Sometimes its hard to tell if people are trying to be funny, mean, interesting, provocative or are just plain stupid or completely out of touch with reality.  I know I get accused of being all of the above all the time.

The other day in New York I gave a speech at the AlwaysOn Conference which AdWeek summarized nicely here.  The audience was primarily newspapers and people related to their business. So as I do when I speak to a group like this, rather than just shilling a product, service or position as many, if not most keynote speakers do, I try to put myself in the business shoes of the audience. Then I discuss what I would do if I owned, ran or invested in their business, and the approach  I would take to some of the strategic issues of the day.

The concept of directing comments to a vertical segment of a market is nothing new. I have been doing it for more than 20 years. Yet for some reason, based on comments from a few folks over the past couple days, there are some relatively high profile people in the internet business that have a tough time grasping that concept.  Tech Crunch - a site I love. SearchEngineLand – Run by  Danny Sullivan, I think he Danny  likes to banter to create traffic, smart on his part. But I also think he doesn’t fully understand all the business elements on some of the topics he has challenged me on.  Then there is Jeff Jarvis who always like to slam me. Which is ok by me. I just consider the source. As Jeff describes himself  ”Most of my holdings today are in mutual funds because I’m a lousy investor.” Which tells me all I need to know about his business knowledge.

While its fun to make a list of those who have criticized me, the criticism is incredibly valuable.  As a businessperson and one who tries to stay ahead of the technology and business curve, even when it means taking a position that is far from popular, critics serve the purpose of always “making you check your hole card” . In other words, the more a position I take gets challenged, the smarter I get on the position. So the criticism is welcome.

Of course the criticism can be fun for me to challenge and also wrong. Which much of the criticism of my Newspaper Industry speech is.

Danny Sullivan thought he had caught in some hypocritical act because I am an investor in Mahalo, a human powered search engine that leverages SEO techniques to increase traffic and revenue. First of all, I invested in Mahalo in 2006 . Not yesterday as Danny would seem to imply. Nor am I involved in the day to day management of the company.  Im always available to answer questions when they ask. Which they do every so often.

Second, EVERY presentation or discussion of actions I thought the newspaper industry should take ALWAYS had the qualifier that the newspaper had significant amounts of unsold inventory.  My point being that if the traffic Google was sending you was not being monetized and you didn’t see a way to monetize the traffic, it was time to make a business decision reconsidering the value equation of traffic coming from Google or Google News vs the strategic implications of staying in their index and offerings. Topics I discussed in my last blog post.   I also discussed in a prior blog post, but unfortunately didnt have time to cover in my 12 minute keynote at Always On, that twitter and facebook were becoming significant sources of traffic to newspaper sites. A fact  that should be considered in the value equation and which in the long run  could become a threat to Google’s Search and News . (a point Im sure Google has also taken note of )

We increasingly look to friends and/or our social networks as a trusted source for information, and because that information is broadcast to us rather than us having to go find it, and because Twitter and Facebook updates are not going to be competitive threats to the newspaper business,  leaving Google is no longer unimaginable for Newspapers.  In the case of Mahalo, unlike newspapers, they are making good money from Google traffic. No reason to stop doing that.  On the flipside however, its fair to point out that Mahalo does use some newspapers content to support their content.  If a newspaper would ask me if they should block Mahalo, the fair answer would be that there is no reason not to. Like Google, the traffic from Mahalo would not justify the value Mahalo gets from their content.  If the CEO of Mahalo were to ask me how Mahalo should deal with newspapers, I would tell him he should work out a licensing deal with the newspapers. That it would be found money for newspapers, so he could most likely get some level of exclusivity on their content in exchange for a minimal amount of money that would be in the form of an advertising revenue share from  pages that host their content. It would be a simple revenue arbitrage for him while also giving him a nice differentiator that would allow him to promote being an exclusive source of content from companies he worked out deals with.

