Useful dialogue, dcrice. Y'know, Jobs has it right: 'Think Different.'
Amusing you find AXC/AEN/Reiter/TVW a worthy business model in light of your fascination with content and critique of its "aggregation." Very well. Understand your arguments, of course, but they support my points. (Still, welcome aboard AXC.)
Now, I'm not gonna deny that content drives eyeballs. Having been Elvis' product manager in a former life, I can assure you that "content" is the only reason you fill the house. But here's a dirty little secret from the King and Col. Tom: Both content and eyeballs need *agents*.
You might even be right about some bot-driven future access metaphor--where one simply barks at a videowall and up comes..."1984!"
But you're gonna pay to play. If that's not what you're after, you'll be confronting the familiar face of a portal and indulging it plenty of commercial and e-commerce airtime. Hey, wasn't pay TV supposed to be "commercial-free?" Okay, so the issue of "user control" is relative.
I'm reminded of the enduring and remarkable relevance of a throwaway line expressed to me over twenty years ago by Paul Klein, co-founder of Home Box Office and former programming honcho for NBC:
"People don't watch programs; they watch...television."
Klein went on to call for two things he thought could represent the solution to the scourge of television--a state that, alas, has never been achieved, even with hundreds of channels now available. Paul's hot buttons were:
1) "Ease of Access," and
2) "Diversity of Choice."
Don't think what he had in mind was..."All Monica, All the Time!"
Okay, let's do a little business. What I'm saying is that, like the past, the future will not be binary. It will be, well, "messy." A firm like BCST will not hit a proverbial brick wall because it will grow with its culture and hatch vast numbers of new initiatives. For example, it will create revenue-sharing deals for sports and entertainment content; it will produce and own a prodigious variety of original material; it will finance special projects and "made for Internet TV" productions. It will host the broadcasts of your son's Little League games. It will pioneer virtual worlds. And most importantly, it will bring Interactive Business TV to every workplace desktop in America.
You wouldn't have read it in the business plan, but BCST is about a Big Picture: Everyone gets a TV station with which Everyone Else can interact. (You'll soon see this concept emerging at BCST's SimpleNet subsidiary.) And of course, BCST will always provide a distribution vehicle, a ready audience, and logistics support for content people of all stripes. Without big-footprint firms like BCST providing leadership, organization, traction and hype, content just can't cut through the noise.
Rush Limbaugh and Art Bell are newsworthy, and that's why they matter today. Tomorrow, it will be other messengers of controversy. You know, if what BCST is doing were easy, don't you think a swarm of others would have already stepped up to the plate? Well, one recently did, but it's no conventional broadcaster: As a testament to BCST and a validation of its mission, enter CMGI with a $100 million+ warchest...
To answer your question about VDAT's following the BCST train, consider the following chart. It's pretty clear BCST had to make noise to legitimate Internet broadcasting. It appears that liftoff was achieved for the sector in early December, about 4.5 months after BCST's IPO. Clinton and Glenn helped, but the credit goes to BCST's "buzz" machine. (Conventional media players DIS and TWX included for reference.)
techstocks.com
Why did VDAT "outperform" BCST during this interval? I suspect you already know the answer, but for the record:
Even now, VDAT's market cap is under $75 million (02/27/99); the stock's 52-week low was $1.19.
BCST's market cap is about $2.9B (02/27/99); the stock's 52-week low was $16.38 (split-adjusted).
Thus, as a substantial percentage change is easily accomplished from a low base, a short-term stock-price performance bake-off is meaningless. Nonetheless, you win a Bronze Star for the courage of your convictions, especially if you invested in VDAT at $1.19. (And a Silver Star/Purple Heart combo to long-suffering AXC shareholders, who lived through an ignominious low of $0.6875!)
Let me conclude with a final remark about your uncertainty as to how BCST "will evolve their business model to make money long-term." (Interesting you went to Harvard because this case, along with AMZN's, should hit Cambridge by Fall.)
Like AMZN, BCST is an arresting exercise in unconventional wisdom. If you think of it as a TV network or media company, you'll apply the wrong metrics, leave money on the table and--worst of all--miss the sound of history being made.
"Elvis has left the building..."
BAM
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