Re: Sunday traffic curiosity

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

> On Mar 31, 2020, at 03:47 , Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom mu> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 23/Mar/20 22:54, Owen DeLong wrote:
>
> > That hasn’t been my observation at any of the local sports bars. I
> > actually have little to no interest in live sport (except maybe the
> > occasional curling match, yeah, I’m not just old, I’m odd).
>
> I think we each need to define what we mean by "the kids" :-).

From my perspective, anyone born in this century pretty much qualifies as
a kid at this point. Maybe even the last 3-4 years of the previous one.

> > Live sport seems quite popular among kids and millennials, at least in
> > the US.
>
> Yes, but as a proportion of those who drive how the Internet is
> re-defining traditional economies, how does that track?

Don’t know. Not a statistician, not a gatherer of demographic information.

I’ll leave that to those in the business of the surveillance economy which seems
to be the primary way in which the internet is redefining traditional economies.

Turning consumers into products. Personally, not a fan and I think GDPR is
a sure sign that there is a backlash coming. The main reason it is tolerated
so far is most people aren’t aware of what it really means or even that it
is actually happening.

> > From an African perspective, my anecdotal observation is that it is
> mostly really young kids (you're talking from as little as 4 - 5 years
> old) and women (both young and old) that are influencing this "I don't
> care about how it all works, just get me my value" paradigm that is the
> new economy. And in both cases, the majority of them don't have a
> penchant for sport, live or on-demand. Much of that is relegated mostly
> to men, from early-teen boys all the way to us geezers, a demographic
> that, in my observation, don't use the Internet as dynamically as "the
> kids" and women.

4-5 year olds don’t define the economy today and likely won’t have significant
input into it for at least 10-11 years.

My observation is that they are _NOT_ the ones influencing this. That rather,
it is the very large corporations and their ability to leverage big data and the
surveillance economy for fun and profit that are driving this.

I will admit that 4-5 year olds are probably the most likely demographic to
have no inkling as to what giving up their personal data means. I suppose
rather like tobacco companies that getting them hooked in young does serve
as a competitive advantage.

> > Personally, I wish I could stop paying the “fee for access to local
> > sports” that my linear provider charges every month.
>
> Africa's primary sports broadcaster, amazingly, includes access to all
> sports, games and matches (regardless of their significance) as part of
> the flat monthly subscription fee. Whether your poison is boxing, motor
> racing, football (American and soccer), basketball, the Olympics,
> baseball, rally cross, iron man, e.t.c., local and international. They
> do not have a pay-per-view concept yet. It is something they are
> considering as a way to keep themselves relevant in a VoD world, but for
> now (and since ever), all major and minor sports events come for no
> additional cost.

I wouldn’t know. I’m not a subscriber and not particularly interested in any of their
products. As I said, I wish I could get the local $CABLECO to turn off my “access
to local sports” and stop charging me a monthly fee for something I don’t want.

> > Nonetheless, the younger people around me supposedly driving this new
> > economy seem very focused on their love of live sports.
>
> Would be interesting to know what age these "younger people" are, and if
> they are male or female. I've found the gender does actually matter,
> when it comes to watching sports.

All genders seem to be relatively equally represented. Age range is probably
about 7-25. Here, it seems there are as many female sports fans as  male
among the younger crowds.

> > Well, for the moment, live sports aren’t happening, at least locally,
> > so how to televise them isn’t exactly an issue.
>
> We all agree on that - but almost every sports event considered (until
> the rolling lockdowns) how they can continue their events with some
> combination of the Internet in play.

Sure, they’re all desperate to try and find a way to preserve their revenue
stream.

> The thing with sport, though, is that participants have to play. No
> players, no event. So even if there was a good solution to moving sports
> to the new economy, scenarios like the Coronavirus keeps players off the
> playing field. That doesn't mean that outside of these extreme cases,
> sports organizers aren't considering how to use the new economy,
> especially when those driving it will have far more influence on it,
> than traditional sports lovers.

Perhaps Twitch won the lottery as professional sports may be forced to move
to remote competition via gaming consoles. :(

I tend to doubt it as I think fans will find other things to do rather than make
the migration.

> > I don’t think eSports will replace traditional sports,
>
> And they were never meant to. Just like Formula-E and Formula One, it's
> just another avenue open to those who are interested. It's not meant to
> replace what the petrol heads like.

I wasn’t the one arguing that they would. Seems your trying to argue both
sides of the coin here.

