Tag: money

Despite Citizens United fears, you cannot buy success with money

Despite Citizens United fears, you cannot buy success with money

RANT: The networks are being jerks about the iPad

RANT: The networks are being jerks about the iPad

Time Warner cable may not be available in your neighborhood so you may not have a dog in this hunt. To catch you up, TWC offers a free iPad app that allows you to stream live video TV feed to your device. You would think that the networks would have no problem with this. Let’s list the reasons:

  • You must be a Time Warner customer to use the service.
  • You must be a RoadRunner customer to use the service (RoadRunner is the brand name for TWC’s cable modem service).
  • You can only use this service at the specific IP address of your RoadRunner account.  You cannot be at the Starbuck’s down the street. You cannot be at your neighbors house that also has TWC and RoadRunner but a different IP address.  You cannot be traveling to a hotel in a far off city.
  • TWC’s terms of conditions on their service already allows me to plug as many TVs into my cable feed as I would like. I can have a TV in every room and closet in my house.

Evidently, some networks don’t get it. They won’t let me have a TV called “iPad” in my house.  I can plug a TV made by Mitsibushi or Sony into my living room but I cannot stream that same content to my iPad.

Therefore, if my wife wants to watch an evening soap opera such as “Desperate Housewives” I cannot go into my living room and watch the Discovery Channel. To make matters just as bad (so that ABC doesn’t get a break here), we cannot do the reverse and have her watch Desperate Housewives on her iPad while I hog the TV in the family room for Discovery.  Instead we have to record one of the shows on our DVR and watch it later.

Let’s build on that last point. Instead of watching live TV that forces me to sit through commercials, the content providers are forcing me to record the show on DVR where I am certain to fast forward through the commercials.  So by enforcing this rule that costs them no money, they make less money.

RANT: TO ALL OF THE CONTENT PROVIDERS ON TIME WARNER CABLE, WHY DON’T YOU THINK JUST A LITTLE BIT BEFORE YOU MAKE A STUPID RULE THAT HURTS YOUR ADVERTISERS AND YOUR CONSUMERS AND COSTS YOU ZERO MONEY!

Below is the email from Time Warner Cable explaining the situation.

TWCable TV App For iPad View Web Version Time Warner Cable
IMPORTANT UPDATE TO YOUR                    TWCABLE TV APP FOR IPAD(TM)
As you know, since launching our TWCable TV App for iPad on March 15th, you and hundreds of thousands of other Time Warner Cable customers have enjoyed the flexibility and freedom of being able to turn any room in your house into a TV room by using your iPad.

And, while most TV network owners agree with us that this is a great convenience for our customers and their viewers, a few networks disagree. As a result, for the time being, we have decided to focus our iPad efforts on other enlightened programmers who understand the benefit and importance of allowing our subscribers – and their viewers – to watch their programming on any screen in their homes.

Unfortunately, that means that channels from network groups Discovery Communications, Fox Cable, and Viacom will be removed from your iPad lineup, effective immediately.

•  Discovery channels: Animal Planet, Discovery, TLC
•  Fox channels: FX, National Geographic
•  Viacom channels: BET, CMT, Comedy, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike, VH1
This means that you will temporarily have a new lineup on your iPad consisting of the following channels:

A&E E! HLN
ABC Family Food Network Lifetime Movie Network
AMC Fox News MSNBC
Bravo Galavision SyFy
CNBC Hallmark Channel Travel Channel
CNN HGTV USA
Disney Channel History
We will be providing replacement channels as quickly as we can, perhaps as early as tomorrow. You won’t need to change anything or update your App in any way to receive these or the additional channels.

In the meantime, we will pursue all of our legal rights against the programmers who don’t share our vision. Your enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm of the programming partners who have embraced the App – rather than those who are solely focused on finding additional ways to reach into wallets of their own viewers – has convinced us more than ever that we are on the right path. We will continue to fight to ensure that you have access to the content you pay for, no matter which screen in your home you choose to view it on.

For up-to-the-minute information on what’s happening, please visit:
www.IWantMyTWCableTVApp.com
.

Why are these channels going away from the TWCable TV App for iPad?
Unfortunately, the owners of those channels don’t yet share our vision for making it easy for consumers to view the content they’ve already paid for on different screens within the home. We would rather use our technical resources to distribute the channels of programmers who agree that their content should be seen on any screen inside your home, while we pursue legal solutions that would let us continue deploying this Application.

Will other channels be put up in their place?
We’re working to add new channels to the lineup as quickly as possible.

Will more channels be dropped?
At this time, we don’t expect any additional TV network owners to to demand that we remove their channels from the iPad App.

