Jamie Kellner, the CEO of Turner Broadcasting, apparently needs a better PR keeper. He gave an interview to Cableworld magazine in which he made some toweringly stupid comments. The original piece is behind Inside.com’s tollbooth, but this link to the Yale Law School’s excellent Lawmeme weblog copies much of the salient idiocy — then lampoons it.

My two favorite quotes — and these aren’t the jokes:

[Ad skips are] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming.

… and …

I guess there’s a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.

Gee, thanks, Jamie.

I remember that after Ronald Reagan was elected president how surprised people were when they discovered that he actually was going to do all the things he said he was going to do. I’m just afraid that not enough people will take Kellner and the movies’s Jack Valenti seriously

From CNN:

An environmental group has sued to get warning labels slapped on chocolate products that caution sweet tooths about potentially hazardous levels of lead and cadmium.

As my wife says, “Well, we’re screwed.”

This explains so much….

Thanks to Amee Abel for alerting me to this, and Theresa Carey for finding the original.

The guy who invented Smell-o-Vision just died. Michael Todd Jr. was the son of the noted movie producer.

His legacy continues in dumb, futile attempts to bring aroma to the Web.

This is a Twilight Zone kind of coincidence — or perhaps the subtle work of crafty writer. It turns out that the address Marvel Comics picked as the home of Spiderman is actually occupied by the Parker family. No one named Peter lives there, though, so knock off the junk mail.

From The New York Times: U.S., in a Shift, Tells Justices Citizens Have a Right to Guns. The Justice Department told the Supreme Court for the first time late Monday that the Constitution “broadly protects the rights of individuals” to own firearms.

The law is a living thing. It isn’t just what Legislatures enact (thank God). It’s the sum total of legislative action, judicial ruling, and executive action. That’s why it’s so hard to get a straight answer out of a lawyer. It’s also why it’s so important to have Attorneys General who don’t have ideological agendas — or who are willing to put them aside.

The question came up in force during confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft, a conservative Republican from Missouri who is quite frank about his Pentacostal faith. From Ashcroft’s confirmation testimony before the Judiciary Committee:

But, as I have explained this afternoon, I well understand that the role of the Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it.

The late Charles Black (paid link), professor of Constitutional Law at The Yale Law School, taught many of the nation’s political leaders. My wife, who fondly remembers taking Black’s class, says that he would sometimes drawl — mostly in jest — “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Just read the Constituton and do what it says.”

There’s an excellent profile of Ashcroft in the April 15, 2002 issue of The New Yorker (not available online). The article talks at some length about Ashcroft’s ties to the National Rifle Association. Yet since The Depression, the Supreme Court and the Justice Department has read the Second Amendment as requiring a militia. This has been settled law through the administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

Now comes Ashcroft, enforcing the law “as it is,” telling the Court that:

“The current position of the United States, however, is that the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to prevent possession by unfit persons or to restrict the possession of types of firearms that are particularly suited to criminal misuse.”

What’s next? This, too, is from Ashcroft’s confirmation:

As is well known, consistent with Republican United States Attorneys General before me, I believe Roe v. Wade, as an original matter, was wrongly decided. I am personally opposed to abortion. But, as I have explained this afternoon, I well understand that the role of the Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it…. If confirmed as Attorney General, I will follow the law in this area as in all other areas. The Supreme Court’s decisions on this have been multiple, recent, and emphatic.

As opposed to the 1939 Miller decision, I suppose, which was neither multiple nor recent.

I can’t help but wonder what Ashcroft has next on his list.

“I’m always grateful for whatever help I can get from the press, or a bunch of business-school students, whatever,” Mr. Parsons said dismissively.

Those words yesterday from Dick Parsons, who is about to become CEO of AOL Time Warner. Thanks for asking, Dick. Here’s some more of what you said:

“We’re the No. 1 movie company, the No. 1 online company, the No. 1 premium cable network company, the No. 1 cable network company, No. 2 cable company, No. 2 music company. What am I missing? All of these businesses are roaring, with one exception, no question. What we’ve got to do is answer some serious questions around AOL. What is the future of narrowband? Is this a medium that has a long-term advertising future and if so, at what rate can we expect growth and how will it migrate to broadband?”

Here’s the thing. People go broadband to consume information. From all reports, Napster drove broadband traffic. Record companies squealed like stuck pigs, but note a new report from Jupiter Research. Again, from the New York Times:

Disputing the position held by the major record companies, a report issued on Friday found that people who use file-sharing networks to obtain music at no charge over the Internet are more likely [italics mine] to have increased their spending on music than are average online music fans. The report … also found that people who use high-speed Internet access and CD burners to make homemade compact discs ÷ a practice that has been criticized by the record industry as abetting piracy ÷ are as likely to increase their spending on music as to decrease it.