> > I think that for now, the sports organizations facing a sudden and
> > dramatic loss of revenue and progressively more distressed fans are
> > grasping at straws to find ways to keep their fans engaged, hoping for
> > a near-term return to normal revenue activities. Remains to be seen
> > how well that will work.
>
> And that is the new economy that the Coronavirus has amplified and
> accelerated. Listen to your customer, engage them, and offer value (not
> product). Every industry is affected. No one is immune. Old, traditional
> models, as sensible as they seem, are going to be challenged, and a ton
> of them will simply disappear.

Well, I don’t see the 49ers ever offered value, or product, but that’s just my
opinion, obviously. Certainly at the moment they don’t seem to be offering
anything, even anything like what they previously offered. Remains to be
seen whether the NFL and its ilk will survive this process or not. I have to
admit, I won’t mourn their loss if they don’t make it.

> For every call we make to Google Maps to get us from point A to B, there
> is a shop selling an atlas that is going out of business. You can't
> blame the Google, or the user, for that.

Uh, no… You’ve got that ratio way out of proportion and it’s not an accurate
statement at all, except the last part.

First, shops that sold atlases also sold other products and its unlikely that
in any of those cases, the loss of atlas sales alone would be more than a
blip in annual revenue.

Second, an atlas is good for hundreds, if not thousands of navigation events.
They aren’t single use devices, so more accurately, every thousand or so
calls to google maps to get us from point A to B represents an atlas that
didn’t get sold.

Third, most of the shops that used to sell atlases were book stores. They got
devastated by Amazon long before google maps was a thing.

I don’t blame google or amazon. Just like I have no sympathy for the taxi
cartels that were crying “they’re stealing our business” about Lyft and the
other ride-share companies. In fact, when the taxi cartels were getting away
with pressuring cities like Los Angeles to do crazy shit to stop Lyft and the
others from doing airport pickups, I rather went to extremes to apply opposing
pressure…

For example, at LAX, I’d set my pickup location to the hotel on the opposite
side of Sepulveda Blvd. as I was leaving terminal 7. In general, I’d arrive
in the hotel parking lot about 1-2 minutes before my ride did. Perfect.

At Las Vegas, it was a bit more complicated. You cannot walk out of McCarran
airport. The only ways out at the time were shuttle bus, private car, or taxi.
The shuttle buses (that would get you out of the airport) were all operated
by hotels  and it didn’t take them long to catch on and start checking
for reservations before letting you on the bus. Finally, I discovered that
there was a nice quiet neighborhood just outside the airport perimeter
that was just barely over the flag-drop price in a cab. I also discovered that
cabs wait in a very long line to do airport pickups. Doing so is usually
lucrative because they can depend on the long haul fare to downtown.
A short fare from the airport is a money-loser for them in a big way and
they have no way to turn it down. So I’d get a cab to the nearest drop
point in that neighborhood and then make a point of scheduling my
pickup while I was in the cab. As I got out, I let the cabby know why I
was doing what I was doing. If I got attitude, no tip. If they acknowledged
the validity of what I was doing, they got enough of a tip to be nearly
break even on the event.

Capitalism — I was voting with my $$.

Virtually all of those ridiculous policies have since been abandoned.

> > These have already been tried in a variety of ways, usually with
> > limited success.
>
> My advice is use the little time and money you have now to experiment
> with new models. 99% execution, 1% strategy; not the other way around.
> Don't wait until all the money and time runs out to experiment, and then
> you don't have any left of either.

I’m not in that position, fortunately. Old economy, new economy, either
way, they still need pipes to move bits. I’ve always been mostly on the
execution side of moving bits.

> > This idea that things can cost zero is the most frustrating part. I’m
> > so tired of not being able to buy apps instead of rent them. I’m fed
> > up to here with apps that come with ridiculous loads of advertising.
> > This shift from an ownership economy to a rental economy is terrible
> > and I wish that we could somehow educate the kids on how much more it
> > actually costs them.
> >
> > Possibly the worst artifact is the “If you’re not paying, you’re the
> > product” and the number of millennials that view the surveillance
> > economy with a kind of “Yeah, so what? Privacy is so 1990.” attitude.
>
> The folk on this list understand how it all works, which is why we
> either don't have Alexa in our homes and seal our laptop microphones and
> cameras with gaffer tape. For the rest of the world, they live in the
> Matrix, and to them, they spend more time chasing value. Being concerned
> about what they are giving up for that value is counter to their
> thought-process.
>
> The clever companies that know how to keep delivering that value will
> keep their customers hooked to "renting" it from them.

Meh… I think the most clever companies are the ones who have found
ways to keep their products hooked to them while delivering their value
to their true customers. Unfortunately, I think they are also among the
most despicable form of parasite we’ve ever seen.

