September 2006 Archive
September is one of my favorite months of the year. Once the NBA Finals end in June, the sports fan in me goes into hibernation for a long three months as the airwaves are filled with that mind numbingly boring thing called baseball. As the calendar rolls out of August, the real national pastime — football — blasts out of the gate and my wife becomes a pigskin widow until after the Super Bowl.
As much as I love the NFL, I wish I didn’t hate NFL television coverage so much. Every year I hold out hope that this will be the season that the networks fire all the broadcasters that annoy me, cut the overproduced kickoff and half time specials, and just focus on the freakin’ football.
This season marks the beginning of several new broadcasting contracts, but alas, the new blood has brought nothing fresh to the table. CBS and FOX reupped with the league for about $8 billion, DIRECTV renewed its NFL Sunday Ticket package for $3.5 billion, NBC got back in the game for $600 million after a long hiatus, and Disney has moved the venerable Monday Night Football from ABC to sister network ESPN.
That’s a heck of a lot of money to toss around, and given the investment, the naive side of me hoped the networks would do more to reach out to fans and improve their football experience. But here’s the rub: Football fans are a captive audience. We have absolutely no choices when it comes to game coverage and the league doesn’t care, as long as it gets paid. Whatever the NFL tosses our way is what we are forced to take in. Period. It’s a monopoly in every sense of the word.
All aspects of the game fall into this take it or leave it mentality. Game coverage: Since I live in Texas, every Sunday I primarily get to watch the Dallas Cowboys (who I hate) or the Houston Texans (who I’d love to root for but they suck). Only with DIRECTV, which I don’t want, can I see any game I choose. Announcers: John Madden’s half-senile, unintentionally hilarious musings (”They lead the league in Johnsons,” he commented when referring to all the Cincinnati Bengals players named Johnson) to the mere presence on MNF of Joe Theismann, an utterly horrible broadcaster that football fans loath. Studio Crews: Just as bad as the announcers, especially the brutally unfunny Terry Bradshaw and cohorts on FOX.
Musical guests, though, are the most incomprehensible element of NFL coverage. I don’t know what marketing study convinces the NFL suits that performances (if lip synching counts as a, “performance”) by Diddy, Beyonce, and Rascal Flatts is the best way to kick off a season. That’s as ludicrous as Ashlee Simpson singing at the Rose Bowl a couple years back.
Of course, maybe I get too worked up about all this and should try to tune it out and just enjoy the game. I know it’s buried in there somewhere.
Our society’s evolution toward push-button gratification took another step forward with the recent announcement that both Amazon and Apple Computer are selling movies and TV shows for download across the Internet. The nascent business of selling and distributing movies on the grid has so far attracted limited attention from investors and consumers alike, but with two of the biggest names in e-commerce getting into the ring, downloading movies and TV shows could soon replace buying and renting DVDs.
While both services look compelling, Amazon’s Unbox has the advantage of a bigger catalog of movies to choose from. Apple, meanwhile, launched its movie service with just 75 titles from Disney and Pixar — two companies Steve Jobs is personally and financially connected to — though additional films from other studios are sure to become available over time. Both services also require proprietary software to work, although Apple’s iTunes system is compatible with both Mac and PC platforms; the Unbox player only works on Windows PCs, so Mac users need not apply.
One big limitation with any system of downloading movies from the Internet is the fact that those files can only be played on a computer, and it remains to be seen if consumers really want to watch a Hollywood blockbuster sitting in front of their computer screen. Apple, though, appears to have provided the solution to that issue and it just might have a few executives at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Netflix quaking in their boots over the loss of DVD sales and rentals.
At the end of his presentation announcing the iTunes movie service, Jobs unveiled a device called iTV (a working title they’re sure to change) that allows both video and audio media to be streamed from a PC to the living room. The whole thing is run by remote control, seamlessly integrating itself into the couch potato lifestyle, and it even supports wireless networking so there will be no cables to run from the office or den or wherever the PC is located. Apple won’t have the iTV ready for shipping until early next year, but it very well could be the manna from heaven we media junkies have been waiting for.
Steve Jobs, I hate you for making me love you.
A passel of professional investors are salivating after Freescale Semiconductor, with figures of $16 billion or more being thrown around. The news came out just weeks after Royal Philips Electronics agreed to sell 80% of its semiconductor division to a consortium of private equity firms for $4.35 billion, plus $5 billion in debt.
As Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies might put it: “One billion dollars – times 16.”
Now, back up a minute, there. Billions of real dollars are being offered for semiconductor companies? Chip makers that operate in a boom-or-bust industry that often goes from the Garden of Eden to Death Valley in a matter of weeks? Well, yes. Semiconductors are sexy again, at least to big-time investors.
