Recasting My TV

I’ve recast my TV situation with a new Amazon Recast.

I cut the cord on regular cable about six years ago, and in that six years my TiVo Premiere box and an RCA indoor digital antenne did a fine job of providing me plenty of free content to watch.

Only it wasn’t free, because I was paying $15.99/month to TiVo every month for the past six years.

So now I’ve cut yet another cord with my purchase of an Amazon Recast.

What is that, you ask?  It’s like a TiVo, only I don’t pay $15.99 a month. Once I bought the Recast box, the OTA content is as it should be, free.

Recast is basically an OTA DVR, but it’s beauty is it’s also tied into the Amazon ecosystem, so I’m able to control the programming both with an Amazon Fire Stick and an Amazon Tap speaker.

It also didn’t require anything to hook up to my older (2014 model) Samsung Smart TV, as everything works through the Fire Stick and the Recast via wifi (as long as they’re both on the same network).

In terms of the interface, it’s not unlike a TiVo (or any other programming guide), and the synergy with the Amazon Echo ecosystem is pretty seamless so far (although I’m still figuring out all the different commands).

I’ll know more in another week or two.

Speaking of tying up ecosystems, Walmart has announced that it will let customers order groceries by voice through Google’s smart-home assistant, “an attempt to counter Amazon.com Inc.’s growing clout in e-commerce, reports Bloomberg.

Beginning this month, Walmart shoppers can add items directly to their online shopping carts by saying “Hey Google, talk to Walmart.” Information from prior purchases will help identify the correct brand and size — like whether you drink 1 percent or skim milk without having to specify, according to Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior vice president of digital operations. In a blog post Tuesday, he said customers can tweak their orders at home or from their smartphone while on the go.

As a loyal Walmart customer, I guess I’ll starve for now when it comes to ordering with my Amazon Tap.

But at least I can make my TV go!

The Bigger Picture

I was laid up most of this past weekend with allergies and a related head cold, so I didn’t make it out to the golf course or even to the Austin green belt for some mountain biking.

But I did spend a lot of time watching sports on TV, starting with the Cotton Bowl on Friday night, some English Premier League games on Saturday morning, some NFL wild card games on Saturday afternoon, some FA cup games Sunday morning, and then more NFL games yesterday.

It was a footballers weekend, and because of the rains and winds acting up in Hawaii, I missed most of the first PGA event of the year (but I have that one on DVR!)

To top it all off, I watched “Jurassic Park” again for the first time since when it first came out in 1993 (Loved those DOS prompts on the computer screens for the park’s security systems!)

All this TV watching got me to thinking about the coming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Seems like everyone I know is asking me if I’ll be there. For the millionth time, no.

I’ve never been to CES, have no compelling business reason TO go, and nobody’s given me any free tickets, so I shan’t be going anytime soon.  But if you are going, have a nice time and enjoy the multitudes. I see all those crowds, it gives me flashbacks to Comdex.  If you’ve never heard of Comdex, well, sorry, I can’t help you.

Most of what I want to learn from CES I can get from the blogs and media coverage, in any event.

Starting with this piece from The New York Times, suggesting that TV makers had better kick it into high gear and move on to the new new thing when it comes to TV watching.

The net of it is is that 3D had its day and there wasn’t enough content to keep people paying a premium for 3D sets, and now “Ultra HD” is the big thing (although the premium demanded for Ultra HD sets will likely keep that a marginal segment of the market for some time).

That leaves the Internet-enablement of TV sets as a logical next push, which, while on its face seems logical, has eluded some pretty smart folks for some time (including the folks at Google).

Me, I’m not so sure I want my TV to become anymore Internet-enabled than it already is. I’ve tried Roku, Apple TV (both gens), and now have a Sony BlueRay player that includes some Internet enablement, and I’m about as enabled as I want to be.

For me, TV is still a relaxing, kick-back experience, save for the few times when I pull out the Wii for some quick tours of “Call of Duty.” My active screen experience is reserved mostly for my computer and/or smartphones.

The TV is the “dumb” box. I’m not sure I want it to get much smarter.

But even if it were to get smarter, the first thing I’d want it to do is find more content, AND the kind of content that I like to watch.

