Interesting LiveWire info:
Uncovered courtesy of Steve Hausser. Thanks Steve.
LMG & ACTV:
Our partner Liberty Livewire is not quite ready to implement their strategy on convergence. This will happen very shortly.
Liberty Livewire has an oligopoly on post production. Their are only a few minor houses left. One is owned by Rupert Murdoch. I asked John Malone if they would be able to give him any competition, he smiled and said ."no, besides they will be doing business through us anyway. Rupert owes me". On top of owning the post production busuness, he now "owns" HyperTV convergence. Liberty has concluded our patents are iron clad.
Every time that you see what you would consider to be an infringement on HyperTV you should cheer. It just validates our product. I feel for the architect of all of this, Bill Samuels. He has to bite his tongue. Remember, this is Liberty's strategy. As for those who infringe, THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY! Short term stock prices are not part of the equation. Astronomical long term gains are going to be the end result.
Its not ACTV now, its Liberty calling these shots. If you think someone is going to beat Liberty, AT&T and SUNW in the HyperTV game, you should consider selling. The fact is, THEY CAN'T.
For those who missed my post from the Liberty Media Conference:
Tom Wolzien who has been covering Liberty Media for years said that he's "never seen them promote ANY company like that before, ever". Since he really can't comment on the company much more than that because of conflicting interests, I congratulated him and said the the "Wolzien Process" will be getting a lot of exercise around the globe. He beamed.
After David Beddow explained the consolidation of TODDA, FOUR and Soundelux he said that it is becoming increasingly important to have interactivity and that they will need an entire unit to do this and that they will "promote this unit very heavily".
SUNW will provde the hardware AT&T will do Internet hosting and HyperTV/Livewire will provide the platform and IP. No more knocking on doors for HyperTV deals for Samuels and Crowley. They have ubiquity and they OWN the space. As Beddow told the audience after telling of ABC's "experimental" use of the product, "It is hard to believe that one company has patents to cover this ENTIRE area". He then described them as method patents. He then said this about HyperTV:
"We are going to do everything we possibly can to promote the wide scale use of this product IMMEDIATELY! Advertising agencies and programmers will participate in the upside".
Remember that they plan on delivering this product to 850 cities and 60 countries.
Malone was visibly pumped and nodding his head in approval at this point. He spoke earlier of the synergies between Livewire, LDIG and Encore and that Beddow would do a good job of explaining this in his presentation. So it is becoming clear that he has further use of our products. During Q&A Malone commented that Beddow left out an "intriguing component, digital advertising. Advertising is the biggest in digital form. To make it interactive we need the infrastructure.....when we can send an individual house an individual ad[it will be huge]. We hope to be a major player in this through OUR AFFILIATES."
I think that neither Bill Samuels nor Lee Masters would be surprised if the journalists and analysts in attendance didn't understand the presentations on Livewire and Liberty Digital. I spoke to both of them about this matter. Lee Masters went as far as to post his email address, phone, and home phone number to everybody in attendance saying to call if you don't get it( don't call at home unless you want to buy at least 500,000 shares). So bear this in mind.
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