist/enthusiast since the early 1980s when I got my first modem. I launched Seidman’s Online Insider in September 1994 (though initially it was called ‘In, Around and Online’). My timing was good because the first launch of the Netscape beta was a couple of months later.

Then the following summer based largely it seemed on the success of Netscape's IPO there was suddenly huge interest in all things internet. For me personally it wound up being a very nice merging of avocation and vocation.

I am indebted both to Walt Mossberg and to Kara Swisher.

Because Walt wound up reading my newsletter and told other people to read it I wound up with both more readers and with more access to the companies and executives I wrote about. Microsoft, for example took a great interest in me. Initially I was naive enough to think it’s because Microsoft cared about what I thought, but I caught on pretty quickly that Microsoft is extremely smart about how it deals with “the press”. They probably did have some interest in what I thought, but really what interested Microsoft mostly was that Walt might wind up reading my thinking. Microsoft is very big on managing the influencers of the influencers. I did get more access as a result of Walt, and it certainly made some of what I wrote about better.

I already thought Mr. Mossberg was fabulous regardless because he is on a mission to truly make things easy to use and I believe he has made a difference and that things are easier to use. Walt is still at it though because things still aren’t as easy as they should be.

As for Kara, she provided me with one of the sweetest moments of my life. I wrote about AOL a lot because AOL was huge, and mostly I wrote about their ramp pre-web to acquiring Time Warner in 2000 (and then I didn’t really write at all until…now). Kara was one of a very small number of people who was as obsessed with AOL as I was. At one point I wrote something comparing AOL and CompuServe (which AOL ultimately acquired) and wrote something like that if the online services were the Mommas and the Poppas, AOL was Michelle Phillips and CompuServe was Momma Cass (based on the visual appeal of the software). Kara, who at the time was still writing for the Washington Post liked this comparison and wrote about it.

Although I was living in New York at the time, I am a Washington, DC native and spent most of my first 32 years in or in the suburbs of Our Nation’s Capitol, and it was pretty cool being written up in my hometown newspaper. But what was really cool was... A while after my grandmother died (just after turning 90), I saw my brother and he handed me an envelope and said, “This was in Nana’s wallet.” Inside the envelope, was the article Kara had written in the Post, my grandmother had clipped it out and stuck it in her wallet. It was very special to me.

My background for most of the 80s and early 90s was in telecommunications, but I switched to technology/product development in the early 90s (in addition to publishing an Internet newsletter). I worked for IBM for a while, and then I left to try to work for a publishing/media company (CMP Media) and then I had a little business with Mark Hurst of Creative Good fame, and then I wound up at Charles Schwab where I launched and ran Schwab’s outbound e-mail channel and ultimately was responsible for the “customer experience” for Schwab.com. I haven’t worked there (or anywhere else) since 2002 though, so I take no credit or blame for anything currently happening on that web site!

These days I am all about San Francisco and 72 degrees, sunny and beautiful in the middle of July. Oh sure by 8pm, I might be freezing, but I don’t miss the heat or the humidity and I don’t have to go very far at all if the goal is to be warmer.

I’m also all about the iPhone. I wouldn’t recommend it as-is to everyone, but it’s the dawn of truly portable computing and you can get a very good idea of the way things will progress regardless of the fact that it’s not currently perfect. I don’t buy into all the anti-hype hype. It’s the first generation, I didn’t expect it to be perfect. I believe Windows Vista is the 8th or 9th release of Windows, but it was the first one that I felt, “Wow, it finally more or less works exactly as it should!” The iPhone already mostly (60% of the way there) very efficiently combines phone, iPod and laptop into one device.

Finally, I’m all about (except for my little couple of week iPhone obsession) TVbytheNumbers.com, which won’t be available until September. I’m launching this with my good friend and former AOL exec., Bill Gorman who lives about 6 blocks from me in San Francisco.

We both have a love of numbers and analyzing them and we are both very much sometimes perplexed about what Bill calls “the drama of the inefficient auction” that takes place between television executives and advertising executives. About 2 months ago I was looking for some numbers and it occurred to me that the numbers (even those publicly available) about the television industry are spread out all over the place – there is not one central location. At one of our regular lunches I brought this “hole in the blogsphere” up with Bill and the offshoot of that is TVbytheNumbers.com. We won't just be aggregating numbers though, we’re going to help make some sense out of the numbers. This won’t make the auction any more efficient, but it will hopefully help people be more efficient in how they think about the drama. Stay tuned…

I can be reached at robert.seidman at gmail.com

For Fred Wilson (and others) to Ponder

I do like the variety of non-technology issues Fred tackles on his blog and the sometimes lively (and thoughtful) discussion it generates. Fred seems to be enamored with the idea of change, but he never actually thinks about the problem of change realistically. He focuses on specific issues, but the problem when it comes to change is that no matter what the issue, we're the same people.

I believe the bigger issue to tackle is how to accommodate human nature in the best way possible to produce actual results (change). My belief and it can somwhat be quantified is that on very difficult issues where the change necessary is palpable, it’s very hard to move the needle much, if at all, because of human nature. We gravitate towards things that make us feel good and run away from things that cause us pain and that's just how we operate in general.

Whether it be global warming, healthcare, poverty, hunger,issues with obesity, or whatever, it seems that nothing actually happens because the pain to change is greater than the perceived threat of current or future pain.

