Is A Part Of
Via Lawrence Green/caught In between, I discovered the Most Important Thing to come out of this current Internet Video Boom: The YouTube Bubble Burst Pool (at the “Will Video For Food” blog, natch). Just pick a date for when you expect YouTube will either (a) sell out to a media megacorp (b) be outed as a failed business model by a major magazine or (c) just drop to #2 on-line video site. Then leave your guess as a comment (THERE, NOT HERE). The winner gets a one-of-a-kind “I Guessed the Date of YouTube’s Demise” t-shirt. I made a guesstimate of Friday the 13th of April, next year, because I have a feeling that sell-out/rescue (which would have to happen in the next 3-4 months, tops) isn’t going to happen.
Speaking of really bad business decisions, I was deeply schadenfreuded to learn that the Evil NewsCorp has made an immensely stupid move regarding its FNC (Fox News Comedy) network. Via the Lovely and Talented TVNewser, Variety reports:
(News Corp. Chairguy Peter Chernin) threatened, for the first time publicly, to pull the Fox News Channel from cable systems if the net doesn’t get the rate increases it’s seeking in what he expects to be “really tough, tough, tough negotiations” in coming months. “You’re likely to see nothing signed until midnight of the night before the deals expire, and you may see us pull the channel,” he said Tuesday. Fox gets monthly fees of 25ยข per sub and wants to boost that to $1.
Apparently, Mr. Chernin is the only person in the media industry to have NOT noticed that FNC’s ratings have peaked and are declining (although not the “plummet” “nosedive” or “tanking” declared in most liberal blogs). Still, an approximate 20% decline, vs. last year in Prime Time in the ‘Prime’ demographic for the last several consecutive months (but hey, daytime is up 2% and the 65+ demographic is still growing!) is enough to put Roger Ailes (who HAS noticed) ‘on the warpath’. And Mr. Chernin is demanding a four-fold increase, and threatening to pull the channel from cable systems that don’t pay it? Maybe he’s overconfident about his 65+ audience’s ability to write nasty letters to the cable companies (like cable companies read ANYBODY’s nasty letters). Or maybe he’s hoping to get FNC taken off of 20-40% of America’s cable systems, so it becomes nearly impossible to calculate meaningful “vs. last year” ratings for a while. Or maybe:
Asked about the net’s perceived conservative bias, he defended it staunchly. “I think it’s pretty well known that I’m a Democrat,” he said. “The truth is this is a big company, and we have a lot of different voices and points of view.”
Maybe “the truth” is NewsCorp is a Big Evil Company, and can withstand the sabotaging of one part of it by a bigwig who is a secret operative of political opponents? “Yes, Fox has figured out that by simply putting a question mark at the end of something, you can say f—ing anyhing.” Thank you, Jon. (And yes, that is a clip from YouTube. I am King of the New Irony.)
