From The Street 1/28/05

[ddlsmith]

The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week
By George Mannes
Senior Writer
1/28/2005 7:15 AM EST
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/markets/dumbestgm/10205701.html

Doom and Voom
Dolan's debacle
1. Flipping the Bird at Cablevision
Well, you can say a lot about Chuck Dolan, but you can't accuse him of wishy-washiness. Once he fixates on a bad idea, he holds on to it for dear life.

Dolan, to remind you, is chairman of Cablevision (CVC:NYSE) , the mostly successful cable TV operator behind the ill-fated high-definition television satellite service called Voom.

As was widely reported last week, Cablevision's board gave up on Voom, and the company sold off its key satellite assets.

But what wasn't so widely reported was Dolan's assessment of why Voom went down the tubes.

It had nothing to do with the obvious reasons why Voom was near-doomed from the start. Voom, for example, faced intense competition from the comfortably established EchoStar (DISH:Nasdaq) and DirecTV (DTV:NYSE) . Voom's much-vaunted high-definition programming was padded with lame, exclusive-for-a-good-reason programming such as Euroleague basketball and views of a tropical fish tank.

No, that wasn't the problem, according to Dolan. Instead, it was Our Litigious Society, which apparently makes it impossible for company directors to Be Brave and Do the Right Thing.

Really. In a memo that leaked out of Cablevision (at least one analyst believes it authentic, but the company declined to comment on the authencity of the memo), Dolan and one of his sons -- also an executive at Cablevision -- wrote that they believed the board's decision "has to do with today's post Enron regulatory climate, which places great emphasis on the potential legal liability of directors who sit on the boards of corporations involved with new enterprises."

Dolan can scapegoat lawyers and regulators if he wants to. But we suspect the blame lies with the guppies.

 

[Sean Mota]

It had nothing to do with the obvious reasons why Voom was near-doomed from the start. Voom, for example, faced intense competition from the comfortably established EchoStar (DISH:Nasdaq) and DirecTV (DTV:NYSE) . Voom's much-vaunted high-definition programming was padded with lame, exclusive-for-a-good-reason programming such as Euroleague basketball and views of a tropical fish tank.


I hope he has VOOM to make an assessment like this. Otherwise he is quite lame in his editorial.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I believe George (the author) is a member here. It would be interesting to know if he had VOOM.

Although I must agree with him lot's of the programming was bad, but there was also a lot of good programming which offset the bad.

 

[gutter]

Scott...was or is VOOM paying its bills to you and is the current contract on or off?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Yes VOOM has been paying it's bills, thats where we got all the money for our big Christmas party.

While the ad agency has expressed interest in advertising in February, I have at this time opted not to renew them for February.

 

[vurbano]

Yes VOOM has been paying it's bills, thats where we got all the money for our big Christmas party.

While the ad agency has expressed interest in advertising in February, I have at this time opted not to renew them for February.

Your not going to advertise Voom after 1/31/05?

 

[jimmykce1]

I think the end is nearing for Voom. Also Sean has posted that there is another board meeting for Monday (1/31/05).

 

[gutter]

Yes VOOM has been paying it's bills, thats where we got all the money for our big Christmas party.

While the ad agency has expressed interest in advertising in February, I have at this time opted not to renew them for February.

Well you can always ask for cash in advance. This may be the most chilling tail but I don't blame you. Without a committment from the board to fund, I wouldn't take a contact either.

 

[riffjim4069]

I believe George (the author) is a member here.

George is both a member and a tool.

 

[Indy]

Time to upgrade to VaVaVoom and Playboy while you still have a chance! If the Voomer Doomers and the Voomer Rumors are correct, then this will be a free weekend of upgraded programming! You may never see it on your Voom bill. And if Voom is still around , which I am pretty sure it will be, you will have it all.

 

[David Dietzel]

One Of The Five Dummest Writers On Wall Street

George Mannes writes "Flipping the Bird at Cablevision" and "the blame lies with the guppies."

This is from a "senior" writer. I'd hate to see how that publication's junior writers practice journalism.

All the sports on VOOM are great to watch -- soccer, hockey and basketball may be games from outside the USA, but very enjoyable none the less.

Fish tank? Yes they sometimes show HD fish tanks on one channel, but this is a miniscule fraction of the Originals programming. Equater is great. I enjoy watching Auction and Fashion and all the rebranded movie channels.

Dolan is correct that Boards are fearful of lawsuits since Enron over big losses. And, many companies nowadays make decisions from quarter to quarter with very little long term vision.

