Ok, so Google didnt get sued into Oblivian when they bought Youtube. They happened to be one of the very few companies that could afford to buy all the real estate in Oblivion and just move there.

Where are all the licensing deals from content owners excited about hosting their content ? Is it just me, or have we seen more content owners ask to have their content removed than sign new licenses to have their content added ? Where are all the licensees ? I mean out of the 10s of millions of copyright owners world wide, you would think we would have heard about more than the licenses signed when Google bought Youtube, right ? Where are they ?

But thats not what is interesting about what has happened to Gootube since the acquisition.

Whats interesting is that Gootube has gone corporate. Its primary application is to host commercials. Commercials for TV shows. Commercials for Products. Commercials for cheesy websites. Gootube may host a bunch of user generated content, but thats not what people look at.

Take a look at Decembers Top Viewed English Videos.
Most Viewed (This Month)

SNL – Digital Short – A Special Christmas Box *Uncensored Ve 02:45 Added: 1 week ago From: NBC Views: 6957535 12845 ratings	Sleeper Cell: A New Cell Awakens 04:30 Added: 2 weeks ago From: CBS Views: 3813597 2541 ratings	The 12 Days of Christmas 05:47 Added: 2 weeks ago From: Zipster08 Views: 1955951 5535 ratings	Hard Drinking Devito Bashes Bush on “The View” 05:20 Added: 3 weeks ago From: dailyclick Views: 1886783 1462 ratings
Will It Blend? – iPod 01:13 Added: 1 week ago From: Blendtec Views: 1870954 5236 ratings	Rocky Balboa – Official Trailer 02:25 Added: 3 weeks ago From: MGMStudiosInc Views: 1836866 6631 ratings	document.write(' '); Ladies in Love (The L Word) 01:01 Added: 1 week ago From: CBS Views: 1568995 1699 ratings	Richard Simmons’ Exploding Steamer 02:37 Added: 3 weeks ago From: CBS Views: 1533243 5540 ratings
Britney Spears caught without underpants 01:07 Added: 3 weeks ago From: tylermcgregor Views: 1408363 3523 ratings	Me and My Cell Phone — The past 25 years 00:59 Added: 1 week ago From: VerizonWireless Views: 1373397 < img src=”http://www.youtube.com/img/star_sm.gif” class=”rating” alt=”" /> 5731 ratings	BRITNEY’S SKIRT FLIES UP, CROTCH SHOT SHOWN AGAIN, CHECK IT! 00:29 Added: 1 week ago From: wylinoutbitch Views: 1341496 3299 ratings	Matt Damon Does Matthew McConaughey 01:28 Added: 2 weeks ago From: CBS Views: 1277719 3895 ratings
dick in a box (better quality) 02:43 Added: 1 week ago From: augustson Views: 1235236 1294 ratings	BRITNEY SPEARS NUDE ON BEACH, THE REAL VID RELEASED TODAY!!! 00:29 Added: 2 weeks ago From: wylinoutbitch Views: 1173279 3451 ratings	Gangsta Gangsta Video (Lil Scrappy) 04:43 Added: 3 weeks ago From: lilscrappy Views: 1163908 2266 ratings	Star Wars PSA: Vader Dad 00:45 Added: 2 weeks ago From: wwwBLACK20com Views: 1124946 4762 ratings

BRITNEY SPEARS TOP FALLING OFF AT AWARDS!! FULL CLIP HERE!! 00:29 Added: 1 week ago From: wylinoutbitch Views: 1088674 2355 rating s

That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife! 00:26 Added: 2 weeks ago From: T3Online Views: 1055464 3171 ratings

Christmas Tree Jump 02:42 Added: 1 week ago From: TzarElWrinkly Views: 1013283 5247 ratings

Power Tool Drag Racing 4 02:55 Added: 2 weeks ago From: slamer123 Views: 992688 1254 ratings

Go through the list. Only the StarWars PSA, the Christmas Tree Jump and PowerTool Racing are really user generated content. 3 out of 20.

From there you have a contrived 12 days of christmas that is one of thousands of promos for Youtube users themselves trying to build a following. Is this social networking at its best ?

From there we have commercials or promos for movies, tv shows, blenders, knives, music videos and for a phone company. Then we have the most popular of Youtube videos these days. The fake Porn thumbnail with headlines of: Britney, Paris, whoever, nude, in the shower, wherever, doing whatever. 5 of the top 20 are fake porn.

This is the future of TV and entertainment ?

Thats what Youtube has become. Fake Porn and Commercials. Sure there is still some fun stuff on there and being uploaded, but how long before fake porn just takes over ? It was 9 of the top 20 for the week as I write this.

Now some of you might assume that Youtube can just police the fake porn and take it down before it c
lutters Youtube into….oblivion. Well they can’t. If they police videos they cant qualify for the safe harbor laws under the DMCA. (although some how real porn never manages to squeeze through, so we know they are looking at every video and shouldnt qualify anyway, but thats another discussion) and whatever content filtering they may be introducing is never going to catch mis sized dirty thumbnails at the front of fake porn.

So will all the creative people of the world want their User Generated Gems surrounded by fake porn and commercials ? Or maybe the bigger question is whether or not CBS and NBC and the other big media players will want their promos for their shows surrounded by fake porn or by Youtube Response videos which have to be the dumbest things I have ever seen. All that is missing from these response videos is a standardized preroll of “Im rubber and you’re glue…”

Could it be that Gootube will fade ? The victim of fake shots up Britney’s skirt and “My Response to…” videos ?

When will advertisers start wanting to know just how videos are viewed and by who ? Is a video viewed by the person who uploads it worth the same to advertisers as someone who came for the “entertainment” ? Is a video viewed by someone who “watches” 8000 videos a day really viewed or is that “view fraud”. Exactly how many people go to Youtube only to watch videos as entertainment and is that number growing or declining and how will that number trend in the future ?

