Don’t Tell Me What’s Impossible!

 There was a time when the only people who ever wondered if comic book technology would be possible in the real world were dyed-in-the-wool science fiction geeks, like me and my friends, and in fairness we also wondered if super powers were possible, if psychic powers were possible, if faster-than-light travel was possible, if magic was possible, if cloaking devices were possible, if artificial intelligence was possible, if cloning was possible, if time travel was possible, if alien life forms actually existed, if Big Foot really existed, if any of the cryptozoology critters you read about really existed, if adult women who actually like geeks (like us) really existed, and if it was actually possible to talk with one without spontaneously combusting…

Fortunately for all of us – including that significant portion of the world’s population that had never considered any of those questions until now – some of us geeks grew up with the talents, education, wealth, or simple chutzpah to investigate these questions. Consequently, computers more powerful than anything NASA owned when we went to the Moon fit into the back of your cell phone, robots are now exploring the surface of Mars (and building all manner of consumer products right here in Michigan), there has been an honest-to-Buck-Rodgers space station orbiting the Earth for the past twenty-two years (as of 2021), and a team of brilliant lunatics have not only build 3-D printers that can print things made out of titanium, they also allowed Adam Savage from Myth Busters to build a flying version of the Iron Man armor with it…

I found the video on YouTube, but you can probably get more information off the Science Channel website, since the project was part of Adam’s new series airing on that network. Although, according to the linked file, producing this particular episode seems to have consisted of asking Adam if there was any project he felt like doing and then getting out of his way, since he already knew the people who had invented the titanium 3-D printer and the jet pack system necessary to make the suit fly. The result is every bit as amazing as you would probably expect, especially when you consider that in addition to taking off and flying around the hangar complex under its own power, the suit also turns out to really be bullet-proof and capable of shrugging off an explosion from three feet away…

Now, by this point I’m pretty sure that anyone reading this post (assuming I have readers) is asking why I’m geeking out over mad science and/or bewildering technology instead of just making notes on a business page. And I have to admit it’s a fair question; I have no idea what the commercial possibilities of a flying suit of bullet-proof and bomb-proof armor might be, or even what the business implications of being able to 3-D print materials as hard and rigid as titanium might turn out to be. What I do know is that when I was a kid both the 3-D printer and the Internet itself would have been considered comic-book fantasy, no more realistic than transparent airplanes, super-powered aliens who grew up in Kansas, or the Norse God of Thunder fighting crime in New York City…

For as long as I can remember, one of my pet peeves has been people telling me that things about which they know absolutely nothing are impossible, particularly when some of those things were already happening. When I grew up and realized that people were destroying perfectly good companies the same way, with all of the ill effects for the world and all of humanity that such destruction implies, it became more than just a simple irritant. Finding out why people do these things, and getting them to stop, has been the focus of my life for most of the past two decades, and the motivation for my misadventures in academia in the first place. Because the truth is, I have no more idea what weird, wonderful, and completely insane technological developments will pop up the next time I go wandering around on the Internet than anyone else, let alone what the commercial implications of those achievements might be…

But I’m quite certain that we all need to be more careful about saying things like “That’s Impossible!” Before more of us end up having to eat our words…

Sucker Showcase

Many years ago, the original cast of Saturday Night Live did a sketch about a game show called “Irwin Mainway’s Sucker Showcase” during which the host would tell various credulous idiots (the titular “suckers”) various obvious lies in order to get them to humiliate and/or injure themselves. It’s a variation on the old idea that people will do literally anything in order to get on television or win money; when you combine the two there’s almost nothing that is too obviously stupid to keep people from doing it. Dan Ackroyd was the MC (Irwin Mainway) and Steve Martin was the show’s “returning champion” – e.g., somebody so dim that he couldn’t figure out the show’s true nature even after enduring an episode of it. Steven Martin later included the sketch in his own T.V. special; you can find the clip here: https://youtu.be/4Hi8DIEhb_o

What seems most remarkable to me isn’t so much how prescient this sketch turns out to have been as how much more honest the format is, to the viewers if not to the contestants. Modern reality television has subjected contestants to activities at least this unpleasant, and potentially even more hazardous to life and limb, starting with shows like “Fear Factor” and “Survivor” and continuing to the current day. But where the fictional Irwin Mainway and whatever heartless production company was behind him were openly making fun of people, and inviting their audience to laugh at these suckers/contestants, the modern reality show hosts (and, one assumes, producers) go on endlessly about how exciting and competitive their contests are, and how well their contestants are dealing with the challenges involved…

