Regret

Note: This week on the blog I am trying out a little experiment - writing on the first five (or so) subjects that popped out at random from a cool little app called Writing Exercises. The app provides suggestions for topics, characters, first lines - that kind of thing. I tapped the 'Random Subject' button a few times and will (try) to come up with something for each subject I was presented. It may be good, it may stink - who knows? But whatever the topic, I am taking like 20 minutes tops to bang something out. So here goes...

Today's subject: Regret

It is pretty typical and generally accepted life advice that one should live and plan and do in order to arrive at a place, usually somewhere near the end of the line, with no or at least very, very few regrets. The line of thinking holds that most people when reaching that point where they are doing a reckoning of their lives feel the worst about the things they never did or never tried or never took the time or risk to explore. Most of us, the thinking goes, lament the things we didn't do, much more so than whatever failures or disappointments we endured from the things we actually did.

And I think that mostly makes sense. We don't, most likely, get to the end of our time and think about (too much) the more mundane and specific aspects of how we lived - where we worked, what we did, who we socialized with, where we traveled, etc. Of course we will think about our families and close friends, both the ones who have passed and those we might be leaving behind. And one thing I know for sure, no one sits up on their death bed and thinks, 'Gee, I wish I would have drank more glasses of water every day.' So have that Diet Coke or Mountain Dew or Schlitz. Have whatever you want.

But back to regret, (and I need to wrap this up fast as I got distracted by a shiny object or someone jiggling some keys and I only have 2 minutes left to my self-policed deadline for finishing this post).

Here's what I think I think about regret.

If you did truly reach the end of the line with no regrets you probably had a pretty rich, fulfilling, happy, and positive life.

But it is also quite possible you didn't dream enough or 'big' enough too. I think that it is probably ok to have a regret or two. It is ok to have, at one time, had some kind of big, audacious idea or plan or dream that for whatever reason you were unable to try and make a reality. It is ok to have missed, at least a little.

I sort of don't really trust people who claim to have no regrets. Kind of the same way I don't really trust people who claim to not watch TV or who don't like White Castle.

I know I will have at least one regret. And that is writing this post...

Have a great week! 

From Evil to Good, One Download at a Time

Remember just a couple of years ago when it was timely and hip to lament the loss of hundreds if not thousands of small, independent bookstores that were being crushed by the big box mega-purveyors like Barnes & Noble and Borders? Similar to the ire that Walmart tends to engender in some communities, the loss of long-established and local businesses that simply cannot compete with the purchasing power, time-proven strategies, and ruthless execution of many of the big chains, makes most of us want to root for the little guys. Well, at least we like to say we are rooting for the little guys, but once we got a taste of the massive in-store book selection, lower prices, on-premise cafes, and free wifi, well, like I said, we like to say we are rooting for the little guy.It's a niche

Heck, there was even a big Hollywood feature film made not that long ago that starred Tom Hanks and his very B&N like giant forcing poor Meg Ryan's cuddly little bookstore on the corner out of business.

Fast forward only a few years and the retail book industry looks almost nothing at all like it did when Meg and Tom were flirting by email at night and trying to destroy each other's business by day. Borders is bankrupt, and Barnes & Noble too is likely in the early stages in a battle for its own survival, under increasing pressure primarily from Amazon.com and its Kindle ecosystem. B&N has been able to survive and compete this long where Borders could not, mainly due to its Nook e-reader, and its commitment and willingness to take at least some of the fight to Amazon.

But today for many book lovers, Barnes & Noble represents in some ways the last stand for not just a retail model, but for the idea of the printed book at all. If you think about the town where you live, if the closest B&N were to close ip shop, just exactly where would you shop for real, actual printed books? Forgetting for a moment that walking into a large B&N it might be actually hard to locate any books, as they are often obscured by the Nook demonstration area, the kids' toy section, the coffee shop, and the thousands of other things in a B&N that are not books. Where I live, there are two B&N's within about 10 miles, and I can't think of another place anywhere that sells real live printed books.

So for those that cling to the almost prosaic notion of browsing through the shelves, picking up and touching the books, paging through the images of a $125 coffee-table art book that no one ever would buy, if the B&N goes, well, all of that likely goes with it. Maybe something else would come to fill in that void, in the larger cities something probably would, but for many other places book buying would almost certainly become an 100% virtual proposition.