Regardless of what the issues are, the principles of pleasure/pain are at play. Change is hard and usually comes with some “pain”, which we naturally avoid. Throw capitalism on top of it, and it becomes even a steeper hill to climb. If the people like Fred who suggest that something needs to change with our current health care system are in fact correct, how much do you think will be spent to keep things as they are? I’m guessing in the billions of dollars would be spent by the insurance lobbies to preserve the status quo.

Is the world really better off because of anything that happened with Live Aid, Comic Relief, etc., etc. I wouldn’t dispute that some individuals were helped by these events, but did it actually change anything? If you try to quantify this based on anything statistical the answer seems overwhelmingly to be: no.

All it seems to have accomplished was making people “feel better”. I view this as not much different than what goes down with the people who are self-employed as panhandlers in San Francisco. They do provide a service, they make people feel better about themselves by allowing people to think they made a difference when they gave the panhandler money.

I am not sure it matters what in particular you’re looking to change is, people will generally be resistant to any lifestyle change or anything that costs more money and if it’s something that someone else makes a lot of money on already, they will spend heavily to keep things as they are.

Can this generic problem be solved for? If it can, it can be applied to anything and everything that “needs change”. I’m not certain there is not a solution to this generic problem, but I’m certain it isn’t easy and even more certain that without solving for this, you will not be able to solve any individual circumstance where it seems that change is required.

Is it possible to come up with a new way of thinking about these things and get people to embrace such thinking? I don’t think you get to “real change” without it seeming pretty radical for a large % of people, and the notion of “radical” on some level equates to pain, which by human nature we avoid.

My question for anyone with a mind to think about this is: can this be overcome and if so, how would you overcome it? It seems that if you can’t solve for this generic problem, thinking on health care, global warming, obesity, whatever, is just in the realm of mental masturbation. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE thinking about it, but I’d love to actually see some things change too. Can you point to some examples of thinking paradigms that produced REAL change when there was no immediate threat to our overall survival as a species?

Finally, is there a way to actually promote radical thinking that would produce actual change without it seeming radical?

Why I just went LONG 1000 YHOO in my IRA

Normally I don't invest, but, I saw an opportunity here.

The main factor I attribute to this buy is the education I have received recently, specifically from Ted Leonsis, though not anything to do with YHOO and GOOG.

There is a dynamic currently in place where things with scale, any scale (and especially some kind of scale with people who have and spend money) are increasing in value even as scale is being reduced. Whether it's ABC, NBC or CBS, or MLB, NBA and NHL, it doesn't matter. "Share" may be going down, but valuations are going up.

I take this to mean that YHOO, even as the #2 has so much scale that unless it completely screws up, ultimately (thinking 5 years) it will appreciate in value considerably even as it loses "share".

Think I'm wrong? Maybe I am, but it's a dynamic that's already in place and one way I can show that is the television Networks. ABC, CBS and NBC lost 2/3rds of their "share" during primetime between 1995-2006 seasons. All 3 combined now have the share they each once had. Even adjusting for inflation, and even though I don't know the specific valuations I'm comfortable thinking the values of these networks has…not decreased.

I suspect the same thing to happen w/Yahoo. But if I'm wrong, I won't blame Ted.

update: think "Lowest Rated NBA Finals in History" matters? Not to the NBA or the networks it doesn't, it just got 20% MORE in revenues...I know it's counter-intuitive at first, but, 20% more is 20% more and there's just no getting around that.

NBA announces extensions of TV deals with ESPN/ABC, TNT
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 06/28/2007 01:50:29 AM MDT

NEW YORK - The NBA's new television contracts with ESPN/ABC and TNT include rights to technologies that have yet to be invented, an indication of the importance the deals place on newer forms of media. The eight-year extensions go through the 2015-16 season.

The current six-year contracts expire at the end of next season. ''I consider this to be a wonderful vote of confidence by our very sophisticated network partners who are making such a substantial and long-term commitment,'' NBA commissioner David Stern said. The number of games televised on the networks won't change much. What's different are the extensive rights for the networks to broadcast games and other content on the Web and mobile phones.

The NBA will receive about $930 million a year for all its broadcast rights, an increase of more than 20 percent from the previous average of $767 million, according to a person familiar with the deal who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release details. The previous contracts, though, did not include the extensive digital media rights. Stern said the traditional TV rights still are worth more than the digital rights. ESPN/ABC and TNT will each be able to simulcast and offer video on-demand for games on its networks. Stern and network executives downplayed the league's declining TV ratings, insisting there is still plenty of demand for NBA-related content through other forms of media.

Steve Jobs’ and Apple's Four Keys to Total World Domination

Step 1: Launch the best portable music player ever designed that works with the best software ever designed for managing the experience and get millions of iPods into the world and hundreds of millions of copies of iTunes installed World Wide.

Report Card: A+

Step 2: Create a buzz around a revolutionary new phone which actually probably isn’t the best cell phone in the world, but make people want it anyway by being the best iPod ever.

Based on the reviews here, here, here and here the early report card is: A+ (when you consider the phone isn’t available and all these guys tried to find the reasons not to like it, and they had many…and still loved it anyway).

Step 3: Launch more affordable stand alone iPod that has all the features of the iPhone except the phone itself (think bigger touch screen and cool as heck WiFi appliance)

Report Card: TBD

Step 4: Turn AppleTV (Steve’s Little Hobby™) into a full-fledged media server (as opposed to the basic media extender it currently is) with full features (DVR, pay per view/internet download directly from the tv, full streaming capabilities not just at home, but remotely). The goal of this box should be that it’s mostly transparent to the people using it. If they want to watch something on their big screen, it works, if they want to watch in their bedroom, it works, if they want to watch on their office computer, it works and of course if they want to watch on their iPod or iPhone, it works.

