Note: This guest essay was written by someone who works for a regulated entity and must therefore be highly circumspect with regard to any public commentary, regardless of topic. They have been closely following the evolution of the mass surveillance situation since early 2025. 

Why Jessica Burbank’s Flock investigation deserved consideration for an Investigative Documentary Emmy

There are two ways for an investigative journalist to be first. One is to publish a story before another reporter does. The rarer kind is to recognize that something is an important story before everyone else sees its importance.

Jessica Burbank did the latter.

In August 2025, Burbank produced an hour-long documentary investigating Flock Safety, the rapidly expanding provider of automated license-plate readers and other surveillance technology. Her starting point was hardly the stuff of national headlines: a municipal contract in the affluent village of Scarsdale, New York.

What Burbank found there became a window into something much larger.

That matters because the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has an Emmy category almost tailor-made for this kind of work. NATAS describes Outstanding Investigative Documentary as films that expose “wrongdoing, corruption or hidden truths through deep reporting and original access.”

In other words, work that holds powerful institutions accountable and brings new evidence or revelations to light. Measured against that standard, Burbank deserved serious consideration for an Emmy.

On April 8, 2025, Scarsdale’s Village Board approved its Flock contract. The resolution had not appeared on the published agenda. After a presentation and executive session, the Board amended its agenda and approved the contract 6–1. The procedural portion took mere seconds.

Burbank’s documentary reconstructs what preceded that vote and what residents hadn’t been told.

Using records obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, she established that Village officials had been communicating with Flock for months before the public presentation. The incoming police chief was invited to meet with the company the day after his selection and before formally taking office. On March 31, he emailed that “the map is approved,” referring to proposed camera locations—before the public presentation, contract approval, or funding.

That alone is solid accountability journalism.

But Burbank didn’t stop there.

A records request seeking market research and analysis of competing vendors produced only a sole-source justification signed by Flock’s CEO. Burbank searched elsewhere and found versions of similar Flock documents in government records around the country. She then identified communities where Flock contracts had followed strikingly similar low-visibility paths.

In Lucas County, Ohio, commissioners approved a $250,000 Flock agreement among a group of routine items, only to attempt to rescind it a week later after a commissioner reconsidered what they had authorized.

This is the machinery of investigative journalism: find an anomaly, obtain the records, test the official explanation, search for a pattern, and confront the subject with what you find.

Burbank did that last part, too. She interviewed Flock’s national communications director and questioned the company about its contracting practices and the similarities she had uncovered among municipalities. The film does not simply present critics of Flock; it puts Burbank’s findings directly to Flock and gives the company an opportunity to answer them.

Then the investigation makes its most important leap.

Scarsdale isn’t really the story. The network is.

The documentary explains that Flock’s distinguishing feature isn’t simply its cameras. It is the ability, where agencies participate in sharing, to connect searches across jurisdictions. Burbank examines a Texas sheriff’s investigation involving a woman who traveled across state lines for an abortion and gets Flock itself to acknowledge that searching cameras in other participating localities is a capability of its system.

From there emerges the film’s central insight: a national surveillance infrastructure doesn’t necessarily arise from an act of Congress or a presidential directive. It can emerge incrementally—one police department, one salesperson, one municipal contract and sometimes one barely noticed local vote at a time.

As Burbank puts it near the film’s conclusion, one might imagine that creation of a national camera network would require “high-profile debate on the nightly news” and congressional action. Instead, she observes, it can take little more than seconds at a town-board meeting and a police chief’s signature.

That observation looks considerably more important today than it did when Burbank made it.

There was also unusually immediate evidence of impact. Her written investigation was published August 2, 2025. On August 4, Scarsdale’s police chief sent the Village Board a memorandum concerning the Flock contract. On August 6, the Village canceled it. Burbank carefully stops short of claiming that her reporting caused the reversal, suggesting instead that journalism and sustained public participation “might” have mattered.

That restraint is important. Investigative journalism should establish what the evidence supports, not claim credit it cannot prove.

But the strongest argument for Burbank’s work may be one that only became fully visible afterward. She was early. The national controversy she identified in 2025 did not fade. It grew.

Flock and interconnected ALPR networks subsequently became subjects of far broader scrutiny over privacy, immigration enforcement, abortion investigations, police misuse and the extraordinary power created when thousands of local cameras become searchable beyond the communities that purchased them.

In other words, Burbank didn’t simply get to the Flock story early. She identified why it was going to become a national story. That distinction matters.