Moving on to TechCrunch, Michael Arrington asks the question of why I could be so enthusiastic about Techmeme, a site that I use regularly and to which I point to from my blogroll. I think his point is that its an aggregator and as such, shouldn’t I be cautioning newspapers about Techmeme and warning them to opt out of it ?  In response I will refer back to my references about monetizing and leveraging Google  traffic. My rule for ANY site receiving traffic from an aggregator of ANY kind is: If you believe you can create more value from the traffic you receive than potential negative branding implications plus the cost of supporting a potential competitor, then continue with the aggregator. If not, block the aggregator. In the case of techmeme, I dont see it ever originating content from the site. So I would strike the competitive aspect of it.  Nor does Techmeme attempt to index the entire internet looking for sources. Instead, if i understand it correctly, Gabe Rivera, the guru behind techmeme personally cultivates the sources he includes in the techmeme index. Because this is purely a tech driven site, and given that participating sites must be “selected”, I would argue that there actually is brand enhancement to being identified as a source on techmeme.  That said, in the event you think that techmeme is gaining more value from your site, than your site is from techmeme, Gabe offers a “leaderboard” where you can check to see just how important you are to the site.  I am sure that Gabe would be happy to exclude you from the site if that is your conclusion.

The same applies to one of my other investments, icerocket.com .  Icerocket was formed in 2004 to be a real-time search engine.  I wanted to be able to search blogs for information that I thought was important and also have those search results continuously available to me through RSS feeds.  It was and is the most expedient manner to keep up with what the blogosphere is saying about a topic. Icerocket’s strength has always been its ability to exclude spam.  To this day it does a better job than Google or any other search engine that includes blogs at finding and giving you real results. When twitter hit the seen, it was a natural to include twitter results as well.  IMHO, and in the opinion of others, Icerocket is as good or better than any other real time search engine out there.  Should your site stay in the Icerocket index ? That is up to you. If you would like to see your blog posts or tweets gain more visibility, then Icerocket will help you.  We aren’t the biggest, but our real-time search is growing very, very quickly.

Which gets me to the necessary conclusion.   The reality of today’s business world is that there are no absolutes. If I invest in a search index or aggregator, that doesn’t mean I believe every website in the world should be in the index. It means I believe that the business can offer enough value to those it has a relationship with to make that relationship win-win.  Nor does it mean that a company is “evil” or that I don’t like it.  Its real world that you will compete with companies that you do business with.  Superfeedr.com is a business I have invested in for realtime push of information that works with information aggregators and content creators of all types that compete with other businesses I own. So does SMASH , which does cookies for Text Messaging.  So what.

Every business has its own decision making critical path that must be re-evaluated daily. For some reason, many of the internet persuasion seem to think that 2010 is the same as 2009, which is the same as 2008, etc, etc. Its not. Things change. Every business must re-examine the variables that impact their current and future profitability. Your relationships with Google, Mahalo, Icerocket, in 2010 may need to be different than they were in 2006.   This seems like an  obvious conclusion to me, but it apparently isn’t to some.

ShareThis

One of the key core competencies of a publication is the process of selecting “all the news thats fit to print”.

No one can read every news story.  Instead of even trying to consume everything, we all have a process we go through for discovery of news, information and topics of interest to us.  We have sources we trust for our news and information. It may be a printed paper or magazine, a website, tv news, facebook or twitter updates, or some combination of everything we have access to.

No matter how we get information there is one certainty, there is a finite number of sources we will use.

When someone selects google news as their destination for news discovery it is probably at the expense of another destination or product who aspires to be a “discovery destination”.  But lets pretend it is just an incremental source.  That for a while at least a consumer will both go to Google News and to the website of their local paper.  What is the branding message the consumer is receiving ?

When that newspaper allows itself to be included in Google News it becomes a de facto endorsement of Google News as an acceptable and probably preferable “discovery destination” . The branding message to the consumer is “I dont need to go to the newspaper homepage. Everything the newspaper has  is referenced  here in Google News. So if there is something of interest to me from the local paper, Google News will send me to their site.  I don’t need to go to both sites any longer. I can just go to Google News.

Thats not good for the publication brand and business. They just lost their position as a trusted source where real people make decisions on what content they think their readers will want to discover – to an algorithm.

But wait it gets worse.

When that consumer goes to Google News, it lists the number of sources. You immediately become one of 2,172 articles.   It is never good for a brand to be considered one of 2,000 plus sources. Ever. That makes you a commodity. All that promotion you did saying how good your reporters are ? On its way to becoming worthless. To the consumer there are 2,000 other people able to do the same thing (even though there really arent 2k sources, thats not what the branding message they get from Google)

And the bad news will keep on coming.

As a newspaper or other information source, you can never discount  the very real possibility that Google starts becoming a content creator. Why couldn’t they hire reporters ? Why couldn’t they give their content priority over all others ? More importantly, why wouldn’t they ?

