Andy Boyer

Author: Andy Boyer

  • A Future History Lesson On Market Forces

    So Don Imus is fired.  After meeting with Jese Jackson and Al Sharpton, CBS President Les Mooves fired his top rated radio host.  Many people cheer this.  The villain was vanquished, the evil doer thwarted, the racist cast back to the cave from where he belongs.

    And the rest of us will get to watch a first hand example of how capitalism works, how market forces behave and how money and opportunity trump all.

    First, you’ll have the legal settlement from CBS.  It’ll be done quietly, but you don’t dismiss a formerly beloved radio personality with millions of dollars on his contract remaining, and not have to send any more checks his way.  Plus, you have to pay him to stay OFF the air, because WCBS is not the only station in New York.  And there are lots of stations with call letters you have never heard of that would be happy to take a little heat for giving Imus a "Second Chance.’

    But it’s not just traditional radio.  Tell me Mark Cuban isn’t already sitting in Imus living room saying, "You’ll be on HDNet, podcasting as well, and your first guests will be the Duke Lacrosse team, and your topic can be about how the media goes in for the kill.  Or we’ll do a show – The News accoring to Dan (Rather) and Don (Imus). Plus I haven’t annoyed David Stern for a while so we’ll let you do some play by play for the Mavericks as well."

    And sitting next to Cuban on that same couch are the CEO’s of Sirius and XM radio, one guy saying, "Compete against Howard again" and the other guy saying, "Back to back Howard and Imus – you can say anything you want on our network."

    So Imus gets punished – but watch how the market reacts in the coming months.  If the one thing this country believes in, it’s second chances – and grabbing the opportunities to invest in them.   

  • One Quick Note on the Don Imus Thing

    Ok, so Dom Imus said some dumb things by calling the Rutgers Woman’s Basketball Players "nappy-headed ho’s."  But am I being not sensitive enough when I say, "Why is this such a big deal?"

    Yes, it warrants a suspension perhaps and public admonsihment.  But firing?  Civil unrest?  Live press conferences with players?  Or are we scared that people might actually think Rutgers palyers ARE nappy-headed ho’s?  Is that what all the fuss about?  Are we really afraid that two kids in the playgorund will look at a Sports Illustrated and say to each other, "Look, those Rutgers girls really are  nappy – and ho’s." Of course not.

    We’re in a world of 24 hour media coverage.  If Ken Griffey makes a comment at a charity event about why black kids are better athletes than Chinese kids, then some blogger will post it on a web site in 3 hours.  Do we really expect that radio hosts should be able to not say anything dumb EVER?  In Imus’ case we’re talking roughly 900 minutes of content a week.  45,000 minutes of content a year.  What is that, maybe 500,000 sentences a year? 

    He said something extremely stupid wth 2 of those sentences.  But he entertains people with a majority of those other 499,998.  He’s admitted he made a mistake.  No one really things Rutgers girls are nappy.  So look, it’s time to move on. 

    Seriously, we should all care a lot more that the insurance fraud guy drove up my rates.

  • Confused by the Insurance Industry

    For as regulated as some industries are, I am continually amazed by the brazen obscenity with which auto insurance companies treat its customers.

    My insurance rates went up this month.  Yet I have not personally been involved in an accident, received a ticket, moved or purchased a new hummer.

    Instead, someone filed a fraudulant claim on a minor fender bumping that occured when someone else was driving my car.  The driver of my car reported the claim as fraduluant, since there’s not a physical way for an Acura to demolish a trucks’ back bumber while only denting it’s own license plate.  This is an obvious case of a guy with a crappy beat up car taking advantage of a tap on is back. 

    But the insurance company’s response is, "Too bad.  I know we shouln’t have paid it out, but we did, so the owner of the car is responsible." 

    Any advice? 

  • A Lesson in How Not to Market

    ESPN the Magazine came out recently with the "Ultimate Standings."  In it, they rank every pro team in the 4 major sports (yes, they included hockey) on a number of characteristics,including ownership, players, stadium, value, beer prices and more.

    Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Sonics ranked 111 out of 121 teams.  Until now, I really hadn’t thought about the Marketing efforts the Sonics have undertaken lately, but would you repeat these if you were running a company:

    1) Alienate your evangelists by moving your games off of the sports station and onto a conservative talk radio station. 

    2) Allow an executive (in this case the head coach) with 20+ years in the organization to leave for an arch-rival.

    3) Have 50 of the most influential sports fans in town cut ties with the team, and make a killing on their investment.