There are investigations that expose misconduct everyone already understands to be important. They can be extraordinary journalism. But there is another, rarer form of investigative reporting: finding something that appears small, recognizing the system concealed inside it and showing the audience why it will matter before conventional wisdom catches up.

Burbank began with a 37-second vote in a suburban village and found the architecture of a national controversy.

Her documentary ends with a sentence that now sounds remarkably prescient:

“The story of mass surveillance and Flock Safety is one I’m just beginning to tell.”

She was right.

None of this means Burbank was owed an Emmy. NATAS’s documentary categories encompass extraordinary work from some of the best-resourced documentary organizations in the world, and an independent production should be judged by the same standard of excellence.

But that is precisely why Burbank’s accomplishment deserves attention. NATAS says an Outstanding Investigative Documentary should uncover hidden truths through deep reporting and original access, hold powerful actors accountable, and bring new evidence or revelations to light.

Burbank did those things.

And she did one more: she recognized the significance of the story before much of the country did. That isn’t merely good timing. It’s one of the hallmarks of great investigative journalism.

Sources:
Video: You’re Being Watched: The Company Behind America’s Mass Surveillance Takeover

Millions in Public Funds, Zero Public Input: Flock’s Surveillance System Might Already Be Overseeing Your Community
The $7.5 billion surveillance company Flock Safety is operating in 49 states and over 5,000 communities, but the residents of Scarsdale, NY, are fighting back.
Jessica Burbank
Dropsite. Aug 02, 2025

The post She Saw the Flock Story Coming… appeared first on The Big Picture.

1. What you’ve got to know is she WROTE those songs!

So it’s October 1973. I’m driving with the top down on my 1963 Chevy Impala trying to get something on the radio.

This was before cassette decks. Sure, you could buy an aftermarket 8-track, but they sat under the dash and were notorious for getting stolen. Furthermore, the 8-track format itself was wonky. With the movement of the heads from track to track…tapes wore out quickly and thus were a bad investment. Which is all to say when you were in the hinterlands, long before the days of Bluetooth, never mind satellite radio, you’d drive down the highway with your right hand on the radio dial, trying to pull in a listenable station.

Now this was in the hinterlands of Vermont. Needless to say, this ’63 convertible didn’t have FM, not that there was a station broadcasting in the backwoods. But AM signals travel further and…

What you notoriously got was rural news, the farm report, and country music. In an era where no proud rocker followed what was going on in Nashville.

Sure, Ringo made a record in Tennessee. But most of us in the north had never even been south of the Mason-Dixon Line, unless it was the hop, skip and a jump to Florida. We wrote off the south, that’s where you went with your long hair and got attacked by rednecks.

Now don’t confuse today’s country music with yesteryear’s. Today’s country is the rock of the seventies. Back then, it was people with high hair singing twangy songs…

Sure, there was a TV show, “Hee Haw.” But this was long before the average fan of the Fab Four gave props to Roy Clark for his picking ability. As for Buck Owens…we couldn’t find Bakersfield on a map, never mind name a single song of his.

Sure, we knew Roger Miller from the AM radio of the sixties. “Trailers for sale or rent…” This was what we endured to get to the Beatles.

But I’m in a pensive mood, wondering how I’m going to endure another year of college, it’s a brisk day and I stumble on to a station and what comes out is “Jolene.” It was not only the first time I heard the song, it was the first time I’d ever heard Dolly Parton. She hadn’t crossed over, she wasn’t featured on Top 40 radio in the metropolis. But rather than continuing to mosey down the dial, looking for some rock, I listened.

“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene”

This was rootsy. Not that different from those Bonnie Raitt albums I was enamored of. This was not drippy drama, songs to sleep to. I could relate. And I never forgot it.

2. Now we knew who Dolly Parton was. I mean how could you not? With that hair and those boobs?

But the real breakthrough into the mainstream was “9 to 5.” Back when Jane Fonda could open a movie and a flick like this could garner an audience. “9 to 5” was a staple. Everybody saw it. And what they saw in Dolly Parton was someone who didn’t deny her roots, but was in on the joke. That was the thing about Dolly Parton, she had a sense of humor, she could make fun of herself. Not to mention writing the title song, which went all the way to number one and earned her an Oscar nomination.

Dolly Parton was now part of the firmament.