While Im up on my high horse, let me add some historical context. Social networks are not new. Go back 20 years to CompuServe and UseNet groups and then chat rooms. They all cycled through the same way. They were fun and exciting when you found people with like interests. People found the forum, group or room usually via referral. People involved learned, were educated, were entertained, whatever the forum offered. Then if the forum grew, as in any group, some participants became more popular than others, and others tried, but failed to become popular. Still, they tried to dominate conversations, and when they couldn’t they tried different ways to game or sabotage the system. That pushed out the “purists” and original posters.

Then the spammers came. When the forum reaches the point where no one has a strong connection, the spammers and people trying to game the forum take over till the forum dies. Its what has become “The Ecology of Forums and Social Networks” . When a forum is open to everyone, eventually everyone shows up and the original attraction of the forum is lost. Someone has got to take responsibility for any open social network or the network will die.

Go to any forum that has survived a long time and you will find members or admins that police posts on there actively and ruthlessly. Myspace is a perfect example of a company that is figuring this out and trying hard to police what its participants do. Youtube, not so much…

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I was working out the other day, watching TV trying to make time go by alot faster. On comes Happy Gilmore. The movie is a classic. It also could be the ultimate sports marketing class. It should be required viewing for every professional sports commissioner.

For those who dont know about the movie, let me give you the Sports Marketing Class recap.

Failed hockey player needs to make money so his Grandmother can keep her house.
Hockey player realizes he can drive a golfball a long way and can make money doing so.
Hockey player qualifies for golf tournaments and wins money. We root for him to save Grandmas house.
Hockey player as golfer has a huge temper. Throws clubs. Curses. Yells at fans.
We suspend belief as movie watchers. Not that this couldnt or wouldnt happen, but there arent negative articles in the media calling Happy Gilmore every name in the book and saying how he is the worst thing ever to happen to pro sports.
Happy Gilmore continues to show every bit of poor sportsmanship that he can. He screams at and threatens fans. He confronts a fellow golfer and breaks a beer bottle, willing to fight him.

Happy Gilmore’s fan base grows. Fans love him.
TV Ratings skyrocket.
Attendance skyrockets.

We suspend belief as viewers because we still dont see any headlines condemning him as the worst thing to happen to sports. Ever.
Happy Gilmore gets into a fight with an 80 year old Bob Barker.
Happy Gilmore screams at the golf ball, which is toning it down for Happy.
Happy Gilmore hates Shooter McGavin, who is having a career year on the tour.

We love him more.

Happy Gilmore saves the day for Grandma. Fans go wild and love him. He is our hero.

Why is he our hero ? Because he is as far from perfect as he can be. He has one skill he is amazing at. He also has an amazing temper . He is just like any number of people we all know , only he has a special skill that put s him into a very unique situation. He can be a pro golfer.

What does that have to do with professional sports ? Everything. Its a great example of what is wrong with pro sports marketing.

In pro sports marketing we try to make all the athletes perfect. In doing so, we make them unlike anyone any of us can relate to. Its not that we should hear about their frailities and problems all the time. Its that we should see and hear about them in situations that makes them normal. or they shouldn’t be part of league marketing plans at all.

We see them serving food in soup kitchens. We see them surrounded by kids in obviously managed situations.. We see them trying to push kids on a swingset. Its a mistake because its so contrived that we automatically ignore it as being artificial and brand management.

Consumers are savvy. Does anyone think that this situation just happened and miraculously the cameras were there ? Of course not. We all see it as an obligatory Public Service Announcement and ignore it.

NFL Cares about the United Way. MLB Cares about something. NBA Cares, NHL Cares. MSL Cares. Im sure Volleyball, Bull Riders and Bowlers Care as well. We know. We get it. Stop it.

It doesnt make fans think better of athletes. It puts athletes on pedastals . Exactly where they shouldn’t be. Whats worse is when an athlete doesnt live up to these artificial brands we create of them and falls from the pedestal the same fans and media watching the commercials, thrive on tearing them down. Its dumb marketing that creates more opportunities for failure than success.

Not only do I think the “we are so caring” marketing is a mistake, I think the trend towards taking personalities out of the game could be a fatal business mistake. Leagues are so intent on polishing and packaging athletes that they forget the Happy Gilmore lesson. Fans love, or love to hate athletes with personality. Most importantly, they watch those players and buy their merchandise.

Shaq is a larger than life personality who always has something to say. Even if it means being fined by the NBA. Phil Jackson tweaks me, Sacramento, Shaq, everyone. He is showing a personality, which helps makes the Lakers more popular.When Dennis Rodman played for the Mavs, he drew crowds and TV Ratings wherever we went, and it wasnt for his basketball skills. Terrel Owens, Chad Johnson, Barry Bonds are all big personalities that get and keep people interested in the games they play.

The beauty of Happy Gilmore and big personalities is that you don’t have to create commercials to promote them. You don’t have to build marketing plans around them. Fans take to them, whether its love or hate and pay attention to them. The media keeps their storylines going, knowing its what fans want. Knowing they are the exceptions that make things interesting.

One of the biggest challenges the NHL has is that there isn’t one player that we all know is going to be quotable and the media is going to run with and pay too much attention to. Now if Sidney Crosby, or any of the young superstars of the NHL were to be quoted bragging about themself as “The Greatest of All Time”, or about how they “hate so and so”, or were to get a hat trick and pull out a cap and put it in front of the opposing goal keeper. Or maybe, pull out a magic marker and write the score of the game on the boards. Yeah, there would be some gloves dropped, but if it happened a 2nd time, it would be all over the national news and sports fans across the country just might be curious enough to turn on the TV to see what would happen next. Its the Happy Gilmore affect.

This is of course where the “purists” of each sport jump in and say that the games themselves are enough. Yeah right. A matchup between the greatest point guard ever and one of the 3 best Power Forwards ever, both league or finals MVPs, got the lowest ratings ever. Once you get past the hard core fans of the game, or the regional fans of the team, they don’t care about a matchup between “the two best at their position” in the league. They care about a matchup that is combustible. They want to know that tempers could flare. They want to see what will happen to the guy who “stomped on the star at Texas Stadium” his next trip back. Don’t believe me, just look at the ratings and whose merchandise sells the best year after year.