Thus far, even with Netflix, that seems too genius for the propeller heads to have properly figured out.

So, before the TV manufacturing whizzes go off and start to build bigger, bolder, wider, and more “interactive,” don’t forget presenting the basics of filmed entertainment.

We’ll see, and soon enough.

As for CES, if you don’t know much about it and want to know more, Gizmodo provides this useful page giving us a little background. I find that they, CNET, and Engadget have pretty good rundowns of the goings on there.

The event starts tomorrow and runs through this Friday.

Live @ Information On Demand 2012: A Q&A With Nate Silver On The Promise Of Prediction

Day 3 at Information On Demand 2012.

The suggestion to “Think Big” continued, so Scott Laningham and I sat down very early this morning with Nate Silver, blogger and author of the now New York Times bestseller, “The Signal and the Noise” (You can read the review of the book in the Times here).

Nate, who is a youngish 34, has become our leading statistician through his innovative analyses of political polling, but made his original name by building a widely acclaimed baseball statistical analysis system called “PECOTA.”

Today, Nate runs the award-winning political website FiveThirtyEight.com, which is now published in The New York Times and which has made Nate the public face of statistical analysis and political forecasting.

In his book, the full title of which is “The Signal and The Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t,” Silver explores how data-based predictions underpin a growing sector of critical fields, from political polling to weather forecasting to the stock market to chess to the war on terror.

In the book, Nate poses some key questions, including what kind of predictions can we trust, and are the “predicters” using reliable methods? Also, what sorts of things can, and cannot, be predicted?

In our conversation in the greenroom just prior to his keynote at Information On Demand 2012 earlier today, Scott and I probed along a number of these vectors, asking Nate about the importance of prediction in Big Data, statistical influence on sports and player predictions (a la “Moneyball”), how large organizations can improve their predictive capabilities, and much more.

It was a refreshing and eye-opening interview, and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as Scott and I enjoyed conducting it!

Breaking Bad Habits

I recently gave up my HBO habit.

I was tired of paying the premium through my AT&T U-Verse subscription, and I’d been putting off for far too long giving some money to The New York Times digital edition, content from which I consume daily.

So far, it’s been a mostly fair trade.

Though I’m going to miss shows like “Game of Thrones” and “The Newsroom” and “True Blood,” as well as Bill Maher (especially during the political season), I figured being able to get all of the Times’ content on any of my digital devices (and I have many!) at any time was easy math: The digital paywall became more forbidding than the bundle became enticing.

No sooner do I make this move, than I read in Variety this morning that HBO is going to give the Nordic countries the opportunity to cut the chord by allowing folks to subscribe to HBO without having to have an HBO pay-TV subscription.

The Variety story dug deeper into the Nordic permafrost, indicating this was a competitive matching move, an announcement short on the heels of Netflix announcing its move into Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

I laugh at this — I don’t live in a Nordic country, what good does this do me??!!

I did visit Stockholm once — could that qualify me for a subscription???

It’s no wonder more and more people are cutting the cord on cable TV.

Cable has a business model for offering content that is completely antiquated, and entirely out of line with the direction of more a la carte offerings in a digital world.

I only cut a small piece of the cord…this time around…but unless I’m giving more choices and flexibility in content soon, as opposed to their traditional bundling…well, HBO isn’t the only habit I can break.

Sewing Up The London Olympic Games

The new Ralph Lauren-designed uniforms for U.S. Olympics athletes at the coming London Olympics games may look spiffy, but a number of U.S. politicians have come out recently to complain they were manufactured in China. Let the games begin!

Well, it seems that the London Olympic Games are only a couple of short weeks away now.

As we get closer and closer to the lighting of the London 2012 Olympic torch, we will also start to see lines get drawn in the digital and social sand, as this will likely be the most “social” Olympic Games ever.

There will be lots to juxtapose in this year’s games in London with those of Beijing in 2008.

Most notably, the fact that we won’t have a 12 hour delay by the broadcast networks. Instead, NBC has already indicated that they will show many of the events live.  American GDP could swoon to a new low in these London Olympic summer games!

