LEVERAGE 2: 5 Stages of Grief of a TV Guest Star

Yay, finally a video where someone comes across as creepier than I do!



For what it's worth, Ryan and Rachel are now my favorite "characters" in my workplace. How meta is that?

C'mon California!

This is just embarrassing.

Governor Signs LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom

May 6, 2009

AUGUSTA – Governor John E. Baldacci today signed into law LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom.

“I have followed closely the debate on this issue. I have listened to both sides, as they have presented their arguments during the public hearing and on the floor of the Maine Senate and the House of Representatives. I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully,” Governor Baldacci said. “I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste.”

“I appreciate the tone brought to this debate by both sides of the issue,” Governor Baldacci said. “This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest and honest people on both sides of the question.”

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Governor Baldacci said. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

I mean, Iowa was one thing. But Maine? We're California people. We're Hollyweird, Soddom and frikkin Gomorrah San Francisco boogeymen. And we can't even do this?

Let's face it, Cali. Time to turn in the indie cred, release the greatest hits album and move the main show to a stage in Branson.

4GM: The Plausible Premise and the iTunes Monopoly

A while ago Dean sent me this Variety article. The upshot -- the networks are moving to video, but the ad revenues aren't there. Here, for me, are the nut graphs:

So why are the networks investing in sites like Hulu and allowing widespread online distribution of their costly exclusive programs? Because they saw what happened to record labels, which avoided the Internet for years when they couldn't figure out how to protect their old business model. In the process, they lost millions of consumers to piracy and other digital-friendly alternatives. Thanks to faster connection speeds and cheaper storage, accessing video is about as easy now as music was a nearly decade ago when Napster began making headlines.

(SNIP)

Which leaves Hollywood in a Catch-22: If it doesn't follow increasingly wired consumers online, it could lose future generations to piracy, amateur YouTube clips and videogames. But if too many people switch to services like Hulu too fast, the business model of television could collapse.

First off, the phrase "piracy, amateur YouTube clips and videogames" is in the wrong order. Videogames come first in that list of threats.

Where was I -- oh, well, yes. The business model of television will collapse. I'm not bloody HAPPY about it. The business model of television pays me quite nicely, thank you very much. However ...

... right, detour, stay with me. Our favorite new-warfare guy Jon Robb writes about the "plausible premise" in new open-source insurgencies. I'm not going to get into his new warfare theory, but basically what you really need is a plausible premise. i.e. "You can kill US soldiers with IEDs." and then the new Interconnected Marketplace Of Shitty Evil Ideas will solve the problem for anyone looking to kill US soldiers with IEDs.

Or, more succinctly, in order to get the marketplace off its ass to solve the impossible, you have to just pull off the highly improbable and make sure everybody knows about it. Show it can be done, show how you did it, and watch the "marketplace" attack because you've made the "premise" "plausible".

Now what's kind of interesting here is that everybody in TV looks at the music industry collapse as the Bad Story and iTunes as the plausible premise for digital entertainment distribution. iTunes makes money. QED, there is money to be made in digital distribution.

But drawing this conclusion ignores one of the fundamental facts about iTunes -- it is a de facto monopoly. As Clay Shirky writes quite shinily here, a series of lawsuits and circumstances cut off pretty much all other music distribution channels online. Tying the system in to great hardware was the clincher, of course, accelerating the process. But end of day, if you're buying a song quickly, easily and legally in the US, you're buying it from iTunes.

The TV humans are missing the point of this plausible premise -- you can make money off digital distribution as long as you have a monopoly. It's a little shocking that they're missing this, as the massive financial success of the entire television industry up until recently was based on them having a monopoly. A taxpayer-funded monopoly, no less.

Now, let's see how many ways I can watch HEROES right now, off the top of my head:

1.) On NBC when broadcast - ad supported

2.) On NBC.com - ad supported

3.) On HULU - ad supported.

4.) XBOX LIVE - direct purchase

5.) iTunes - direct purchase

6.) Amazon Video on Demand - direct purchase

7.) Netflix - streaming, subscription ... hell, I have no idea what this revenue model is. Oh, and that Netflix is now available on cable boxes and game consoles.

(You'll note that these revenue streams all pay different factions in different percentages.)