Report Card: TBD
--

Time is an important dimension here, but total world domination is worth the effort as far as Apple and Steve Jobs are concerned. They’ll have to keep stirring the pot, and I believe that Apple will make the concept of “liberating your media, so it’s really yours to do what you please with” something that everyone wants. But if Marketing is the metric, and past performance is any indicator…A+ Keep doing that for the next 5-15 years and…total world domination. And really, given its history, Apple would be happy to only own 80-90% of the “liberated media market”.

My only ding on Apple at all with regard to any of this is that if they sold iPods with big hard drives preloaded with 100 hours of video content, more people would understand the concept of portable media sooner, but they can wait 1-3 years on this probably without it impacting the quest for dominance.

Why AAPL Will be Higher in 5 Years

Disclosure: I'm almost always wrong 20% of the time. I use the 80-20 rule and strive to have 100 opinions a day. Usually at least 20 are wrong. It's an absolutely fantastic way to learn though. When it comes to the stock market, while my opinions are fewer, I'm probably only right 20% of the time. But I think this is the 1 out of 5.

Why I love Apple Computer

I'm sure my friend Bill G. and my old friend Mark Hurst will get a chuckle out of this. They'll ask me what took me so long. But this isn't about the reasons they love Apple. They actually love the computers Apple makes. Bill G., he couldn't care less about an iPod, bizarre as that may sound. I can go more bizarre. Hurst didn't even own a TV when I met him. I finally talked him into letting me dump an old 20" set on him before I moved to California. I played up the fact that he sometimes liked movies and he could hook a VCR up to it (these were still pre-DVD days). Much has transpired, and I'm pretty sure Hurst has a TV now, but…I wouldn't bet any money on it.

Bill and Mark have their reasons for loving Apple. I have my own.

Steve Jobs. He really does have that vision thing. there is much more in the 'read more..'

Real Steve Jobs. He's the only executive out there on a large scale that I see as really being ahead of the curve. His quest for total world domination is just beginning. The iPhone will have to be a huge flop which is possible, I suppose, but I'll be surprised. What I think will happen is the phone will have some issues, but they'll get addressed in V2 and the juggernaut that is Steve Jobs and Apple will just keep juggernauting.

Here's one way he's ahead of the curve. Nice handheld device that works with WiFi that (allegedly) has a relatively good battery life. This reason alone has me considering V1 very strongly. Because of Steve Jobs I will almost certainly be saying bye-bye to Verizon as my cell phone provider.

Verizon doesn't offer WiFi, though they do have a fairly fast network for accessing the Internet from your phone. The phone I have will absolutely stream windows media. Except that Verizon blocked that from regular Internet Web access. Verizon wants you to pay $14.95 a month for its VCast service with a very limited offering. Verizon will try to tell you that the offering is not limited, but quite robust. But it's not.

My basis of comparison is that if they would have just let me stream via the Windows Media Center, I could've had access to every channel of my cable box, everything stored on my DVR and everything in my media library (music and video). VCast is not robust compared to a scaled down cable or satellite offering, it's certainly not robust compared to what I have access to. It's really not robust compared to anything other than itself.

Verizon would have been better off selling freaks like me who are way, way ahead of this curve unlimited access to its network for $14.95 a month. I would've paid for it and probably wouldn't have wound up using it much at all. I can tell what a hit success VCast has been by looking at Verizon's last quarterly report (for the period ending 3/31/07). There is exactly ZERO mention of VCast in the earnings report. My guess is when the numbers come out for Q2, again, there will be ZERO mention of VCast. And that I would be willing to bet on. $100 anyway.

Now the iPhone comes along. I don't care about how fast AT&T's network is for data. I don't care that there's no 3G – because it has WiFi. In San Francisco WiFi isn't quite ubiquitous, just nearly so much so that usually I wouldn't notice the difference. The iPhone solves 2 problems: one it's a handheld multimedia device AND a hand held Internet appliance that will work pretty much wherever I am. If it works anywhere near as well as advertised (which is by no means a given), it will be a huge success.

There is the small problem where I switched from what was AT&T (Cingular) to Verizon because although I live in an urban area, when I had Cingular I rarely got any bars in my home. Hopefully they have corrected that by now.

The launch of the iPhone kills VCast off as far as I'm concerned and it was dead on arrival to begin with. This is no big deal. Verizon doesn't do "that vision thing", but what telco does? Verizon had a chance at the iPhone and initially I thought they were smart for passing. Jobs wants Apple calling all the shots. I wonder if Jobs talked AT&T into including the Apple logo on the monthly statement. That would make the transition more seamless when they get around to taking the AT&T logo off. Ok, I jest. Kind of.

Killing a deader than dead VCast is no big deal, but this is: Apple's iTunes Store is now the 3^rd largest retailer of music, passing Amazon. That's right, someone selling DIGITAL music, is the 3^rd largest retailer of music. Apple has about 10% of the market (9.8%) trailing only Wal-Mart (15.8%) and Best Buy (13.8%). All this really means right now is a few things:

1. Digital music sales represent at least 10% of the whole pie
2. Distribution is so fragmented that you can have 10% of the overall market and be in 3^rd place.
3. If you make it easy and make buying music a good experience, a lot of people will buy it digitally instead of steal it digitally.
   

