Andy Boyer

Blog

  • Rossi vs Gregoire Radio Ad War Begins

    I love political season.  Nothing better than a good old fashion radio ad war being waged by people who don’t normally write radio ads.  Today on KJR, I heard what may have been the funniest 20 minutes of political radio the all-sports station has ever run. 

    1) At about 8:20am, Steve Sandmeyer interviews Dino Rossi.  In the 10 minute interview, Rossi addresses the issue KJR listeners care about most, mainly the Legislature’s inability to make any kind of decision on the Sonics situation.  Rossi restated his previous positions, that all Gregoire and the Legislature had to do was AUTHORIZE King County to extend the current tax that tourists pay on rental cars, hotels, etc…past 2011 when it currently expires.  They didn’t have to vote to extend the tax, they had to vote to authorize King County to vote for the tax.  Rossi continued by saying that he knew it was a political hot potato, so to make sure Gregoire wouldn’t take a fall, he publicly endorsed it before her. That way she could endorse it without him being able to use it against her.  Then he got a nice jab in by calling Frank Chopp the “pseudo-governor” and that Gregoire is too afraid to do anything without his approval.  Score multiple points for Rossi.

    2) Interview ends at 8:30 or so, and in the next commercial break, you get a response ad from Team Gregoire.  Basic text of the ad – “Rossi is like George Bush because he cut back on child protection services, is anti-abortion, votes against gay marriage and cut transportation funding.  See, he’s just like George Bush.  And did we mention he is like George Bush?  So, you obviously don’t want George Bush.  Paid for by friends of Gregoire.”  Gay marriage and abortion rights?  The Sonics have just been ripped from the city, fans blame you for this, and 8 days later you run an ad telling sports fans that Rossi is against abortion rights?  Really?  That’s the most compelling argument you have to make to sports fans feeling pain?

    3) 10 minutes later, you hear a Rossi ad that has been playing a while. The ad quotes the Seattle Times, “Gregoire showed the leadership skills of a rookie Point Guard.” The ads also says that when Gregoire had a chance to do something extraordinary, she chose to sit on the bench.  Ouch.  Ouch again.  Score more points for Rossi.

    4) As if this wasn’t enough, the Gregoire campaign found it necessary to run the same ineffective ad a second time 10 minutes later.  I guess they really wanted Sonics fans to know that Dino Rossi is anti-abortion.  It’s like walking into Capitol Hill and talking about policy on shipping tariffs.  Or going to the Apple farmers to discuss H1B visas.

    The KJR vote is going to Rossi.  So I’m not sure Gregoire’s play here.  She either has to be loud and vocal about pushing through the new stadium legislation this session, or just ignore those voters and spend money somewhere else.  But if I won ana election by 2,000 votes, and an entire segment of people who never vote just learned how to register, I’d be nervous.  

  • Limiting Congress’ Right To Speak Online? This Can’t Possibly be True

    Ok, this link comes from Slashdot.  Reputable source, but one of those things that you read, then read aloud, then re-read to make sure you really understand it, and then finally mutter to yourself, and think about how much money you have in the bank and which island you could survive in with that amount of money. 

    This report can’t possibly be true.  It must be some sort of misinterpretation.  But here’s a synopsis, along with the full report:

    Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi….. is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums – nothing.

    Someone tell me this is all a mistake.

  • What If…. Google Hadn’t Bought YouTube?

    Adotas has a story today about Google’s problems monetizing YouTube. 

    If you remember, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.7 Billion, which after complex calucaltions, came out to be a multiple of about $1.7 Billion.  That’s not true, they made some money, but the valuation was shocking.  Revenue this year is estimated to be $200 Million.  A fine amount of money. 

    But, my goodness the costs must be enormous.  How many trillion streams are they broadcasting at what processor and bandwidth cost?   Wikipedia estimates $1 Million per day on Bandwidth alone.

    So now imagine for a second that Google had not bought YouTube, and allowed it to lose money at an astonishing rate.  If YouTube was currently running around the investor community asking people to pony up money to fund the TV watching habits of the next generation.  At some point, the bleeding would have to stop.  Imagine some new scenarios for owners of YouTube:

    1. Comcast:  *Poof* All of a sudden it’s a paid subscription channel, and no copyrighted broadcasts would make it to air.
    2. Microsoft?: YouTube becomes MSN Video
    3. An "Orbitz-like" joint partnership between Disney, Viacom, and General Electric: YouTube meets Hulu.
    4. Fox: The new MySpace Videos?