Never happen you say ? See AOL. See Yahoo. Both are now creating original content in huge quantities. I promise you, someday there will be a bunch of Googlers sitting in a meeting  discussing how they can generate enough revenue and profits to increase earnings per share by a penny.  You can bet someone will pull up a spreadsheet showing the increase in CPMs for original content with the trusted Google News brand on it. It will show that by simply hiring a bunch of reporters to create news, with Google’s traffic and the higher CPMs of original content, we can make a lot of money for our shareholders. You are in denial if you think this will never happen.

It was smart to ride the Google wave of traffic when you were able to sell it all.  Things change. Now you can’t sell all your organic traffic, let alone the traffic you get from  Google.  Now the value equation has shifted.  You are endorsing Google News as a discovery destination making their brand stronger by the day.  Google News’ brand value will increase fast enough on its own. There is no sane reason to allow them to co-opt your brand and use it to accelerate the growth of a business, Google News that will very likely be your biggest online competitor

Update: I want to put a qualifier here because some people think this applies to any or all media companies. It doesn’t. This is meant for media companies that have established brands and brand equity. If you are a startup, you should use Google for everything its worth. It can be very valuable.  If you are trying to create or establish a brand, you should use Google.Google News. If you have no revenue, you should probably rethink your choice of professions and /or business, but Google traffic can only help.

For you, every visitor is a good thing and an opportunity to convert that user and build your brand image.

On the flipside if your company name is one of multiple choices that comes to people’s mind when they need the type of information/news/info you provide, then you need to think through just what impact Google.GoogleNews has on your business today and in the future.

ShareThis

The simplest way to create more jobs is to allow small business and entrepreneurs  to  spend less time and money on lawyers and accountants and redirect that intellectual and financial capital to the core competencies of their business.

Any new government policy that requires the hiring of lawyers and accountants will not lead to new jobs, it will lead to time and money being wasted and fewer jobs being created.

Like the administration before it, the current administration seems to have no concept of what it takes to start, run and grow a small business. None.

Here is a hint. If you want to see more jobs created by Small Businesses and entrepreneurs REDUCE the amount of paperwork required. Dramatically simplify the tax code. In other words, if you REDUCE THE OVERHEAD of small business, you effectively create capital for them through reduced costs. Not only do you improve their financial position, but you reduce that great big time suck known as dealing with your accountants and lawyers. The more time wasted with “professional services”, the less time spent doing your job. This seems to be a concept lost on government.

One last thing. It appears to be a goal of the administration to free up loans to small businesses. For the sake of this comment, let me re-define Small Business as those companies with fewer than 20 employees. There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money. Its stressful enough for a small business in these times to be profitable. Add to that stress the need to repay a loan and success becomes far more difficult.

If we want to accelerate the formation and growth of these small businesses we need to first reduce the costs imposed on them by the government (at all levels) and then  simplify and reduce the costs of raising capital.  Forget government loan guarantees.  Make capital gains on investments up to $1mm in small companies tax free. Make this process paperwork free for the small business and a 1 page form for the investor.

Thats how we will see economic and job growth in this country

ShareThis

I cant wait to get my hands on the IPad. Its going to be a HUGE hit.

You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up.

Apple was brilliant in how they cultivated apps for the IPhone and  Touch.  With so many apps for kids, any parent with young kids and either of these 2 devices will tell you that their kids use and love them.  In fact, it was this very reason that I helped create Puzzle Palace for the IPhone. It allows my kids to take the pictures they take and turn them into puzzles. My 3 year old loves it.

The IPad will take this to the next level.  I recognize that its very expensive for most families right now. Hopefully that will change over time. If it does,  you can bet every home with kids will have an IPad. And the first person to create the “kidproof” covering will make money as well (Hint to entrepreneurs) On the flipside, the minute these devices hit critical mass in families,  the DVD market for kids, who watch the same movie over and over will end as we know it.  Download Scooby Do one time and  the need to hassle with all those DVDs for the kids at home or on trips becomes a distant memory. A relic of an older generation.

Thats big.

Whats also big is the exclusion of flash.  The reason is obvious. No flash.  Far less streaming over 3G. Less streaming over 3G means less bandwidth consumed. Less bandwidth consumed means ATT can  offer a GREAT price on the 3G data service. I personally have never had problems with the ATT Network.  The limits on 3G streaming probably means I wont going forward either. Thats a good thing.