If you’re looking for a place to follow the games, there will be no shortage of television and digital opportunities. Just this week, Facebook and NBC announced a collaboration for “transmedia” coverage of the London Olympic Games.

In that deal, data from Facebook will inform TV coverage on NBC and other channels that will carry portions of the Summer Games starting on July 27, according to The New York Times. The specific uses will vary, says the Times, but there will be a “Facebook Talk Meter”  occasionally shown on TV to reflect what is being said online.

Conversely, on Facebook the NBC Olympics page will get frequent updates with what the companies call “exclusive content” for fans only. Fans will then be able to share what videos and articles they’re perusing on the network’s Olympics website.

It’s hard to believe that in only 4 short years, Facebook has grown from 100 million users, the number they were at during the Beijing Olympic Games, to over 900 million.  There’s no question this will be a much more social Olympics, but let’s also not forget the projected TV audience is 4 billion (In Beijing, the global TV audience was estimated at 4.4 billion.)

Speaking of China, U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) castigated the U.S. Olympic Committee for its decision to have the U.S. Olympics team dressed in Ralph Lauren-designed berets, blazers and pants that were manufactured in China even as the U.S. textile industry struggles to keep U.S. workers at their sewing machines.

Maybe they should introduce sewing into the Olympics as an official sport and we can have ourselves a “sew-off?”

I recently did some Olympic scouting of my own, looking for Websites and mobile apps to help make sure I keep up with the Virtual Joneses during the London sports festouche.  Here’s a few of them I unearthed:

• The official London Olympics Web site — http://www.london2012.com
• Olympic Movement Website — http://www.olympic.org
• BBC Olympics — http://www.bbc.co.uk/2012/
• U.S. Coverage, NBC: http://www.nbcolympics.com

I also found an interesting app for the iPad, the “Ultimate Olympic Guide,” which cost me a whopping $.99 and provided some nice background and overviews of each of the Olympic sports.

Feel free to add any other useful London Olympics resources in the comments section below.

Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Madrid: OgilvyOne Chairman & CEO Brian Fetherstonhaugh Speaks About The CMO Hotseat

Brian Fetherstonhaugh, as the chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, has a unique vantage point on how brands are built, how corporate cultures are created, and what happens as the world goes digital. In the course of the past 25 years, Brian has worked hands-on with many of the world’s leading brands including, IBM, American Express, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Unilever, Nestlé, Kodak, and Yahoo! Today, Brian leads OgilvyOne Worldwide, the interactive marketing and consulting arm of the Ogilvy Group. With more than 4,000 staff in 50 countries, OgilvyOne is at the forefront of the digital revolution. In 2007 and 2009, the Forrester Report ranked Ogilvy as a leading U.S. interactive agency.

OgilvyOne Worldwide Chairman and CEO Brian Fetherstonhaugh started our Q&A today here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Madrid by revealing who his favorite character on the 1960s-era AMC show about advertising, “Mad Men,” was.  Drum roll, please….It’s…JOAN.

Mainly, Brian explained, because Joan “gets things done.”

We then turned our discussion to the vast evolution IBM’s own marketing culture has endured the past two decades, and the opportunities and challenges presented by the changing marketing landscape for CMOs, whose tenures these days last an average 27 months.

Brian also discussed other key issues facing chief marketing officers during this time of great change, including the need for CMOs to focus on new talents and skills development. Before he jetted off to another city somewhere in the world, Brian left the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, and you, with some valuable marketing advice.

And when you watch the video, never mind the Spanish waiter who entered the frame for just a moment: He was simply doing what we wish to see companies everywhere do best, servicing their customers!

Facebook Up Front

There’s nothing like the looming shadow of the largest Internet-related IPO in history to bring out all the Debbie Downers.

Mind you, I’m in a two-day meeting in Raleigh with my teammates, so I’m supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on inside these four walls.  And I mostly am.

But, I simply could not ignore this headline sent to me via email by a fellow colleague (just to demonstrate the continued critical importance of personal word-of-mouth recommendations…I can’t find out everything from watching “The View”, now, can I?): GM To Stop Advertising On Facebook.

