Whoa… Random Notes

$1.7 million on a really down market day!

Going to be interesting next year…

Not the markets (that goes without saying… along with the surrealistic presidential campaigns).

The dinner.

All the dinners.

Can two weeks of crammed events/shows/meetings/exhibits/etc live up to the hopes of the NCTA Board?

We’re tempted to start one of the doomsday clocks with side bets on the outcomes… with "+ or —" so many dollars above or below.

Your guesses?

Kaitz at even? (Not a chance… with the next dinner outside New York, generating the dollars from financial players in the City—presuming some are still extant next year—will be little more than a long shot).

Cable Positive up $2?

WICT down $2?

CTAM Red Ribbon Breakfast?

SCTE attendance up 5%?

Hall of Fame up $1.5?

CTAM attendance up 5%?

(Being nice about this… sort of).

Or…?

* Meanwhile: Let’s all hope subscription television is truly recession-proof.

* Free Markets? Ummm… regulation is coming again. Maybe 9/16 will enter the vernacular as the day the great deregulation train got stopped dead in its tracks. What form regulation takes is going to be a contentious process. For cable and the other multichannel-multiplatform-broadband and more providers, the "good news" (in that we’re down the list) is that financial markets will bear the initial brunt of regulatory changes (some bad, some good, some clearly necessary). But once the regulatory avalanche begins, it is going to be hard to slow… much less to stop. The sanctity of a contract is already under siege. Entire multiplatform business models are under siege from the Federal Confusion Commission. But wouldn’t it be nice it we could ditch retransmission consent? Which, of course, raises the possibilities inherent in uncertainty… a chance to press for favorable regulations. But in this election, watch what you wish for carefully…

* Debates! The first one is Friday evening… from Oxford, Mississippi. (Though I don’t think famous Oxford resident John Grisham will moderate.) Shades of Faulkner? Literate answers to literate, probing questions? Or, confederate flags flapping? Base accusations? Or gentlemanly probity? With PBS ‘ Jim Lehrer, it might just be possible. Though given the nature of the slashing ads—from both sides—any kind of reserved manners might come as a surprise.

* Political Ads = More $s? Maybe not as much as we all hoped. Too many of these presidential campaign attack ads that get picked up and run in news shows actually often don’t run as paid ads… they just get released on the Web along with a press release… free media! They do have the side-benefit of giving fact checkers something to do.

* Launch Time! Anybody else notice that both BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal launched enhanced financial web sites right as the market went haywire? Traditionally good timing… really.

* Always a Silver Lining Department: CNBC ratings spiked. And a few people actually noticed Fox Business. Fox News did a nice running promo for the sister net as political and financial news blended last week.

Yo-Yo Markets: How high? How low? Same day? Ouch!