Big personalities create rivalries. Rivalries are great for the sports and their leagues. But in terms of rivalries that are of national interest, all that is left is the Red Sox vs Yankees rivalry. I couldn’t care less about either team. But I’m always curious as to what will happen when they play. I want to see the fans and the signs. I want to hear the players talk about how much they hate the other team. I want to watch to see if there are any brushback pitches or bench clearing brawls, even though guys spend more all their time dancing and never brawling.. It doesn’t matter that they dont really fight. Its part of what makes a great rivalry. The chance that something intense can happen.

Thats why we watch teams we don’t directly root for. We watch because we might see something that we can’t see or feel in our day to day lives. The things that a sportscenter replay cant truly capture. The Happy Gilmore moments. We want to feel the tension through our TVs We want to feel the excitement in our stomachs when two guys who we know hate each other because of comments they made matchup. It doesnt matter if its pitcher and batter, batter sliding into 2nd, a faceoff, or skating towards an obvious check against the boards, or a player going to the basket, with the only defender being the one guy he hates. Nothing has to happen. We just like knowing it could.

Football does a great job of letting guys talk trash about players and teams they hate while publicly saying they are against it. Players are often quoted as not liking someone/someteam. They push and shove e
ach other. They spit at each other. They smack a guy across the face and its 15 yards and they have to lineup the next play and do it again. If they truly wanted to stop it, they would kick a guy out of the game. They would automatically suspend him for the next. They don’t. Its combustion at its best. Its unpredictable. Its fun to watch. We know they leave it all out on the field. The NFL does its very best to protect guys from injury, from there, despite league pronouncements to the contrary, everything and anything goes. Fans love it.

Every other sport is trying to take out the very things fans turn towards the game for: personalities, conflicts, tension, euphoria and every other emotion we cant show away from sports.

It doesn’t have to be about fights. Fights are bad for any sport. Fans don’t want players to get hurt. Fans do want trashtalking. Fans do want players to hate each other. Fans do want confrontations. Watch hockey fans respond to fights and major penalites. Watch basketball fans repond to technicals, and in particular a 2nd technical. We shouldnt kick a guy out for a 2nd technical, we should increase the number of free throws to match the number of technicals. Fans would love it. More opportunities to get out of their seats and yell at Rasheed or whoever.

In 2007, we have to realize that fans expectations are different today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Every kid playing every video game goes “Happy Gilmore” on the person they are playing against. Watch the trash talking on the competitive video gaming shows ESPN is running if you don’t have the chance to watch a couple people playing video games. Advertisers are lining up trying to find ways to be in front of those players.

Play a fantasy sport to see the hysterical trash talking that goes on in every league. Listen to talk radio. Advertisers are running towards, not away from both.

Sports provide us what our day to day lives can’t. Sports give us an outlet for our day to day stress that we dont get in our day to day lives. We want to love, hate, yell, scream, jump up and down. We want to be the 6th man. We want to go to work in a great mood because our team won, or commiserate if we lose. We want to laugh at and with the big personalities of sports.

Look at the fastest growing sports of the last 10 to 20 years. The sports where bragging, hating and yelling are part of the culture. From wrestling to cagefighting to Nascar where drivers hate each other, their fans hate each other, and even their girlfriends and wives hate each other. Its great entertainment.

We want as many Happy Gilmores as we can find. Its what makes sports special.

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There is an oft repeated business saying that sales organizations should “Go after the low hanging fruit”. The meaning obviously is to close the easy sales before you have to work to climb after the more difficult sales. Its a maxim that is rarely wrong.

For major media companies, and an ever growing list of Web 2.0 video-hosting companies, the low hanging fruit right now is selling advertising around video content available via broadband connections over the net, and to a lesser degree, available through Video on Demand from cable and satellite.

Advertisers want to buy it. They are as ripe as ripe can be and sales-reps are grabbing their dollars before they fall from the tree and hit the ground.

Because there is so much low hanging ad money there for the taking, many in both traditionally big media companies and Web 2.0 firms see it as the money pot at the end of the rainbow that will be the catalyst for future growth. No question its a growing market, But the biggest Internet video bulls seem to forget that what is happening now is not very different than the introduction of Digital Satellite and Digital Cable to viewers and advertisers.

Imagine if all of the sudden there was digital bandwidth available across the world. That anyone who wanted to buy a small dish, or add a digital set top box, could do so and easily receive access to Gigabits of bandwidth. of video. Right to their TV for anywhere from 30 to 120 dollars per month. Imagine what would happen to the TV industry. The change would be incredible. Channels would pop up out of no where. Just about anyone could create a channel and get it distributed across the country. Tens of millions of people would get what would seem like unlimited number of TV channels.

Thats exactly what has happened over the last 12 years. The number of TV channels exploded. The amount of advertising spent on non broadcast TV exploded. But, here we are 12 years later and the distribution of those non network ad dollars goes to the networks that have an audience. Plain and simple. If you had an audience, you could get ad dollars. If not, not. If you are a network that cant draw a .1 for its prime time shows. Forget about it. Its not impossible of course, but you are gonna have to work your tail off to get ad buys.

Work your tail off may in fact be an understatement. Talk to people in the cable industry. TV Ad buyers don’t like to make ad buys that require them to aggregate smaller network audiences. Its a hassle for them to buy 10 different networks, let alone 100 or 200. its a hassle for them to audit the buy. There are actually services that monitor ads to make sure they ran and provide the results to advertisers.

If its a hassle for ad buyers to buy 100 TV networks, how much of a hassle do you think its going to be for them to buy 100 websites and get them audited ? Whats more, what do you think all those Web 2.0 sites who are easily selling video ad inventory today because its a nice experiment for advertisers do when they cant sell their video inventory any longer ? Or when the biggest advertisers tell them they have to work through a publisher network like Yahoo or Google in order for them to get a buy ? Well, the first thing they are going to do is lower their ad prices. Which is exactly what we saw happen both on smaller digital video networks and on websites trying to sell display advertising. Its history repeating itself.