Now, I would be the first to admit that this isn’t a new idea. A number of television series have based episodes around the concept over the years, and there are at least three full-length movies of which I’m aware that have been released on the same themes. I will also admit, however, that I have started worrying about the long-term effects of both encouraging people to be credulous idiots and encouraging other people to watch them and laugh. As the world becomes more complicated all around us it gets easier every year to make an innocent mistake that can screw up your entire life. Even ten years ago if you lost your cell phone, the worst that would happen is that you would report it as lost/stolen, have the carrier deactivate the account and give you a new one, and buy a new phone. If you’d bothered to sign up for the insurance, they’d just give you a new one. Today that same phone could allow someone to drain your bank account and max out all of your credit cards before you noticed it was gone…

I point this out for a number of reasons, not least of which is I’m worried about the corrosive effect this is having on our society; however, the effects on business, and particularly on business strategy, may be even worse. Business runs on information, even more so than money, and without complete and accurate information it isn’t possible to plan your activities or make competent decisions. If you base your calculations on bad data there is no way you can possibly get the right answers (the infamous programmer’s term GIGO – garbage in, garbage out – comes into play here), and with people deliberately introducing nonsensical information into reference sources just for the fun of watching more people behave like credulous idiots it’s getting harder every day just to tell what is real and what is supposed to be humor…

Earlier this week I noticed a clickbait item trumpeting that Don Knotts had just blurted out his “real” reasons for leaving the Andy Griffith Show. Which sounds like minor celebrity gossip, at best, until you realize that Mr. Knotts has been dead for eleven years as of today’s writing, and he revealed the complete rationale for leaving the show in the early 1970s. Heaven only knows what kinds of malware or online scams you might be subjecting yourself to if you clicked on that link, but the one thing I’m fairly sure of is that if you did click on it you would not have learned anything about the late Don Knotts that everybody else didn’t know forty years ago. If you make a practice of clicking on such links you probably won’t learn anything else, either, but you’ll definitely have qualified for an appearance on the next Irwin Mainway production when it comes out…

And that’s still not even the worst of it…

Five Hundred Channels, but Nothing’s On

I was scrolling through the program guide on our television recently, looking for something that I’d actually be interested in wasting a few minutes on until it was time for the baseball game, when I noticed an infomercial channel with an unusual program offering listed on it. There, on the “Mall” channel, just between the Night Court re-runs and the Secrets to a Better Golf Game was the interrogatory tittle: “Are You Pooping Enough?” Now, I’ve been watching cable television for a long time, and at odd times of the night on obscure channels I’ve seen the so-called “Sponsored Programming” selling everything from the legendary Bamboo Steamer to what is essentially hair-colored spray-on Christmas tree flocking to cover your bald spot. But this was the first time I’ve ever seen a group of otherwise functioning adults asking the world about a possible deficiency in their bowel movements…

Intrigued by this strange offering, I wandered out onto the Internet and ran a couple of searches looking for other oddball infomercial products. Within moments, however, I realized that the problem wasn’t going to be finding enough information here to write a 600-word blog post; the problem was going to be which of the completely insane offerings available to include. Because lurking out there among the perfectly normal “as-seen-on-TV” products were a few items so bizarre that even after finding their company’s home page I’m still not sure if these are real offerings or some elaborate online hoax…

Consider, for example, the Potty Putter ™ - not a golf club that you can use as a chamber pot (that’s the UroClub, which is from a different infomercial altogether), but rather a practice putting green and putter designed to use while sitting on the toilet. The question of why you couldn’t make such a thing yourself out of a dollar’s worth of outdoor carpeting pales before the question of why on Earth you would want one in the first place. Or if that’s not strange enough, how about the Better Marriage Blanket – basically a cotton blanket on one side and an activated-charcoal filter on the other side, which the inventor claims will eliminate the effects of flatulence in the bedroom…

Now, we should probably acknowledge right at the top that not all late-night infomercial products are sleazy or fraudulent. The oft-parodied “Ginsu” knives work exactly as advertised, and the ones we can still find around the house are as functional as ever after three decades or so. I also have it on good authority that the bamboo steamers actually worked like a charm, and the handy device that can scramble an egg while it’s still inside its shell operates perfectly, assuming that you can think of a use for one in the first place. And while the various dial-a-psychic services may be complete nonsense, there’s a limit to both their humor potential and how much harm they can actually do to the unwary. Gastrointestinal Quackery, on the other hand, has its own page on the Quackwatch website…

“Why does he tell us this?” I hear some of you asking. After all, infomercials and “sponsored programs” were a fact of life long before the dawn of the Internet age, and it is far easier to debunk the value of any of these products today than it has ever been before. The thing is, people are just as likely to use Internet research to confirm a mistaken belief as they are to debunk one; the need to do your homework and remain skeptical of any information source is getting larger, not smaller, as we plummet further and further into the new century. And with well over 500 cable channels already, and more coming all the time, not to mention an almost unlimited volume of snake oil ™ vendors on line, I don’t see the situation getting better any time soon…