Its big that there is no USB port. As a content producer thats not a good thing. It means that Apple wants to force us through ITunes to sell content. It will be the path of least resistance for consumers to add content to the IPad and a HUGE source of revenue for Apple. Im sure there will be work around alternatives, but they wont be able to match the simplicity of the ITunes Store.

Outside the Apple Universe, the company that should be licking its chops is Dish Network. Their SlingBox product just became a grand slam.  I absolutely LOVE the sling box app I run on my IPod Touch to watch NBA League Pass games, HDNet in a hotel room  and other shows that I record on my DVR. I cant wait to  put it on the IPad and its big screen.

And finally, if i was just out of school and fluent in all things Wi Fi , networking and wireless, I would immediately go door to door offering to fine tune your home’s wireless network.  With new HDTVs coming out with Wi FI, the IPad, SlingBox, Netflix Streaming and other applications consuming tons of bandwidth in the home, it is an ABSOLUTE certainty that 99pct of home networks can be improved and perform significantly better.  Be that kid in your neighborhood that comes in and fine tunes everyone’s wi fi in their home for 50 or 100 bucks (or more if you live in a fancy part of town) and you will make some good money.

ShareThis

If you want to know why its going to take longer than people hope or expect to get out this great recession, look no further than media and corporate response to Jeff Zuckers move of Jay Leno to primetime.

What Zucker and NBC did was the EXACT RIGHT MOVE.

Business environments change. When they do, as broadcast network television has, and continues to, there are two basic choices. You can do it the way it’s always been done, or you can challenge yourself to change the game.

In the case of NBC, Jeff Zucker chose to take a risk and move Jay Leno from late night television to primetime.  The upside was HUGE.  Rather than risking tens of millions of dollars each season on pilots that never make it on air, and then watching those that do get aired fail far more often than they succeed, Leno in primetime could change the economics of primetime TV dramatically for the better.

Leno’s show would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour instead of 2mm, 3mm or more per hour. A game changer. It was  equivalent to CBS putting a reality show in primetime. Survivor worked. It changed the economics and ratings landscape of TV forever. A successful Leno show would do the same thing,.

But what if Leno to primetime failed ? What was the downside ?

The downside was that NBC could go back to business as usual. They could cancel and move Leno, just as they have done. Then they could go back to the old school way of lots of pilots, build a primetime schedule, and then pray some of the shows work. Rinse and repeat.

Going forward they will program the 10pm slot. They will get some hits, some misses. It will be expensive, but in a few years they will find a hit and recapture the viewers they lost. Just as every network has done in response to a down period.  In a few years the Leno experiment will be nothing more than a memory. A big so what.

Thats what happens when ideas fail. They fade into memory and hopefully something is learned.

But there is a bigger message in all of this.

What I have learned from watching all of this is that corporate America has been neutered. No one has any balls anymore.

I have a saying, “No Balls, No Babies”. It was told to me by a blackjack dealer when I asked if I should double down on an 11. The message was simple. If you dont take the risks, you dont get the rewards.

Well that used to be the case. Its not anymore.

In today’s corporate world, if you don’t take the risks, you don’t get skewered on blogs, on cable news, in the newspaper. Public condemnation  appears to be a far worse consequence than financial success is a reward. Thats a huge problem for our country.

In today’s world, we reward Patent Trolls with 8 and 9 figure settlements for ideas they never did a minute of work on or ever tried to monetize. The extent of their effort was hiring or selling out to patent lawyers. That’s a problem.

In today’s world, we reward companies that cut 10,000 jobs to benefit a few thousand shareholders. We lie to ourselves and say that the money will be re-invested in growth or passed on to shareholders. In reality, it will be used to buy back the stock that was awarded to corporate management under the guise of “avoiding dilution”

In today’s world, we let politicians pretend they know how to solve problems by creating policy “solutions” that are supposed to be implemented over 10 years, while we as voters and citizens go mute despite knowing there is absolutely no chance that any program survives 10 years and any number that is attached to any program, whether its health care or a stimulus program, is an absolute guess at best and most likely an outright lie.

We need more Jeff Zuckers. We need people who try to change the game. Who don’t just approach problems with gutless answers. So what if it didnt work. So what if the media rips him and NBC.