Yahoo, Amazon, HBO and many other organizations that are successful today lost enormous sums of money before turning profitable. Wall Street analysts are often proven wrong by men of vision, drive and determination -- attributes that most folks, including most journalists, lack.

In VOOM's case, a treacherous son stabbed his father in the back and sold off VOOM's hardware assests at fire sale prices hoping to solidify his path to the throne -- that's the REAL cause of VOOM's apparent demise.

 

[rang1995]

it's simple if they do shut down..what was bad from day 1 was MARKETING..period..from sears to no national ads..MARKETING!!!maybe they can fix that fast in a last ditch effort but the need a "white knight"to come to the rescue ASAP

 

[NYVoomer]

I hope he has VOOM to make an assessment like this. Otherwise he is quite lame in his editorial.

Lame and unprofessional. There appears to be a lot of slanderous remarks about a memo that he admits cannot be authenticated. This is journalism at it's worst and does nothing to provide us with facts.

 

[rollerfink]

it's simple if they do shut down..what was bad from day 1 was MARKETING..period..from sears to no national ads..MARKETING!!!maybe they can fix that fast in a last ditch effort but the need a "white knight"to come to the rescue ASAP

It was bigger than marketing. They had a real problem with operations at one point. In fact, I recall them saying that they had to kill their marketing for a while because they couldn't keep up with the new installs. Also a 20-30% churn rate cannot be blamed on marketing.

 

[Sean Mota]

Lame and unprofessional. There appears to be a lot of slanderous remarks about a memo that he admits cannot be authenticated. This is journalism at it's worst and does nothing to provide us with facts.

NYVoomer, welcome to the board. I was not talking about the famous memo that was published here (at satelliteguys.us first and second at briefing.com before anyone else).

My direct quote which you quoted was talking about his assessment of programming. If he did not interview anyone and does not have VOOM to make a correct assessment of VOOM programming, IMO, I find it wrong for him to discuss VOOM programming in his column. At least the guys from www.Multichannel.com came here and interview a few of us to know what we liked about the programming and we disliked about the programming among other things. Here's the direct quote that I was referring to:

It had nothing to do with the obvious reasons why Voom was near-doomed from the start. Voom, for example, faced intense competition from the comfortably established EchoStar (DISH:Nasdaq) and DirecTV (DTV:NYSE) . Voom's much-vaunted high-definition programming was padded with lame, exclusive-for-a-good-reason programming such as Euroleague basketball and views of a tropical fish tank.

 

[GreatMac]

There is a reason this guy (George Mannes) writes for a third rate pub. It is a stupid article, which actually says nothing of substance and is based on no apparent understanding of the industry, and no apparent experience with the programming.

But see, it is easy to say, for example, that The Street has "[content that] was padded with lame, exclusive-for-a-good-reason [stories by unpublishable elsewhere "guppies" such as George Mannes]. I assume (and hope) his salary is commensurate with his talent and that he cannot actually afford a Voom subscription

In the meantime, my hat off to Chuck Dolan.

 

[Tahoerob]

Well Voom did cause problems with HDTV Magazine:

The Grid Guide and the Daily Program Guide (email) have been suspended
temporarily due to the collapse of VOOM and their non-payment to HDTV
Magazine for advertising (many thousands of dollars), which has in turn led
to our default with our data supplier, Tribune.

 

[GreatMac]

Well Voom did cause problems with HDTV Magazine:

???! Something fishy with this guy. He has a Google fed Voom ad banner on top of his blog. If one advertiser's default (and I am not sure it is true, since it has not happened to anyone else) can put him out, he had bigger problems. You didn't actually pay him $35 bucks, did you....

Dish is O.K., but can't hold a candle to Voom. Didn't like the 921. I was tempted by the DirecTV HD TIVO box, which is much better (but currently pricier than the 921), but went to Voom instead, since after all it is the programming and picture quality that really matter. For DVR, I make do with MCE 2005 now.

 

[T2k]

This article is hilarious: it was long time ago when I've seen so clueless, biased, out-of-your-@ss unfounded crap like this.
Dunno who's this clown but definitely some loser from some 3rd grade crap.

This piece should be a school example: a guinea pig with all the possible mistakes/deliberate distortion an amateur/liar can make.

Cheap, clueless crap at its best, period.

(/me spent 90s as TV/magazine journalist/writer )

 

[DarrellP]

If Dolan really wants to know why Voom failed, all he needs to do is come to someone's home, pick up the phone, order Voom and see what a fiasco he has to go throught to get an install, a good antenna and a reliable signal. Then let him play with a buggy box and sit through a rainstorm and try to watch his favorite program. The programming had nothing to do with their failure.