The CD isn't dead , Amazon and Target (#'s 4 & 5) still combine for more sales than Apple, but that's the trend. And it's way, way early days for that trend as far as video, but that's going to be the trend with that as well. Everyone who likes more flexibility and control over their media and is not change resistant will want their media in digital format to begin with. There are always those resistant to change. But you wait them out and they either change or die. The world moves on either way.

It's going to be at least 5 years before Apple rips me off and launches the "Put your TV on your iPod/iPhone" campaign, but I still believe that's what Steve's Little Hobby™ is all about.

Microsoft didn't design for this kind of stuff, not even when it set out to compete with the iPod with the Zune. The Zune does have WiFi built into it, but it's old school 802.11b. Not only that, they didn't turn on real live Internet access (you can talk to another Zune apparently, if you could find…another Zune, but you can't browse the web).

The Zune would've made sense to me as a portable media device if it had enabled WiFi. It's got a nice screen and it works fairly seamless in terms of "synching" with a media center. But I am near a half terabyte in media storage, and growing. The Zune can't hold all that or do "live tv". But the iPhone can.

There are other portable media players that are missing the boat too. I saw a very nice one from Archos, but they want you to use their software. It does have WifI, and it's got a nice screen, but a few things. One thing the good old pre iPhone iPod has taught me. I don't need a bigger screen to enjoy video remotely. The Archos is slick, but it's not going to fit into my pocket any more comfortably than a PSP (and perhaps less comfortably) and that's not all that comfortable really. But the Archos doesn't want to hook into my media center, it wants to hook right up to my cable box and use its own DVR docking station to record programs. If I were starting from scratch today with portable media, I might give it a look.

With Apple, I won't have to. Apple is making the first handheld device I can use to stream video. I know, there are handhelds that do this now. I have one. It's an iPaq and it does a nice job but the battery life wasn't very good at all with WiFi enabled.

The battery life is key to me. But if I can get an hour of WiFi access to browse or stream and still have a couple of hours of talk time, I don't think the battery life is an issue. If I stream video for an hour and won't be able to use my phone afterwards, that's a problem. For those who have continuous access to chargers that might not be a big deal. The iPhone still beats the other handhelds though because of the form factor. From the looks of it, it has a much better form factor for my pocket than even the 80GB Video iPod, and that has a way better form factor than any other portable device I have (besides the Nano, of course).

I don't see 40 million people running out and buying an iPhone for $600. But if you ask me in 5 years if I think there will be 20 million iPods/iPhones out there that do WiFi in a nice form factor, the answer is yes. That assumes some non-phone version that has similar features (the bigger touch screen, internet access via wifi, etc).

And in 10 years? In 10 years you'll be reading about how iTunes is the #3 distributor of music and video (and of course #1 in digital distribution). And by then, Apple TV isn't going to be a hobby. It'll just be some box in your house that you hook up and never think about again. It will be the box that seamlessly gets all your media wherever you want it and wherever you are. And it won't be for gearheads like me. It'll all be as easy to use as the iPod.

My Media Center runs on Microsoft Vista. The portable streaming is powered by Orb Network's software. The first handheld device to truly unleash the power of all that when I'm outside the home...is an Apple product.

Right now, I'm one of a relative handful of people who even cares. For that alone I love that Apple built this so I could take full advantage RIGHT NOW without having to wait 10 years. In ten years it will be so much better.

I'm sure there will be challengers, but like Google ten years ago, nobody knows who those challengers are. We've seen Microsoft's vision and if it's the Zune, well it's a vision, and for many people it's a very functional product.

It just doesn't liberate all my media and fit comfortably in my pocket. the iPhone looks like it will. I don't underestimate "liberating my media" and "fitting nicely and comfortably in my pocket". For now, I am sure I overestimate it, but I'm always ahead of the curve on this stuff.

Right now I think AAPL will be higher in 5 years. I could be wrong, and even if I'm right, it could go back down to $60 before shooting to $600. If your time horizon is 3 days, or 3 weeks or 3 months I don't have an opinion. But if it's 5 years, right now I would say buy APPL even with the huge run up of the last year.

all of this assumes only these three things:

1. the iPhone works pretty much as advertised
2. there will be iPods that have a lot of the functionality of the iPhone at much better prices
3. AppleTV becomes a full fledged media center/server instead of merely a media extender for iTunes
   

One Last Steroid Rant, and This Time I Really Mean It

I'm pretty sure I have Google adwords figured out to my satisfaction. This one won't be too much of a rant. I wasn't lying when I said Bud Selig is a liar, and here is just one example (it's #4 on the list), you could find several variations of the same thing. Bud Selig is a liar, but he's fairly consistent about it.

Here's my true personal feelings on performance enhancers in professional sports. It doesn't really bother me too much. I know there are issues with kids, and I don't dispute that's a real issue. But I'm far more worried about parents encouraging their 12 year olds to have "Tommy John" surgery. People lie and cheat in this world, and famous rich people with talent have special exceptions made for them. It's not a myth, it's a fact.

If you eliminate steroids in professional sports, you won't save the kids. The kids will still have alcohol, drugs and a host of other temptations to deal with. All you can do is prepare them and hope for the best. "Yes, there are cheaters and liars out there, but don't let it make you angry. And yes, there are people like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds, but they were very talented gentleman involved in a highly competitive profession where effectively they were all in the top tiniest percentile and no matter what they do or how they act, not just some, but many people will pay them a great deal of attention, because at least in one dimension they outcompeted almost everyone else.

