Koo’s Corner

With the college football season less then a week away, its becoming an intruiging storyline of the Big Ten Network can reach distribution deals with the remaining cable companies who have yet to broker a deal with the upsttart sports network.

2 months back Comcast joined Dish, DirectTV, Verizon, ATT, and many others to carry the network with rumblings that MediaCom and Time Warner were reopening up negotiaions.

Earlier this week, Gene Smith (Oho State’s Athletic Director), made an announcement informing fans that Time Warner negotiotions had stalled and that those looking for the network should look for diffrent providers.

Smith’s email effectively painted Time Warner as the bad guy. Time Warner has struck back by proposing to allow BTN football games to be available on a pay per view basis. While Mediacom seems to have brokered a last minute deal for distribution, Charter Communication’s is still negotiating , the BTN and Time Warner saga has become a half hearted posturing and rhetoric war between the two companies.

The pay per view proposal was a half ass posturing move to paint the BTN as the bad guy (not saying they aren’t). Time Warner does not seem to be legitimately pursuing a deal and is more dragging their feet in negotiations to give the appearance to subscribers that they are pursuing a deal.

The BTN but Time Warner on blast once again.

“Time Warner is well aware that it cannot selectively choose to air a network’s programming in lieu of full carriage. In addition, offering to do so to a customer base it has effectively ignored for the past year in not carrying the network is counter-productive and creates both confusion and false hope.

“While proposals have recently been exchanged, there is a wide gap between what Time Warner and its other competitors would seem to agree is reasonable and fair. Somehow America’s top cable operator, largest telephone company and two satellite providers have each decided to make the Big Ten Network available to their customers. There are another 230 or so similar companies, serving more than 55 million homes and seven out of every 10 folks in the eight Big Ten states, that each carry the network, too.

“Time Warner has already had more than 18 months to decide to offer the Big Ten Network to its customers, and in a statement Wednesday said ‘we are ready to carry the network.’ Fine. Then they should carry the network, and at terms comparable to the network’s other agreements. Or they should tell their customers they have decided not to. Either way, fans deserve to know the truth.”

The bottom line here is that this is a war of attrition and both sides are pretty dug in. BTN has some pretty solid distribution, but covets getting Time Warner in the fold. Time Warner is poorly run company and has done some internal analysis that probably shows that the amount of money it will cost to broker a deal is more than the amount of subscribers the company will lose, especially if they continue overstating their intentions and progress to reach a deal.

The trut is that the company is slowly bleeding customers. Some because of this, some because their product is average, and a lot because their customer service and market strategy is garbage. They should take a page out of Verizon, ATT, and the satelittle companies and put am emphasis on consumer needs and wants rather than then bottom line.

I have often blogged about the Big Ten’s network uphill struggle for distribution by the major cable companies. About a month ago, the upstart sport’s network cleared a major hurdle by getting distribution on Comcast. However the one state in the Big Ten region, that really missed out was Ohio.

Unlike other states in the midwest, the majority of Ohion’s get their cable from Time Warner, a cable distributor that claimed they were still in negotiations with the Big Ten Network.

Both sides seemed to be nearing a deal, as Time Warner ever promised prospective customers in Ohio that a deal would be brokered by the start of the season. However Ohio State athletic director in an outbound email, paints a much more pessimistic outlook. Below are some highlights, with the full version of the email being found here.

While I think its a nice courtesy that someone updates the fan’s who are weighing making decisions as consumers, I am not sure its the AD’s responsibility to do this. In what’s most likely a posturing move by the Big Ten, Time Warner is sure to lose a significant amount of customers who will not put with not having the network two years running.

Time will tell if a deal will ever be brokered, but to me Time Warner (already know for a inferior products and service) is really dropping the ball on this one by allowing hoards of customers to switch away from them.

