Mark Cuban's Gutsy Call: Newspapers Are Doomed
He went on:
Bankruptcy is probably your best friend because you get to recapitalize and start all over again. It's not that people don't or won't read newspapers, it's just they won't in the numbers they have in the past.
The only way to get rid of the deadwood and the legacy financial aspect of it is through bankruptcy.
Different take, same result from the SAI archives: Running The Numbers: Why Newspapers Are Screwed
See also: Mark Cuban To Web Video Sites: Where's My Naked Ladies?
Mark Cuban: Here's How YouTube Can Make Money (And Lose Market Share)
Mark Cuban: I Like GQ, Not Valleywag
Although I doubt the management of most newspaper companies has the balls to go the near term bankruptcy route.
I think its likely they all just try and hang on with as little fundamental change as possible until its too late and end up with much less in the end.
As for the newspaper industry, he is simply echoing what Rupert Murdoch, a guy who actually owns newspapers, said just the other day and what is generally known by everyone who reads news.
Finally on Cuban. Notice how he quickly covered for his player/employee who was caught on Youtube saying he doesn't approve of the sh*t when referring to the Star Spangled Banner.
Says the man is "misunderstood.
A$$wipe covering for an a$$wipe.
And his insight on Newspapers is spot on. Show me a paper who isn't cutting their newsroom staff or shutting down foreign bureaus because of declining subscriptions. Their biggest customers, automotive advertising, are quickly learning most people research their cars online.
Personally, I do not agree, it is just that Newspapers will not make up their new revenue streams (from online/mobile) for another 5 years. But they are starting to learn, and adapt. In the future, Newspapers will be ideally suited to take advantage of upcoming trends such as "location aware Mobile devices". They have the salesforce, the local presence, and the customer relationship. From an editorial standpoint they are also ideally suited to be our news blogs of the future.
www.twitter.com/A_F
HDnet.....yep...okay. have you ever watched it?
A new toilet seat...not making that up.
IceRocket....first time I have ever heard it mentioned anywhere....
Reality show....complete failure.
Anyone else want to chime in on the greatest single billionaire this country has? He exists because Yahoo gave him money for something that was probably worth a couple of million....5.9 BILLION dollars for soemthing 9 years later doesn't even exist. And he was brought into it very late in the process.
Clyde
For nothing. 25¢ more for something so thin you can wipe your ass with it when it's folded in half. Most of the stories are not original local reporting but AP and Scripps/Howard, they don't even cover local crime, and the rest is what little advertising they can rustle up these days.
I actually hope they go bankrupt for raising prices at a time like this: with the economy in the gutter, 10% of my townspeople unemployed, the real estate, construction, and service industries dying or gone, trillion dollar buyouts for failed/failing banks, and a dying newspaper industry that pretty much deserves to be where it is right now.
Look at how much information I can find online for free and my local paper wants to charge us $1.25 more per week and probably another dollar or two over the usual cost for weekend editions.
Normally when my local paper is about to raise prices they tell us in advance and give us big, fat apologies and long lists of reasons why they must do it. Not this time. I read the paper every day: no announcement. They just snuck it up on us. I think that's cowardly and wrong.
www.Drewryonline.net
I actually hope they go bankrupt for raising prices at a time like this
Actually I disagree. One of the problems of the media business -- particularly magazines -- is they're charging far too little for their product. Something has to give -- cut reporters, and you produce a thinner product and enter a death spiral.
Normally when my local paper is about to raise prices they tell us in advance and give us big, fat apologies and long lists of reasons why they must do it. Not this time.
Well that's just bad PR, no apologia there.
Solution: tax the hell out of advertising, and eliminate it as a deductible business expense. Make it so it only pays to advertise if you really have something serious to sell. Charge a buck a pop for popup ads. Support the media by selling a service to people who are willing to buy it.
Then he and Wagner founded Audionet, which became Broadcast.com, which they then sold to Yahoo -- yes, for $5.9 billion -- but in stock options. He made a smart call with that move, getting paid for a buyout in options at the peak of the internet bubble.
He was then further smart enough to turn around and diversify his holdings so he wouldn't get screwed by having all his stock eggs in one basket if the bubble burst, which of course, it did.
He's a very smart guy when it comes to business, knowing when to sell and when to hold on, and though he's not taken HDNet as far as it could go (yet) he has some way-ahead-of-the-curve ideas in the film industry with regard to digital, film distribution and use of theaters for things other than showing films; look for him to start capitalizing on them over the next few years. Also, he and Wagner have produced more than a few quality fews out of Magnolia, to boot.
Mark's always been many things -- extremely energetic, flamboyant, even irritating, but stupid has never and will never be on the list. And yeah, his writing on his blog is not great much of the time -- that's why he's a business guy and not a writer for a living. Some of the smartest people I know can't write for shit, even in basic emails. Writing well is a skill, but it's not always an accurate indicator of intelligence.
He probably would say that the Mail services are doomed because there's email.
Oh, and books too, Amazon should file for bankrupcy too...
uuuuuughhh
"Actually I disagree. One of the problems of the media business -- particularly magazines -- is they're charging far too little for their product. Something has to give -- cut reporters, and you produce a thinner product and enter a death spiral."
Actually, Eric, I disagree. If you read my comment again I said the paper is so thin you can wipe your ass with it. Even folded in half. I'm not kidding. I also said it is full of wire reports and advertisements. How much bang am I getting for three-quarters of a buck? None. They have cut local reporting down to almost nothing, and most of it only runs now and then, not every day. There has never been local police beat coverage. Can you imagine that? I could have a wanted thug living right next door to me but I sure as hell would never know it from our cost-cutting, penny-pinching newspaper.
Henry might recall the times I've mentioned their copy-editing abilities as well. I threatened months ago on SAI to start a scrapbook of them to scan and upload, but the truth is if I did it would fill up so quickly I would need a blog the size of an encyclopedia (printed out) to include all their errors.
This newspaper misspells everything, reverses the daily high and low temps almost once every week, gets today's date and day wrong on the front cover, mixes up titles on continuations, cuts off the tops of article columns so you can't read them, forgets to finish a story that started on another page, and even screws up people's ads and obituaries in blatantly obvious ways...I could go on and on but it's hard to recall exactly how bad this paper is without almost blacking out over the sheer seriousness - and copiousness - of the mistakes.
One of my biggest pet peeves is as a copy editor for a school newspaper I did better (literally almost error-free) with our paper than they do with theirs, and all the proofreading was up to me. All of it.
Did I mention this useless rag is owned by the New York Times and it's the only paper with any local coverage of my town at all? And they want 75 cents for it simply because they think they have me and other people in this town by the balls? When you can read the whole thing online for free and get much more information besides what little they offer from other free websites? They can go stick it.
BTW, I interviewed with Broadcom back in late 2008 for a regional ad sales position. When I asked the fellow whom I would report to what he did before joining Broadcom he told me he was selling shoes. Go figure.
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