Inside of sports is sometimes very sleazy. Between 2002-2004 I read almost every major book on baseball written in the 20^th century. There was always cheating, always lying, always a few very foul people. Ty Cobb was a very, very nasty man. But he sure could hit. Ty Cobb didn't have the pressure of the media like Barry and Sammy have it. Mr. Bonds has it far, far worse. Some of it he brought on himself but that suits him fine because he really doesn't care what you think (or what I think). From 2000-2003 he was the most amazing hitter I ever saw. Far and away the most amazing hitter I've ever seen.

I went to the ballpark many nights, and most of him, he did not disappoint. I was sure he was cheating but I was sure many, perhaps even most, were cheating. The guy sitting next to me thought the same thing. I thought people knew.

As far as performance enhancers go, I'd like to see one of three things happen (pick one):

1. Legalize them
   
2. Actually test for them (you need blood tests for certain things like HGH which can't be tested via urine samples)
   
3. SHUT UP ABOUT IT. TOTALLY IGNORE IT AND MOVE ON!
   

What will likely actually happen is none of the above, at least for a while. Barring some disaster, Barry will break the record and then I know I'll be hearing about that for at least a month afterwards on ESPN. If Barry hadn't been so good once performance enhanced, if say, like Sosa, he had only around 600 homeruns right and retired 2 years ago it would be different.

But he was that good. In years to come there will be stupid discussions like "Mark McGwire's statistics are more valid because he didn't put as much performance enhancements into his system as Barry Bonds."

It's never going away.

Neither is baseball at least not anytime soon, and that's why I don't expect anything to change at all.

Last night the New York Yankees came to town for the first time ever in terms of a regular season game (they did play one exhibition game here before the regular season began in 2000). The game sold out. Robin Williams (San Franciscan) and Billy Crystal (New Yorker) sat together behind the Giants dugout rooting for opposite teams. They still love the game, and they don't care about the cheating, not really. If it really bothered them they wouldn't go to the games. I'm sure Robin Williams feels about the same as I do right now, the last place San Francisco Giants could use a little performance enhancing. Barry did go yard though. 749.

Jason Stark of ESPN/ESPN.COM has for years down a "Useless Information Dept" column filled with statistics and weird views on this (recently he listed the pitchers who've given up home runs to a batter who wasn't even alive when the pitcher made his major league debut) and I love that stuff, and steroids era wise, I could probably have some number fun like that. But I'm going to give you some useful information (assuming baseball as a business interests you in the slightest):

Ticket sales are up. 2006 total attendance outperformed 2001. In 2001 the New York Yankees had an average attendance for all games (home and road) of 37,780. In 2006 they averaged 44,943 for all of their games (again, this is home and away, the Yankees had record home attendance in 2006 averaging 51,858 per game and breaking 4.2 million in total home attendance).

Note: I got these numbers off of ESPN.com and as a Giants fan I can look at the Giants numbers and tell you it's not really attendance but "paid attendance". Paid attendance in MLB parlance means you paid for your ticket whether you showed up or not. They'd rather have everyone who paid show up (concession sales), but if you paid, you paid, we're counting you. I agree with the methodology.

I draw four conclusions from the stat tables at ESPN:

1. Paid attendance has gone up in the last 5 years.
   
2. Overall paid attendance was helped by more than 1.75 million annual ticket sales from 2001-2005 just by moving the Montreal Expos to Washington (where a new stadium will open soon). The 2006 Nationals overall attendance (home and away games) averaged 11,000 more tickets per game
   
3. Similarly new stadiums with more seats and improvements to existing stadiums. Fenway is small in terms of seating capacity but amazingly they have been able to cram room for over 4000 more seats since 2001. Somehow they squeezed room for almost another 500 in between last year and this year.
   
4. It's probably maxing out in terms of ticket sales (based on 2007 averages), but they can keep raising the prices.
   
   

National network ratings are probably not going up and I have no idea what the local ratings are. It doesn't matter. Ratings can keep going down some and baseball will still get a bigger contract from the television networks. I am a quick study and I understand how the game works now when it comes to this kind of thing and network ratings.

Budweiser needs to sell beer. Baseball sells beer. Budweiser is willing to pay even more than they already are to advertise and they will. Ratings for this year's World Series could be as bad as they were for the NBA finals. It won't matter. When it comes right down to it, MLB will charge FOX (or whoever the highest bidder is) more than they are making now, and FOX or whatever network winds up with it will turn around and charge Budweiser more money to offset the costs.

And all of that will happen whether they do anything about steroids or not. As long as Billy Crystal and Robin Williams are still coming to sold out stadiums to watch baseball games (where much beer is sold, by the way), Budweiser will pay for the ads. It's not just Budweiser of course, but you get the idea.

ESPN and its ilk will, as they should, keep playing to the controversy, and the one thing you should know about me is I'm always a little early to the dance and looking around and wondering where everyone is. There will be a day, and it will not be many years where, they're calling Bud Selig a liar on PTI and Around the Horn and when that day comes, I'm going to get some e-mail from my friend Bill G that goes: you. were. exactly. right.

The name's Robert Seidman, the date is June 23, 2007.

No more steroids ranting, and this time I really do mean it.

P.S. if you search on "Bud Selig is a Liar" as of this moment (and these results change over time) you will see the Crasnick story weighing in at #9, and some crazy guy occupying spots 3 through 6, but weighing in at #2, as if Google has some algorithm for "the truth" is this entry which didn't have the word "liar" in it anywhere (and I checked the source code to make sure there wasn't some prankster tagging going on -- there wasn't). I couldn't even leapfrog over Bud's own entry. Dang the man.