Wait — it gets even better. Another Jupiter report finds considerable pent up demand for broadband service:

[W]hile only 16 percent of U.S. online households subscribe to broadband, more than 24 percent of dial-up consumers are considering signing up for a broadband service within the next 12 months.

Why?

[F]or the first time in years, the top motivator of dial-up users planning to switch to broadband is a persistent “always on” connection (59 percent). Less important are entertainment-related features such as the ability to view quality video (26 percent) and listen to audio (15 percent).

It’s true: an always-on connection is lovely, though I have a not very sneaking suspicion that an always-on 56kbps connection would soon get old.  And those 26 percent and 15 percent figures feel anecdotally low. I could probably find you a ton of research that says that no one plays games or surfs porno — and I could probably find server logs that demonstrate the exact opposite. As a friend of mine says, no one has ever traded for a slower connection.

So what does all this mean for Parsons’ dilemma? I think it means that AOLTW should embrace broadband like a California tree-hugger embraces a redwood. Push the bandwidth, and push the content that drives demand. CNN? The Atlantic Records archive? Raw satellite feeds? The Wizard of Oz? Put it online. All of it. You want to put up a tollgate? I could get behind that; servers and server-side bandwidth are expensive.

But the cheaper you provide the broadband content, the more people will want broadband access, and the more people have access, the more they’ll want content. I have no idea where the demand cycle tops off, but you know what? Neither does anyone else. And of all companies, only AOLTW has the power on both ends of the pump to find out.

Piracy? Well, what about it? You think people aren’t already burning your records, your DVDs? Remember that study — downloads drive demand, they don’t satisfy it.

Get out of the narrowband business. All those modems that old management bought five years ago? Trash ’em. Get on cable systems, get on DSL lines. Jump on bandwidth, and show people how much they need it.

“Grateful,” you said? Happy to help.

Trust me on this. I have lots of equipment that isn’t turning me into George Martin. Or Alan Parsons.

Jerry Garcia’s guitars up for auction. After a long strange trip, two guitars once owned by the late Grateful Dead lead singer are put up for auction.

A propos my filing of 5/3, below, AdAge has a story today about Personal Video Recorders like TiVO and Replay, in which it reports that

1. there aren’t nearly as many of these boxes around as analysts thought there’d be, and
   
2. owners aren’t skipping ads as much as the networks feared.

Three years ago, Forrester Research projected 50 million PVRs in homes by 2005. The Yankee Group says 350,000 were sold last year, with 1 million in homes today and 20 million — mostly in set-top boxes — by 2005. (As an alumnus of The Yankee Group, I always take their numbers with a large grain of salt; I know how they used to be developed. In the intervening 15-plus years, I hope their methodology is improved. One inside baseball note: George Colony left Yankee in 1983 to found Forrester Research.)

The nut grafs from AdAge:

The latest annual PVR Monitor, produced by independent research firm NextResearch, provides evidence that viewers are not automatically using PVRs to zap ads and suggests a kind of creative Darwinism is emerging, where marketers who produce ads that resonate may be able to bypass PVR hurdles. For example, the study, which surveyed 358 people who used the services, shows 92% of respondents said they watch ads that are entertaining and 69% watch for products they are interested in.

The study also showed that viewers’ likelihood of watching commercials when viewing programs with PVRs vs. live TV is nearly the same. Only 1% said they always watch the ads when using a PVR or watching live TV, while 60% said they occasionally watch them with PVRs and 62% with live TV.

In other words, people will pay attention to content that interests them, and skip over stuff that doesn’t. No wonder the networks are upset. And notice that the same proportion of people skip ads whether they’re watching live TV or on a PVR.

Someone tell the judge, OK?

OK, so Newsweek has a story in its current (May 13) edition about how Afghan military intelligence thinks Osama bin Laden is alive and living in Pakistan. This is in the next to last graf:

… bin Laden is likely to prove harder to catch. “He’s kind of like Elvis,” says Col. Wayland Parker, the U.S. military’s liaison between coalition forces and the British-led international security force in Kabul. “He’s here, he’s dead, he’s there, he’s alive. The last time we felt sure about where, he was in Tora Bora. After that, he drops off the radar screen.”

First of all, as far as I understand it, Elvis is not elusive. Elvis is dead.

Second of all, I’ve gotta think that someone who can be called “Col. Parker” shouldn’t be making Elvis metaphors….