This, my friends, is not a monopoly. If you want to continue to do an ad-supported model ("the business model of television"), then every streaming version -- and broadcast is theoretically a really dumb streaming version that's riding on the remnants of the old monopoly -- takes viewers away from every other streaming version. In an extra special bit of stupid, NBC Universal is actually competing with itself by putting streaming episodes on both NBC.com and Hulu. Now I'm sure there are cross-platform advertising bundles in play, but it's still a dilution of the brand.

Ironically, CBS's utter refusal to stream their shows, generally seen in the industry as a failing, is the smart play. You want a CBS show, you either watch/tivo it -- where the ad pricing from the old monopoly still creates at least a framework for monetization -- or you buy it once the advertising bloom is off the rose, and the money filters back into the Viacomm coffers. Or you pirate it. And we have yet to see a single reliable statistic on revenue loss due to piracy.

So what's going to happen?

No idea*. But in the short run the smartest thing for all the studios who already have programming on Hulu is to shut down all video streaming on their network home pages. Hulu got there first and fastest. If you're not on Hulu, get on it, or shut down streaming on your own site to take advantage of what's left of the old model. If you must have broadcast and streaming exist simultaneously, then force the streaming monopoly.

Apple's advantage in iTunes was that they weren't a music company. They could fuck another industry with a clear conscience in order to establish their monopoly. (This, btw, is why Apple TV sucks. They tried to play too nice with the studios) What's tricky is that there's going to be a lot of factional infighting in these companies as we move to the new model, because:

Hulu is owned by the studios who own the networks that Hulu is going to kill.

Ironically, whoever comes up with the Magic Box that moves streaming internet to the TV in a grandma-friendly way will win. This means that if the studios were smart, they'd be hammering at that tech, pouring money into it like mad so they own it, rather than fighting it. Of course, they're content companies, not tech companies, so that's probably not a priority.

And in the end, Netflix will win. But that's another post.

* Well, actually, I think download's going to die or be subsumed into the equivalent of a cable premium fee for "access" to the material. But that's more a gut instinct than an arguable position.

Guitar Friday: The Fender Blues Jr.

by M A N


Hands down, this is my favorite amp. Which, of course, begs the question: why is a guy like me who cut his teeth with 80s shred in love with a little 15 watt peanut butter sandwich of an amp? Because. It. Sounds. Amazing.

The Blues Jr. has a single 12" speaker, 3 12AX7 tubes in the pre-amp, 2 EL84 tubes in the output section and is rated at 15 watts. 15 watts? That's it? Yep. Don't let the little size fool you. Those 15 watts pack a punch. I've annoyed more than a few neighbors when I used to have one. Naturally, this isn't going to be the amp you'd use on a large stage without any PA system, but it's perfect for studios and smaller stages.

As for the tone, you won't find anything that sounds better in its price range. It has that rich, warm tube sound that most players crave. It's great for getting SRV's tone without dropping 3 grand on a vintage Bassman amp or a tweaked out Twin. And this is where the 15 watts comes in handy. Unlike 100 watt Marshalls or Mesa Boogies , you can push the tubes into their "sweet spot" without having to turn it up so loud that it disrupts the migratory patterns of the local bird population. The Blues Jr. has a both a Volume and a Master control. The Volume controls the pre-amp and the saturation of the 3 12AX& tubes, allowing you to dial in everything from a smooth, crisp, clean sound to a fat and dirty cruch. The Master controls the overall volume of the amp, letting you crank the saturation while still keeping the neighbors happy.

Another great thing about this amp is that it is easily modified. There are several enclaves of people devoted to the tweaking and modding of these little titans, from switching out the speaker for a 12" Celestian Greenback to tweaking the bias and hotrodding the pre-amp section, turning the amp into a full-on Boogie clone.

Although the amp is versatile, it's more geared toward blues, classic rock, and country players. You can throw a Metal Zone in front of it and get all the thrash goodness you want, but the amp really shines when it's left to its own devices (though I like to throw a dyncomp and a blues driver in front). As for price, they're more expensive now than they were ten years ago, but still worth every penny. If you're looking for a stage amp that doubles as a monitor, you'll want something bigger. But if you're looking for an amp that just drips buttery tone, the Blues Jr. is for you.