There but For the Grace of God…

There was a story that popped up on “Nightline” last week that caught my attention as a true indication of just how bad our present economic crisis really is – and how diverse this country’s beliefs are, as well. According to the story (which you can pick up off the ABC News site) there’s a young couple who are filming themselves having sex and selling the A/V files to an amateur porn website in order to make enough money to pay their bills and provide for their 20-month-old daughter. From what I can make out, ABC was expecting this to be a mildly sensational story; the kind of things that will pick up a few extra views for a news show that airs after most people have gone to bed. What they got was a genuine hot potato, and an apparently huge influx of email commentaries…

The first thought that came to my mind on reading this story is that the editor at ABC who approved it for broadcast is having one on us – or else is so naïve that he or she should be institutionalized somewhere safe until they learn a little bit more about human beings. American society remains deeply divided on most issues of morality, which is hardly surprising given the vast diversity of our population and their ethnic and national heritages. Americans as a whole like to pretend that we are all the spiritual descendants of the Puritan movement by way of the Plymouth Colony, and that none of us would ever have a dirty thought, much less look at a dirty picture. But even a cursory examination of our commercial history will establish that this is nonsense; contemporary American culture is derived from literally hundreds of different cultural traditions, none of which could ever have agreed on one code of morality…

Thus, it is disingenuous (and facile) of the ABC News people to claim that they did not expect any strong reaction to the story. A much more interesting question is what this says about us – and the time in which we are living. At first glance, the idea of two young adults (who have a child of their own) filming amateur pornography for money might seem shocking, but when we consider that this activity is completely legal, as is the use to which their content is being put, it certainly doesn’t compare to some of the extremes we have witnessed people going to in order to support their families. It is highly probable that this material will complicate their efforts to raise their child (especially if they intend to maintain a particularly straight-laced family), but given that they have voluntarily chosen to take this action, and that all of the things they are doing are completely legal, I don’t think we can criticize it on ethical or moral grounds…

At some future point, perhaps, I will have to address the ethical side of this question in one of our regular Sunday ethics posts. My point in bringing you this story today is to point up that no matter how degrading your job might be, and no matter what you feel you have sacrificed in order to keep your family fed, somebody somewhere has probably had to do something worse – and that no matter how advanced, sophisticated, jaded, apathetic or uncaring you think our society has become, there will always be stories about people doing completely legal things in the privacy of their own home that will move vast numbers of our citizens into a howling frenzy…

It’s probably worth remembering that the next time you plan a business venture, and innocently ask, “What could possibly go wrong?”

3D or Not 3D: That Is the Question!

For at least the past fifty years, people have been debating the usefulness of three-dimensional effects in the movies – and whether this represents the future of the medium or an occasionally annoying novelty. The recent versions have been much more impressive than the old-fashioned red and green 3D glasses, with images that really do appear to be extending off of the screen and into your personal space, but even the best of them still have issues, such as making the picture noticeably darker and murkier. The new “glasses-free” technology is promising, but they still don’t have the bugs out of it, and even if they did, there are very few movies (and even fewer television programs) which were shot in the right format to make any use of it – which makes the fact that several companies have been trying to market television sets with the glasses-free 3D feature all that much harder to explain…

A story which ran this week on the New York Post website explained how the relative failure of these 3D television products is contributing to the failure of the ESPN 3D service, and may ultimately lead to the disbanding of the channel. It turns out that most of the companies who have been paying for ad time on the new network have been ones that manufacture the 3D television sets – which makes very little sense, since anyone watching ESPN 3D would already have a 3D television set, and anyone who doesn’t have such a television set wouldn’t be watching the new ESPN in the first place. Moreover, since the 3D televisions aren’t selling all that well, the companies that make them can’t afford to keep buying up prime time advertising on ESPN 3D, and may pull their funding – which would leave the network with no revenue to keep it going…

Exactly why anybody thought that either the television sets or the channel that catered to them were worth spending money on in the first place remains unclear. The new 3D movie technology has brought in a lot of money (since theaters charge more to see the 3D versions of movies), but unless a lot of broadcasters and cable companies started investing in 3D cameras, the cable and pay-per-view versions of those same 3D movies would be the only things you could watch on such a device – and those few movies would still be “edited” by most channels, making them an inferior copy anyway. But even if we can somehow account for why the management teams of these companies felt that home-use 3D systems were a good idea, that still doesn’t explain why they didn’t realize that the consumer market wasn’t ready for such products. Even the most basic focus-group research should have revealed that most people have no use for a very expensive piece of home entertainment electronics that they can’t –as of yet – use for more than a single cable channel and a few specific movies…

