Markets Shrugged

As they should. As CableFAX Daily reported Friday, the market reaction was muted. Now I know what Rush means by the "drive-by media." I presume you’ve been privy to the CableLabs treatise by its exec vp and "chief strategy officer" David Reed and director of advanced network technologies Bob Lund. [If you haven’t, well, credit Fred Dawson with the scoop – note that no one else has – and go to http://www.screenplaysmag.com/news_exclusives/CableLabs-FTTP-080906.html for a good look.] The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Grant created a tempest in a teapot Friday morning … and had every analyst that follows cable scrambling to respond … and they did. With calm and common sense. Reed and Lund were doing what CableLabs is for: looking way out ahead and thinking of different scenarios that cable might (emphasis mine) face someday in some manner … maybe. Sort of like military planning … you plan for everything you can think of … any and every possible exigency. Right now, the Pentagon is planning how to invade Iran. (Really. And Israel’s experiences in Southern Lebanon were a possible dress rehearsal for an air attack.) Not only that, but the Pentagon is planning how to invade Canada and Mexico; or, at least it should be (I still think that’s the way to control the borders, take ’em down to the Panama Canal and up to Baffin Bay!). So CableLabs looks ahead. And thinks. And runs scenarios through the wringer about what might be and how cable maybe should (or maybe shouldn’t) respond … or even get ahead. So I read the report. Clearly a really big "what if?" Still, there’s a really, really interesting aspect of the mini-brouhaha … it wasn’t. And the markets acted sensibly. Maybe there’s hope for the world after all!