    I guess my point is that next time you are enjoying some free entertainment, be happy YouTube was bought by a company who thought it was a cool idea, and would figure out how to make money on it 5-10 years down the road.

     

     

  • In a related story, signups for rugby leagues rose 143%

    You gotta wonder how a TV company can make this kind of blunder…According to the BBC:

    New Zealand rugby fans watching a regular sports programme found themselves viewing hardcore pornography instead on Sunday afternoon.

    Four minutes of pornography interrupted sports coverage on the Prime Television channel, after what a spokesman described as a distribution mix up.

    The pornographic footage was meant for an adult pay-per-view channel. Instead, it found its way onto a regular free-to-air programme called "Grassroots Rugby".

    Rival television channels reported that some viewers were angry about the broadcast, which may have been seen by children.

     

    And yes, I am fully aware that when I run for public office someday, some crackpot reporter will Google my name and the word "pornography" and momentarily think he hit the jackpot…

  • An Economy in Chaos – Could It Be Good For Our Health?

    Here’s a debate some friends and I stumbled into. We were looking for ways that a bad economy could help us correct behaviors that lead to better long-term decisions. For example, if gas is expensive, we start looking at alternative sources of energy, or public transportation.

    So in an economy where it costs us more money to drive places, where we have less money for disposable income, and more expensive food costs, we will have to change some spending habits. The question became, will we get healthier.

    One argument is that with ridiculous gas prices, I’m more likely to walk to the stores that I need to buy things from. I may start walking to the bus stop and riding it to work. With less disposable income, the average American group of friends might skip a movie or night at the bar to go shoot hoops at the park, thinking that the $100 they would spend together on beers could be used more wisely.

    But I can see the flip side as well. Depressed people may skip a night meeting up with friends in order to buy a $5 bottle of wine and never leave their couch. The $8 a pound they spent on turkey could be replaced with $.25 Top Ramen and $1.99 bologna. People could take an attitude of “This sucks, I’m going to sit at home and sulk.”

    So I don’t know. I’d like to think that people will move to more urban centers, congregate at parks and places of shared interest, walk and bike places they normally drive, and feel like when all else that they can’t control fails, they can at least take care of themselves. Thoughts?

  • Seattle Loses A Piece of Itself, What Does a Fan Do Next?

    Well there you go. 

    A region with Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, Washington Mutual, Safeco and Weyerhauser couldn’t find enough tax dollars to keep a piece of history intact.  An international talent pool of software executives, engineers, bankers and real estate moguls, with more college graduates per capita than anywhere in the nation, couldn’t find a few people to hammer out a suitable solution.

    So who do you blame?  Sure, you want to blame Clay Bennett.  While he may be a liar, he’s simply a guy who is going to be given a hero’s welcome and key to the city in his hometown.  He never again has to fear taking a wrong turn and running into a homeless heroin addict drinking a latte on Broadway.   Given the chance to take your two-bit town and and make it a major league city, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

    So now try to blame Howard Shultz.  He got snookerd into selling to Bennett.  But he didn’t want to sell.  He did everything but beg for some money to renovate Key Arena.  The team was losing money like there was a hole in the bottom of its bank account.  And here’s the dirty secret.  It wasn’t Howard that was getting killed.  His 50+ partners, the guys who retired from Microsoft and thought the stock market would never stop rising, were the ones who needed to stop writing checks every year to cover the losses.  So they went to Olympia, and Olympia gave them the finger.

    So is it Olympia’s fault?  The City Council’s?  Well of course, but there is a bigger culprit in all of this.

    It’s the fault of the fans who live in and around Seattle. It’s at least partly our fault.

    We did the famous passive-aggressive Seattle shuffle.  We complained, but took no action.  How many of us vote regularly, or ever, in a City Council election?  How many of you know your District Rep or State Senator in Olympia?  One day we all looked up and realized some pseudo communist named Nick Licata, who starts meetings about the Police budget with a poem, was in charge of the team’s fate. And even then, we relied on the Save Our Sonics guys. (Great effort guys.  I exempt you from this.  You really did all you could, and we should commend you.)

    But scroll through the list of successful executives who live in Seattle, and then match it to the backgrounds of the people on OUR City Council.  It’s a shame.  It’s embarrassing.  We voters have all been asleep at the switch.