The ironic part of all of this is that eventually 3D cameras probably will become standard – or, at least, no more expensive than any other video systems – and increasing numbers of television productions will start using them. If the price of the 3D-capable television sets drops in the meanwhile (or if similar products are introduced at a lower price later on) this technology might be a real winner. The question right now is when that will happen – and if it was worth getting in on the new technology wave right from the beginning. Personally, I can wait…

The Horror, The Horror…

I was very amused to read the story online this week about the new Oprah Winfrey network, and the minor storm of protest brewing about it because a number of cable systems are planning to carry it as part of their premium package – which is to say, viewers who want it will have to pay more than the cost of their basic cable package. It’s always hard to say how many of the people spewing about this sort of topic are really that upset, and how many are trolls having a good time at the expense of people who don’t really understand economics or cable television operations, but as I was enjoying a quiet chuckle over the issue it occurred to me that MOST people don’t really understand how cable works, and we should probably take a closer look…

To begin with, it’s important to understand that most cable systems have a hardware limit on the number of channels they can bring you, whether it’s the amount of copper wire they have buried under your street or the amount of fiber-optic cable they’ve been able to install or the bandwidth their satellites can beam down to your DSS dish. Back when your only cable option was the local cable company this didn’t matter so much, but most major population centers now offer at least two or three options for getting your television content, and that means that every channel a given provider is offering is a selling point that they can use to attract your business. On the other hand, your cable provider also has to pay a certain amount (it ranges anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars) for each customer who receives each channel. These factors combine to make the provider want to bring you any channels that they think might make you more likely to engage their services, but want to avoid any channels that most people wouldn’t care about…

Tiers of cable channels work like any other bundled product – you are offered a group of products for a single price, partly because the product you actually want is going to vary a bit from one customer to the next, and partly because that way you’re paying extra for products you don’t really want and will never use in order to get the one you do want. So putting the new OWN network on a higher tier means that, in theory, the people who want it can pay a small additional monthly charge to get it, while the people who don’t want it do not have to pay a higher cable bill. Cable companies often claim that they can’t add or delete a single channel from your cable service because of hardware limitations – and a decade or so ago this was frequently true – but these days it’s more often because the effort of keeping track of millions of individual cable bills, all for differing amounts, would require a lot more effort (and drive their costs up)…

In the case of the OWN network, the channel they’re taking over in most cable systems was previously held by the Discovery Health Network, which was generally a premium service already. The real problem would appear to be that Oprah’s show was broadcast over the air for twenty-five years, and even people who have been paying to receive it (on basic cable) seem to be convinced that it was free the whole time. Asking that your cable company provide you with something they have to pay for at no additional cost to you is just as asinine as asking any other business to give you products or services for free, and even asking that they create a new tier (the “Oprah” tier, presumably) which will drive up their expenses and raise everyone’s cable bill isn’t much better. The bottom line is that your cable company is in business to make a living, and if you want to watch the OWN network programming you should expect to pay for it…

Although I can’t help adding that, to paraphrase the late Sam Kinnison, if this is the biggest issue that is disturbing you, you, my friend, do not yet have a problem…

The Ethics of Playoffs

By this point it seems clear that everyone in America - and probably most of the rest of the civilized world, or at least those parts that are tired of hearing us whine about it - is in favor of a playoff system in college football. Naturally, there are those who do not watch college sports or sports in general (a friend out in Los Angeles claims to have difficulty remembering which sport uses the oblong ball with the pointy ends on it), but even the majority of those people would probably agree that a system which allows the two teams which are actually the best to meet head-to-head to determine the national championship is more in keeping with our stated national preference for truth, justice and fair play. Unfortunately, there is a very simple and incredibly powerful force that is preventing such a system from being implemented, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future; I refer, of course, to money. As long as it remains more profitable to maintain out current plethora of bowl games and opaque system of selecting the two teams for the "championship" game, nothing is likely to change. The question we need to consider is whether or not this is actually a bad thing...

First off, all of the arguments about bowl games, television revenues and profits made by the sports programs of NCAA schools improving the quality of education at those schools are completely specious - the money generated by the athletic programs is almost universally retained by the athletic department for its own use. The rest of this point is a bit murkier, however. Participation in any nationally televised event usually comes with the opportunity for the school to broadcast its promotional video during the event, and will always create mentions of the school's name in publications and newscasts where it would not normally appear. It seems clear that this will increase the school's exposure and prestige; the degree to which this improves matters for the institution remains in dispute. Still, a national playoff system would concentrate media and public attention on the seven games involved (assuming a field of eight seeds; a field of 16 would involve 15 games, and so on) and draw it away from the 28 other bowl games being televised each year. This would be even better for the eight teams selected, but would undoubtedly harm the other 56 to some degree...