Why didn’t Time Warner Cable anticipate this before launching the iPad App?
We firmly believe that this App is no different than delivering our signals to another TV in the home, and are surprised and disappointed that some TV networks see it differently.

What is easy isn’t always what is right…

What is easy isn’t always what is right…

Scott McKain, an adviser to many on how to more effectively run a business, just did a great article on how NBC screwed up with this Leno at 10 problem.

What Scott doesn’t point out in his advice is that the change is not always necessary for the good of the company.  In this case, Conan was getting his butt kicked by the more experienced (and more entertaining) Letterman.

Scott’s article is excellent.  Jump over and read it.  Here is some of his advice:

1) Don’t EVER make the assumption that ANY productive employee is ready to be put out to pasture. We work for many reasons, and only ONE of them is money. Zucker’s assumption that Leno was wealthy enough and would want to ride off in the sunset started the disastrous chain of events.

2) Sometimes we have to allow good colleagues to depart. If NBC would have just allowed Conan to move on, instead of trying to sacrifice its business plan to keep him, they would have been in much better shape.

3) We must look to make the decisions that are best for the long-term…what fixes a short-term challenge may create lasting problems. That’s what happened here.

Healthcare for illegals

Healthcare for illegals

First, let me be clear, I think that Rep. Wilson of South Carolina should be censured for his outburst while President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking in a joint session of Congress. He reminds of irresponsible brats such as Kanye West. Public outbursts while the President is speaking are simply unacceptable in any format and definitely not allowed in a joint session of Congress.

I do think that it is interesting that the rude outburst occurred due to a statement from BHO regarding healthcare for illegal aliens. There is a reasonable argument that BHO, while perhaps not lying, was not telling the complete truth. Check out this interesting video below and then read the rest of my comments.

 

Now I see that the Democrats in the Senate would like to toughen up the loopholes to prevent illegal aliens from getting taxpayer supplied insurance. I don’t get it, BHO says that this can’t happen but now a few days later there is an amendment that prevents this thing that can’t happen.  Makes me think that BHO was bending the truth a bit and probably knew it.

Of course the solution that the Senate is currently thinking about is to use Social Security numbers.  Seems reasonable.  SS numbers have become the defacto national identity card that we need. I have ranted on this before, if we would just have national identity cards then we would control much of the illegal problem that we have.

Below are a few clips from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

A key Democratic senator said Friday that lawmakers planned to toughen provisions in a health bill to prevent illegal immigrants from enjoying benefits, in a Democratic response to concerns by some Republicans.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee met Friday, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) said they wanted to use Social Security numbers to ensure that illegal immigrants weren’t eligible for subsidies envisioned as part of a plan to expand health coverage.

President Obama’s health-reform proposal has sparked heated debate over whether the plan benefits illegal immigrants, as demonstrated by Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst. WSJ’s Elizabeth Williamson breaks down the details of the proposed new government-run insurance plan.

Still up in the air is whether illegal immigrants would be banned from participating in federally regulated insurance “exchanges” under Democrats’ health bills, even if the immigrants were willing to use their own money to buy policies. On Friday, a coalition of three dozen faith-based groups wrote to Congress to express anger at the proposed ban.

My comments on New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

My comments on New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

Bill Maher is a relatively famous television personality. Of course, he got this position by correctly realizing that he wasn’t a very good standup comedian and his real talent was getting famous people on TV and then making fun of them or using them as foils to make a political point.  He has bounced around a couple of different venues and has currently landed at HBO.  His show is called “Real Time with Bill Maher”.  He has used this notoriety and fame to also publish some of his remarks and is a frequent contributor to Huffington Post.  His latest article is the subject of this post.

Originally, I only wanted to reply to Bill Maher in his comments section.  However, Huffington Post limits comments to a small number of words so I am forced to make further comments here.  You can read my original thoughts at this link as there are currently over 2500 comments on this article and it would be difficult to find mine.  You may also want to read Bill’s original article before you read my comments.

Bill’s opening comment starts out all wrong.  He says “Not everything in America has to make a profit” and while this is true, I am not aware of any time in America’s history when it was discussed that something could NOT make a profit.  Doesn’t it seem very un-American to decree that a certain portion of our economy is not eligible to make a profit?

When the very unfunny Bill Maher mentions the war profiteering problem, he forgets that at the time we were a very agrarian society and not even close to the world power that we are today – in fact we were probably not even ranked in the top 10 most powerful nations. Can we have one without the other? Do we want to live in that world again? Really, do you? Think about it Maher.

Yes, I understand that there is a concern over Haliburton and other companies that were awarded contracts in the MidEast without open bids. But he includes this discussion in an article that talks about not making a profit, which implies he thinks that government contractors and service providers should not make a profit.