This on the first scroll of The Wall Street Journal this afternoon.

It would be easy enough to dismiss this headline considering the source, News Corporation, which owns the Journal, which is competing for essentially the same advertising dollars — never mind that they also own that little used social network, MySpace, which once-upon-a-time was the bell of the social networking ball — but, it’s General Motors, the U.S.’ third largest advertiser in a critical category for advertising (automobiles).

According to the story, GM has spent some $40 million on its Facebook presence and plans to stop advertising there “after the company’s marketing executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers.” However, it also points out GM will continue to expand its use of marketing through Facebook’s pages, which is essentially free real estate.

In this case, it seems that the “owned” media is outpacing the “paid.”

On the other side of Madison Avenue, AP-CNBC recently conducted a poll that indicated more than half (57 percent) of Facebook users polled said they never click on ads or other sponsored content when they use the site. Only 4 percent say they often click on ads.

This isn’t exactly a canary in Facebook’s coal mine, however.

As I’ve tried to point out to my own troops, the shift in attention to the Facebook platform cannot be denied — U.S. Internet users now spend 20% of their surfing time there, and as Facebook creates more intersections between entertainment, retail, and commerce, I would expect that number to go up, not down!

So what if people don’t click on an ad for the new Escalade — there’s a pretty good chance a few millions of the right people saw those ads, and quite frankly, if folks’ attention is moving from the big screen to the small (and, via mobile, to the smaller), then the attention deficit economy must eventually witness the transition of ad dollars in some semblance of parity, which heretofore hasn’t happened.

It doesn’t escape my notice that this news emerges the very same week that the big broadcasters are holding their “upfronts,” where they try to sell their $60 billion of inventory as much in advance as possible for the next year to advertisers, their agencies, etc.

The New York Times’ Amy Chozick penned a piece today explaining some of the festivities at this year’s upfronts. An excerpt: “At the Fox Party on Monday, the judges for the show ‘MasterChef,’ Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot, and Joe Bastianich, will personally serve a menu that includes organic salmon ceviche and a deconstructed Caesar salad accompanied by brioche Twinkies.”

Fox will be serving “veal meatballs with black truffles” along with “Manhattan mules,” a combination of vodka, ginger beer, and lime.

Traditional advertising’s Rome is burning, so why not throw a cocktail party and drink mint juleps as the last vestiges of appointment programming disappear into the Nielsen viewer diary of history?

The dirty little secret is this: We’re entering into a world where the absence of data is going to be replace by an abundance of data.  Moving forward, Facebook’s problem with advertisers will not be whether or not they can share information about the platform’s advertising performance, but more importantly, which data, about which demographic, on what platform, etc.?

There will be more information than most advertisers can consume effectively, particularly those more schooled in Nielsen “set meters” than A/B splits and multivariate testing.

Yeah, sure, go ahead and pile on the new kid on the block.  Mark Zuckerberg’s about to take away those truffles and Manhattan mules and your annual party is moving from up front to out back.  I’d be mad, too.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the advertising world is changing, and the big screen is about to be replaced by one that will get smaller and smaller, but one that will be more and more valuable to marketers.

Whitney

The older I become, the more people I know and love who seem go off and die on me.

That’s just a part of growing older, I know, but the the past couple of years the pace seems to have picked up a bit.  I’ve lost three good friends and a dear uncle to cancer-related illnesses and an accident in the past year alone, and all of them well before their years.

So when I heard the news about Whitney Houston over the weekend, like so many others, I was stunned.  We hadn’t heard much from her in recent years, and when we did, it was often initiated in tabloids.

But back in her heyday, when we heard from her regularly, it was from that whopping, stunning, belting angelic voice — it was like she could reach out and sing to the whole wide world.

Judging from the outpouring of love, sadness, sympathy and fond remembrance in the social realm this weekend after the news was out, she did reach the whole wide world. I never knew there were so many Whitney Houston fans out there.  Yesterday afternoon, Facebook was literally a living memorial to the singer.

I also immediately felt bad for the Grammys producers.  To receive such momentous and tragic news the night before the Grammys broadcast, and then to have to try and figure out how to both remember Whitney and continue to fete the year in music??!

