What Price Olympic Glory?

The Beijing Olympics ended less than a month ago, yet television networks worldwide are already calculating their bids for national media rights to the 2014 and 2016 Games. The key word here is media. Because increasingly ad revenues are being derived from non-traditional sources, including streaming video, podcasts, VOD and distribution via mobile devices.

Talk about a gamble... It's not just a question of NBC trying to figure out how people will use existing digital technologies six to eight years from now, but also what impact new (as yet unimagined) innovations might have. There's also the problem of "digital seepage." No doubt foreign rights holders will be on-line with own Olympic program streams as well. With viewers becoming increasingly tech savy, they may start designing their own personal Olympic screening schedules.

But despite the current economic climate, I'm sure broadcasters will be able to somehow scrape together the billions of dollars necessary. I'm less confident they'll be able to maintain the national distribution monopolies they've enjoyed in the past. Makes Las Vegas-style Texas Hold 'Em actually seem tame.

How 'bout that Cloris Leachman, huh?

In response to someone who accused my posts of perpetuating "Doon and Gloom," you should know that the other night I spent some "quality time" watching the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars. Another ratings sucess for ABC. And how 'bout that Cloris Leachman, huh?

Initially Talent/Reality shows, like Dancing with the Stars, were seen by network executives as little more than stop-gap programming during and after the writers strike. But as viewers of traditional programming migrate to more daring cable fare, Talent/Reality shows are filling the ratings gap. The genre is especially popular with the 20% of the country doesn't have cable or satellite. Like it or not, increasingly they are the "core" audience for broadcast networks.

So I predict more primetime singing and dancing in the weeks to come. In addition to the on-going Presidential campaign, that is...

We Never Saw It Coming

While time and again the media is making comparisons between America's current economic crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930's, there is one central element that they seem to miss. Today's financial chaos was born out of my generation's love of debt.

Whether it was the CEO's and stockholders of multi-billion dollar corporations, or average homeowners, everyone wanted to leverage their existing assets in order to create greater wealth. And debt was the way to do it.

This would have struck my parents, children of The Depression, as sheer folly. Their generation knew nothing is ever certain in life, that cherished assumptions could disappear virtually overnight. Sudden bank failures. Valuable stock certificates reduced to scrap paper. They'd seen it all.

My generation, raised during the prosperous decades following World War II, only knew optimism. Our parents sacrificed so we could enjoy. And enjoy we did! Yet, in the great scheme of things, a few decades isn't a particularly long period of time. (Even if the big hair and padded shoulders of the 1980's now seem like another century...)

We had no idea things could ever go so wrong. Or that we didn't understand the implications of the complex financial strategies we so eagerly embraced. My generation is largely a stranger to sacrifice, adherents to a philosophy that assumed life inevitably progresses, and with it comes personal fulfillment and inevitable wealth.

The fact that the news media is missing this story shouldn't be surprising either. The reporters and editors charged with unraveling this puzzle -- Gen X, Gen Y and Millennials -- are even further removed from the events, the psychology and the tragedies that took place nearly 80 years. Having failed to learn those lessons ourselves, it's not surprising we didn't pass them along.