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Monday, June 29, 2009

An Update on Microsoft's Razorfish

I had written in November about the layoffs at Razorfish, and early rumors of a sale.

Seems this sale is happening soon. According to the Financial Times, Microsoft has appointed Morgan Stanley to look for a buyer for Razorfish, with French firm Publicis emerging as an early front-runner.

Omnicom and WPP, which are trying to put more focus on digital advertising, are also potential suitors.

Publicis has recently made some financial moves aimed at enabling an acquisition, and have also gotten cozier with Microsoft - on Friday, Publicis announced an agreement with Microsoft Advertising to use Microsoft technology to place Publicis ads on television set-top boxes.

Friday, June 5, 2009

NBC and ABC Suck Lemons

I would like NBC and ABC to lose enough money that they have to shut down. Or at least fire their entire sports-related teams. Let me explain why:

NBC:

NBC has the rights to show the French Open Men's Semifinals this morning. The matches started at 5 am PST today, Friday, June 5th.
You have the opportunity to watch arguably the greatest to ever play the game, Roger Federer. In the other match, you have the cinderalla, who has already dispatched the world's greatest Clay Court player (and a possible arguable greatest ever to play the game, Rafael Nadal).

So when you switch on NBC, what do you see? Why, Dave Matthew's Band, Tom Brokaw, and the rest of the idiots from their morning show. Interspersed with ads from our local carpet dealer. They've decided we can wait until 10 am PST (on a workday!) to watch the matches. That made me develop my first symptoms of high blood pressure.

I am pissed off at NBC. Very pissed off. This is exactly what they did during the Olympics - while also lying about having the broadcasts live.

So what am I going to do about it? I am going to stop watching NBC. Anything on NBC. And I'm going to bad-mouth NBC whenever I can. I like Conan O'Brien. So I'm going to watch him free on YouTube. Hah!

ABC:

ABC won the rights to show the NBA Finals. I know, I know, the NBA season is unreasonably long. But after all that time, we've gotten to the point where we can see Superman and Skip-to-my-Lou go up against the Black Mamba and 9-time winner Phil Jeannie Buss. Kobe, at this point, is in the "best ever" discussions. And had a game to prove it last night. What I would have loved to have seen after the game would be some great analysis, interspersed with humor, etc. etc.... ok, I would have loved to have the TNT Inside The NBA crew (EJ, Barkley, Kenny) take us through the game.

Do you know what I saw instead? A local Oakland crew. Three guys - at least I know/ like Nate Thurmond. The other expert they brought in was the Warriors assistant coach for shooting for big men, or something. No disrespect, but.... And they kept trying to work the Warriors into everything. Kept talking about Michael Pietrus, and showing clips of him as a Warrior. WTF!?!?!?

Ok, so ABC wasn't as bad as NBC. I'm not going to bad-mouth them as much as I will NBC. But I'm quite unhappy.

NBC and ABC suck lemons. I want NBC to fail.