You know who has this figured out ? Google and Yahoo and the major media companies. . They all know that ad buyers are never going to deal with individual websites to buy video ads. They aren’t going to put themselves in a position where they have to deliver and audit video files across hundreds of sites. Thats why Google and Yahoo and the big media companies are so excited about Internet video. They each want to be the one stop for Internet video advertising. They want their publishing networks to be gatekeepers to advertisers.

Google thinks they can monetize ads better and deliver them far less expensively (because of their data center delivery), Yahoo hopes it can do the same. The big media companies know they can bundle Internet video with their cable and broadcast audiences, along with their existing Internet properties to create a more comprehensive solution. Plus, if worst comes to worst, they bundle it as a free add if they need to implode the market pricing of Internet video. Which is exactly what I think they end up doing over the long run. The less Internet video can stand on its own as a business, the less Internet video sites can invest in content and promotion to create an audience and the bandwidth to deliver that content. Thats a good thing for media companies who have to spend millions per episode for broadcast network shows and who get paid by the subscriber by cable and satellite companies.

It also makes it a smart move for them to cross license their content to create a Youtube competitor. Not that i think they can have the social impact of Youtube, or reach their traffic levels. They probably cant But what they can do is drive enough of an audience that they can create a package that more economically and simply lets advertisers reaches Youtube users on non Google properties by combining their Internet, TV and Youtube Jr. sites into a single ad buy. Plus, if advertisers buy ads on their Youtube competitor as part of a bigger package, they aren’t buying from Google. That makes it a smart move.

Which brings me to HDTV.
HDTV is the Internet video killer. Deal with it. Internet bandwidth to the home places a cap on the quality and simplicity of video delivery to the home, and to HDTVs in particular. Not only does internet capacity create an issue, but the complexity of moving HDTV streams around the home and tp the HDTV is pretty much a deal killer itself. Together, internet video is destined for the PC monitor for a long time to come. The only wild card that will have an impact is gaming consoles, but they dint offer access to internet video, they all kill themselves by only offering access to content inside their walled gardens. Internet video won’t replace TV. It wont even complement TV offerings. It will flourish in the office. It will be a fun way to share personal content privately or publicly. It will be Community Access TV.

On the flip side, HDTV is here and now. Its gone from being a future technology that could be cool in our living room to being the King of this holiday shopping season. 10s of millions of HDTVs have been sold and will be sold in the next year. The number of households with HDTVs is exploding. Yet for reasons I cant figure out, the broadcast networks are ignoring the opportunity it presents.

The 4 broadcast networks are really the only 4 companies that create content on a daily basis that can put smiles on the faces of all those HDTV buyers. They broadcast most of their prime time signals over the air and have the greatest reach on cable and satellite HD delivery.

Bob Iger, Les Moonves, Bob Wright, Peter Chernin, why in the world are your networks not promoting the hell out of the fact that everything looks better in HD ?. Where is the “Congrats, you just bought an HD set, here is how to get our best programming ever , in HD. And oh by the way, if you haven’t called your cable or sat company or hooked up an antenna, you aren’t getting HD. Call your cable or sat company to see what you are missing”

Every study about HD viewing says over and over again that people with HD sets, particularly those who just bought them will tune to HD networks first. Not only do viewers turn to HD first, but more families are gathering around their brand new HDTV that they just bought and are truly excited about. Why in the world aren’t you taking advantage of this opportunity ? This is a unique point in time where you can grab viewers from non HD networks simply by promoting what you are already doing. It could be the year where
broadcast ratings explode because of HD.

Then there is the advertiser side. Sure internet video is the hot sexy thing now. But where do advertisers get the greatest value ? From putting their TV ads on the net ? By creating 10 second spots for pre or post roll and showing them on PC monitors ? Or by creating commercials in HD that look beautiful on the brand new HDTV that millions of homes just installed and are excited to see new programming, including commercials on ? Whats worst, is that by letting your advertisers continue to show commercials in Standard Def, you are making them look clueless to all those new HDTV viewers. How many things could be more brand damaging than looking like you dint have a clue ?

This is a unique point in time for all networks broadcast in HD to push the ball forward. HDNet is going to start a big ad push in 2007. Maybe we can carry the ball, but either way, its absolutely crazy, and stupid to not leverage this opportunity to the hilt.

Last year I said that Disney was brilliant for breaking the logjam and selling their shows on Itunes. This coming year, 2007 will be known as the year Broadcast TV leveraged HD to create a golden age of TV with huge gains in ratings vs non HD networks, or it will be looked back upon as the year Broadcast Networks blew it.

Either way, HDNet and HDNet Movies will be right in the middle of the High Def revolution

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Every couple weeks I get emails from people asking me if I heard what Donald Trump said about me on some radio or TV show. From Howard Stern to Donnie Deutch to just this week while promoting The Apprentice. I have to be honest, I LOVE IT when he rips me. Its been 3 seasons since The Benefactor tanked, but Donald still couldn’t find something else to rip on. It always gives me a good chuckle knowing that he thinks of me so often.

I guess all good things must end as Donald turns his attention to Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie of course ripped on Trump the Chump (T the C) on the ABC show The View. T the C ripped back just as hard, but this isnt about what is being played out on TV. This is about the role of blogs in all of this and how it really shows who understands new media vs old media.

Rosie gets it. Rosie has a blog, and she is using it in her battle with T the C. Its actually pretty good. She uses it to say whats on her mind, is honest, timely and in the current post she pulls from the Trump Wikipedia entry to clarify and support her assertions that he filed bankruptcy.

She has a great url, rosie.com, other bloggers link to her and using Alexa as a traffic reference (not a perfect source, but its easy), her traffic is good. In fact, her blog was so busy, she couldnt keep up with the traffic, but she was still smart enough to put up a simple HTML page that had her latest post.

