Author Archives: Steve Mays

Multimedia getting big in collegiate sports marketing

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The company I work for has the marketing rights for the Oklahoma Sooners.  Last week the university announced a new new 10-year, $75 million extension of our deal. Here’s the part that caught my attention:

"Sooner Sports Properties (Learfield) will create a broadband channel to run content about Sooners athletics in addition to certain radio and television rights for events not covered under contracts through the Big 12 Conference. It also holds provisions for emerging technology."

If I read the release correctly, multimedia content generated $2.65 million last year. Sounds like a whole new ball game doesn’t it?

Surviving Las Vegas

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Fake waterfalls, fake grass, fake tits. Las Vegas is city of illusions. If Branson is Las Vegas for people who don’t haved teeth… Las Vegas is Branson for people who do. In fairness, Las Vegas is for people who like to gamble and shop. I don’t care for either.

Nice wedding on Friday and a great show on Saturday. Cirque DuSoleil’s "O" is amazing. Beyond description. The O Theater (The Mirage) seats 1,809 and the show has been sold out every night (2 shows) for years. Tickets range from $85-150. Let’s call ’em $100, or $180,000 per show…$360,000 a night. And the show is probably a loss leader to get folks into the casino.

Took some pix and video and will share those when time allows.

Now I’m about to check email for first time since Thursday. This won’t be pretty.


But these days it seems
Nowhere is far enough away
So I’m leaving Las Vegas today

Google Lunar X Prize

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“Put a robotic lander on the moon, take a spin across the lunar landscape, and beam back visuals — with minimal or no government assistance. Pull that off before anyone else and the galaxy’s richest, most audacious Internet company (Google) will hand over $20 million.” [Wired]

After reading this story, the first thing that popped into my head was: I have more confidence in Google (and a few other companies for that matter) than I do in the U. S. government. My gut tells me Google is more efficient, less corrupt and possessing greater vision.

Guy Kawasaki, Gnomedex 2007

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One of the best presentations at last month’s Gnomedex was Guy Kawasaki. He’s a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books, has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. He talks about evangelism in this video.

“Things we were told about online that were wrong.”

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Steve Safran at Lost Remote takes a look back at some of the responses to his suggestions regarding the web. These bring back a lot of memories:

  • Nobody will break news on their site before the story airs
  • Newspapers won’t put much news online because it will cannibalize sales
  • Nobody will buy web advertising
  • Only young people use the web, and they don’t want news
  • The bubble has burst – there’s no future in the web now
  • There is no need to hire a web-only salesperson
  • News websites will never “blog” or have anything to do with blogging
  • Social networking tools don’t belong on news sites
  • The networks will never send programming directly to the audience and ignore the locals
  • People won’t watch video online because the quality is not high enough
  • People won’t watch video on an iPod because the picture is not big enough
  • Viewers won’t upload video and pictures because it’s too hard to do

The news we want or the the news we need?

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“Mainstream media outlets may not be offering up the stories online users most want to read, according to a new survey that found user-generate new sites like Yahoo giving top billing to different stories than mainstream outlets. The study, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, took a week’s worth of news from three user-driven sites, and Yahoo, and compared it to top stories on various mainstream outlets. The result: online users gravitated toward different topics than those from traditional news outlets.”

— Editor & Publisher:

History of Learfield: J-School Genesis

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Clyde Lear’s latest blog installment of the history of our company is the best yet.

“For two years I worked on my Masters in Journalism. I wrote my thesis on starting a state-wide radio network. Missouri –like a lot of states– had dismal radio coverage from the state capital. Every radio newsroom, big city and small town, depended instead on the two major wire services, the AP and UPI.  There wasn’t access to the voices of the news makers. There was a need for a state-wide news service for radio stations.”

The post includes some video of reports he did as part of final exam. These are priceless and make the post. You can’t miss the embedded clip but be sure to hit the text link to a series of his stand-ups. I’ve included my favorite here to give you a taste.

These started out on 16 mm film and Clyde eventually sent them off to be converted to VHS. And now they’re digital and on YouTube for the all the world to see.

Learfield is a pretty big company today and it’s fun to see the germ of the idea that started it all.

nano upgrade: A+

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Nano_video250The new iPod nano looked great at the product launch up on the big screen behind Steve Jobs. It looks great on the Apple website. And it looks great in the TV spot. But it looks/feels/smells even better in my hot, sweaty little hand.

How does video look on that wee screen? Amazing. I keep turning the nano over, tying to figure out how something that thin can play sharp, bright, crisp video.

I’m looking forward to watching more video podscasts and maybe a TV show or two.

In closing, a word about the iPod UI. I thought it was damn near perfect before but I must say they’ve improved it.

Protect and Serve (and maybe kick your ass)

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A chilling hidden-camera video of an encounter with a St. George, MO (near St. Louis) cop. I hope some of the local media pick this up and ask some questions. Here’s my imaginary scene at this morning’s roll call at St. George PD:

First Cop: “Hey, Kenline! I watched you go ape shit on that kid out the commuter parking lot this weekend.”
Sgt. Kenline: “What are you talking about?”
First Cop: “The kid had a camera rolling and your voice came through lound and clear. You got any vacation time coming, you need to take it, dude. But look at the bright side… you made the home page of Digg!”
Sgt. Kenline: “Uh, what’s dig?

Update 9/11/07: St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig says his officers “are not trained and taught to act like that” …and Sgt. James Kuehnlein on unpaid suspension pending further investigation. [StLToday.com]

Update 9/12/07: Brett Darrow (the guy getting his ass chewed by the cop) met with St. George Police Chief Scott Uhrig for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon and also filed a formal complaint against the officer, Sgt. James Kuehnlein. During the meeting Darrow asked to see the videotape from Kuehnlein’s police car. But according to Uhrig, that footage, inexplicably, is nowhere to be found. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch] If the officer did nothing wrong, wouldn’t the patrol car video have cleared him? Hmmm?

Moral of the Story: Live each day like it’s gonna be on YouTube tomorrow.