Second, there's the business picture to consider. Bowl games, as is often alleged, generally do benefit the television networks and venue owners more than anyone else, but as a business blogger I feel it is my duty to point out that these are public-owned companies (in the case of the networks) and public municipalities (in the case of many of the actual stadia) all of which benefit the economy and the public in general by earning money, employing people and paying taxes. The residual benefit realized by the communities in which bowl games take place (especially hotel and restaurant receipts from visiting fans) may be smaller, but is certainly not a bad thing, especially because these businesses also contribute to the economy as a whole. And even if the secondary benefits realized by related businesses (transportation companies, tour companies, apparel and souvenir manufacturers, publishers and the like) are small, they're certainly better than nothing, which is what we're likely to see from a bowl that is eliminated as no longer relevant or simply driven into complete obscurity...

Finally, there's the effect such a system would have on the game itself. As frustrating as it is to have the same record as another team in your conference (and actually beat that team head-to-head during the regular season!) and still end up below them in the standings and bowl precedence for the post-season, as is the case with Michigan State this year, it would be even worse if no one ended up watching your bowl appearance because it wasn't one of the 7 National Playoff games, and worse still if your team was denied a post-season game after finishing their best season in a generation just because there wasn't enough of a television audience to bother staging the game...

In the long run, I can't (as a fan) say that the current bowl system is really a good thing. But by the same token (as a business teacher) I can't really say it's entirely without its up side, either. As long as there is money to be made, there will probable always be dozens of obscure but colorful football games played in the last weeks of December, and the first weeks of the new year...

GO GREEN! GO WHITE!

New Towel Technology

No, the title of this post is not a typographical error; I refer here to a new product which is taking the country, and eventually will take the world, by storm. A product for all of the members of our civilization who are being unfairly punished, embarrassed, or just inconvenienced by the existing towel technology, and yearn for something better. For too long, innocent members of society who are (through no fault of their own!) too dim to figure out how to wrap a towel around themselves have suffered shame and humiliation, but now thanks to the miracle of science (and the efforts of a truly ingenious couple from Florida), you too can reap the benefits of the Wearable Towel …

As reported this week in the Washington Post, the Wearable Towel, or simply the Wearable, is generally similar to a conventional towel, only with the addition of arm holes on each side. It’s manufactured in Turkey (which does not, actually, make it a Turkish towel, however) and available direct to you at the low, low price of just $19.99 plus shipping and handling. The designer suggests that you can wear it anywhere you would wear an actual towel (including in your back yard, at a barbeque, at parties, etc.) and that you can be “totally undressed” (emphasis theirs) under this towel if circumstances require it!

Astute readers will have noted this product’s similarity to the infomercial classic known as the Snuggie (a blanket with sleeves) and its upscale competitor, the Slanket, which costs nearly twice as much as a Snuggie, but is much larger, made of more durable material, and comes in a huge array of colors and prints (where a Snuggie is available in just 3 insipid pastel fleeces). In theory, while a Slanket is more expensive, it is being marketed as having added value for the consumer – that is, being warmer, more functional, and more visually appealing. This does not change the fact, however, that both products are actually just wearable blankets and are being aimed at a target demographic of people who are unable to cope with the technical complexities of an actual blanket (or, say, an over-shirt or sweater). None of this really compares to the horror of the Comfort Wipe, however…

This product, which I swear I am not making up, serves a personal hygiene function so profoundly disgusting that even someone afflicted with OCD would hesitate to describe it any further. But the Washington Post article also goes on to cite the 1980’s era telesales product that would scramble an egg while it was still inside the shell, and its modern counterpart, the Egg Genie which will enable even someone who is not able to boil water effectively to make perfect hard-boiled eggs every time. Which leads the Post’s reporter to what effect these products are having on our society in general…

Now, as any regular readers of this space already know, I’m not a huge booster of the American primary education system; I personally feel that if we’re going to continue to encounter college students (like one I ran into this week) who have managed to obtain high school diplomas without realizing that the word “exercise” does not have an “A” in it (and can’t copy the word off the blackboard in front of them, either) then we really shouldn’t be blaming telesales products for the dumbing-down of America. In the long run, I’m fairly certain that all of these products will join the Veg-O-Matic and the Pocket Fisherman on the junk heap of History (as well as on an actual junk heap somewhere)…

But if they don’t, remember, folks, you heard it heard first…

Vegetable Foreplay?