Good job Rosie !

Now T the C on the other hand, well Donald, your blog sucks. Its actually pretty embarrasing. First of all, rule number one of blogging Donald is that you are the one that is supposed to write the posts on the blog. Less than half the posts on the front page of the blog have your name as the author let alone are written by you . Blogs are supposed to be personal, not corporate Donald.

Next are the ads you have on the site. Nothing wrong with ads. We all know that you need the money, but your blog is on the website of Trump University. What University has ads on their website for a 20pct discount on How to Get Rich books and schemes ? Speaking of Trump University, has anyone out there seen a resume with Graduated from Trump University on it ? I wonder how many people of your Trump University graduates work for you Donald ? After all, Trump is the brand that you want to be associated with the best, right ? Is Trump University the Harvard of…..oops, I just read the FAQs. TU doesn’t offer credits or degrees. Its merely a way to pitch your How to Get Rich books and online courses. But you still hire Trumpers and Trumpettes who buy the stuff right ?

Way to protect the brand Donald. Was this the same thinking behind Trump the Board Game and Trump Water or the first Trump Magazine ?

Now back to your blog. Does it really help you sell Trump University ? Well according to Alexa, no one even knows about it Donald. The entire Trump University is about the 23,000 most visited site on the net. Not terrible. But of all those aspiring Trumps that visit the site, only 24pct of them even go to your blog. Can’t say i blame them. But those are your good numbers Donald. And you are a numbers guy Donald aren’t you ?. Ratings, ratings, ratings, right ?

No one in the blogosphere seems to know or care about your blog Donald. Links to your site are rare at best Donald. Rosie on the other hand is just kicking your ass. People read and reference her blog. Yours is Dirt. Flies don’t read your blog Donald.

Oh by the way Donald, this blog is one of, if not the most widely read personal blog on the net.

Here is my advice T the C. Move your blog to a unique URL. Write something personal. Explain to us why you don’t like to shake hands. Explain to us why you think Rosie is fat, but you aren’t. Explain to us the virtues of Trump Ice water. Why we should subscribe to the new Trump Magazine. Why we should buy Trump suits. Why we should buy Trump The Fragrance. Or better yet, you could explain why in the world you would put your name on some of these things.

Donald, let me just tell you that its a whole lot easier to say whats on your mind on YOUR blog than have to freak out and call every talk show in America ranting about Rosie. That is if your time is valuable.

Its obvious you dont understand new media Donald. Its obvious in your show. Its obvious in how you integrate the net into your businesses. Its blatant with your excuse of a blog.

And by the way, when someone prints this out and you read it, if they tell you to create a myspace or facebook or a yourminis.com page …. please do. We all need the comic relief.

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Discipline is easily one of the most difficult jobs in business. So I don’t envy Commissioner Stern’s responsibility in this matter. But I do have some thoughts:

I like that the commissioner fined the teams 500k, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Not in terms of dollar amount, but in terms of assigning responsibility. I think the coaches, the President, GM and Owners should have been fined directly instead.

The responsibility of the culture of a team and organization, of any business, starts with the owner and is implemented by the team’s President, GM and Coach or whoever is in the position to manage the workforce

No team is going to be perfect and problems will happen. The game is just too intense for skirmishs not to happen now and then. The players are just too competitive. They will happen on the court and may even happen off the court. Whether those skirmishes escalate, or whether the players are smart enough to walk away reflects how well coached and managed the team and organization is.

This isnt just about the NBA either. I havent been inside an NFL organization, but when I see teams have player after player arrested, that tells me there are management issues in that organization and league and Im sure it applies to other leagues as well.

Players respond to the environment they are placed in. Players respond to the expectations created for them by the organization. Regardless of sport

Coaching a team is not just about Xs & Os. Being a general manager isn’t just about picking players. Being a Team President isnt just about profitability. Being an owner isnt just about entertaining customers or grandkids in your suite.

Basketball is a team game, as well as a team business. It has its own set of organizational dynamics. GMs should know whether their coach is in control of their team and what the culture for the team the coach is defining. GMs and Team Presidents should know whether their players are prepared and have the character to deal with the stresses on and off the court that the NBA brings and if not, should be taking the responsibility and steps required to put them in a position to succeed.. All should be involved in communicating with the players to define what the on and off the court expectations the organization has for them.

The interesting thing is that the players know exactly where the flashpoints are. They know who the players that will instigate or escalate problems. More importantly, and more troubling, they are left to have to decipher exactly what it means when either the team/coach/GM/Owner either knows and doesn’t care, or is oblivious to what the players consider to be obvious.

Its an unfortunate conventional wisdom in the NBA that owners should “Let basketball people make basketball decisions”. In today’s NBA, every basketball decision affects the organization from top to bottom . In my experiences, many, many “basketball people” I have worked with in the past with the Mavs and around the league, dont know shit about organizational dynamics and management. I can tell you that working now with those who do and know its importance makes my job far, far easier.

In previous eras when the vast majority of players had 4 years of college and every games ‘ and players’ highlights and lowlights werent broadcast milliseconds later on cable/satellite and on the internet, knowing basketball may have been enough. Its not any longer. A team’s “Basketball People” and upper management has to be responsible for defining and managing the culture of the entire organization.

Its their responsible to determine where their problem areas are and address them before bad things happen. To know which players can possibly create problems and either get them the help they need, or get rid of them.
When something goes wrong, the responsibility is not just that of the players involved. Its the responsibility of the entire organization to recognize what caused it and if it can happen again. Isnt it interesting how so many people are there for the press conference when a player is signed, but most of those same people are no where to be found when something goes wrong ?

The perspective of many in management positions in the NBA is that they are immune and seperate from the actions of players. If the league were to assign public responsibility , along with fines to coaches, GMs and owners that would change very, very quickly and you would see management become more proactive , aware and involved with all elements of the cutlture of their organizations. That would be a great thing for the NBA and its fans.