    4) Ask fans who enjoy some of the closest seats to the court, to give those up in order to pay higher taxes, sit further away and drive to Renton.

    5) Take arguably the greatest play by play caller in the NBA today, a guy who can paint a picture of a basketball court in 4 words, and move him to TV to be replaced on radio by a guy that drives some fans crazy (honestly, I actually like Locke as a reporter but I see why he drives some guys nuts).

    6) Now, couple all this with a sub-standard product

    You either need a great product or great salesmanship to get people to buy something, and unfortunately the Sonics have failed to show much of either.  Now the strategy seems to be to threaten to leave. 

    So, given that the Sonics owners are smarter than I am, I see a different view.  We’re simply not the target audience.  They don’t really care about what we think.  The target customer is the representatives in Olympia that can get a deal done without our vote and the corporate sponsors who will spend money to fill up the luxury boxes and acreage of advertising. 

    That’s not a bad strategy I suppose.  But when your target market is legislators and business people, it’s not hard to imagine how you become 111th on the list of sports franchises.

  • Internet Advertising Soars

    This article about Internet Advertising from the TimesOnline.co.uk is definitely worth reading.  Here’s an excerpt:

    Advertising on internet soars as world follows British lead


    The internet will overtake radio by next year and become the world’s fourth-largest advertising medium, a year earlier than forecast.

    Global spending on internet advertising increased from $18.7 billion in 2005 to $24.9 billion (£12.6 billion) last year, according to ZenithOptimedia, the media-buying agency.

    The Middle East and Asia are driving a boom in global advertising spending. Zenith predicted a spike of 7.7 per cent in spending in Asia in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

     

  • Amazon Blocks Statsaholic

    Here’s what happens with highly paid people with big egos and small imaginations make decisions – They solve problems that don’t exist.

    Amazon.com, rightful owner of Alexa.com data, shut down the very helpful Statsaholic.com Web service.  Statsaholic only exists because the people at Alexa weren’t building all the features that people wanted to use.  Now Amazon has blocked Statsaholic, and are copying those features into Alexa.com.   

    In a MBA Case Study (especially a Harvard one), this is probably the smart response.  And in 2 years, will anyone really care?  But we start losing innovation when the "Microsoft problem" permeates across other companies.  When people think, ‘Well it’s useless to do something new because someone big will just steal it from me later anyway," the whole web economy takes a step backward.  Out of all the challenges Amazon can go solve, I don’t get why "Screwing Statsaholic" should be at the top of the list.  Plus, marketing guru Seth Godin is somehow associated with Statsaholic, so I’m not sure why you would want to make an enemy of him.

    In the meantime, there’s a Mozilla hack that gets Statsaholic working again.  Check it out here. 

     

  • Proof that EVERYONE is 6 Degrees of Seperation Away

    News from ESPN comes that Don King (yes that Don King) was able to got a front row seat at Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience Wednesday. (yes, that Pope.) 

    According to the report, "the Vatican visit was arranged through a boxer King represents — Italian super welterweight champion Luca Messi, whose brother Alessandro is a Catholic priest."  So yes, even if you go go to church ever day and live the holiest of lives, Don King is about 4 clicks closer to the pope than you are. 

    My favorite sentence from the report: "King, who spent four years in prison for manslaughter, had hoped for a personal meeting with Benedict."

  • Movaya Launches New Mobile Game Distribution Service

    A few places have picked up the story that Movaya launched a service to make it equally easy for large retailers or small web sites (like this one) to add Mobile games for sale. 

    Brier Dudley writes a blurb here. 

    GameProducer.net received some comments here. 

    NW Innovation profiles it here.

    More links to come…. 

  • The Upcoming Battle Between Obama and Hillary Supporters

    A lot of talk has been generated about the "You Tube Effect" on the U.S.  Presidential election in 2008. I think the most interesting aspect is the total lack of control that the campaigns will have over their suporters. We are going to see "campaign extremists" completely convolute the message and intentions of the high paid campaign managers.

    Here could be the first salvo between the supporters of the two main Dem candidates.  In one corner, a slickly produced anti-Hllary video based on the Apple commercial 1984. This is nicely done, and by all accounts, the Obama campaign had nothing to do with it. In response, a Hillary supporter hacks together a low budget retaliation that well, just looks dumb. How will the candidates keep their supporters under control? Check out both videos.

    Vote for Obama:




    Vote for Hillary:


  • This is How You Blow Up a Building

    Only in Vegas.