Let me begin this post by saying publicly that I do not now, nor have I ever, had any personal animosity toward vegetarians. Some of my friends and several members of my (extended) family don’t eat meat for various reasons; some because of the undoubted social, environmental and medical benefits of a vegetarian diet and others because they just don’t like it very much. As with most other forms of personal conviction, I am more than happy to respect anyone’s beliefs on the sole condition that they return the favor. Which is probably why I’m so amused by NBC’s refusal to air the most recent PETA ads because they fail to meet FCC guidelines – or the Network’s own standards…

A story being reported in the New York Post states that NBC has refused to air the commercial message PETA wanted to run during the Super Bowl, which extolled the sexual benefits of a meat-free diet, because the television spot included scantily-clad females being “too intimate” with various vegetables and fruits. Quite apart from the obvious First Amendment issues raised by this story (exactly what is protected speech, and at what point should legislated morality take priority?), I was immediately struck by two other burning questions: Who, exactly is this ad targeting, and why on Earth would anyone convert to a vegetarian lifestyle because of a television spot featuring (presumably) comely women and produce?

One assumes that ads featuring scantily-clad women are aimed primarily at men (and a specific group of women), and that these people would be the targets of this particular appeal. I can’t speak for the women, of course, but for the most part, the primary concern that (heterosexual) men have on viewing a woman in revealing costume is not whether she eats meat. I supposed it is possible that a very small number of viewers might actually be attracted to a woman based on her eating habits, but I can’t imagine that element of our society is large enough to justify the cost of a Super Bowl ad. As to the content of the spot, we all know that sex sells, but it seems far-fetched to expect anyone to accept the premise that “if you stop eating meat, women like these will want to sleep with you,” which is the presumptive message in this case. It actually seems more likely that some of the flashy cars and/or personal grooming products that are advertised in this fashion would improve your chances more than a dietary change – and none of those claims seems particularly likely…

Which leaves only a few other possible explanations. One is that PETA has been using this same marketing approach on-line for several years now, presumably with some measure of success, and they believe that expanding their audience in this fashion will pay off. Unless they can specifically identify increases in membership (or at least in vegetarian lifestyles) as being associated with this form of advertising, however, it still seems like a waste of money and time…

A much more likely explanation is that PETA was hoping for precisely the chain of events which has actually happened: that their television spot would be rejected by the network censors, the story would be picked up by news agencies all over the Internet, and their message would be viewed by millions of people – and best of all, that they would never have to shell out the huge cost of a Super Bowl ad. If so, then we must conclude that the PETA people are much smarter than we had previously believed…

But if they think this is going to generate any mass conversions to their cause OR their lifestyle, they’re still likely to be disappointed…

Shorter Commercials? For Real?

It sounds obvious, I know. But a report this week on the Washington Post Online states that when a television network puts fewer – and shorter – commercial breaks into a show, the viewers like it more, and better still, are less likely to surf away from the channel. This cuts way back on the chances of those viewers finding something more interesting on the other channel and not coming back after the commercial break (all 3 minutes 16 seconds of it) is over. Apparently, telling them how long the commercial break will be (e.g. “Bob’s House of Spackle will return in 73 seconds”) works even better on both dimensions – the viewers are pleased to hear it, and less likely to surf away. Particularly if the announced break is really short…

Why this isn’t actually obvious has to do with the primary misconception that television viewers have about their programs – and the commercials, for that matter. You see, however much the viewing public may think (or hope) otherwise, television exists mainly for the purpose of selling advertising time. It’s sort of an unwritten, unspoken contract between broadcasters and the viewing public: you watch our 14 minutes of advertising and we’ll show you 46 minutes of entertainment, free of charge. This is why old-time cable channels charged money for their content: because they weren’t showing you ads, they had to make money some other way. Or, to look at it another way, instead of you watching the ads, you were just giving them money for the content directly…

Unfortunately, as the years passed people started messing with the contract. Television stations and producers started following the example of Hollywood movies and putting ads for products (called product placements) directly into the programs, and cable channels started to realize that people would still pay extra for their exclusive content if there were ads, and started selling ad space just like the broadcast stations. Worst of all was the “program crawl” concept – little animated ads or previews running along the bottom of the screen while the program was in progress, distracting the viewer and sometimes even blocking out critical parts of the picture. Viewers fought back with VCRs, editing out or fast-forwarding through commercials, and spending more time on DVD movies and the Internet. The introduction of digital video recorders like TiVo and television downloads for you iPod completely upset the balance, and today the broadcast networks are growing desperate to bring back their lost viewers…

Which brings us back to the concept of shorter, less invasive advertising. If the networks can demonstrate that shorter and less annoying commercial breaks result in more people watching their ads, they should be able to justify charging more for those ads and retaining the same revenue while improving their relationship with the viewers. It’s a better answer than those “sponsored by XYZ Corporation, with no commercial interruptions” concepts, because those shows usually open and close with hordes of XYZ Corp. commercials that no one watches, because the viewers know they’re coming. If the broadcast networks can back it up with some quality programming, they might even be able to turn the tide and restore their traditional contract with the viewers...