And that might not be a big issue at all, who knows. But for me the interesting thing is how through all this change and technological progress in e-commerce and e-readers that the massive, powerful, and formerly evil megastore like B&N has come full circle to represent all that used to be good and nostalgic about the book buying experience.  B&N has gone from being the malicious, heartless competitor to the underdog that many people who love physical books are rooting for. 

It's really hard to pull off that kind of corporate reputation transformation, even if you wanted to. Once evil, always evil is more typical. Although I suspect B&N would have been happy to continue laying waste to little shops all over the world, evil or not.

What do you think - would you care if there were no more physical bookstores?

Have a Great Weekend!

Bundling, choice, and basketball

It is a new year, and time for the latest version of what seems like an annual public fight between a big Cable TV company and a high-profile content provider. In the latest example, Cable TV provider Time Warner Cable and the MSG (short for Madison Square Garden), Network are in a pitched battle over the rights fees that Time Warner has to pay to MSG for the rights to distribute MSG programming on its cable systems. As a deal could not be reached by December 31, as 2012 begins the MSG feeds have been blacked out on Time Warner systems. Blah, blah, blah

From a purely selfish point of view, the current dispute hits close to home for me - my cable provider is Time Warner, and the MSG Network carries most of the games for my beloved New York Knicks. I admit, the prospect of not having easy access to Knicks games has harshed my Happy New Year mellow.

However, these Cable TV contract disputes provide additional insight to how a combination of escalating programming costs, (mainly in the form of ever-increasing fees paid by networks for the rights to carry professional sports broadcasts); traditional and arcane packaging or 'bundling', and near-monopoly competitive enviroments in many localities have conspired to drive up the costs of basic and enhanced cable rates over the last decade. When ESPN agrees to pay the NFL just over $15 billion over 8 years for the right to show 'Monday Night Football', rest assured the viewers, (and in many cases the non-viewers), of ESPN end up having to pay more to watch Jaws and Gruden gush over how great a job every coach in the NFL is doing. 

The end result is a simple and classic pass on the costs gimmick - ESPN and other content providers pay more for their programming, they in turn squeeze the Time Warners and other cable systems for higher per-subscriber fees, and finally the cable systems themselves pass the increased costs down to their customers by jacking up cable rates. Traditionally the cable systems try to mask this process somewhat by their practice of packaging or bundling groups of channels into programming tiers, (Basic, Super Basic, Colossal Super Mega, etc.), that ostensibly provide some consumer choice as to the networks they'd like to subscribe to, and how much they are willing to pay for them. But even the most discrete set of packages or bundles that are generally offered still do not come close to most consumers actual viewing patterns, and likely the set of networks they would order if true a la carte pricing was available in the cable TV industry.

There has been tons written about a la carte pricing for cable TV, and speculation on whether or not it would actually decrease average cable rates. I've seen pretty compelling arguments on both sides, so it is hard to say what the outcome would be. Additionally, any system of individual pricing and ordering of cable networks is generally seen as a death knell for a slew of less popular, niche channels that simply would not have enough viewers willing to pay for them individually to keep them afloat.

Thinking about this entire situation as I have the last few days, (again as it effects my ability to easily watch the Knicks games), I can't help but wonder if this cable TV model is just a refection of a waning and outdated set of assumptions about how content should be created, distributed, and consumed. In an environment where attention, activity, and engagement with content is increasingly shifting to mobile phones and tablets, which themselves are primarily single-purpose application driven, then the idea of consumers choosing to pay monthly fees for 500 channel cable bundles in order to access the 17 channels they are interested in seems like a dying distribution model. 

Why can't the MSG network or the History Channel or the hundreds of other channels out there simply create their own an iPad application that would allow consumers to make individual choices about what content they'd like to access and pay for? And to take it a step further, why can't the individual entertainment producers simply skip the traditional networks, cable systems, and satellite providers completely, and market their shows, movies, sporting events, etc. directly to the end user, either with applications or direct streaming or download?

The answer is of course they can, and many are already moving in that direction.

But sadly for me, the era of direct, low friction, and discrete consumption of New York Knicks games has not started as yet. So until then, I get to listen to Time Warner and MSG call each other names.