Cooler Heads (SkyBOX) 03.14.05

bradley

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source: http://www.mbc-thebridge.com/

Cooler Heads (SkyBOX) 03.14.05

SkyBOX: Cooler Heads

by Evie Haskell evie@Mediabiz.com

(SkyBOX) Bickering, blackmail and a nice dose of litigation continues to mar the multiplatform arena here in the U.S. Defying Wall Street's (well, some of Wall Street's) swoon over Chuck Dolan's rejiggering of the Cablevision board, the new slate of directors did not simply roll over on the VOOM issue. (Did anyone REALLY expect them to? Certainly no one who's actually met the folks on the new slate.) Anyway, at the new board's direction, Dolan raided his personal piggybank (wish we had that piggybank) to lay down a nice, round $10 million to help keep VOOM alive.

That aside, the senior Dolan was forced to fly to Denver to try to get Charlie Ergen to give, or at least lease, back his satellite. Now that is serious punishment. Ergen is famous for his tightwad, five-for-me and one-for-you, approach to business. Makes you wonder what fit of spite caused the original Cablevision board to sell the satellite outside the family, so to speak. Did they give Mr. Dolan senior an opportunity to buy it? Interesting question.

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, Charlie not only had the VOOM satellite in tow, he also found the SEC on his doorstep asking pesky questions about payments to consultants. Personal-friend-of-Charlie type consultants. Any guesses?

So with all these goings-on we were delighted to get (via the fine folks at Ipsos) a whiff of fresh air coming in from Canada. Seems the folks up north have actually reduced their per week spam volume from an average of 68 percent of the total in 2003 to 49 percent of the total in the fourth quarter of 2004.

And how have they done this? Ipsos credits some of the relief to new laws, some of a spate of filter-installing and some to (hold on to your hat here) self-control. Seems our northern friends have become less willing to open spam, making spam less effective, leading to ... ta da!... less spam.

Amazing.

Wonder if we could get some of that fresh air to blow down here.

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