The only problem with what Jeff Zucker and NBC did with Leno is that they are unique in trying to solve problems with original solutions.

We need far more of it. Not less

ShareThis

As is the normal way on the internet, people love to read headlines. Of course they rarely read the substance of the article behind the headline. They take the headline and run with it as gospel. This is particularly true of internet video and the presumption by many that the internet will be so vast and powerful that its a foregone conclusion that video on the internet will replace traditional television delivery.

Aint gonna happen.  I can go into depth about it, but my buddy Dan Rayburn does a far better job of it.  He asks the simple question of “how is it the Youtube , with all of google’s resources,. cant solve their buffering problem ? ” Then he answers much of it.

Now maybe Youtube will fix their buffering problem someday, along with the other issues that Dan addresses, but it wont be easy and it wont be quick.

You can find Dan’s work here. Make sure to also read the comments. He does a good job there as well

Let me add a couple other thoughts. There are many that think that video over the internet will “set them free” from having to deal with a small number of big companies (think cable, telco). . If that is what you think, you better think again.  There are maybe 3 companies that can stream to 1mm or more simultaneous users. Google, Limelight and Akamai.  And that 1mm simultaneous users isnt just for your content. That is for EVERYONE’s content and they cant get much beyond 2mm without big problems.  More importantly, if you want to stream your content to millions of users at once, its going to cost you an incredible amount of money.

Which leads me to a lesson for all you netizens who are jazzed up about over the top video.  If you really believe the demand is there and your content will command 1mm simultaneous users , its probably cheaper to pay Directv, Dish Network and Comcast to create a channel for you and let your viewers watch it on tv.

Let that sink in. Its going to be cheaper to have the big traditional cable distributors offer your content to viewers than it will be to reach a large audience on the net. Thats for a one time offering. If you plan on doing it more than once or on a regularly scheduled basic, there is no question its cheaper to do it this way. And the picture quality will be dramatically better.

In fact, that is probably a great business opportunity for satellite, telco and cable companies. Open up times to bid to offer content over their networks. You want channel 1020 on Directv, its X dollars per hour minimum or the best price bid. Here is how you provide your content to us. You can buy marketing from us as well. Directv, Dish, Comcast could make a boatload of extra money offering this service.

And i can give you one more option.  It may be cheaper to go to a movie theater chain and pay them to broadcast the content you want people to see via digital to their theaters. As long as its a slow night and they can sell popcorn, I can assure you it will cost you less than a content distribution network would charge to deliver to thousands of viewers.

Maybe someday over the top video will be a realistic alternative to traditional distribution of content, but its not now and its not this year or next or the next and probably not the year after that

ShareThis

I get pitched continuously. Email after email.  99pct get deleted within 10 seconds. Some repeat offenders get filtered directly to spam.

The quickest way to get deleted and filtered as permanent spam is to send me an email a 2nd time and comment that you are going to show me some  ”perseverance” and continue to send me the email till I respond.  Why do people think this will work ? .  For those of you who are not smart enough to figure it out,  it is not perseverance to resend an email to someone, anyone, multiple times. Its LAZINESS . Lazy people think they are working hard when they hit the send key. That’s not work.  That’s wasting time. That’s the lesson of the day.  Sending the same email over and over again not only shows you to be lazy and annoying, but it gets you sent directly to spam.

Now for a sales letter so bad it went from humorous to disturbing.  I have marked my comments with an *

Good morning Mark,

I spoke to your very capable secretary Nancy earlier today.

*I dont have  a secretary named Nancy*

As a former active Attorney, Real Estate Broker and Advisor with Merrill Lynch,

I believe I have a unique insight into the next big moves in Stocks and Precious metals.

While I do not have a “crystal ball”, I do my homework.

*Nothing unusual so far, but then all of the sudden, the letter gets bizarre.  He starts pimping out his daughter for no reason I can figure out *

I have a daughter, Cxxxxxxxxxx, who is a senior in high school.

Two years ago after being chosen by Coca Cola to do a multi-media modeling

Campaign focused on the Olympics in China, she had her ACL ligament severed in a soccer incident. In the Junior

Miss  Pageant she won Best Actress and was in the top 10 overall.

She was a model with Elite in XXXXXXX.

You should see her photographs; Facebook:  XXXXXX,  in YYYYY City

****Im sorry, the whole daughter thing was incredibly disturbing to me*

I plan on specializing in this sector for the next 5 years.