How did this happen, especially when Intel, the capo di tutti capi of chip firms, is getting rid of thousands of employees, including managers? The answer may be in your own hand, especially if you’re clutching a cell phone, an iPod, or the remote control for your ginormous flat-screen TV at the moment. Consumer electronics are driving a worldwide chip business that hit a record $227.5 billion in 2005, topping the prior record of $213 billion set in 2004. The Semiconductor Industry Association forecasts growth of 10% for this year, to a new record of nearly $250 billion.
The private equity investing business is subsequently throwing bigger and bigger sums of money out there for chip makers: $2.66 billion for Avago Technologies, $3 billion for Sensata Technologies, $9 billion-plus (including $5 billion in debt) for Philips Semiconductors (which is changing its name to the puzzling NXP), and you-tell-me for Freescale Semi when that shooting match is over. Break out the champagne! Happy days are here again! We’re going to party like it’s…what? Texas Instruments forecasts that Q3 sales and earnings are going to be a little lower than expected?
Oh. Never mind.
Advanced Cell Technology, which made front page news around the world last month with its claim that scientists had obtained stem cells from embryos without destroying them, is now fielding hard questions about its research from other scientists. The company’s business practices are also facing scrutiny.
Scientist Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge told the BBC the day of the stem cell announcement in the science journal Nature that: “I am unconvinced by the ethical arguments - spare IVF embryos used to derive the cell lines would have been destroyed anyway.”
After Dr. Lovell-Badge’s statement, Nature asked Advanced Cell Technology’s head of research, Dr. Robert Lanza, to clarify his work. Not one but two press releases, as reported by The Scientist’s blogger Brendan Maher, were sent out by the Nature press office over the next several days to clarify the original announcement. They stated that though stem cells were indeed grown from one cell extracted from an 8-to-10 cell blastomeres, those embryos were destroyed in the course of Dr. Lanza’s research.
The company maintains that it did not intentionally mislead the press, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But Advanced Cell Technology clearly caused the scientific and the lay press to look like bunglers for rushing a hot-button story out to the public without examining the underlying science more carefully.
I’m no scientist, but as I wrote in a previous entry, the company has made other grand announcements about its research at around the same time it needed money to keep the company running. In 2001 and 2003 (before its reverse merger), the company claimed that it had developed procedures to clone embryos and thus harvest stem cells ethically. However, neither produced viable stem cells for biomedical research. It then merged with a publicly traded shell company that formerly manufactured Hopi katchina dolls. The move enabled Advanced Cell Technology to raise equity in the public markets.
That’s not all — a quick peek at the company’s recent SEC filings and press releases reveals even more interesting developments in this story: The company privately financed new debt to investors, including Anthem Venture Partners (who own 20% of ACT), that netted the company some $13 million in cash. The deal closed on September 8, 2006. CEO William Caldwell IV told the UPI, “We expect the proceeds generated by these financings will fund preclinical studies and accelerate our progress to commencement of the clinical studies necessary to develop real treatments that tap the amazing promise of stem cell technology.”
The company may also want to make sure that breakthrough technology it developed for the ethical harvesting of stem cells actually works.
The US Postal Service is eliminating its numbered-ticket system from all of its statewide branches in the coming weeks, according to The Arizona Daily Star. Traditionally, postal customers would take a numbered ticket from a dispenser and wait for that number to be announced to receive service. Very soon, however, customers will simply have to form a line and wait their turn.
It’s no wonder that the likes of UPS, FedEx, and DHL have thrived in recent years as business owners have sought out less time-consuming options for their shipping needs. It also seems there’s a UPS Store or Mail Boxes Etc. around every corner these days; while they offer both postal and various shipping services, they usually don’t have the wait.
The post office change, according to USPS spokesman Rob Soler, was made to (insert polite cough here) reduce waiting times and (insert more insistent cough here) increase efficiency. Must be something stuck in my throat.
Soler further explained that when customers’ numbers were called in the past, oftentimes they would be in another room checking their postal boxes. Each no-show would delay a postal clerk by as much as 30 seconds. Considering how sloooooooowwwwwllllyyyy the clerks at my post office work, 30 seconds is but a speck in the time-space continuum. Don’t get me wrong, folks. I’m not saying that the numbered-ticket system is God’s gift to efficiency. I recall – and not so fondly, I might add – taking a number as a kid every time I stepped foot inside a Baskin Robbins. Heck, departments of public safety all over the place still use the technology to control walk-in traffic. It is, all in all, just another method of making us wait.
The thing is, with the numbered-ticket system, I don’t have to stand in line in order to wait my turn. I can browse across the latest collectible stamp offerings, or poke around for spare change from the self-serve stamp machines. Or (try and keep up with me on this one) I can even take a seat until my number is called.
Evidently Arizona post offices are among the last in the nation to scrap the numbered-ticket system, which makes me wonder when the location near my home will be killing it off.
Hopefully not before Christmas.