More and more over the past year and a half, I have found myself utilizing Yelp.com in researching various local businesses (restaurants, bars, barbers, etc). Think of it as a community user based Zagat’s. Or if you are familiar with IMDB.COM (you should be), a similar website but instead of ratings and reviews on movies, the same for any local business.

IMDB worked because it became the best resource to learn more about a movie or show. Rather than relying on one or two reviews or recommendations, you could have the ratings and reviews ten’s of thousands enthusiastic movie watchers. One of the byproducts of something like IMDB, is that little films and shows that are awesome yet fly under the radar can receive the recognition they deserve and . IMDB also allows you to cross off films that have great marketing and recognition yet are deemed to be absolutely horrible.

I have a friend who is applying for a job at Yelp, and I was trying to explain how similarly  Yelp empowers community members to voice their feedback of local businesses, thus educating other users of great unknown businesses and companies to avoid.

Below is a perfect example.

I am moving a week from today. I can’t take that much work off and I don’t know if I can enlist enough man power to  do this. Plus I have some nice stuff and would rather leave it to professionals. So I decided to go with a mover. Do I know movers? How does one find the best movers?

Yeah Google is ok, but lets show you some of the top results when googling bay area movers, or San Jose movers.

A Better Way To Move

Aaron’s Moving

Puma Moving

Remington Moving

All of them say the same stuff and the websites are very similar. All claim the same level of service and the quotes are about the same. Since Google likes them, its obvious they are probably doing something right. The reality is that Google doesn’t necessarily find good businesses, but rather sites with good SEO.

I wasn’t feeling confident about picking one of these companies (I looked at another 10 that were in consideration as well). Then it dawned on me that maybe I should use yelp as up until now I have only utilized it for bars and restaurants.

A quick look at the 4 companies painted a much clearer picture.

A Better Way To Move Yelps Page-      8 reviews    Average 1 .5 stars out of 5.

Selected Quotes that seemed to be consensus opinion of all review:

“THIS COMPANY IS A DISGRACE. DO NOT USE THESE GUYS….  This is obviously a well rehearsed scam…….To top it off … they drove over the mail box as they left”

“STAY AWAY, AVOID AT ALL COST- AN ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE.”

“I don’t even know where to start with this company.  By far the most AWFUL experience ever.  I can’t stress enough to not use this company.”

Aaron’s Moving- 22 Reviews    Average 4.5 stars

Selected Quotes that seemed to be consensus opinion of all review:

“They were perfect. They did their work fast and smoothly.”

“These guys are amazing! I highly recommend them. They arrived on time and ready to work. I’ve never seen movers be so careful with belongings.”

Puma Moving- 11 Reviews     Average 5 stars

Selected Quotes that seemed to be concensus opinion of all review:

“These guys were awesome. They showed up on time, they were efficient and quick and moved everything without any problems.”

“I would strongly recommend Puma Moving Company and will consider using them in the future if necessary.”

Remington Moving- 4 Reviews       Average 2 Stars

Selected Quotes that seemed to be consensus opinion of all review:

“Is there a way to give negative 5 stars? I know 2 people who have had personal belongings stolen during the move, and then they made it VERY difficult to get their remaining belongings out of the storage unit. It’s very suspicious. Buyer Beware!”

“Remington Moving sole more than $7000.00 dollars worth of my belongings.  Their drivers shown up, asked me questions about some of my things as they loaded them into the truck, and stole all of my camping supplies,  my guitar, my stereo, my art supplies, my art, scratched eight chairs to my dining room table, broke off the foot to my antique chest and stole many other things as well.”

For awhile I have been following the digital living room wars as products like Vudu, Apple Tv, and Roku’s Netflix box hope to change how consumers utilize digital media. I also think I did a pretty decent job chronicling the now resoloved HD DVD vs Blu Ray format war.

Awhile back I blogged about LG’s partnerhsip with Netflix to develop a similar box to Vudu. Guess what, LG’s box is here and not only can it stream 12,000 Netflix movies, it also plays Blu Ray discs.