Therein lies the problem, of course. The viewing public has gotten a taste of programming on their schedule, of what they actually want to see, and without having to bother about advertising interruptions at all. It’s possible to regain their attention, if you have something new, unique, or at least interesting (I note here things like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which are neither new nor unique, but seem to interest a lot of people), but it’s going to be hard going to attract an audience without at least one of these elements. Regardless of how short your commercial breaks happen to be…

Travel by Blue Screen

I was watching ESPN the other day, and I noticed what has to be the most efficient travel operations method I have ever seen. The network is featuring a series of commentary programs supposedly transmitted live from each of the various NFL training camps around the country as the teams begin gearing up for the 2008-2009 season. Basically, the program consists of two on-air personalities sitting in director’s chairs at the edge of the practice field while the team works out, and chatting about the personalities that make up the team and the prospects each team has for this season. The on-air people claim to be visiting one camp per day, as they move randomly about the country…

I became suspicious of the whole thing early on, when I realized that the program wasn’t moving from one camp to the next nearest one; instead, they appear to be lurching about the country at random, from New York one day to Los Angeles the next day to Indiana the next day to San Diego the next, and so on. There’s no question that ESPN has the resources to actually charter a private jet and send two of their on-air people (plus their entire support crew, camera crew, and entourage) on jaunts like these, but it seemed a highly inefficient use of both money and staff time. This opinion was reinforced when I realized that neither of the two talking heads on the show was interacting with any of the people at the training camps; all of the “local” team interviews had been taped earlier or were part of press conferences held at some other time…

It wasn’t until they had the continuity malfunction that I caught onto the scam, however. About a week into the program the two on-air guys were starting their conversation for the day, when a couple of people started walking across the field behind them. Despite being behind the commentators, the two people walking were clearly closer to the camera than the men in front of them (e.g. they were larger and in better focus). That’s when I looked closely and realized that the two commentators were actually sitting in front of a blue screen; they weren’t actually at the camp, but rather were being digitally superimposed over the live feed…

I suppose many other sports fans (and television viewers) would have been offended by this trick; at the very least, they might have resented the network assuming that they (the viewer/fans) would be taken in by this simple trick. My reaction was quite the opposite: I thought it was the most brilliant idea I had heard in years. Since ESPN already has a camera operator or two covering each team (or at least has one based near enough to go and get some footage when needed), all they had to do was have one of their people in the field set up a camera on a tripod somewhere near each practice field, and then have two of their people sit down in front of a blue screen on the set in their broadcast center. No travel expenses, per diem, or even extra salaries involved…

Now, I’m not saying that every company could get away with this sort of thing, or should even try. In each of the ESPN “Training Camp” broadcasts, the commentators spent most of their time reviewing tape, playing interviews and game footage, showing pictures and diagrams, and generally discussing media other than the footage being shot of them at that moment. In point of fact, it really would not have made any difference at all if they had gone around the country and set up their broadcast set at each training camp, or if they’d just gone to the Bahamas and done the whole broadcast as a voice-over using their satellite phones. Most business travelers who are spending the company’s money and their own time traveling around the country for business have some concrete reason for actually going where they say they are going in person, and a conference call or videoconference is not always going to cut it…

Still, if your company needs to cut down on its travel expenses, you could always look into having your people try traveling by blue screen…

Too Good To Fail?

It’s funny how sometimes you will see a company launch and hear everybody talking about it like it’s foolproof – as if there is nothing that could bring it down, no way it could fail. For example, when Martha Stewart launched her “Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia” (hereinafter MSLO) a few years back, the initial public offering brought in over a billion dollars, and everyone was saying that with Martha’s name recognition, visual recognition, huge television and magazine audience, and many lucrative endorsement deals, there was no way her company could possible fail…

Which makes this week’s article in Slate.com truly amazing, considering that its title is “Martha Stewart's Company is Doomed!” It turns out that most of Martha Stewart Living’s income doesn’t come from the magazine, the television show, or any of the other media it manages. Despite the name, MSLO gets most of its money from merchandising deals, and in fact the bulk of that is coming from their contact with K-Mart. Unfortunately, the K-Mart contract only guaranteed huge payments through the year ending this past January. From here on out, MSLO will only be getting its agreed-upon share of the action, not a guaranteed minimum that is not pegged to sales figures…

To make matters worse, those sales have been declining rapidly. K-Mart has not been doing well in recent years, and the merger with Sears (another stricken retailer) has really not helped. With the ongoing mortgage crisis and the decline in the economy in general, fewer and fewer people are buying new house ware products in the first place, and those who do are being drawn away by other vendors and other endorsers. In particular, Rachael Ray is drawing away a lot of Martha’s younger viewers with her more accessible projects and activities, and her much more upbeat style. Ms. Ray has her own cooking show, despite having no formal training as a chef; does interviews and exposition in a folksy, common-woman style, and generally connects well with younger professional women who may not identify so much with the 67-year-old Stewart…

