Saturday, September 4, 2010

Marc Abela on TV: "TV Days are Counted...Revolution is on its Way"

I received lots of mail from different people about the article I wrote concerning TV Tokyo borrowing $5 billion dollars from Mizuho Bank.

I plan on commenting or placing data supporting facts on this site later today (I'm looking for English language based materials which is making it hard), but I did want to put up an excellent commentary about the entire debacle that was written by Marc Abela.

Marc Writes:

Yes, I read about the TV Tokyo loan - from your web page, mostly. Pretty weird deal indeed. I mean, of course, personally, if TV Tokyo wants to freely bet 5 billion dollars on their next idea, and Mizuho Bank's managers are dumb enough to bet 5 billion of their customers' money on the TV Tokyo "business model" - let them be my guest, just as long as they don't come knocking, of course, at the door of the taxpayer in 3 years in yet another attempt to force government to redirect resources coercively from unrelated neighbors to pay for the cleanup of their own mess. 


If Mizuho cares to lose its reputation as a viable financial institution where you don't want to put your money because the managers on top make all the wrong calls - I surely won't stop them (but like you said, I will definitely take my money out and move it elsewhere). 

I personally think (like you, I'm sure) that the days of "TV" as a concept (i.e. you sit there and someone tells you what to watch, when and how) are so totally counted. Hard to put a clear number, is it 2 years left, 5?, 10?, 1? But the amount of nonsense we regularly get on TV, weirdly covered news and biased reporting, wannabe "entertaining" programs that mothers wished they could just keep their kids from, crappy commercials about just that much more vendor financing for your already indebted father, dumb and dumber discussing on reality TV live, is driving most (all?) of its customer base away - at an unbelievable speed.

It has been a year and some I have not turned my TV on. Not even once. Really. Weird. But it still sits in my living room. Antique. I currently just use my own personal channel registration on YouTube and other video web sites of people I personally trust and care to follow. When they post something new I get a note - and watch it if I can or skip it if I have to. Programs can last 7 minutes, or 77 minutes - as apposed to the 30 minute or 60 minute structure imposed by TV. 


New posts and programs come and appear freely, at times twice a day or sometimes only once a month - as opposed to the daily or weekly structure imposed by TV. Commercials are more targeted to me (guitar stuff, etc) and I click on it when I want - as opposed to having me patiently listen for 2 minutes about how the brand new shampoo will surely make me have better looking friends... What's wonderful is that the pay-per-click commercial on the internet makes both me "and" the shampoo company lose much less of our resources (time/money/etc), and finally, I can watch it all from where I want - when I want - starting from the second which fits me, and pause all the way until I'm done, with any more important phone call.

TV days are counted. Meanwhile the internet has not even started yet. Revolution is on its way.



Marc Abela is an extremely well-known businessman in Japan. He founded the Ludwig Von Mises Institute website at www.mises.jp. You can contact Marc Abela through Facebook.  

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