*** IN what , pimping your daughter ?****

I have attached charts for Gold and Silver which go back to 1980.

*How did we get to gold and why ? The simplest search on my name and gold shows I am not a fan of gold. Never will be.***

Gold has made Highs in Jan 1980, 88, 96, 04, 2012?

Gold has made Lows in Jan  1985, 93, 01, 09, 2016?

Silver spent 11 years building a descending wedge from 1980 to 1991.

Silver spent 11 years building a base from 1991 to 2002.

From 2002, the next 11 years are likely to be bullish.

The long term cycle high is due in 2013.

For 9 of the last 10 years Silver has shown Seasonal strength from the end of October

to the end of May with an average gain of 21.4%.  (Financial Post, December 8, 2009)

Gold Beats All in Decade of ‘Fear and Greed’: Chart of the Day

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&sid=aHuMwsIjMF.U

Please click on the link above.

Investors who bought gold or commodities at the beginning of the decade should

have tripled their money by the time the ball drops in New York’s Times Square

on Dec. 31.

Gold has increased more than 380 %

Silver has roughly tripled.

Stock holders have lost approximately 10% in the decade.

We are now entering the 2^nd quarter of the Bull market in Gold and Silver.

Historically when Gold makes major high, the Gold/Silver ratio approaches 40.

Gary Savage thinks the ratio could press below 40.

See: www.garyscommonsense.blogspot.com

On a percentage basis, Silver has far more upside than Gold.

Have a great New Year and a Better Decade than the last one.

Very Best Regards,

***So the guy pimps his daughter. Sends me a bunch of charts and info on Gold and Silver and then says good bye.   Dont try this at home or work ***

ShareThis

Got this email today, and decided to share it and my response as a message to college kids out there that are pretty much the same as I was. Here you go:

Mark, I was in the group  that listened to you speak at the XXXX.  And I need some guidance, dude.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced addictive behavior before, but I’m sure you’ve got an idea of what it would be like.  Now I want to specify that I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol or any of that junk.  I’m addicted to adventure.  Of pushing physical boundaries and experiencing new things.

But man, it’s killing me right now.  I can’t focus on anything that I need to do.  I’m a full-time undergrad and real estate agent (among other things), and this desperate search for adventure is not driving me toward my goals; it is crippling me.  Before you had the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, how did you maintain focus on the things you needed to do?

My Response:

You are still in school. You don’t need to have all the answers or focus on one thing. You should be trying a lot of things until you find the one thing you really love to do and are good at. When that happens, you will be able to focus.

Being focused at 21 is way over rated. Now is the time to screw up,  try as many different things as you can and just maybe figure things out.

The thing you do need to do is learn. Learn accounting. Learn finance.  Learn statistics. Learn as much as you can about business. Read biographies about business people. You dont have to focus on 1 thing, but you have to create a base of knowledge so you are ready when its time.

You will never know when that time will come.  But you can be ready when it does.

ShareThis

The premise is very simple.  Over the air broadcasters, the people who bring you TV that you can get with rabbit ears, pay nothing to the government for the allocated digital spectrum over which tv is delivered. Not only do they pay nothing to the government for that spectrum, they are no longer only using it exclusively to deliver a tv signal. They have about 19.2mbs of digital bandwidth available to them and rather than using it all for the delivery of the highest quality tv signal, they are now trying to slice and dice that bandwidth and monetize it in any way they possibly can. They create new tv channels, they lease it to companies who use it for other applications.  They basically auction it off to where ever they can find the most profitable revenue stream.  So why should the broadcaster be allowed to keep the bandwidth they are not using for their TV channel ? Rather than their auctioning it off , lets let the government reclaim it and auction it off.  Offered on a national basis, the sum value is greater than its parts and should be able to put a pretty penny in the federal coffers at a time it is sorely needed .

It makes perfect sense to me. Except that no one has really taken a contrary view on how that spectrum could be used in the future. No one has asked the question of whether or not we will regret having reclaimed that bandwidth in the future.  Of course the cynic in me always looks to see how the government might be wrong. What would cause us to regret reclaiming and reselling the spectrum ?

At least a couple things I can think of.

