The important decisions, like whether to put a rightful hefty e-waste disposal tax on cathode ray tubes, and start charging even to dispose of existing TVs, are in the political realm so networks can\’t do more there than lobby. Though they really should… it looks better than lobbying for infinite copyright extension and a mandatory death penalty for \”stealing\” cable.

It\’s also not up to the networks whether they can keep hooking viewers on their \”hot\” shows, or their fair and balanced news. They\’re already trying as hard as they can to do that now. Trying harder and thinking clearer won\’t help, when you are already doing your best. Finding ways to get the Internet entrepreneurs and amateur content providers may help them, and if the broadcasters leverage their relationships to guilds and artists to facilitate that, they may make major breakthroughs. However, they have never shown that creativity or initiative, and it\’s hard to believe they\’ll acquire it now. Their core business is shaking down the Girl Guides for singing the Gilligan\’s Island theme song. They tend to hire thuggish lawyers and stupid production people who know only to cut costs and dump losing shows from the schedule. Since when do creative, brilliant, collaborative and entrepreneural minds go into slowly dying industries to devote their lives to that?

The industry has lost its leverage because its lost initiative and other industries, like the Internet, regularly outhink it.
It\’s only the unimportant decisions like whether to store the static bits on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray or on USB devices (there\’s a strong case for this despite the cost) that really offer much latitude for industry leverage. No insult to Mark, he\’s an entrepreneur and is used to seeing \”impossible\” things happen, even making them happen (and I liked his TV show, especially when primary school kids got to influence decisions). But, a good entrepreneur is mostly choosing his timing, his team, and which of his many good ideas is the most inevitable. S/he doesn\’t expect that edge to last more than say five years. And certainly doesn\’t view broadcast TV and its top executives and money players as a better talent pool than Internet geeks and home video makers and venture capitalists. Anyone who\’s betting on the latter not to outmaneuver the former is simply not looking at history.

The broadcast networks are a portal to reach the many millions of people who don\’t want to pay monthly bills to watch TV, or simply can\’t, and accordingly use broadcast TV. They watch SD. If they put the money into HD, that\’s another monthly bill to pay for the TV device itself. So short of financing HDTV acquisition for those people, the networks are helpless.

It doesn\’t matter one whit whether they do any particular thing this year, with the possible exception of their lobbying choices in Washington and the extremely unlikely possibility that they will somehow agree to open an even-ground dialogue with Internet entrepreneurs and hobbyists of all kinds (even the file sharers) to better serve the public. It\’s easy for me to think of a few dozen ways they could increase their profits and please their advertisers by doing this. But that\’s me. I don\’t work for a broadcast TV network. And I never ever will.

The important decisions, like whether to put a rightful hefty e-waste disposal tax on cathode ray tubes, and start charging even to dispose of existing TVs, are in the political realm so networks can\’t do more there than lobby. Though they really should… it looks better than lobbying for infinite copyright extension and a mandatory death penalty for \”stealing\” cable.

It\’s also not up to the networks whether they can keep hooking viewers on their \”hot\” shows, or their fair and balanced news. They\’re already trying as hard as they can to do that now. Trying harder and thinking clearer won\’t help, when you are already doing your best. Finding ways to get the Internet entrepreneurs and amateur content providers may help them, and if the broadcasters leverage their relationships to guilds and artists to facilitate that, they may make major breakthroughs. However, they have never shown that creativity or initiative, and it\’s hard to believe they\’ll acquire it now. Their core business is shaking down the Girl Guides for singing the Gilligan\’s Island theme song. They tend to hire thuggish lawyers and stupid production people who know only to cut costs and dump losing shows from the schedule. Since when do creative, brilliant, collaborative and entrepreneural minds go into slowly dying industries to devote their lives to that?

The industry has lost its leverage because its lost initiative and other industries, like the Internet, regularly outhink it.
It\’s only the unimportant decisions like whether to store the static bits on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray or on USB devices (there\’s a strong case for this despite the cost) that really offer much latitude for industry leverage. No insult to Mark, he\’s an entrepreneur and is used to seeing \”impossible\” things happen, even making them happen (and I liked his TV show, especially when primary school kids got to influence decisions). But, a good entrepreneur is mostly choosing his timing, his team, and which of his many good ideas is the most inevitable. S/he doesn\’t expect that edge to last more than say five years. And certainly doesn\’t view broadcast TV and its top executives and money players as a better talent pool than Internet geeks and home video makers and venture capitalists. Anyone who\’s betting on the latter not to outmaneuver the former is simply not looking at history.

The broadcast networks are a portal to reach the many millions of people who don\’t want to pay monthly bills to watch TV, or simply can\’t, and accordingly use broadcast TV. They watch SD. If they put the money into HD, that\’s another monthly bill to pay for the TV device itself. So short of financing HDTV acquisition for those people, the networks are helpless.

It doesn\’t matter one whit whether they do any particular thing this year, with the possible exception of their lobbying choices in Washington and the extremely unlikely possibility that they will somehow agree to open an even-ground dialogue with Internet entrepreneurs and hobbyists of all kinds (even the file sharers) to better serve the public. It\’s easy for me to think of a few dozen ways they could increase their profits and please their advertisers by doing this. But that\’s me. I don\’t work for a broadcast TV network. And I never ever will.

Let’s look at last night’s Super Bowl.

Ok I am a company marketing exec. I decide to spend $2.6 M for a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. I spend money on the writers and production of the ad. But to do it in Hi-Def costs just a bit more, so I won’t spend it on that.

So I run a standard def ad during the Super Bowl. These companies are saying to their customers – WE ARE CHEAP AND HAVE NO INTEREST IN QUALITY.

Doesn’t that make you want to buy these companies products and services?

Some of the companies actually ran standard def ads that they “letterboxed”. So on my 50 Plasma they decided to but a huge black box around their blurry. Pure marketing genius.

In this day and age, how do you run a standard def ad during the Super Bowl? How?

How are these marketing execs not being called out on this?

Does anyone care?