Per Cnet

“With the LG box, due to come out this fall, Netflix subscribers will be able to make use of Blu-ray discs and standard DVDs and also to tap into an online repository of about 12,000 movies and TV episodes (a fraction of the overall inventory at Netflix). The service will be available to subscribers at no additional charge.”

So while the format war is over, a new lets call it a Cold War has been brewing among technology early adopters. Blu ray or digiatl media. I know I wrestle with this as I debate buying a Blu Ray movie at the store or just downloading a movie to my Vudu. Its not an issue for many as both technologies are in their infancy’s but I can see this being a growing issue in 2011 and beyond.

LG’s box is great because high end consumer with Netflix or jut an avid movie buff considering getting Netflix users can buy this box and rest assured its the only box they will need for most likely the next decade. Additionally there is no added charge for Netflix subscribers other than the box itself.

Yes its expensive (rumored to be $300-$400) and I am sure a year from now the price will be lower, but its a safe buy. Netflix isn’t going anywhere and its likely that the 12,000 titles will only increase from here on out. Blu Ray isn’t going anywhere and the amount of Blu Ray titles will dramatically escalate in 2009. The LG box also plays standard DVD’s as well.

With Netflix’s member base and the product’s dynamic functionality, barring some notable product flaws I think you’ll see LG take a dominant position in the digital living room race especially if they market the product well for the upcoming Holiday season.

The tech community has enjoyed taking shots at Yahoo over the past 6 months. For years before that Microsoft was a great punching bag to beat up on. But if anyone has taken more abuse than Microsoft, it would be much maligned AOL.

For whatever reason, the portal and former ISP giant has been unable to shake the stigma of having dated technologies, business model, and content strategy. But as much as Silicon Valley likes to thrash the DC online company, AOL has been somewhat ahead of the curve in commercializing social media.

Unfortunately for AOL it seems a lot of these efforts are beginning to come apart.

AOL started their move into social media by acquiring the first attempted enterprise blogging network in Weblogs for $25 million in 2005. At the time the network of blogs included 50 blogs.

AOL’s next big move came when they launched FanHouse and grabbed sports blogger

AOL’s next big move came when they launched FanHouse and grabbed sports blogger  thought leader,Jaime Mottram, to recruit the web’s best sports blogger to move over to the new blog hub. Jaime left Fanhouse almost a year ago to fill a similar role with Yahoo, who wanted to join AOL in trying to commercialize the sports blogosphere.

Fanhouse continued to be a modest success but Mottram’s departure was the first of a slew of key defections and setbacks to Fanhouse.

Shit Hitting the Fan

The past week, AOL has seen a handful of developments further hurting the public perception of their social media efforts. First came word that AOL was making cuts to the Webogs network (dumb move, do you really want hundreds of full time bloggers underemployed and bitter at you?). Then came the bigger story that AOL was making larger cuts to a variety of different business segments,

This week TechCrunch now implies that bloggers are limited in how much they can be paid for blogging despite AOL’s denials that they have capped content production . Meanwhile a less public problem has arisen as the remainder of bloggers at FanHouse are repulsed with FanHouses ‘partnership with Fantasy Sports Girls.

The move has really irked the FanHouse veterans and has drawn criticism from across the blogosphere, and even drawn the ire of Mottram himself. The idea of scantily clad babes and sports is very solid, but Fanhouse bloggers are sad to see this lower form of sports commentary overshadow all the great work they have been doing on the site for years. Fantasy Sports Girls is a great great idea, but one that drastically is different from the tone and culture that FanHouse has strived to maintain.

With AOL curtailing compensation for Weblogs, and FanHouse ripping apart at the seems, its clear that despite AOL’s coreagoues and good intentioned forray into social media seems be crumbling at its core. AOL has valitated the space to some degree adding credibility to companies like Gawker, Federated Media, SB Nation, and ofcourse YardBarker, but in the end mismanagement, attention on the bottom line, and employee churn seems to have pulled the pin out of the AOL Social media grenade.