1. The simplest  revolves around a  question: Will there be higher bandwidth applications in the future that consumers will expect to be delivered for free to our TVs ? On the bottom of the importance scale could be 3D TV.  Of course whether or not TV is delivered in 3D is not very important.  No more important than needing to have color delivered over the air as black and white disappeared. But if 3D does become important to consumers and an expectation of the TV viewing experience (there are technologies that dont require glasses, and they will improve in quality and decrease in price), if over the air broadcasters are not required to offer it, consumers will be at the mercy of cable/telco/satellite tv distributors to charge whatever they want and the value and most likely sustainability of over the air broadcasters will decline considerably.

As I said, 3D TV is an example, but not necessarily a good one.  Ask yourself a simple question. What type of high bandwidth applications could you imagine being delivered to our future digital TVs in 5, 10, 20 years ? Now that TV is delivered digitally over the air, and all new TVs are digital, basically computers behind a screen, is there any reason not to believe that an entirely new generation of applications will be developed that benefit from being delivered over the air ? That what we call TV today, could look very antiquated in 1o years if we only had the bandwidth to enable it ?

Of course this is where people chime in and say “the internet can support all of that”. Not so fast.  The beauty of broadcast TV is that it has 2 very unique features that differentiate it from delivery of content over the internet. The first of which is economic. The marginal cost per viewer is zero. In other words, it costs the same amount to deliver the 19.2mbs of applications and content to the first viewer as it does to every possible viewer. That is not the case with the internet. If that were the case there would be no need for companies like Akamai to even exist.  Every additional internet viewer or user costs the broadcaster of the content money. Each incremental viewer requires a variety of additional resources, from CPU cycles to bandwidth.  Broadcasting over the air is always cheaper than on the net.

The 2nd feature that differentiates it significantly from the internet is the fact that it is a true broadcast medium.  There is no contention for the bandwidth that is being delivered. On the internet if someone in your neighborhood is using a lot of bandwidth, your performance could slow down. With a broadcast medium, you can run into distance limitations, and like the internet delivered over cable, there could be interference issues, but unlike the internet, the performance and quality of broadcast tv is never impacted by the number of people receiving the signal or the other things they may be using the shared bandwidth for. Thats important.

Why is it important ? For national security reasons ?

Right now the spectrum is officially owned by the government and broadcasters have an obligation to act in the interests of the people, as defined by the FCC.  If we auction off the spectrum to private interests, its gone. It is  owned privately. The government cant get it back no matter how badly it needs it without taking steps that are damning in their very nature.

What could the government need the spectrum for ?

2.  National Security. Thats what the government could  need it for. I don’t know of a single person with a technology background that doesn’t believe there will be a cyber attack of some consequence in the next 10 years that will essentially shut down a city, region of the country or worse.  I was in NY during the blackout 6 years ago. That was bad. We relied on backup generators to power our TVs and battery powered radios.  But things have changed considerably in just 6 years.  We have become far more digitally dependent.  Much of our lives is transported through the internet, and that dependence is increasing. It is going to happen. Hopefully it will be on a small scale and we will immediately get smart enough to prevent it from happening again.  But what happens while an entire city’s internet and digital infrastructure is down ? How do we communicate or receive communications ?

We get our communications through broadcast. Im not talking about being able to get your CBS evening news over the air to your TV. Im not talking about whether or not you have access to a crank powered radio to hear the latest.  Im talking about the value of having 19.2mbs of bandwidth that is able to reach most of the population in the continental US and deliver whatever type of information /data that we may need.

This isnt something that could easily happen today. But if there was a huge emergency, it sure would be nice if the government could step in and reclaim as much bandwidth as they need and broadcast whatever they need to broadcast to us. (im sure they will use satellite as well, but far from enough people have receivers).   It may be video. It may be maps localized to show us trouble spots. It may be information about utilities. It may be instructions on how to solve a problem caused by the cyber attack. Who knows. But i would rather be in a position where the bandwidth, and enough of it, was available for broadcast rather than reading how “shortsighted we were to sell off the bandwidth to wireless providers rather than consider how we could have used this broadcast bandwidth in a national or regional emergency”

I also know that once it happened twice (they would say the first time was a unique exception), then there would be a mandate to require that all new HDTVs and (possibly phones and future digital devices) to also be able to receive data from broadcast sources  and store it on internal and/or external storage  to be viewable on the tv , and potentially an executable file that provides support and help in the emergency.

The bottom line is whether or not there are applications that would benefit national security. I dont know, but i think we have to at least consider the possibility.

