The Brave New World Where Everything is Fragmented

Of course complicating things even further, not all the players involved are all that brave. I’ve seen this happen before (think about a newspaper industry that was once booming that can now often not give away free newspapers). We were all talking about that stuff in the mid ‘90s and it has certainly come to pass.

Think about this: the Sopranos, the most influential drama (especially considering it wasn’t on a broadcast network) probably of the last 20 years. It drew about 11.9 million viewers on Sunday, making it only the 4th most watched episode ever. Number one was the 2002 season premier (13.4 million).

I’m still not quite sure that the NHL is really in better shape just because franchise values are up. It’s true that the multiple is the multiple (and right now that multiple seems to be 3.5x revenue). But it’s also true that: the multiple is the multiple, until it isn’t.

But what’s going on with the NHL, the NBA and the Sopranos is the EXACT same problem: limited free time in a world of burgeoning choice. It wasn’t that the Sopranos got significantly worse since 2002 (it was already starting to wane by then in my estimation), it’s that momentum for the fragmented world is accelerating and getting more and more fragmented all the time.

So let me be the first person I know to say this: (I’m not sure anyone else hasn’t, and I ‘fess up, I didn’t google it, because I didn’t want to know):

Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue is a GENIUS. Like Mark Cuban genius in terms of timing. He got out when the going was good. This poor sap Roger Goodell is about to not know what hit him. He’s worried about the Cincinnati Bengals % arrested – and while I don’t blame him, that’s going to be the least of his worries. The one thing that’s held on pretty steady is the NFL’s ratings clout. But their ratings too are eroding and it’s going to get worse, not better. And this is regardless of anything the NFL and the networks are doing in terms of packaging the product itself. It’s just math. It’s inevitable because of that math (limited free time, more choices, with choice escalating constantly).

I think of at least three things the NFL could or should be doing to stave this off (they can’t stop it, but they can optimize for the fact it is occurring), but don’t appear to be doing at all yet. This doesn’t mean they’re not thinking about it, but I believe they probably are not thinking about it enough. Mr. Goodell, I may be reached at robert dot seidman @ gmail dot com. I’ll give you the three ideas for um… $3.8 million.

Die Paulie, Die!!!

Regardless of my personal feelings that not only was the Sopranos series finale lacking and the last few years weren't really very interesting to me either, I give David Chase the tip of the cap for being a creative genius. According to the Internet people are split down the middle. Me and my friend Bill G. are on opposite sides -- even Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon disagreed on Pardon the Interruption. Interesting to me is how much smarter ABC is here than Time Warner itself -- the actual distributor of the show. ABC was all over capitalizing on the Sopranos sensation wherever it could. Even ESPN. PTI, a show about what's up in the sports world spent 10% of its air-time discussing (or arguing about) the Sopranos finale.

Time Warner, coroporate home of HBO on the other hand, had no mention of the finale AT ALL in its own Time Magazine. Perhaps they will capitalize with the next issue. The episode did seem to leave people wanting more, and sticking Tony's mug on the cover of Time should sell a few more copies. Maybe they were smarter than I was all along and wanted to rake it in on the aftermath instead of the "pre-finale hoopla". We'll know soon enough.

For me personally, only one change would've made a huge difference. I needed Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri offed to be fulfilled. It didn't work out that way so I wasn't.

Optimzation Addiction and the Google Democracy

It came along at a good time. The Sopranos is over, and let’s face it, the last 3 or 4 seasons kind of stunk it up anyway.

I have been playing around with Google ad words as part of something I’m part of that’s planned for the fall. I dedicated a $300 budget to it, and…by the time I’d spend $13, I’d probably learned enough, but man, it was so much fun I just couldn’t STOP PLAYING WITH IT.

I like optimizing. I am curious about improvements. Simple lazy mental masturbation stuff. Like, when I see The Hardest Working Man in the Marina, I want to tell him, “Dude, stand out in front of the Cingular store on June 29 when the iPhone is released and you’ll RAKE IT IN!" The combination of guilt and giddiness could be lucrative. If they needed an iPhone so badly they were in line for it on June 29, by the time they have it they are going to be giddy! *update 6/11/07 12:55pm PDT: just found out the iphone will not be available for purchase until ~6pm on 6/29.

Google allows continuous optimization in real time. You can see results, make changes, try different campaigns, get immediate results, optimize some more, etc. I did a variety of experiments ranging from the ad copy, to where the page landed to keyword vs. site specific. I could get lost in it – probably forever if I had enough money to just send continuous ads into the world.

But there’s something else. I don’t see how it can last really although a part of me hopes it always works exactly the same way. I wrote a blurb on how dumb Time Warner is for not having leveraged the Sopranos across its major brands very well and wrote ad copy that said: “Time Warner Needs a New CEO, if you love the Sopranos Richard Parsons must go!” and then I linked it to various Time Warner keywords including “Sopranos” and “Richard Parsons”. They ran my ad. Even on the Richard Parsons search! People clicked – though not a lot…but the night is young and I haven’t spent all my $300 yet.

The Sopranos finale didn’t make me feel any better about any of that…

Update 6/10/07 7:50PM PDT: The ad for parsons generated a lot of clicks (over 200) and then exceeded my $ allowance for that particular campaign -- I had not put all $300 against that campaign.