I had a nice little mini vacation away from blogging over my birthday weekend. But its back to the grind. Couple of Interesting updates below.

- Last week TechCrunch broke the story that Digg was close to consummating a deal to be acquired by Google. This weekend, the site now claims the deal is dead as Google left Digg at the alter. Its not clear if Google balked at the underlying technology of Digg, or at the prospect of working with Digg’s young and somewhat rogue management team.

While a lot of attention is put into the Yahoo Microsoft talks, the Google Digg rumors are just as interesting to watch. Digg is a web 2.0 icon and if it’s unable to find a healthy exit (Google at 200 million would have been darn near ideal), I have a feeling that the sentiment of Web 2.0’s staying power as a market force will begin to sour.

- Speaking of Web 2.0, I am a HUGE fan of Hulu.com and visit the site quite often. While there is an abundance of great movies and televisions shows on the site, I was surpised to see what the most popular movie clips were on the site. Below are screenshots of the top 10 clips of this month.

Considering the substantial amount of clips on the site, I am kind of surprised to see that all the top clips are from second tier movies and are sexual in nation. No I am not an idiot and am unaware of one of the internet’s most popular uses, but I just didn’t foresee Hulu becoming an online destination for rubbing one out.

- Finally, Yardbarker is now Wikipedia. This was quite an extensive process and I am glad to see our company on the site where it belongs.

Rumors are abound that Google is finalizing a deal to acquire news content aggregator Digg.com. The acquisition price is rumored to be in the neigborhood of $200 million .

With other portal/search engines like yahoo and AOL having their own content aggregation tools, Google seems to be seeing the value of the original enterprise content aggregation tool.

Below is a great video on Digg from awhile back.

I read a lot about Digg and their founders in the great Sarah Lacey’s Web 2.0 book and am glad to see their efforts pay off with a potential healthy exit via Google.

Digg is Web 2.0 icon, democratizing what news content would become featured. It was a novel concept at the time and one that has truly changed how internet users find news. Digg popularity grew rapidly, with a lot imitators launching in the following years. The company and the founder, Kevin Rose, became a poster boy for social media, user generated content, and web 2.0.

Today we’re going to try something different. Lots of blogs vent, mock, and throw stones at whatever topic comes into their sights that warrant the mean spirited energy to blast. I try to avoid that….but not today.

Its Wednesday night, and the only day of the year that has no professional sporting games. This irks me greatly in combination with a lot of other thigns, so for this one day I am going to break from tradition and just be a complainiing, whining asshole. Below are some things that really grind my gears.

The now resoloved writer’s strike:

Yeah its over, but its affects are being felt this summer. When the strike started in late fall, production shut down on the majority of television shows. Other shows that were scheduled to start shooting, were delayed months as the strike dragged on. Since the culmination of the NHL and NBA playoffs, its been pretty rough with my favorite shows on hiatus or recently retired. The novelty of Ice Road Truckers is wearing off, Penn and Teller’s Bullshit is only weekly (just discovered and love it), and I find myself watching nostalgic looks at history like the drug years and I love the Seventies on VH1.

Gone for now are the likes of Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Conchords, The Office, Lost, The Hills (shutup), and South Park.

Gone for good are personal favorites Sopranos, Rob and Big, and The Wire.

Maybe its that my new apartment does not have an on screen guide, but the combined affect of all of the above shows being out of season or wrapped for good is making me lose my mind.

Yahoo email

Lately, I have been getting a lot of error messages when trying to open various emails in my account. Emails that are spam get into my inbox at a high rate. Even emails with the word “spam” in the title seem to not trigger any flags for the spam filter. What’s even worse though is that reply emails, emails from long time acquaintances, and mailings that I have opted in for go to the spam folder at a high frequency. Every day I have to go “fishing” for lost emails, and I only noticed the need in the last couple of months and fret over what emails I never saw because of the schottiness of Yahoo email. Gmail is much much better and Yahoo deciding to give @ymail email addresses is not going to be of any help.