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There is a lot of interesting speculation about ITunes Music Sales. Are they going up , down, flat, flattening ?

There is a lot of interesting speculation about Zune sales. Will sales accelerate, slowdown, drop off a cliff ?

What there hasn’t been much of, is speculation of what might happen if Google entered this market.

It used to be that no matter what technology business you entered, you always had to model for what would happen if Microsoft entered your business and tried to kick your ass. These days Google has taken that spot with Microsoft still a force to be reckoned with and Apple the wild card in any personal electronics or digital distribution of content. So let me offer my personal speculation of what might happen when Titans clash in the online music sales and device business and why they will clash.

First the why. The brilliance of apple in personal electronics is that they realize that music sells Ipods. Sell 65 million Ipods at an average of a couple hundred dollars each, plus accessories and thats real money. A whole lot more exciting than the $ 300mm in gross margins (30pct of 1billion songs) from music content. Smart. But not a strategy that only Apple can implement.

Lets start with Itunes Music Sales. Slowing or accelerating, we can safely say that they can or will sell 1 Billion songs a year. We can also safely say that they pay about 70 cents per song back to the label/licensor of the song. So doing the math, they pay out about 700mm dollars a year to the labels. Now if we aggregate 2005 market share for the top music labels of about 82 pct and multiply them by the payout from ITMS sales, that would mean that Apple paid about $ 575mm to the top labels for the year.

Now lets introduce Googlenomics.

There has been speculation that Google is offering 100mm dollar or more licensing opportunities to TV Networks. Thats 100mm in cash for SEGMENTS of shows. Not full shows. Not full movies. Clips. There has also been speculation that GOogle offered stock in exchange for licenses at the time of the Youtube transaction. If true, and I believe they are, these actions in the user generated video space defines that I think will come to be their approach to capturing content markets. Pay a lot of money in a land grab for the best properties you can find and aggregate them in a manner that can pre-empt or displace the existing competition, and then give the content you just paid a boatload to license away for free, hoping to make your money back along with a return by selling advertising around it.

For the historians of the PC industry, its not a far cry to the maneuver that put Microsoft Office in the drives seat many years ago. When Office apps were also rans, the traditional spreadsheet, word processor, database and graphics program cost about $495 EACH. MicroSoft decided to offer their Microsoft Office Suite as an upgrade to any competitive product for only $99. The promotion brought major market share and a foundation for software upgrade revenue that would be in place for a decade. Microsoft tried to own your desktop, Google tries to own the advertising on your browser. Not apples to apples, but pretty damn close. Get big, subsidize and monetize.

So how could/would Google enter the Itunes Market ? I dont know if they would buy or build their user interface for a music store, but I would be willing to bet they would use their stock and cash in the bank to go to the same companies they are licensing music videos from Universal, Warner Music and fellow market share leaders and basically pay them about $575mm per year in licensing revenues for exclusive access to SELL OR GIVEAWAY their music online (Online only, say the 1st Billion songs ?)

Its the answer to the following question: Would it be worth it to Google to pay $575mm and up per year to completely turn Apple upside down ? To completely pre empt their ability to sell IPods ? To potentially introduce a new hardware device, or partner with someone who has one ? To sell advertising around the music rather than the music itself ? Is their a traditional Google arb here of 70c per song vs 70c of advertising around the song ? Could it sell that much advertising online to justify giving the music away ?

Which also requires that we introduce MicroSoft into the equation. Could they position the Zune as the defacto winner by spending $575mm per year with the music labels and giving the 1st billion songs away to Zune owners ? Of course they could create the possibility of selling ads online the same way as Google

Or would Yahoo enter the fray and partner with a 3rd party or Microsoft and pony up the stock and/or cash ?

Is turning the IPod/PDA industry upside down worth $575mm a year ?

I would think so, but time will tell.

.

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There are few things more exciting than starting a business and getting things rolling. The fear, the adrenalin, the excitement, the hope that every entrepreneur feels, are all intoxicating. In fact, very often they are TOO intoxicating. Very often, along with some success comes the feeling of invincibility. I have been in situations where I have told myself that Im smart, I know what Im doing, that I will figure things out as I go, so its OK to take on this new opportunity.

Those were usually the times I made mistakes. In a lifetime of running businesses I have developed a lot of rules that have been almost infallable, here are a couple of them that I use religously to this day.

1. Everyone is a genius in a bullmarket
A lot people think that if they are picking stocks that keep on going up, its because they are smart. They fail to notice that EVERYONE is able to pick winning stocks when all stocks are going up. (Much like we are seeing in this fall and winters stock market). The same principle applies to business. Entrepreneurs have to be brutally honest with themselves and recognize where they have added value and where they have gone along for the ride. There is nothing wrong with going along for the ride and making money at it, but it will catch up with you if you lie to yourself and give yourself the credit for the ride.

Sports Leagues were the perfect example of an industry that thought they were responsible for growth when in reality it was a bull market for rights fees.

First the advent of cable created competition for sports rights that increased the value of sports rights. Then Satellite TV came along that created increased competition for cable and broadcast for sports rights, so sports rights values went up. Then the competition between rights holders themselves creating regional sports networks increased the value of sports rights. Today, sports are in a sweet spot because of the rise in adoption of TIVO like capabilities by TV viewers. Sports is the most TIVO resistant programming.

Smart sports rights holders, like we are trying to be with the Mavericks, recognize that it wasnt our brilliance that to this point had pushed up our TV rights revenues. It was the market. Its our challenge to recognize what we can do to push the value of our programming further. Its a bigger challenge to recognize that its possible that the bullmarket may end and we have to be sure our programming is of sufficient value to our customers and viewers to be able to maintain or continue to increase in value.