So what can MSLO and its iconic founder do about the situation? Some of the obvious measures are already in place, or being finalized, such as the new merchandising deals with Macy’s, Costco and KB Home, and it may be possible for the company to explore new retail channels, as well. They could also explore new media concepts, new celebrity endorsements for Martha herself, and collaborative projects with manufacturers and food processors, much like Ms. Ray and some of the other television competitors of the Martha Steward Show have done. They can start looking for new directions to expand their operations (preferably ones in which the market is healthier than anything connected to the Real Estate industry), and even possibly introducing new media products and new media personalities – assuming Martha can handle that…

The main lesson to all of the rest of us, though, is about not putting all of our freshly-collected eggs in our hand-made baskets. The single biggest problem MSLO has is that its entire operation is based around Martha Stewart herself, and when she began to lose popularity the company had nowhere else to go. The potential for new and innovative media creations (as well as the more obvious merchandising deals) is clearly there, but the company was thinking solely about promoting Martha, not about things Martha could present, promote, and make money off of, and thus painted itself into a corner…

There’s still time for MSLO to pull out of this tailspin, and I hope they do, but it’s going to take more than just looking for a new place sell products and new stations to carry a single television show…

Suspension of Disbelief

It's funny sometimes how things come full circle, or at least continue to decline. In the early days of television, some conservative commentators worried that the fact that police dramas always ended with the bad guys being caught and punished might one day convince the general public that all crimes (and indeed all problems) really could be resolved in just 46 minutes (allowing for commercials). Of course, this was garbage; most people knew the difference between television and fact, and no one really expected to have Joe Friday show up and solve real crimes. In recent times, however, the highly popular "CSI" television series really have begun to impact the prosecution of real crimes, since juries are starting to believe that crime scene investigators really have all of the cool-looking computers and bleeding-edge equipment shown on the programs. If the crime lab people on TV can use DNA evidence to know, within minutes, who the bad guy is, then the people in real life should be able to do that, too! And if they don't have such conclusive evidence, then obviously the defendant must be innocent...

It's just as bad for medical dramas and legal dramas, too, where everything is always clean, neat, and ready to go; no gray areas, no ethical dilemmas (unless that's the plot of today's show), no issues with red tape, court delays, insurance issues, stacks of paperwork or other things that don't make for good television. Why exactly people can't remember that these same media offerings also include such improbabilities as characters who never have to visit the toilet (unless that's part of the plot), parking spaces that are always open right in front of wherever the character needs to go, cell phones that always get perfect reception, restaurants that always have a table available and so on is beyond me. Granted that all acting (television, movies, stage plays, whatever) requires the audience to suspend their disbelief (you're not actually looking through a magic arch into somebody's living room, for example), no one has ever been able to explain why people fail to reinstate their disbelief once the program is over...

An article on the MSN Money site points out that this now applies to money issues, too. The fact is, people earning $86,000 per year (taking home about $5,600 a month) DO NOT live in quarters that rent for $5,000 a month, and young people on minimum wage jobs (or working as street performers, artists or whatever) do not live in quarters that cost $2,200 a month. They also don't spend 150% of their take-home pay on clothing, drive cars that cost more than my house, or eat out at $200-a-plate restaurants every night. Yet one could easily get that impression from a variety of popular television programs and movies – none of which have even a nodding acquaintance with reality.

Nor do matters improve any when we consider the portrayal of professionals. Not all doctors and lawyers earn what the senior partner of a top Wall Street firm makes, and nearly all of them have to deal with insurance and/or collections issues unknown on the small screen. Social dynamics are another area where a poor grip on reality seems to prevail: it's hard being the only poor member of a well-heeled social group, and such an individual will generally have the unappealing options of being excluded from group activities they can't afford or mooching off the better-off members of the group.

So why am I ranting on about all of this? What harm can these skewed perceptions do to our society in the real world? Well, just as CSI viewers can throw off jury trials with their unrealistic expectations, so can people with preposterous ideas about money throw off the economy. Just as sales of Dalmatian puppies shot up after “101 Dalmatians” hit theaters (despite the fact that they really don’t make good pets), and enrollments in cooking schools skyrocket every time there’s a “Next Celebrity Chef” or “Next Food Network Star” series running (despite the fact that most people can’t make it as a professional chef, and would be ill-advised to try), so to do people who actually believe in these preposterous fictional lifestyles attempt to buy houses they can’t afford, cars they will never make the payments on, and consumer goods they do not need…

Unless we can get them to re-engage their common sense, bring their disbelief back online once they leave the theater, and stop thinking that life is anything like TV…