The #2 entry for bud selig is a liar:

The Official Site of Major League Baseball: Official info: MLB ...
Allan H. (Bud) Selig was elected the ninth Commissioner of Baseball on July 9, 1998 by a unanimous vote of the 30 Major League Baseball club owners. ...mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/about_mlb/executives.jsp?bio=selig_bud - 62k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Les Moonves vs. Mark Cuban: Who ya Got?

Thinking can sometimes be a very synergistic process for me. There are a multitude of subjects I am interested in thinking about and sometimes in the process of thinking about one thing, I wind up understanding another. It turns out in some weird way almost everything is at least tangentially related in my mind. I understand that often the output of all that is probably some “crazy thinking”.

Things are not always what they seem. I saw record low Nielsen Ratings for the (Stanley Cup) and wondered why my pal Ted Leonsis wasn’t selling the Washington Capitals as fast as he possibly could. On the surface, my approach made a lot of sense. But TV is a place where things aren’t always exactly what they seem, and indeed in the case of Ted Leonsis and the Washington Capitals and the NHL, I was very wrong.

Thankfully I had that all sorted out and didn’t wind up needing to binge on any kind of e-mail exchange with Mark Cuban where I was freaked out looking at the Nielsen Ratings for the NBA Finals and saying, “Oh my God, you’re as crazy as Leonsis!” It’s a good thing too, because I don’t think Mark would have gone nearly as easy on me as Ted did!

Fortunately I do have a gift for self-correction. I can learn.

One thing I am trying to learn is what’s really going on in the television business. I mean what’s really going on. The television industry itself faces the exact same challenges as the major sports franchises. Television bumps up against the same real limits. And there is definitely one real limit: that’s the amount of available free time. You can check out some of this data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bad news is, there’s definitely not unlimited free time. The good news is, as of last summer, TV still won the highest concentration of free time (about 2.6 hours per day). And as you know, on any given night there is way more than 2.6 hours of programming available. All of the programming is fighting for the same free time.

I watched the Dan vs. Katie/Cuban vs. Moonves frenzy the other day and it definitely got me thinking that I was missing something. Something was not right about the whole thing in my mind, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Then, in a somewhat unrelated bit of curiosity, I was looking at the Brand Keys “Sports Loyalty Engagement” (more or less a measure of which sports franchises have the highest loyalty from their fans) and saw all the other “brand loyalty engagement” studies Brand Keys does, including this (rank of evening news by loyalty in 2007):

Evening News Shows
ABC
NBC
FOX
CNN
CBS
MSNBC

Then I understood the something I had missed in this whole thing. The short version of that thinking is, “Ouch, Moonves is dope!” The truth of it is, here he was a complete and total dope. He’ll never admit it. You won’t likely hear the Les Moonves, “Mistakes were made…” speech. But one very, very, very big mistake was made.

First, it is true that the program “brands” do have some loyalty and you can measure it. That’s true for both the Today Show and the CBS Evening News. There is data that I am missing and this data would be helpful. But there is data that I am not missing, and that’s the actual results (which are not good). I like to focus on results. Also, I wanted to start thinking about this in these terms: “What would I do if I ran a television network?”

There’s a secondary truth as well: the stars themselves have some “loyalty engagement index”. Which shows have the most loyalty and which stars have the most loyalty very often crossover. The data I am missing is the crossover between people who are loyal to both Katie Couric and Dan Rather, and people who are loyal to both morning AND evening news programming. Based on the actual results, and admittedly this is still pretty speculative there wasn’t all that much crossover.

Moonves made a key mistake, I believe. The evening news market was already in a free fall (and that trend will NOT change), the mistake Moonves probably made was that he thought he could change this trend. Given that mistake, I do understand how he made the second and big mistake. Let me be clear: when you have a brand, and the sky is kind of falling (ratings across all evening news viewers combined are down more than 50% over the last 25 years) but there is still value in the brand to be milked out of it – you milk it as long as you can. Creating a “new brand” in the environment of Network evening news is as complicated as launching a new beer brand. Beverage companies spend years with rollouts of new brands and the main reason (in my opinion) the rollouts of “new beer” are handled as slowly as they are is because they don’t want the success of the new brand to come at the expense of any existing brand.

There was an existing brand at CBS News. The brand to be exact, was “The CBS News with DAN RATHER”. Dan Rather actually was the brand and I think in a shrinking market where you have a fairly good brand – killing that brand off and trying to launch a new one is just…absolutely insane. This has nothing to do with Katie Couric. I do not believe there was anyone CBS could have put on aside from perhaps bringing Walter Cronkite back that would draw MORE viewers than Dan Rather. Because Dan Rather was the brand and getting rid of him pushed out the millions of people who were loyal Dan Rather evening news fans.

Katie Couric had loyal fans too – but that was for something else. So one lesson here is that brand loyalty does not (certainly in Network television) cross over from morning shows on one network, to evening news shows on the other.

As a result of the way Moonves went about this – again probably a result of thinking he could change the overall trend, one very, very critical mistake was made. Moonves thought about CBS News as the brand. It wasn’t. Dan Rather was the brand and in this case Moonves completely underestimated the value of the Rather brand.

I really don’t find it surprising that without ever thinking about any of this I hadn’t figured it out. What’s vastly more surprising to me is Mooves didn’t figure it out either. There are studies on brand loyalty by the stars themselves. I would not be shocked at all to find out that programming decisions for smaller networks, whether it be USA or Mark Cuban’s own HDNet are being made by trying to create programming around stars with high brand loyalty that happen to be out of work.