Its also our challenge to recognize whent there is opportunity.. Sports is one of the few TIVO proof programming options to advertisers. We have a unique chance to lever up our viewership to prove our value as a TIVO proof option to advertisers by integrating value for our advertisers into our games and by working to increase our viewership. Its critical not just because we want to protect and increase this revenue stream, but because across our revenue streams it has the most upside. Advertisers want a way to stay in front of the largest possible TIVO proof audiences, with the unique experience of HDTV, congregating at the same time, rather than picking them off one at a time as in an on demand universe. One gives you a number the next morning, the other takes a long time to aggregate into an audience size of value. That makes it a unique opportunity the Mavs have to work hard to leverage with our partners.

For the Mavs, its also important to realize that we cant raise ticket prices forever without pricing ourselves out of the market. In fact, we lowered the price of all tickets in our upper bowl and created a TWO DOLLAR ($2) ticket for 10 of our games. Fans can get 10 games for 20 bucks. That lowering ticket prices is the most powerful, least expensive marketing we can do. It leads to a more positive brand value and committment to the Mavs, which helps us create new products that leverage the live nature of our product.

Its not easy, but we recognize that much of our past increases in revenues were the result of industry trends as much as our efforts. We have to make sure to do whatever we can to focus on winning the battles in case the bullmarket does not continue.

Which leads to rule #2
2. Win the Battles you are in before you take on new battles
Everyone of my businesses has a make or break battle going on and so do yours. There is one battle in your business that you are not winning, or are battling to stay in front.
In our film business, its the battle to get people to theaters without spending more than we bring in box office. With the Mavs, its the battle of making our game experience in the arena and on TV so compelling that its strong enough entertainment on its own to draw an audience and make our advertisers happy. I cant control how a game on the court goes, but I can make sure that if you come to, or watch a game you have a great time doing it. On HDNet, its how to keep on raising the bar and find or create programming that our subscribers feel committed to and take ownership of. I can spend as much money on a show as a big network, but they are wrong 95pct of the time. Its not a model i want to copy. Its the ultimate challenge to find a new way to get results.

THese literally are the 3 problems that I focus on. They arent issues that just popped up. THey have been challenges in these businesses for years and present a moving target that require my ongoing and continuing focus, today and most likely for years to come. Its an intellectual challenge I really love. Its truly the sport of business. Sure, I deal with operational issues, but pretty much every other strategic element of my businesses I have learned to delegate. Thats not easy for an entrepreneur to do. In my past, I would have taken on everything and anything that I thought could add value to. I had to be in the middle of everything. No longer. Ive learned to hire people that I can build trust in and let them take the ball and run with it.

Of course not every business has bench strength. Some entrepreneurs wont hire people that have complementary skill sets. Others just are small business and cant afford it yet. For those businesses, this rule is all the more important. If you are the main engine behind your company, taking on new challenges will only dilute your ability to win the wars you are in and of course increase the risk of injuring your primary business or core competencies.

In fact, this is the biggest issue I have with the NBA and our international efforts. Its not that I think there is no opportunity internationally , there is. The problem is that the “CEO” of the NBA is in the front and middle of every effort. His efforts are diluted on both fronts and we risk losing multiple important battles. If the metrics for the lines of our business that drive 75pct or more of our business were skyrocketing, thats one thing. But we aren’t winning the battles we are in. We aren’t losing, we just aren’t winning, we are treading water.
International isnt going anywhere. China as an example has great potential and it always will. If we were dominating in our core revenue lines, I could easily be the biggest proponent of an International NBA effort (minus contributing our players to competitive enterprises) . The NBA needs to find someone who can lead and win each of the battles. Trying to use one person as the leader for both is a huge mistake that is not worth the risk fto lack of execution it exposes us to.

I have used the same logic with HDNet. HDTV is taking hold all over the world. In many areas its booming. We sell those markets content via salespeople, but I have said no to offers to bring HDNet t
o the rest of the world as a linear or online network . Why ? Because dealing with the rest of the world takes a lot of time and focus. It takes going out and hiring people to run it, and training them and then being available to help support their efforts on an ongoing business. Every minute that i spend, or our top people spend dealing with the rest of the world is a minute not spent fighting the battle to make HDNet and HDNet Movies the best networks they can be here in the US. We are not a business that has maximized our growth here, we are just starting to accelerate. Taking any resources away from that battle would be a huge mistake.

Its the same with Landmark Theaters. We could go international, but winning the battles here are far more important and again, every minute our leadership spends on the rest of the world is time and focus lost on Landmark here in the US.

Its a huge lesson for entrepreneurs. Win the battles you are in first, then worry about expansion internationally or into new businesses. You do not have unlimited time and/or attention. You may work 24 hours a day, but those 24 hours spent winning your core business will pay offer far more. It might cost you some longer term upside, but it will allow you to be the best business you can be. To use a sports metaphor, get the fundamentals right and then add to your fundamental skills before you try to take on the trick shots.

Rule 3 is the natural extension of rule 2.

3. You can Drown in Opportunity
Few businesses only have one opportunity. Every entrepreneur’s mind goes crazy with the new and exciting things they can do beyond the new and exciting things they are already doing. The risk is that you can drown in all these opportunities. Far too often when an entreprenuer hits a rough patch or competitive challenge, the temptation is too “turn on the thinking cap” and find something new for the company to do. Don’t fall to the temptation. As an entreprenuer you have to know what the core competencies of your business are and make sure that your company focuses on being the absolutely best it can be at executing them. Bottom line is this. If you are adding new things when your core businesses are struggling rather than facing the challenge, you are either running away or giving up. Rarely is either good for a business. In fact, by chasing these opportunities, you may be assuring that you drown in them.

These rules are things I check off against before I undertake new elements of a business. Hopefully if you are an entrepreneur it will

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Dont ask me why I like to write about the newspaper industry. Maybe for the same reason I bought the Dallas Mavericks. Everyone else said it was a disaster, I saw that there was no place to go but up. A great challenge that got the juices going and my asking the question of “What would I do”. Its the same thing we saw when Todd Wagner and I bought Landmark Theaters with many people predicting the decline of the theater industry because of technological changes.