Not an easy balance to strike.

In 1998, I had occasion to work with the Grammys team when IBM sponsored and produced the official Webcast. That year, the Dixie Chicks broke out, Monica was celebrated, and Will Smith won for best rap album. But what I always remembered was how professional and capable were the people behind the scenes at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

So I was hardly surprised when this year’s excellent Grammys emcee, LL Cool J, walked onstage after Bruce Springteen’s opening act and addressed Whitney’s passing head on and with a prayer, explaining “This night is about something truly universal and healing. This night is about music.”

Or when several of the other artists tipped their hat to Whitney in some way during their own respective performances.

Or, of course, during Jennifer Hudson’s haunting performance of the song Whitney made famous, “I Will Always Love You.”  I’m not sure how Hudson got through that song without breaking down onstage herself.

However carefully orchestrated the tribute was, it was tastefully executed and left me thinking this was one of the most exciting Grammy’s broadcasts in years.

I hadn’t planned on watching the Grammys this year, but curiosity got the better of me — not only because of Whitney’s passing, but also because I knew I’d likely see a lot of music I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.

Like Adele.  I missed Adele on the first go around at the Grammys, and though I have heard a couple of her songs, I never put the name and the face together.  She was just a name I kept hearing.

And before you suggest I live under a rock, the fact is, I don’t listen much to the radio anymore, and I certainly don’t live on iTunes (you’ll more likely find me on Pandora). So for me, the Grammys is as good as a place as any to find out about new music — and to find out who Adele is.

Well, after seeing Adele interviewed by Anderson Cooper before the broadcast, and after watching her rendition last night of “Rolling in the Deep” during the broadcast, I became another instant in her otherwise millions of fans around the world.

Adele seems like she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She doesn’t seem to take all this fame and fortune stuff too seriously — but then she walks out on that stage before a few hundred million people and delivers that powerful singing punch like nobody’s business.

I hope she keeps it that way.  Too many of our other great artists were taken too soon because of a combustible mixture of drugs and alcohol that are always, quite literally, a recipe for disaster.

We ask so much of them sometimes, our celebrities.  We want to know everything about them.  We want them to be perfect.  We want them to be always on.

Instead of letting them just be human like the rest of us.

Elvis Presley.  Marilyn Monroe.  Jimi Hendrix.  Janis Joplin.  Michael Jackson.  Amy Winehouse.  And now, it seems, Whitney Houston.

I don’t know about you, but that list is enough tragedy to last me a lifetime.

So, I suggest we let Adele take her six Grammys and disappear back into the English countryside and that we leave her the hell alone until she’s ready to leave her compound and go back on tour.

Let her enjoy her gramophone trophies and hanging out with her new love — we’ve all got our own lives to get on about.

As for Whitney Houston, may she rest in peace. I, like so many others, will choose to remember her when she belted them out like in the video below, where she took the U.S. national anthem to a whole other level.

Whitney, you will be missed.

Luck

I decided to try my luck last night watching “Luck,” the new Michael Mann directed, David Milch produced HBO series about the sport of horse racing.

If you’re not familiar with David Milch’s work, you’re missing some of the best TV ever: “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” “Deadwood,” “Brooklyn South.”  “Deadwood” has to be one of my all-time faves.

So Milch’s foray into horse racing, it turns out, wasn’t simply a fictional exercise.  He’s also been a race horse owner himself.

The first episode, like a good long 1 1/4 mile race, got off to a slow start, but by the end of the episode you could see some momentum building.

We’ll see how the race for ratings for “Luck” pans out in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, PGA golfer Kyle Stanley simply ran out of luck, or skill, or something at the Farmers Insurance tournament at Torrey Pines (San Diego, CA).

They were playing the South course over the weekend, one of my faves, and Stanley strutted into the 18^th hole in his last round with a three stroke lead over Tennessean Brant Snedeker.

However, Stanley’s luck faded when he hit what seemed like a beauty of a shot over the water and behind the pin on the par 5 18^th. However, the English he put on the ball spun it all the way back to the edge of the green and into the water.