From the holler, but never lumped into the same bucket as Loretta Lynn and George Jones, no matter how talented they might have been. Dolly Parton was now mainstream, when those other acts were not. They were still inhabitants of the country ghetto, Parton had transcended that.

And she maintained this status for the next half century. To this day! Most people have ups and downs, their careers wax and wane. People change their opinions on them. But not Dolly Parton. Somehow by being aw shucks and exhibiting all that talent, she was embraced.

And, once again, she was in on the joke. She’d go on late night TV and play the role. You’d think she was ditzy, almost a bimbo, and then she’d let out a zinger showing that she was as sharp as you and me and to underestimate her was a mistake.

3. But Parton’s crossover appeal, the cementing of her credibility amongst those who were not country fans, was the 1987 “Trio” album, which she made with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.

I bought that album, played it too. It was a natural extension of the country rock that began with “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” which always had a place in the firmament, it never died.

Now the funny thing is the true star, the person who could make it happen, was Linda Ronstadt, who was a superstar in the seventies and then broadened her purview to the stage with “Pirates of Penzance” and then cut three albums of standards with Nelson Riddle. If Ronstadt’s name was on it, it sold.

And in truth, Linda had much more broad-based musical success than Dolly, more hit albums, but now, nearly forty years later…

Linda’s star in the public firmament has faded, yet Dolly’s shines as bright as ever.

Because Dolly wrote.

That’s what makes it so you’re remembered. The songs.

And Dolly’s songs were personal. And her story from there to here was one of lifting herself up by her own bootstraps. Gloria Steinem may have gotten all the ink, but Dolly was just as much of a role model for women’s liberation, if not more.

Dolly wrote for herself. And the personal is universal, when you do it right.

And she was so damn likable. Without being syrupy sweet, without shaving off all of her rough edges. She played the game with a wink. And those who play and can beat the odds doing it their way…we cotton to them.

4. And then there was the whole kerfuffle with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Unlike the desperate with a chip on their shoulder, looking for the accolade as a victory lap they can put on their résumé, Dolly thought she didn’t deserve induction, because she wasn’t really a rock artist.

But if you’re going to induct Whitney Houston…

And, of course, Dolly wrote Whitney’s signature song, “I Will Always Love You.” An outstanding performance, but it’s the song that will live on, not Whitney Houston. Look at history, rarely are interpreters remembered, but writing, when done right, is forever.

So Dolly Parton, of all people, is calling the Hall on its B.S. Ironically, she’s standing up for the leather jacketed crowd pissed that pop, never mind hip-hop, is now part of the Hall. She was more interested in the integrity of the institution than the award.

But when Dolly finally acceded, she took the stage, played the guitar and ROCKED! I was there. You couldn’t watch it without a smile on your face. If this was the Rock Hall, she was going to deliver, and she did!

5. Now if you want to know every facet of Dolly’s career, there are plenty of obituaries to fill that need. You can go on Spotify and listen to her catalog. I’m no expert.

I’m just like so many of you. Country music of the sixties and seventies was not my bag (Although I did love Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl”… Then again, do youngsters even know that classic? I don’t see any of them covering it. But young acts continue to cover “Jolene” and other Dolly Parton songs.), but Dolly Parton was an exception. We all knew her, she was embedded in our hearts and minds. As much as she appeared, she was never overexposed, we were always glad to see her. She was like someone from down the street, dropping by for a cup of coffee, gossiping with relish. She was more than a performer, she was a person!

I know you know what I’m talking about.

Which is why there’s a national, international outcry over her passing.

Old rockers? They’re dropping like flies. Then again, when they’re not on the road…out of sight, out of mind. But Dolly Parton never left the news. And she’s left a hole that cannot be filled, because she was sui generis, there was only one Dolly Parton.

And there will never be one again.

Just like the Beatles were a product of post-war Liverpool…

Dolly Parton was a product of a rural America that has expired with modernity. Sure, there’s still poverty, but there’s also flat screen TVs and smartphones and the internet…

Actually, all you can really do is marvel. At what Dolly achieved, and she never rested on her laurels, she continued to march forward.

Wow.

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Dolly Parton appeared first on The Big Picture.

I’m categorically against self-checkout.

I mean I’m already doing all the work. But it’s even worse, the machines are so theft-avoidant that you’ve got to follow a specific routine, not only scanning the item, but placing it on a platform to register its weight, grocery shopping is frustrating enough already.