Etrade.

Not sure if its Etrade of the SEC, but I just opened an account with them and wanted to buy some stock in Jet Blue last Friday. I have had accounts with Etrade in the past and currently have a checking account with them and wanted to take advantage of the really low price dip in Jet Blue. Unfortunately I got the error message below even though the money in the account was started with Etrade checking money.

I have had to sit on the sidelines watching Jet Blue’s stock go up around 20% in the last 3 days. What kind of BS rule is this?

Its a tough time for me right now. The all star break serves as the roughest time of the year for the sports fan. The day after the all stay game, is actually the only day of the year with not a single professional sports game.

Anyways I wanted to bring light to what I view as a sports broadcasting tragedy. No I am not talking about Billy Packer leaving CBS, Bryan Gumbel’s horrible announcing, or Joe Buck in general. Rather the fact that Fox has held the rights to all the BCS games, minus the Rose Bowl, over the last 2 years. However the contract is up for negotiations this fall, with ABC and Fox both vying for the rights.

In my opinion Fox does an inferior job covering these huge games. All the way around (editing, commentary, in studio analysis, camera angles, replays, graphics) its just not as good as ABC and the broadcasts really suffer.

I decided to poll some large and knowledgable fan bases on their preference.

Click below to see image full size

The above graphic has reduced the text but the totals are 86% prefer ABC (95 votes) with 13% preferring Fox (15 votes).

I ran the poll again on another site but this time reversed the options with Fox being the top option on the form. The results were pretty much the same with 84% preferring ABC.

The point of all of this, was to prove my hypothesis that the college football die hards prefer ABC by more than a 4-1 ratio. I’ll spare you the pretty stinging comments blasting Fox.

Even the ABC BCS logo is better than the amateur looking Fox logo

With ratings down over the last 2 years and a clear preference for ABC, the BCS would be wise to take a lesser or equal offer to switch back to ABC. Fox has no college football games all year which hurts the marketing, commentator knowledge, and production quality of their broadcasts. It was believed that Fox was going to make a run at broadcasting some regular season games, but nothing has happened other than the butchering of some of the year’s biggest games.

I’ll be tracking this closely, simply because I love applauding smart decisions and blasting stupid ones.

Awhile back I read an article about how Sony has lost 3 billion dollars on the PS3 (2.16 billion in 2006, 1.16 billion in 2007). The artile does point out that losing money on gaming hardware is actually normal (money made on software) and PS3 sales have been better in 2008.

Regardless of what the bottom line says, the PS3 will end up being a huge cash cow for Sony. Why you ask?

Royalties, blu ray royalties.

I blogged pretty extensively about the HD format war between HD DVD and  Blu Ray and accurately predicted their demise and subsequent surrender. So while accountants and Wall street throw stones at Sony for bleeding money, you have to consider that the PS3 was essentially the biggest difference maker in the format war.

With blu ray prevailing, the Blu Ray consortuim (1/3 of IP believed to belong to Sony) can sit back and collect money as the technology is slowly adopted. CNET has a great article about the royalties Sony will be seeing.

The article points out that hardware manufacturers had to pay $15-$20 in royalties to install DVD drives in computers, dvd players, cameras, etc. But for every player in the market came dozens or sometimes even hundreds of DVD disks. Royalties for the disks ranged from 7 cents to 4 cents over the years.

While Sony will only get about a 1/3 of these hardware and disk royalties, Blu Ray via the PS3 is entrenched to replace DVD in terms of consumer adoption sometime in the next 3-6 years. Its going to take time but as more shelf space at Blockbuster, Best Buy, Circuit City, push Blu Ray Players, and the the Blu Ray drive begins shipping in new computers, its only matter of time until Sony dwarfs their loss with substantial profits.