sorry, i couldn't resist.
the swedish surprise
mindfulness good as meds
Futurology
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
"With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market." -- Business Week, August 2, 1968.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
"With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market." -- Business Week, August 2, 1968.
ESPN Says Study Shows Little Effort to Cut Cable
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: December 5, 2010 nyt
Seeking to understand the cutting of cable cords, ESPN has waded into the Nielsen Company’s audience sample and concluded that the cancellations are currently a “very minor” phenomenon.
The sports network’s study provides a new answer, or at least a new set of data, for a question that looms over the television industry: how many Americans are dropping their costly cable subscriptions and watching TV on the Internet instead?
This action, often called cord-cutting, has happened in 0.28 percent of households in the United States in the last three months, ESPN found in a study that it plans to release on Monday. Offsetting those losses, though, 0.17 percent of households that had been broadcast-only signed up for pay TV and broadband.
“So the net amount of cord-cutting for one quarter was just one-tenth of 1 percent,” said Glenn Enoch, the vice president for integrated media research for ESPN.
The study is significant because the prospect of cord-cutting has deeply worried television executives. Established players like ESPN that depend on subscriber revenue have been eager to figure out how much cord-cutting is going on — and to dispel myths about the behavior.
“We got a little worn out reading headline after headline saying, ‘Cord-cutting, it’s a disaster; young people are abandoning TV.’ For our strategic purposes, we needed to know what was really going on,” Mr. Enoch said.
The research comes from the same sample that Nielsen uses to project TV ratings. Nielsen verified ESPN’s findings.
Similarly, data from the research firm SNL Kagan found that 119,000 customers dropped their cable or satellite subscriptions in the third quarter of this year. There are about 100 million subscriptions nationwide.
Pat McDonough, the senior vice president for planning, policy and analysis at Nielsen, said the ESPN study confirmed that while there are some cord-cutters, “it’s a really small number of people.”
More people, she added, are “swapping cable cords, rather than cutting them.” Cable providers have lost some customers to satellite or telecommunications providers in recent years.
Mr. Enoch said ESPN would monitor cord-cutting behavior every three months using the Nielsen sample. The amount of cord-cutting could pick up over time, but networks like ESPN are limiting the amount of video they make available on the Internet without a subscription partly to prevent that.
Sporting events are particularly hard to watch free online, so it comes as little surprise that the Nielsen sample found that among heavy and medium viewers of sports, the research showed what Mr. Enoch called “zero cord-cutting.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 6, 2010, on page B7 of the New York edition.
------------------------------------------------------
Only 0.1% Have Cut The Cord: ESPN Analysis
Analysis Of Nielsen Data Indicates 0.3% Of Broadcast-Only Subs Became Multichannel, Broadband Subs Over Past Three Months
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 12/6/2010 9:40:26 AM
Cord-cutting, at this point, is barely a blip on the multichannel horizon.
According to an ESPN analysis of Nielsen's national people meter sample over the past three months, just 0.28% of homes dropped their multichannel video service, but maintained their broadband connections.
That percentage was mitigated by a group of broadcast-only households that became subscribers to multichannel TV and broadband over the same period, as these "un-cutters" represented 0.17% of homes in the Nielsen sample.
As such, the net loss between the groups was just 0.11% of all households.
Additionally, people who were heavy or medium sports viewers showed zero cord-cutting. Heavy and medium sports viewers account for 83% of sports viewing and 90% of viewing to ESPN, according to the programmer.
"This project adds critical intelligence to our understanding of the multichannel marketplace," said Glenn Enoch, vice president of Integrated Media Research, ESPN, in a statement. "We knew from other sources that cord cutting was a very minor behavior, but we now have the ability to quantify this group and monitor it in the future."
I broke our blender which we have been using quite a bit. Any suggestions for a replacement? I would love to get the Vitaprep but can't quite get over the price. There must be something close for a more reasonable amount?
on getting feedback
lebkuchen recipe / wiki history
frugal portland
bristol bay: theres gold in them there fish...