I also won’t be surprised that when it comes to network television, that no matter how steep the trend line down is, that the egos like Moonves will think they can reverse the trend, fire more stars with high brand value and…how long can it really be before Dan Rather and Katie Couric are hosting together a nightly news show on Cuban’s own HDNet?

I’ve got Mark Cuban.

How I got Schooled By Ted Leonsis ( Why the NHL ain’t dead, even though the Ratings Suck!)

Robert Seidman ©June 7, 2007

Many people ask me about my confrontational style and approach and while I primarily attribute this to genetics, it’s an approach I embrace very much because it’s quite often the best way for me to learn.

We live in a wonderful world where Robert Seidman – an out of work blogger – can actually “confront” a guy like Ted Leonsis (a man with a net worth after taxes of over $100 million, who owns an NHL franchise and part of an NBA franchise).

Fortunately, Ted doesn’t have any problem with the confrontation and so for me, the out of work blogger, there is a great opportunity to think and learn. And learn I did. Because I was wrong and Ted was right.

Yesterday at about 2:45pm PDT when I was watching ESPN’s PTI and listening to Kornheiser absolutely rail on the NHL about its abysmal ratings (“if Bettman looks at these ratings and says. ‘we’re fine, everything’s good, the league’s healthy…he’s whistling past the graveyard!” If you had asked me yesterday at 2:46pm if I’d ever get around to disagreeing with Kornheiser, I’d have said, “No way, Mr. Tony is my boy!” Mr. Tony is my boy, but he’s wrong just like I was.

There is absolutely NO correlation between the VALUE of the NHL franchises (which are going up) and the national ratings for the Stanley Cup (which are going down). I am convinced of this now in the way that I am convinced that at some point this morning Apple stock (AAPL) was at around $126.50 even though not a single iPhone has yet been sold. Still, the value at that moment was the value, and does not correlate in any way to the # of iPhones sold.

While I do not believe the NHL will be in better shape 2 years from now if the national ratings for the Stanley Cup are where they are now (or worse), I do believe that “right now” the ratings are not actually indicative either of franchise values or the health of the league, and that right now things are actually much better for the NHL than they were a few years ago. More on this later...

Influencer of the Influencers

I don't care about this Web 2.0 notion of "respect my authority". I have no authority because nobody is reading my blog. Nonetheless, I was able to influence Mr. Leonsis (it may all be subconscious to him, and I'm fine with that!).

Last night I wrote this piece on the growing irrelevancy of the NHL in pop culture, singling OUT my favorite show in the world, "Pardon the Interruption". i note though, I was incorrect that they didn't give ANY time to the Stanley Cup -- it did get about 2 seconds worth in the "Big Finish" (you can see "Ducks" if you click the picture).

Today, Leonsis wrote an entry singing the praises of Washington Post columnist and PTI co-host Michael Wilbon. That's exactly the kind of thing I think Ted ought to be doing: a.) because WILBON ROCKS! (and so does Mr. Tony!) and b.) it would be good for the NHL if the PTI boys felt like talking about the Stanley Cup while it was actually in progress.

i don't care if there's 140,000 people reading this or 14. I'm solutions and results oriented and the results are in: me and and you (all 14 readers) are already making a difference. God bless America.

TV and the Steadfast Leonsis

Even though he didn't link back to this summary of all our e-mail back and forth I'm sure his TV. TV. TV. TV post was specially crafted on my behalf.

I might have to agree he's right about the "growth stock" -- ultimately. But right now, if it was a stock in the Pop Culture market it would be so close to $0 you couldn't short it anyway. How low did it go?

One staple of my life is ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption”. PTI has been on one DVR or another for over 4 years. I love Kornheiser and Wilbon together. My day is kind of thrown off when there’s some BS like golf or tennis or college baseball that cancels PTI for the day. I read Kornheiser religiously as a young man and as much as anyone I blame him for my curmudgeonly style. Thank you Mr. Tony.

On Today’s PTI – they didn’t talk about the Stanley Cup at all. Not at ALL. And yet, they spent “5 Good Minutes” with someone I’d never really heard of “Dan Wheldon”. He was on TV only because Danica Patrick shoved him after last Sunday’s race. Mr. Wheldon is a great TV personality and was very entertaining. The IRL got 5 GOOD minutes, the NHL’s Stanley Cup got no air time at all.

Interestingly one thing that was obvious, Wheldon doesn’t probably have any love for Danica Patrick, but he understands the only reason he is on TV is because of her, and the only reason anyone even cares about the IRL at all is because of her. So even though she can’t win a race, as long as people care about her she can pretty much do what she wants. And the IRL must be most pleased by THIS shove. Way happier than Roger Goodell is going to be if Randy Moss shoves one of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

All of this does raise one question: does hockey have some women down in the minors who can skate a little bit?

Do a Google search on : Female Hockey Players. Then think about how PTI gave the IRL 5 minutes, and the NHL Stanley Cup 0 minutes, and then tell me if it really seems that crazy.

Is The NHL Really In Better Shape Now?

My brother says that in business/negotiations, “he who cares the most usually loses.” Under this theory I thought I could probably win an argument with Ted Leonsis about the NHL because I figured as the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise (and he is a minority owner of the Washington Wizards NBA franchise as well) he is bound to care more than me. I felt like I was in a good position.

But I do not have my sea legs yet, and came out of the communication exchange feeling a little bit worn down and in need of a glass of wine. I give Ted many points for stamina. I also give him a tremendous amount of credit for making himself so accessible to the NHL fan-base (and everyone else, for that matter). I think guys like Leonsis and Cuban making themselves so accessible IS one of the most outstanding aspects of the internet. It’s possible to get guys like this engaged in very interesting conversations. Extremely engaged at times. So I will tip my hat to Ted on that, it’s a great thing.