> > Yep… It’s also growing because as they fragment further and further
> > (e.g. Disney launching their own and pulling content off Netflix),
> > each one sucks just a little bit more with each transition and the
> > price to the consumer to get everything they want keeps going up.
> > Eventually, aggregators that can offer some form of a la carte
> > licensing are going to spring into existence to meet that demand, but
> > for now, the content providers aren’t ready because they haven’t lost
> > enough customers to this frustration yet.
>
> Agreed.
>
>
> > Not so sure about that. More and more people I talk to are finding
> > less and less interesting on Netflix. Producing their own content has
> > been Netflix’s response, but eventually, that model just turns them
> > into yet another single-studio outlet.
>
> You spoke too soon:
>
>    
> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/netflix-market-cap-surpasses-disney-123801623.html
>
> But yes, I see what you mean; and for as long as VoD operators keep this
> as their goal, linear TV will never die.

Market cap is merely one measure. It represents the current market opinion of the
legitimate sale price of the company and little else.

Nonetheless, even if Netflix turns out to be a better single-studio outlet than Disney,
everything I said still holds true.

> > If I had to wager on the last man standing in that arena, I think I’d
> > say Disney to win, NBC/Universal to Place and tough to say who picks
> > up the Show position.
>
> I disagree, if your position is a global one.
>
> Sure, Disney are very likely to challenge Netflix in the U.S., but they
> don't seem - to me anyway - like they have the right DNA to take their
> game global, in the way Netflix has, and does.

Really? Are you sure you’re accounting for all that is Disney? 

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/companies-disney-owns-worldwide/

ATV, RTL 2, RDS, Tele 5, Kividoo ring any bells to your non-US crowds? Yep, all of those are
Disney.

They also have the world wide distribution rights for Studio Ghibli (though they don’t actually
own it).

Source: https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/companies-disney-owns-worldwide/

> Netflix have 3 very key things going for it that give it far greater
> global presence than any other U.S. VoD service provider:
>
>     - Their own-produced content, meaning they can release without
> restriction.

So can Disney, Comcast/NBC/Universal, and Time Warner.

>     - Their own, well-deployed network, meaning performance is always
> excellent.

Disney has a lot more of this than I think you realize.

Not sure about the international extent of Comcast and/or Time Warner.

>     - Country-specific content to identify with the locals.

This may well be the one place where Netflix does, indeed, have some advantage.
I have to admit that one of my favorites on Netflix has been a show from Spain about
the early days of telephony in Madrid.

> DIsney and many of the new VoD providers with a Hollywood background are
> relying on their "vast" libraries that made them wealthy decades ago to
> take over Netflix's market. The problem is my kids aren't interested in
> the "Lion King", for example. That's for you and me, the old timers;
> they have zero interest in trying to figure out who "Mickey Mouse" is.
> It's just the way they are…

This statement tells me that you CLEARLY have underestimated the vast extent
of the Disney reach and don’t realize how many things you wouldn’t expect when
you hear the name Disney are owned by Disney.

> > You enjoy. I have no actual interest in linear TV for sports and
> > amusingly, the linear programming that I do watch is recorded by my
> > TiVO and time shifted so I can skip the stupid commercials.
>
> For me, it's about seeing every business squirm as they are forced to
> re-think old strategies. The Coronavirus caught them off guard, but it
> was always coming.

Again, I don’t see every business squirming. I see lots of businesses squirming.

I see some businesses that were poised to take advantage of this (and yes,
Netflix was one of them), and I  see some businesses that have been easily
adapted. I also see some businesses that have chosen to be flat out despicable
in the process, among them Whole Foods and Amazon, both of whom could
have chosen to be public heroes with very little effort and instead chose to
be 19th century plantation owners.

> > The only time I watch ads is when they’re more interesting than the
> > superbowl, which is pretty much every superbowl.
>
> Well then, I'm sure you enjoyed Volvo's clever "interception marketing"
> number from 2015's superbowl:
>
>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzWlm9PFamQ

Admittedly, 2015 was one of the years I was lucky enough to avoid the Super Bowl.

Hats off to volvo for a clever bit of trickery, but I didn’t even know it happened and don’t
feel like I missed anything in the process.

> A perfect example of the new economy, where your competition is anyone
> with an Internet connection and an idea :-).

Meh.

I’ve got an internet connection and lots of ideas. What I don’t have is the capital
to hire the necessary additional expertise and convert them to products. Further,
since I want to play in the anti-surveillance economy with products that are
directly opposed to those in the surveillance economy, it’s unlikely I can get
funding or that the products I would like to make would actually win in the market
place.

Owen