"According to Vice, The Vice Guide To Everything, is their "new MTV show about the absurdity of the modern condition: the most interesting people, news, sub-cultures and rituals on the planet. It's the stuff you don't get from the mainstream media but that you absolutely need to know - and won't stop talking about."
birthday dinner at blue hill stone barns
The premise of Storage Wars revolves around the fact that the United States has many thousands of square miles of storage space, enough to house every man, woman, and child in the country seven times over, according to the opening credits sequence. These storage units make their money by renting out their space to people who have things they need secured, of course, but the single biggest way they lose money is from people defaulting on their rent. If someone doesn't pay rent on a storage unit for more than three months, then everything inside that unit becomes the property of the storage company. The items are auctioned off but not piece by piece. Instead, the company hires an auctioneer to sell whole UNITS, and various pawn shop owners, consignment specialists, and other scavengers descend on the auctions to hope they'll find treasure packed in the back of these units. But they're not allowed to step inside the units during inspection, nor are they allowed to open up sealed boxes. The buyers are only allowed to buy the unit based on what they think they can see standing outside of it.
ifc is scooping up many of the oft short lived cultish comedies for rebroadcast. recently aired included flying circus, freaks and geeks, undeclared and arrested development. now adding mr. show, the ben stiller show and larry sanders.
Interesting explanation of WikiLeaks strategy (via Yglesias)
pdx portland
Jason Neroni's not the only New York City name looking to make it big in Portland: Eater confirmed today that New York transplant Sarah Pliner (formerly head chef at the West Village's Socialista Downstairs and veteran of Ducasse and Aquavit) will open up Aviary, a small-plates style spot, on NE Alberta sometime early next year. "Coming from New York, we wanted to be part of a neighborhood," Pliner says. "Alberta is such a vibrant, happening place."
Pliner (who spent about 10 years in Portland during the '90s — cooking at the Heathman and Giorgio's), is pairing with fellow schooled-in-NYers Jasper Shen (Aquavit, Jean-Georges) and Kat Whitehead for the project, and their eclectic mix of influences shows up in the menu. "We've all worked in a million kinds of restaurants," Pliner says, "and we want to take the best of things we've done." A sneak peek at a working menu reveals three sections: Small plates (featuring roast goose salad and oxtail croquettes); a vegetarian "seasonal" menu (think tempura pumpkin and cauliflower veloute); and large plates (like crispy pig ear with coconut rice, and brioche-crusted halibut with uni). NY strip streak is the priciest item, at $16.
Build-out is in progress; projected opening date: January.
Jason Neroni's not the only New York City name looking to make it big in Portland: Eater confirmed today that New York transplant Sarah Pliner (formerly head chef at the West Village's Socialista Downstairs and veteran of Ducasse and Aquavit) will open up Aviary, a small-plates style spot, on NE Alberta sometime early next year. "Coming from New York, we wanted to be part of a neighborhood," Pliner says. "Alberta is such a vibrant, happening place."
Pliner (who spent about 10 years in Portland during the '90s — cooking at the Heathman and Giorgio's), is pairing with fellow schooled-in-NYers Jasper Shen (Aquavit, Jean-Georges) and Kat Whitehead for the project, and their eclectic mix of influences shows up in the menu. "We've all worked in a million kinds of restaurants," Pliner says, "and we want to take the best of things we've done." A sneak peek at a working menu reveals three sections: Small plates (featuring roast goose salad and oxtail croquettes); a vegetarian "seasonal" menu (think tempura pumpkin and cauliflower veloute); and large plates (like crispy pig ear with coconut rice, and brioche-crusted halibut with uni). NY strip streak is the priciest item, at $16.
Build-out is in progress; projected opening date: January.
OUCH
MICHAEL WHITE cooks pasta and people go crazy. This has been the case since he was the chef at Fiamma Osteria on Spring Street in the early years of the century, and it remains the case at Osteria Morini, a casual new restaurant on Lafayette Street.
MICHAEL WHITE cooks pasta and people go crazy. This has been the case since he was the chef at Fiamma Osteria on Spring Street in the early years of the century, and it remains the case at Osteria Morini, a casual new restaurant on Lafayette Street.
look familiar