And every time I’m forced into using self-checkout there’s a snafu, and I have to wait for a clerk to come along to reset the machine and…

It’s my own personal protest. And as a matter of fact, many retail stores are eliminating self-checkout because of the shrinkage problem.

Which means I have to wait in line and…

I need to plan to go to Costco. It’s an adventure, not a ramble around the block. I’ve got to find a parking space, navigate the people and their carts and hope what I want is in stock and wait to check out, but…

I needed more Vitarain Zero. There’s nothing worse than running out of a staple. Like Chobani coffee yogurt.

I’ve got a formula, encompassing Chobani and a skyr not to be named, it’s hard enough to find as it is. As a matter of fact, I bought in excess of twenty when I went to Gelson’s last Saturday. But they had no Chobani, never mind blueberries. Is there another blueberry shortage? There was one a couple of years back.

So instead of driving home I went to Ralphs.

But I’ve got to ask you, how long can refrigerated items sit in your car, especially during the summer? I was contemplating this, but then I remembered Ralphs’s parking is in a covered garage, so I drove further away from home and they were overloaded with Chobani coffee, I ended up buying sixteen. And they had blueberries too!

But I won’t buy VitaminWater Zero there, it’s too much of a rip-off. Funny how I’ll spend so much money on a restaurant meal and then haggle over a few dollars, but I hate being ripped-off, it’s an insult. I’ll pay full price for what I want, but don’t f*ck me in the ass.

So I calculated my Vitarain Zero stock and my coming obligations and realized today was the day, I had to go to Costco.

Now I thought of getting gas there. Aren’t the prices dropping? But the cars were stacked six or seven deep, it wasn’t worth the wait.

But I went into the store and…

I told myself only to buy that which I needed, to not dilly-dally, but I had to look at the TVs.

They’re selling an 83″ Samsung OLED for $3999. EIGHTY THREE INCHES! And you wonder why people don’t want to go to the movie theatre.

And I found my Vitarain Zero and couldn’t resist the chopped fruit, it’s summer after all, and then, lo and behold, they had Grillo’s pickles! So I bought a bucket of them.

And then it was off to the poke. They make this sriracha ahi… And it’s very hot. In reality, I should not be eating it, I pay the price afterward, but it’s so damn good! It’s rare that you can find store bought stuff with enough heat.

And they had a salmon mango ceviche too…

And a spicy tuna ahi salad…

But how much fresh fish could I buy?

I contemplated this question and then decided on just the sriracha ahi and the salmon mango ceviche and then…

After sampling a few things that did not float my boat, I had to strategize my exit.

Like I said, I refuse to use self-checkout. If for no other reason than the other people tend to get flummoxed and not be so fast.

So…

I’ve analyzed the checkout at this store. And my plan is to go to the lane closest to the entrance. You see most people tour the store in a U, and end up on the opposite side. But I’ve had good luck going back crosstown in the store and using the far left lane.

And I’m racing a guy with liquor. Did you know you don’t need to be a member to buy liquor in a California Costco?

And when I get to the registers, each one has four people ahead of me.

Oh well…

I decide I’m going to time my exit. It’s 12:27. How long is it going to take me?

Turns out Costco has in-store wifi, so I fire that up and am just starting to peruse Instagram Reels when a woman comes up to me with a handheld scanner. What’s up? I’m way back in line.

She asks me for my membership card.

I guess they’re rooting out fraud.

But then she starts scanning all the items in my cart. What exactly is going on? Why is she doing this?

And then she walks away, to do the same in the next line over.

So I leave my basket and go over to her and ask what is going on.

She said just to show my Costco card at checkout.

Huh?

Yup, she already scanned all my items, they were in the system, and when the clerk scanned my membership card the bill would come right up and I could pay, no extra scanning necessary.

Now I was confused when the clerk scanned my card and then started checking out the items in my cart. So I asked him why he was doing this. He was counting the merchandise, to make sure there was no stealing involved.

And then I scanned my ATM card, got ahold of my cart and checked my phone.

It was 12:29!!!! I’d been checked out in two minutes!

And now I’m starting to smile, feeling so good. Like I’ll come back more often on smaller runs.

But what I really felt good about was Costco. They were doing every little thing to enhance the consumer experience.

At Ralphs, it was like the clerk was stoned. Going through the motions, seemingly wanting to be anywhere but there.

It was like she was encased in molasses while she was bagging my stuff. There was no separate bagger, that would cost too much!