The term “war profiteering” was really a big concern back in the two world wars when rationed goods were required. With any rationed good there are, inevitably, ways to make lots of profit if you can find a supply of the rationed goods and sell them outside of the system. It was also a time when over-charging for military goods was easy to do.  In fact, then Senator Harry S. Truman made his big mark by chairing a committee that was designed to go after profiteers. But even Mr. Truman didn’t want to eliminate profit from the process, he just wanted to eliminate the corruption of charging for goods and services in unfair manners.

Does Mr. Maher really want to eliminate the profit potential of companies that do work for the United States?  Will he be able to delineate those that offer services to the military versus those that offer services to other branches of the government?

While it is important to make sure that we are getting value out of our government spending, I doubt that most people (aside from Mr. Maher) would want no profit to be made in the process. At the time of the big worry on war profiteering, approximately 20% of the workforce was in agrarian efforts but by 1970 it was about 4%.  To make matters worse, a decade or two before the world wars (but definitely in the memory of most alive at the time) over 40% of the workforce as agricultural based and we were not considered to be a world power at all.  In fact, prior to WW1, the real powers of the world resided in Europe.  This change from an agrarian society that was not a force in the world to a world power in 40 years was fraught with danger of profiteering and therefore a real concern to everyone.

He then goes into prisons that make a profit. Does he really think that the reason that we have a lot of people in prison is because of the profit making of CCA?  Come on, Bill.  That simply doesn’t make sense.  There are approximately 2M people in prison in this country and according to CCA’s website only 75,000 of them are in their care.  If CCA has such a huge influence do you think that they would have a larger market share than under 4%? Are the other 96% of the convicted criminals incarcerated the real felons and CCA is only getting the CCA influenced laws?  This is a perfect example of Bill Maher simply not thinking before he talks/writes.

Bill then goes after journalism and he dreams of the good old days. He dreams of when real journalists were like Walter Cronkite, may he rest in peace. That was an era with little competition for TV. There were 3 stations, no Internet, only AM radio, 2 newspapers in every town, only 2-3 movies came out a month AND LIFE magazine was a thriving concern.

The reason that News didn’t make money was because it didn’t have to make money. Bill is correct, it was a loss leader because people watched it and it drug people to watch the Entertainment divisions products which did make money. Now it needs the Entertainment division to pull the viewers to the 11 o’clock news. A regular complaint of station owners is when the Entertainment division of their network has fallen behind in market share it affects the 11 o’clock news profitability.

The profitability of News v. Entertainment was never a philanthropic effort on the part of the big networks. Quite the opposite, it was a concerted effort to drag in viewers and achieve the highest gains that they could.

And then Bill, the lover and worshipper of Michael Moore, gets to his real agenda (because the above junk is not really a problem anyway) – healthcare.  Bill is one of those that doesn’t think that it is fair to make a profit from running a service in the health sector because if you are sick then you have to go to a doctor and get better. You don’t have a choice so it is morally wrong to charge more than your costs.

But that is precisely where Maher blew it in his utopian dream rant. He specifically discussed healthcare and made the reference to going to a Catholic hospital. Yes, there was little motive for profit BUT there was little interference from the government, as well. How do you get from the times were great in the past without interference from government and now the only way to get better is to make government bigger?

If you read some of the comments in Mr. Maher’s columns you will see them chastise insurance companies.  Mr. Maher only makes one reference to an insurance company in his column but instead spends time lambasting HCA, an operator of hospitals.

Of course, he doesn’t take it to the next step and look at food. If you don’t eat then you will die so this is a requirement of life as well.  Therefore, if we follow Bill’s thought pattern then Kroger and WalMart should operate as non-profits as well. To continue this logic, then surely the power utility provider should operate as a non-profit since you need electricity to heat/cool your home and we wouldn’t want them to take advantage of you. And since the majority of people in the US need clothing to survive the elements at least during part of the year, no one should make money on winter coats, scarves, hats, boots, etc.

And even if you buy the absurd argument that all of that should be free from profit then where do you stop.  Does the thread provider that provides the thread for your coat need to operate as non-profit?  And the trucking company that hauls vegetables from the farm to your local grocery store, should he succumb to non-profit status as well?

And what about the nurse that works hard and cares for the child with the broken leg at the hospital? Should she work for only enough to fulfill her basic needs? If so, doesn’t that make her a ward of the state?  Is that the goal of Mr. Maher?

So when we get down to following the logic of Bill Maher (and the more confused Michael Moore), who is allowed to make money these days?  Why of course, Bill Maher and Michael Moore are!