Of course this is all pie in the sky hypothetics. Maybe someone has already thought this side of it through. Maybe its ridiculous on its face. I dont know.

But maybe not.  I think there is a greater than zero chance that in the next 10 years  broadcast bandwidth can be of value to the country in an emergency. We need to at least consider this before we sell off the spectrum

ShareThis

I can’t go more than a week without shooting baskets. There is something about the feel of the ball coming off my hand, and the sound of the ball going through the net. It just feels good.

If I’m just standing in the gym, I can shoot pretty well. Playing in a game. Well it’s not quite what it used to be. I used to have a spin move that would work for me no matter who I was playing against or what level they were at. If I could get a pick and the defender went under, I didn’t have to think about it, I could hit the shot. These days, my mind knows what to do, but my body just laughs at me. Put me up against 20 year olds, and I won’t embarrass myself but it’s only because I know how to set a pick and hit an open, a very wide open jumper, and spend the rest of the game getting out of the way.

I love to compete. I always have. Playing basketball was just something I had to do no matter how good I was and its something I will always do, no matter how old I get. It gives me a chance to blow off steam. It gives me a way to refocus.

But no matter how much I love to play the game or how involved and competitive I get during a Mavs game, it’s only a minor release. Real competition comes from the sport of business.

In sports, you know who your opponents are. You know when you are going to play a game. You know pretty much how long the game will last. It’s mentally and physically exhausting if you are at the top of the game, but it still pails at the effort required to be successful in business.

The sport of business isn’t divided into games. It’s not defined by practices. It doesn’t have set rules that everyone plays by.

The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It’s 7×24×365xforever.

I love the sport of business. I love the competition. I love the fire of it. It’s the feeling of the clock winding down, the ball is in your hands, and if you hit the shot you win…all day, every day.

Relaxing is for the other guy. I may be sitting in front of the TV, but I’m not watching it unless I think there is something I can learn from it. I’m thinking about things I can use in my business and the TV is just there.

I could take the time to read a fiction book, but I don’t. I would rather read websites, newspapers, magazines, looking for ideas and concepts that I can use. I spend time in bookstores because 1 idea from a book or magazine can make me money.

I’m not going to go to dinner with you just to chat. I’m not going to give you a call to see how you are. Unless you want to talk business. Other guys play fantasy sports. I fire the synapses to get an edge.

That’s what success is all about. It’s about the edge.

It’s not who you know. It’s not how much money you have. It’s very simple. It’s whether or not you have the edge and have the guts to use it.

The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours.

The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there.

The edge is knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer.

The edge is knowing that you can fail and learn from it, and just get back up and in the game.

The edge is knowing that people think your crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think.

The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business

The edge is knowing that you are getting to your goals and treating people right along the way because as good as you can be, you are so focused that you need regular people around you to balance you and help you.

The edge is being able to call out someone on a business issue because you know you have done your homework.

The edge is recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The edge is being able to drill down and identify issues and problems and solve them before anyone knows they are there.

The edge is knowing that while everyone else is talking about nonsense like the will to win, and how they know they can be successful, you are preparing yourself to compete so that you will be successful.

That’s what makes business such an amazing sport. Everyone plays it. Everyone talks about how good they are or will be at it. Just a small percentage are.

Every single day someone has an idea. Every day someone talks about some business they want to start. Every day someone is out there starting a business whose entire goal is to beat the hell out of yours. How cool is that.

Every day some stranger from any where in the world that you have never met is trying to come up with a way to put you out of business. To take everything you have worked your ass off for, and take it all away. If you are in a growing industry, there could be hundreds or thousands of strangers trying to figure out ways to put you out of business. How cool is that.

The ultimate competition. Would you like to play a game called Eat Your Lunch. We are going to face off. My ability to execute on an idea vs yours. My ability to subvert your business vs your ability to keep it going. My ability to create ways to remove any reason for your business to exist vs your ability to do the same to me. My ability to know what you are going to do, before you do it. Who gets there first? Best of all, this game doesn’t have a time limit. It’s forever. It never ends. It’s the ultimate competition.

It’s the sport of business. It’s not for everyone, but I love it.

I’m fortunate. I have done well enough financially that I don’t have to play 24×7×365. I can and have cut back to 18×7×365. Family first now.

But in those 18 hours, you can bet I’m competing, and loving it.

But that’s me. You have to figure out what works for you.

ShareThis