But at Costco? They know me and want to keep me as a customer. They just don’t see it as a store, but a religion. I believe in Costco like I used to believe in bands, because they’re not doing it the same way as everybody else, they’re not resting on their laurels, they’re constantly innovating.

And when I get to my car…

Those flats of Vitarain Zero are heavy, so I want to get as close to my machine as possible.

However, not too close. I remember my 2002 getting a scratch in the door from an errant grocery cart, it always bugged me.

And the cart looked steady, but just when I was done loading my car, I saw it resting against the rear bumper.

Oh no… The bumper is plastic, but still…

So I leaned in close to investigate.

Turns out the Costco carts have rubber bumpers, for this express reason, so they don’t damage your automobile!

Now maybe they have these bumpers at other grocery stores, but I’ve never encountered them.

So this is where we are today. We’re enamored of brands more than people. Because they understand the relationship is everything.

Apple… You pay a fortune, but it looks good and it just works. And you have recourse if it doesn’t, you can call or go to an Apple store.

Of course there are Android fanatics, but I read in today’s “Wall Street Journal” that the iPhone has more than 60% market share in the U.S., and it’s the most expensive handset, except for a few rivals. And Apple has four of the five best selling smartphones worldwide, and over sixty percent of the profits.

We’ve got a relationship with Apple. You may not, but many do. And when we see that dreaded green bubble, we wonder why that user didn’t get the memo.

Costco doesn’t complain.

That’s what today’s entertainers are doing constantly, complaining. About not making enough money, getting ripped-off, getting dissed. But Costco is above it all, just preaching to the choir, its choir, which is not everybody, but a hell of a lot of people.

Costco is thinking about ME!

As for Apple and its prices… No one is forcing you to buy an iPhone, and none of them are cheap. Where else do we see this? With concert tickets! But in that sphere the acts won’t own the value of a ticket to their show, there’s endless finger-pointing, someone is at fault. But the bottom line is people are lining up to pay, they’re dying to go to the show and they’re willing to pay for it!

But all we’ve got is ill will.

Ain’t that America, someone is at fault, someone is holding you back, ripping you off.

But not at Costco.

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

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~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Lefsetz on Costco appeared first on The Big Picture.

So I’m looking through the midyear issue of “Pollstar” and there’s a chart for “Venues With Capacities Of 5,000 Or Less.”

Now if you’re a dedicated follower of the main “Pollstar
chart (if not fashion), you know it tends to be dominated by the usual suspects, mostly acts with years under their belts, playing big buildings. But it’s the smaller venues where acts break, so that’s why I was interested.

And I’d be lying if I told you I knew every act who appeared.

Now let’s be clear, these are not anomalies. This is a six month chart, you needed to do consistent business in order to triumph.

So starting with the 2,001-5,000 capacity venues…

Number one is Jerry Seinfeld, which is not surprising.

But I’d be lying if I told you I knew number two, Subtronics. Turns out he’s a deejay. That’s a world unto itself, based on word of mouth, a veritable underground scene when it comes to mainstream publicity. But people want to party. So, they’ll come to see the deejay du jour, in numbers.

#3 was Bert Kreischer, not exactly my cup of tea, but he’s a well-known comedian.

#4 Another act I had not heard of, Josiah Queen. Google tells me he’s a Christian contemporary artist, and that’s a world unto itself even more than deejays/EDM, one that would not normally fly on my radar screen.

#5 was Def Leppard. This act goes out seemingly every summer, I didn’t think they were even playing buildings this small. They represent an era, good for them.

#6 Mannheim Steamroller. An annual holiday event (this chart runs from November 13, 2025 to May 13, 2026).

#7 K40S. Now the funny thing is if you Google you end up getting results about a Xiaomi smartphone, they fill the entire first page. K40S, who I was unaware of, turns out to also be an EDM artist, but you have to Google ” K40S music” to discover this, the act doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, never mind press, but they pulled in in excess of 3,000 people an evening, for a nightly gross of $142,412, and that’s not chump change.

#8 At this point legendary comedian Jim Gaffigan.

#9 Michael McIntyre, another person I’d never heard of. Turns out he’s a British comedian, and he’s 50!

#10 Josh Johnson, another comedian.

So if you’re doing the math, five of the ten highest grossing acts in what we used to call theatres are COMEDIANS!

Whoa, whoa, whoa… How about all those acts in the Spotify Top 50, aren’t they supposed to be driving the culture, isn’t music everything?

NOPE!