In the last couple days, I have read, or had people in the newspaper industry email saying that their papers were going to extend their newsgathering to all platforms. Rather than being deadline driven, they would capture and publish. Every platform, any platform where people want to read, watch or listen. If they had it, they would publish as soon as they got it.

I agree that its a good strategy.

I wrote a couple posts ago that sales should be a core competency and paper and local media outlets should be selling everywhere and anywhere that their customers allow them to. That local media has a local salesforce and thats a huge differentiation that needs to be a focus.

The same applies to local newsgathering. Reporters have recorders for interviews (every one i do these days). Some interviews could easily be expanded to include video. Should the reporters be required to not only write a story, but also edit the audio and even video of an interview ? ABsolutely. I recommend that EVERY reporter or columnist spend a morning with a disc jockey in a radio station. Watch how quickly and easily they edit together audio into a package they turnaround in seconds and put on air. Take a look at how easy it is to use basic video editing equipment.

Once you have packaged the interview or story, a quick fact check, and it should be posted to the net.

Across newsrooms oldschoolers are throwing up, right ? You write, you arent a DJ. You dont do wedding videos. Right ? Well you should probably reconsider . The more you package with multimedia, the less your editors can do to the story…..

Which leads to the question, how do you differentiate the paper from the net ? Its easy. For features, Online is where you put it up first to let people know you are working on it. Online may be where you intentionally overwhelm them with TOO many choices and too much information. Put up a complete 45 minute interview with Mark Cuban with a 400 word summary and you know how many people will listen to the entire interview ? None. People will read the 400 words and make a decision if they want more. Polished ? Absolutely not. And thats what differentiates it. Its your tease for the indepth article where you add context to the interview, write in depth about how wonderful, exciting and exceedingly handsome I am, get quotes from others confirming the same and create a story with such depth that maybe someone will believe it, but many will buy the paper expecting to find and read it.

If Google or Yahoo are immediate gratification for everything and anything globally, Newspapers can be the library for everything and anything locally. The attraction of Youtube isnt the quality of its content, its the breadth. You can find anything and everything. Your website can be the same. Its what we did at broadcast.com . We drowned them with volume and alternatives. We didnt care if it was audio or video of a cat screeching, 2 people playing bridge or a cousin telling jokes. We figured if there was enough choice, people would come back out of curiousity to find out what was there. Only your newspaper can do the same thing locally.

The interview you did with the high school basketball player who went on to the nba, you are idiots if its not posted. The interview with the cheerleader who went on to do Debbie Does Dallas 19, you are an idiot if you dont have it up. Every interview from every high school football game, lacross game, talent contest or 3rd grade recital shoujld be on the net. Who else has the amazing library of great stuff that you have accumulated over the years ? Your editors’ mundane is the high school kid discovering audio or video about their parents and spending all day looking for more and telling all his/her friends and family about the amazing and crazy stuff they found. Every thing that isnt digital needs to get digital and every new piece of information /story/feature/report/editorial needs to be digital an added to the website as its found.

Then you take a page from Youtube and create a “related” or recommended listing of stories in the paper that day or upcoming that would refer people to the paper.

For time sensitive events, like a sporting event, you only have so many teams to cover. Cover them fast and well. Teams have coaches who track everything and anything in a game. We have guys tracking tipped passes, which plays are run, tons of minutiae. If we can process it and cut film from it for a quick turnaround at halftime, so can a newspaper. I would get multiple stringers, former coaches, fans, whatever, who track and compile as much different information as they can, and the beatwriter becomes the editor who takes in all the data and turns it into an indepth story that gives the paper brand as the place to go for information like you cant get anywhere else.

High School kids would kill to be able to do the same thing for any of their school;s sports and publish it to your website or for the big games, to your paper.

And if you are really good at compiling esoteric statistics, not only can you trademark those, but you can create your own fantasy leagues that incorporate that data. High School Fantasy Football anyone ?

Online is fast and overwhelming quantities of minimally packaged and information by reporters. The paper is for indepth, feature stories that encourage people to committ to the paper and the story.

But I digress. This is about RSS.

RSS (if you dont know what it is,this is a good resource) is something few beyond the technically literate have a clue about. Thats a good thing for newspaper. It means you can brand and own it. RSS has expanded to the point where the latest versions of IE and Firefox , the 2 most popular browsers both have icons in the URL bar. Its a little orange burstie thingie . Make it your orange burstie thingie.

The great thing about this RSS Icon, is that when you click on it , it gives the user the ability to bookmark the page they are on and receive continuous headlines from that page right in their browser.

What did I just say in English ?

It means that you can open your readers up to Click and Read, or whatever you want to brand that Icon as. I realize that most newspapers offer RSS Links on their websites so people with RSS readers can subscribe. I do it all the time.

What newspapers, or any entity hasnt done, is take branded ownership of the Live Links that browsers just started offering across IE 7 and Firefox and using it as a marketing tool.

Put in URLs around reporters/columnists/whatevers along with the orangamajiggi, and teach your users that your newspaper is now putting up everything and anything that they do. Get it first, get it best with the Heralds LiveLink. Just go to this webpage, click on the Yellow and then click on Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. The Herald will then automatically send you headlines of every story we put on the net by category. We bring the news to you ! No more having to search through Google News, or searching for the latest stories, we bring it to you !

Of course RSS can do more than send a headline, it can send full articles files, ads, and tea
ses to send people to the paper for more info.
As anyone who uses live bookmarks on firefox knows, its just to easy to use and it works.

I just could never figure out why Live Bookmarks and their IE equivalent havent become an integral part of internet site marketing to consumers.

Maybe this is all just craziness to those in the newspaper industry, but I think there might be an opportunity to take your content, touch it one time, put it on the net, extend the stories into features in the paper, and use RSS to make it easy to alert your customers about new news in a manner that is far less intrusive than email alerts

And writing this of course gives everyone in the sportsjournalists.com forums a chance to support or hate me. Which is always fun to read.

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