    Now let’s take it one step further.  It’s just basketball.  There are really WAY more important things than basketball.  Like Schools and  Transportation to name two.  These are complex problems with many variables.  The Sonics situation was a simple problem with a single variable – how do we creatively make a fiscally responsible decision that also helps the owners of the team?  Simple problem.  Give me and 10 friends a night at Dad Watson’s with all of the relevant data and we could come up with something.

    But OUR elected officials couldn’t handle something this simple.  Now, what makes you think they can handle Transportation or Education?

    The team is gone.  For most of us, it’s the first time we realized our leaders were so inept.  But it’s our fault for not paying attention.  We should have clued in after the Monorail debacle, and we all paid $500 for car tabs for a mode of transportation that didn’t exist.  We should have clued in when our gas tax skyrocketed and the roads got worse.  Now maybe we’ll get it.  Do some research.  Personally, I don’t know much about Drago, Godden, Licata, Curly, Larry and Moe, but I will certainly find out. 

    If the loss of basketball in Seattle pains you, then realize this Council, this Governor, and this Legislature, WILL hurt you again.  Blame the first pain on your own naivety, but blame any upcoming pain on being inactive, and not working hard now to correct who is "representing" you.   

  • If you can’t make fun of a mass exodus, what really can you make fun of?

    I suppose we all should have seen something like this coming.  With nearly every key executive who is not named Yang fleeing the sinking ship formerly known as Yahoo, a few enterprising young folks put togteher this web site to make it easier to write your resignation letter.  Ah, must be good times down there. 

    Down the road it will be fasicnating to review the complete company history of Yahoo, and analyze their strategic decisions.  Can you think of any other company that had such a specacular rise and (possible) fall in just a 15-20 year period? 

  • A Few Random Notes

    Nothing brilliant to comment on this week, though there’s a ton of odd unrelated stuff going on.  Here are a few things that made me stop and take note:

    • Here’s my friend Dan from Manchester making his national television debut on America’s Got Talent.
    • I really have to go back and figure out how Nick Licata gets elected to Seattle City Council.  I’m beginning to think that moderates and conservatives simply don’t vote in Seattle.  Either that, or there’s some weird transition that anyone who is moderate or conservative bolts for the Eastside as soon as they can.
    • For all the talk about Erik Bedard not speaking to the press, maybe with all his millions Larry Holmes can find a speechwriter, or at least someone who will keep him on some sort of consistent train of thought.  This could literally be a SNL skit.
    • The U.S. Embassy told Americans living abroad: "Be Wary of Soccer-Crazed Germans."  No word if the Germans responded by warning their people to stay away from stadiums in Detroit, Cleveland and New York, just as a general rule.
    • After months of hearing about how U.S. elementary, high scools and colleges are sub-standard, the graduate programs get blasted with this report from Business Week.  Apparently there was actually a Web site up for years that claimed to give people answers to the GMAT.  Yes, Years.  As in, for years the guys at GMAT never thought to Google "How to cheat on the GMAT" in order to fix the problem. Note to MBA grads – there may be job openings at GMAT soon.
    • After the purging of the Mariner front office this week, someone asked me an interesting question.  If all decisions had been left to the Wisdom of Crowds approach where fans could vote on all matters, could they really have done any worse than Bavasi.  In 4.5 years, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen where you look upon the body of work and see no success in the past, no success in the present, and no hope for success in the future.  How hard to you have to try to take an 90+ win season in 2003, and decimate the major league and minor league talent without replacing it with much in return? 
    • And of course, today could be the day that we find out for sure that our millionaires and legistalors all got out-hustled by an Oklahoma oil guy.

    What a fun week.

  • The Best Seat in Pro Sports

    This comes to us from the Stanwood division of Andy Boyer.com. 

    This is what happens when your marketing team doesn’t check things out with the legal team. Or maybe they couldn’t reach the lawyers, since the whole legal team was in court trying to make sure the Seattle based Marketing team would be out of a job in a few weeks….

    bestseat.jpg 

  • Your Latest Ad Spending Stats

    I hate taking stuff off TechCrunch, since you probably already saw this report there.  But you need to know these ad spending stats, so it’s worth seeing twice.  So, here’s the question I have for you – Will Online ad spending keep going up, or are we about to get nailed by the recession so all ad spending, including online, goes down next quarter?

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