Now if you’re on social media…

On my TikTok and Instagram Reels I get a plethora of comedy clips. And in about two-thirds of the cases, I’ve never heard of the person. And almost all of them are funny to a degree. But I’m thinking how competitive it is. Anyone can do it, kinda like music, but building a fan base and earning a living?

Now comedy acts complain, that’s part of their routine, including about the travel and club owners, but I never encounter anyone protesting that they’re being screwed by the system, that they’re entitled to attention and a living, that’s the domain of “musicians.” How can the perspectives be so different? They both live and die on attention, and that delivers remuneration. And to make it in comedy, you must work live. I don’t see people posting clips from their bedrooms, sans audience. You’ve got to get out there. But there are a ton of people who make music who never work live, they can’t get the gigs.

Then again, there are fewer places to play.

But does that have something to do with the music?

I’d say so. People are willing to pay for entertainment, but it seems to be comedians who they want to see. And a comedian can’t bomb on a regular basis or they will no longer be able to work, they’ve got to succeed most of the time.

The bottom line is comedy has usurped music’s spot on the bleeding edge.

Sure, there are chains of clubs, and Netflix specials, but it’s still the wild west compared to music. In music everyone rails on about the labels and Live Nation and Ticketmaster, but in comedy, the acts know they must earn their success.

And I see the equivalent of open mic videos on social media. There are a slew of people who will do standup locally, but won’t go any further, because the response is not solid enough and they’re not willing to do the work. And you have to do the work if you’re a comedian. Even if you theoretically purchased your material, that’s only half of it, you need to know how to deliver it.

And comedians know no bounds, they’re unafraid, they don’t go on stage worried about alienating sponsors, they don’t think of clothing lines, they’re selling their identities, anything that compromises their identity will ultimately hit their bottom line, shortening their career.

If you want the truth, you go see a comedian.

That’s rarely the main feature in music. How could it be, with the music made by committee? Comedians are singular.  You need to have a personality and a point of view to have any success at all.

The bottom line here is the numbers do not lie, the public is responding.

And when you go down the chart to smaller buildings, comedians continue to punch above their weight.

It’s not like comedy is new, but fifty years ago when it came to hip comedians you had George Carlin and…maybe Robert Klein. And a bunch of Borscht Belt hangovers.

This is not the comedy of yore.

It’s comedians who are skewering politicians, and the excesses of the public too. That’s part of the act, ridiculing nincompoops with a profile and things that just don’t make sense. This is not Fox vs. MSNow, there’s not an underlying corporate agenda, comedians are outsiders, commenting on the happenings of the day and life in general. Sure, they want to get paid, but they harbor no dream of  going inside and taking over the jobs of the people they’re making fun of. Scratch that, we did have Al Franken, but you get what I mean.

In other words, comedy has usurped music’s power. And it’s so hot that it’s getting wannabes to participate. It’s exciting and it’s anything but fake.

And there’s no equipment and entourage necessary, if you make it, costs are low and you get paid quite handsomely.

But you’ve got to be good.

No, you’ve got to be GREAT! And competition is fierce, upping everybody’s game.

And the public is riveted.

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Comedy Is Hot appeared first on The Big Picture.

“Apple: The First 50 Years”

1. To tell you the truth, I finished this book almost a week ago, and I forgot most of what I wanted to say about it. Primarily the business insights.

Not that I don’t remember the facts. Not that I haven’t internalized the messages.

In any event, this book is not for casual fans, casual readers. If you came to the Mac after Steve Jobs returned or later, you probably won’t get far in this tome. But if you were there at the beginning…

I was not. At the very beginning. Because it was all about the Apple II.

And that lore is repeated here, the creation of the Apple I, the Apple II team’s frustration that it was considered a second class citizen whilst generating all the profits, keeping the company alive well into the Macintosh era.

But I came in in 1986. With the Mac Plus…

The original Mac was close to unusable, it only had 128kb of RAM…

Now let me see… This machine I’m running has 48 GIGS of RAM. 128kb was infinitesimal. Months later came the Fat Mac, with 512kb, but the Mac Plus had a gig of RAM. However you still had to swap floppies. The screen was still small and black and white. But if you bought in, it was a religion. Like being a fan of your favorite band, but deeper. Maybe because you were there early, you were intrigued, and you knew these machines would change the world.

Computers were not rare in 1986, but most of them were PCs…which really didn’t have an effective Windows interface until 1995. In other words, they were not very usable. They were business tools.