In fact that’s the reason that I wrote him. I really think the NHL has a great opportunity because while it has lost 50% of its viewers for the Stanley Cup finals in the last 5 years, they were there as recently as 5 years ago. I do worry that more people read Ted’s blog in one month than watched the NHL finals and while that’s great for Ted, I don’t see it as so good for the NHL.

From my perceptive if you had three million homes tuned in 5 years ago and less than half that many are tuned in now, your prospects are worse now than they were before, not better. However…

The world is a wacky place and linear math like that doesn’t always work. As Leonsis himself notes there are now 2000 billionaires. That’s about 10 times as many billionaires as there are sports franchises worth buying. Because of the concentration of capital and the limited supply of sports franchises, we do live in a crazy world where because of the “limited amount of real-estate” property values are going up, up, up, even in cases where the neighborhood is having severe problems (losing half your viewers is a bad day in the neighborhood).

Leonsis points out that from a financial perspective the league is in much better shape now because although ratings were down 50% in 2006 from the 2002 numbers, the league actually broke even in 2006 and lost a significant chunk of change in 2002 when the ratings were much better.

Despite escalation of the underlying value regardless of performance (because of the 2000 billionaires and limited # of franchises), at some point performance still matters. While I agree that breaking even is better than losing money – and I do see that as both an improvement to the business model and improved financial performance, I still am not quite comfortable with the prospects, but I’m focusing on just the problem of the national ratings. Leonsis notes there have been positive improvements and that ticket revenues and actual attendance are both up, as were local ratings for regular season broadcasts.

Despite these improvements, Leonsis agrees that the national ratings remain a big issue. Current deals that have some of the finals on the Versus network really limit exposure (availability to only about 20M of the 100+M tv universe) and hampers both ratings and cross-promotional opportunities.

Though I confess Ted’s explanations do leave me feeling less panicked, I can’t see how the prospects of a league that 1.5 million homes tune in to the finals are truly better than the prospects of something with twice as many homes tuned in. Also, it seems to me that since those folks were watching as recently as 5 years ago, they’re the first people I would focus on winning back. I believe Ted has an opportunity compared to other figures in the NHL because he is out there in the popular culture with a link to his blog from Engadget and everything.

Other than the stars of the NHL themselves doing everything in their power to get face time with the American public (with the leagues assistance), Ted should somehow use his position to do his part to get the 50% back simply because he’s in a better position than most affiliated with the league to have an impact with that.

Is the NHL “really” in better shape now? Ted thinks so, but I’m still not there yet and this year’s ratings (Saturday’s game 3 did a .8 rating with a 2 share during its highest ½ hourly period on Saturday night) of less than a million homes even when the game was on NBC during primetime is not leaving me feel like the NHL is *really* in better shape, even if the franchise values are increasing and the financial performance is better than it was 5 years ago when the average rating was about 3x Saturday night’s results.

I know Paris is in jail, but maybe that’s the best time to approach her with some sort of deal to save the NHL. One thing I think Leonsis is in a better position than most involved with the NHL is really helping put a focus on how to effectively market the stars of the NHL, in fact, I believe marketing its stars is the only way to win back viewers. I see Leonsis as a very determined guy, and if he was determined, really determined to help the NHL market its stars, I think he’d succeed with it.

Seidman’s Law: You Should’ve Never Trusted Hollywood

Actually that isn't "Seidman's Law".

Seidman's Law is simply this: if the truth hurts, it's because you're doing something that you know (consciously or subconsciously) that you shouldn't be doing, but you're doing it anyway.

I bring it up here only because Mark Cuban's solution to "save the National Hockey League" which pretty much jibed with my own solution does wind up hurting me on some level. The beauty of this law, if you care in the littlest bit about improving your own self awareness is that if the truth hurts you, but you don't know why, that correlates 100% with you (or in this case, me) being in denial about it. So the truth hurts me because I'm in denial in some way about being such a hypocrite. And knowing the truth hurts, but not why means: denial and that is an awareness opportunity for me.

For those who care, Cubes solution to save the NHL was for the stars of the NHL to basically get involved with the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and wind up showing up in People magazine (or at least the National Enquirer).

I agree it would probably work, but something about this truth – hurt me, so I listened to System of Down's "Lost in Hollywood" about 30 times and it came to me.

Lindsay and Paris are pretty foul people. I mean they are famous and attractive, but really, they are pretty vile. They have the whole world by the balls and yet, they still need to be showing up skanky and drunk all the time. To the tune of they are both going to jail for being the skanky, out-of-control drunks that they are.

You wouldn't want your kids going out with girls (or their male equivalents) like this, but even though Lindsay and Paris both act horribly vile, regularly, and in public to the point of J-A-I-L they still have enough value that they could save the NHL.

Where's my hypocrisy? Well…

Writing about Cuban, Paris and Lindsay is the only thing that wound up automatically feeding my blog postings into the "world". In this case the small world of people who care about the NHL, but I'm not against capitalizing on the value of Lindsay and Paris' skankyness, or cashing in on Cuban's cred either.

The hypocrisy on my part? I'm SO over it.

I'm totally down, just like the NHL should be, to use Paris and Lindsay to get attention. Damn if it doesn't seem to work.

-
Update, I'm not alone: Media in frenzy over jail-bound Paris Hilton