Stanley then hit is now 5^th shot into the green, and three putted for an 8, bringing Snedeker back into the tournament in a playoff that took them both back to the tee at 18. They tied on the first playoff hole, so they returned to the par 3 16^th, where Snedeker sent his tee shot over the green next to the TV tower. He got a good drop (actually, a placement), and proceeded to chip within 6 feet.  No gimme, but a makable turning putt.

Stanley plopped his tee shot onto the short side of the green, then put his putt also within 5 or 6 feet. Snedeker was ruled out, and in his ever impatient style, dropped his putt directly into the cup. Stanley, however, slid his putt past the hole, and it was painful to watch him realize a tournament that was his wire-to-wire, had suddenly dropped beyond his grasp.

If that’s the kind of drama we’re going to see in week 4 of the 2012 PGA Tour, then I can’t wait for next week…and to find out who else’s luck might run out!

The Royal Family Social

This is going to be a big week, particularly in the U.K.

After watching “Morning Joe’s” coverage early today from Trafalgar Square, I’m about ready to hop a Virgin Atlantic flight directly across the pond, take the Heathrow Express direct to Paddington Station, hop in a hackney, and proceed directly to Buckingham Palace for some full-on Clash style crowd surfing.

Judging from my convos with some loyal British subjects, and from Joe, Mika, and Willie’s coverage from Trafalgar, we U.S. Americans are much more enthusiastic about Will and Kates’ Royal Wedding than those in the U.K.

In fact, the British government declared this Friday yet another bank holiday, and the Morning Joe suggested up to 1/3 of the British people would be leaving London for the weekend.

Can’t say as I blame them. You remember the lyrics from that 1979 classic from The Clash?

London calling to the faraway towns, Now war is declared, and battle come down

London calling to the underworld, Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls

London calling, now don’t look to us, Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust

London calling, see we ain’t got no swing, ‘Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

Yeah, Phony Beatlemania may have gone the way of the do do bird, but royal watching is reaching a new and fevered pitch in anticipation of April 29th.

Me, I remember the first royal wedding I ever witnessed.

I was a wee lad of 15, and it would be another 14 years before I’d make my way to Buckingham Palace live and in person.

I distinctly remember the carriage carrying Charles and Diana down the streets of London, and I also distinctly remember what looked like a few million people lining the streets, most every one of them with a smile on their face.

Putting aside for a moment the Royal Wedding barf bags and toilet seats and cheap-looking “limited edition” anniversary china, let’s not forget one small but not trivial detail about all this hooplah: Two young people are getting married!

Granted, they’re doing so in front of an expected TV audience of two billion people, but nonetheless, they’re having a wedding and they’re getting married.  That’s something worth celebrating, especially considering the lackluster last few years that Great Britain and the world have had.

We could all use a little sumpin’ sumpin’ to celebrate.

One other major difference between 1981 and this week’s royal nuptials: There was no commercial Internet in 1981 — that would take another decade plus, which means there was also no social media.

Oh how far we’ve come in thirty years.  And I’m not just referring to the royal toilet seats.

No, this time around, Prince William and Catherine Middleton will be broadcast on the YouTube Internets for all the world to see, hosted on the official Royal Channel, and everybody is going to have an opinion and perspective.  Joy.

But if you want the inside skinny, the Royal Channel includes a blog, some Twitterin’ by Royal staffers, and even a procession map so you can following the bouncing couple as they zip around in their Royalmobile after they tie the knot.

Unfortunately, the gorgeous spring weather is expecting to evolve into rain on Friday.

Hopefully not a harbinger of times to come for the pending royal couple, but certainly reason enough to take advantage of the endless and ubiquitous video and social coverage and skip the barricades and umbrellas.

Me, my game plan goes like this: I’m going to record it all on my DVR, then create my own soundtrack for a multi-hour replay featuring the best of the best music that originated in the UK: The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Queen, The Kinks, and any other rowdy English rock ‘n’ roll musicians I can think of.

Because for me, great music that celebrates everything the British realm is, and is not, are some of the great gifts to the world by the British people over the last half century.

But I’ll gladly take a royal barf bag, preferably unused — just so I have at least one memorable souvenir of Will and Kate’s big day!