The Sane Investor

April 9th, 2009

So first off, my apologies that I haven’t put up anything lately.  It was certainly not because I didn’t have anything to say, or that there was nothing to talk about.  You could rummage through just about any online major media site and find a whole host of things to pick through.  One of the more ridiculous segments I’ve seen of late has been a New York Times “Picturing the Recession” piece where users can submit photographs of the recession.  I frankly think it’s ridiculous because you could find photos of stores being boarded up or abandoned gas stations five years ago if you went to the right places.  And many times pictures are extrapolated to carry more weight than they actually should. (more…)

(Note: I will let you know before I get to any spoilers)

So as any of you familiar with this blog know, I typically only write about financial news and topics concerned with investing.  However, I just saw the premiere of the new Batman movie, so I figured I’d write about my takeaway from the movie.

First, a little bit of background on my knowledge of Batman: I didn’t read any of the comic books as a kid, but I did watch the tv show (the animated one, I know there were several), so I was familiar with the characters before walking in to the film.  That’s about it; I didn’t know any of the background stories, so I won’t be able to evaluate it on a “how close it was to the original source” type of basis.

What I can say is that I walked away from the experience very pleased with the film.  I felt as though it was very well balanced between action and storyline, and it didn’t feel as though too much was being crammed in at any one point like I know the third Spiderman did.  But this brings me to my favorite part of the movie: The Joker.

Heath Ledger was Fantastic

I’m not a serious film geek (I know music people are audiophiles, I’m not sure what the theatrical equivalent is), so I can’t say whether or not Heath Ledger is deserving of an Academy Award for his performance.  What I can say is that there were many points where I looked at The Joker in the film, and tried to see Heath Ledger, and for the life of me, struggled.  I must say that for this film, he was The Joker.  Few villains I’ve ever seen on film have been so scary, on both a human and inhuman way.  By scary I don’t mean that I’m going to go to bed and have nightmares tonight, but scary in that he’s not just some guy with a weird accent who talks tough and does messed up things to people.  In fact it seems like so much more, like on the one hand you feel like you understand and can relate with him, but on the other as if he is this supernatural force.

Spoiler Warning!

I won’t ruin too much of the film…I know if you’re anything like me, you read that there is a spoiler warning, and for some reason you keep reading the article.  What I will say is that you do see Two Face, and in the film, his rise and fall seem reasonable, although fairly short.  This is a grand departure from the rest of the movie, which can only be categorized as “long” (don’t worry, it’s still really good).  That was the first thing that came out of everyone’s mouths: “wow, that was long!”.  It also seems a lot longer when the movie gets out and it’s three in the morning (lols).

For the plotline, it follows the “triple climax” style of the most recent James Bond movie “Casino Royale”.  That is, you think it’s over, and then it’s totally not, and then, oh, you thought it was over again, didn’t you!  The ending for me was a bit confusing, and I’ll let you either watch the film or read the serious film discussions to figure that out for yourself.  All I can say is that it was a very good movie, and especially for a summer blockbuster, myself, always the finicky one with cheap parlour tricks for plotline and uninspired dialogue, left the theater engaged and well engrossed in the story and the characters.  I highly reccomend it.

 
In my dorm at school, we regrettably do not get cable television, so myself and my peers have become quite in tune to the online alternatives. Over the past year, we’ve seen the popularization of fancast, a website owned and operated by Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA), a cable television provider, which provides on demand content that seems to be supported by ads running at the beginning and at certain intervals throughout the show. I say “seems to be”, because there typically is only one ad, which probably gets repeated a total of three times throughout a given show (interestingly enough at the end of the show, which seems counter-intuitive because by the time I’ve reached that point I’ve already clicked on something else).

So hence the topic of today’s musing: will internet based programming become more profitable than cable? Since fancast is still in its beta, I’m guessing Comcast is still trying to see whether or not it will be profitable. This definitely seems to be the case, since the site mostly functions as an interactive tv-guide that suggests shows to watch on cable. Once again this seems counter-intuitive, because I don’t know a whole lot of people that sit in front of a computer while watching tv (maybe some of you out there can multi-task far better than I can, but with digital cable I don’t need to look online to see what’s on the tube tonight).

Although fancast to me seems to be the most popular medium (hulu offers its own website, but I find it to be a little shoddy since it’s primarily clips rather than full episodes), there definitely seems to be a few aspects that are holding it back as far as being a legitimate medium. When I’m at home, my family has Comcast as our cable provider, and their “Comcast On Demand” to me seems to be the direction that fancast should be heading in. One of the things I’m not terribly fond of with fancast is once you’ve finished watching an episode, there’s a bit of down time from when the episode finishes and you find the next one. Comcast On Demand fills this down time by providing a more or less continuous feed of a host talking about recent tv shows, movies, and other features available on On Demand. The hosts are fairly entertaining, and the content suggestions are actually fairly helpful, and you don’t feel like you’re being pumped full of advertisements while you’re watching it (I’m guessing there is some money involved, however, in capturing time on the mini-show).

Adultswim, Cartoon Network’s (part of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX)) after-hours adult cartoon program, has come up with an alternative solution to the dead-time, which is that it automatically starts playing another episode of a different show. Although sometimes it will pick content you’re not going to necessarily like, while it’s playing there’s a list of alternative content which usually does include something you’d like. Although this is a little easier for a program like Adultswim which doesn’t have as much content as a site like fancast would feature, it does bring up an interesting concept: grouping and tagging shows in to categories. Thus, if you were watching American Dad on fancast, it might suggest you watch The Simpsons or Family Guy, and include some episode suggestions. They have already implemented a similar approach, however it only has content from the same show, and it’s typically only clips.

Besides filling the dead zone and creating more of the seamless-experience that cable television can provide, one of the things I’ve been seeing happening more and more at my university is people hooking up LCD TV’s to their computers and laptops, and playing internet content in more of the traditional sit-on-a-couch-while-you-watch experience. The only challenge that I’ve been seeing is that the streams that these sites provide are not a high enough grade to really enjoy watching on an HD television. So my hypothesis would be that these sites would begin to include the option to watch the content in a higher quality format but have to watch more advertisements. For myself personally, I’m more than willing to sit through some additional advertising if I get to have a crisp, home theater quality experience.

I feel that online entertainment would also provide advertisers with much more varied oppertunities to pin-point on particular demographics, and the feed back of clicks to see whether or not their advertisements were working. Since they can simultaneously flash a website link along with a commerical, they could receive instant traffic rather than hope the viewer was intrigued enough in their product/service to visit the site later.

In addition to the opportunities available to advertisers, I think online television would be a more meritocratic format for content creators. Since everything is only a click away, small networks could have the exact same opportunities as large networks, and episodes of shows could essentially “go viral”, catipulting the creators and networks in to the spotlight.

Moreover, although I feel as though we’re still a ways away from this technology being at the point where people go online rather than to their cable provider for entertainment, I feel that it will eventually be far more succesful than traditional cable entertainment. I’ve got to say I’m personally very excited for it.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at thesaneinvestor@yahoo.com

All material copyright

© 2008 Andrew Jarmon

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