But what really blew up computing was AOL. Didn’t matter what platform you were on, they all worked with AOL…and people ran out and bought computers just to play.

But that was almost thirty years ago. Do today’s generations, many birthed in this century, know this?

No, just like we couldn’t fathom the introduction of television in our parents’ era.

Anyway, I had no allegiance to Apple. All I knew was I wanted to start a newsletter and needed a computer to do so. And it didn’t take much research to find out I needed a Mac, with PageMaker, and a LaserWriter.

This was a different era, not quite the hobbyist era, but the machines were not foolproof, unlike your iPad and iPhone. Not only did they crash, they might not reboot. The Mac wasn’t truly user-friendly for everybody until the introduction of Mac OS X, based on Unix with the Mach kernel.

Not that you need to know that, not that today you need to know how your car runs. But for almost all of my life, you had to have a rudimentary knowledge of how your automobile functioned, because it would break! Computers were even worse, although they rarely physically broke, they just stopped working.

And you had to figure out why.

That’s right, there was no Genius Bar, really very little tech help at all. You had to sit in front of the computer and figure out what was wrong, and it could take you hours…I found it nearly impossible to fall asleep until I’d solved the problem, gotten my computer back on the right track.

Needless to say, those are not these days.

2 So forty years ago…

Not only was there no internet, techies were considered nerds, geeks, they were not respected by the hoi polloi, who were infatuated by MTV. But once you got bitten…

I used to say it was like having a math problem on my desk. Only there was no test, I wasn’t graded, but when I figured it out the level of satisfaction…

And what the Macintosh could do, and what the PC could not!

So if you were around in those days, you’ll be intrigued, you will be riveted, because Pogue brings it all back. The system updates, which you had to go to the store at first to get. The step by step innovation. The dark years and then the renaissance.

Now this is not the first time this territory has been covered, but it has never been covered so well, because David Pogue is one of our own, he’s not only writing about the Mac, he LIVED the Mac!

The best books ever about the Mac and Mac products were authored by Pogue, and I used to buy the “Missing Manual”s and read them cover to cover. You’d be stunned how powerful these machines are, most only use a tiny faction of their ability.

And the software too.

I read all the manuals, also from cover to cover.

Do you know if you double-click the top of your window, it will shrink it down to the dock? I could list tons of tips, but most are not used and not cared about. It’s almost an insider’s game. But…

Those early days, do you remember Conflict Catcher?

All the breakthroughs and bumps in the road are catalogued by Pogue. In an upfront, breezy style. He makes Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs look like the doorstep it is. Content is secondary to readability, and Pogue is very readable. And as much as he knows to leave in, he’s not afraid of leaving a bit out. It’s a book. Made to be read from start to finish. If you do so, you’ll know Apple’s history.

But how many people need to know this?

3

Apple was the little engine that could. The true breakthrough was the iPod.

But before that, during Jobs’s hejira with NeXT…

The problem with Sculley was he was a marketer, of a completely different product. Pepsi could sit on the shelves for a while. Computers lost value every day they were held in inventory.

Also, Sculley was a publicity hog, who wrote a book and liked being perceived as a visionary, even though he was not. We see this story again and again, do not believe the hype. Which is easy to garner. Can you say “Theranos”? No, the true people to admire are those who are doing the work, whose names are out there, but oftentimes say no to press, it slows them down, never mind that the press always gets it wrong, ALWAYS! Because unlike Pogue, most writers are not familiar with the territory.

Was Jobs a terror?

Yes.

And he was milder when he came back.

But he had a vision, and he didn’t believe in consumer research. He was about the bleeding edge. A lot of this has been documented, which is why the second half of the book is less interesting.

As for Tim Cook and the players in power today…

Yes, the petty wars are delineated, but the real point is they are not superstars, they are not visionaries, those only come along once in a while.

Like a classic musician, Jobs is focused on getting it right, in a world where everybody is taught to compromise to get along, where no one wants to stand out, upset the apple cart. Jobs focuses on product, believing the rest will take care of itself.

And prior to his return and their replacement, those who sat on the board saw Apple as a traditional business. They wanted to sell it, before it cratered, before Jobs came back and reinvigorated it.

Now I remember one of the lessons I wanted to impart… Don’t underestimate expertise. We see this all the time in the music business, since you don’t need a degree to be in it, no one has any respect for those who work in it. Average citizens believe they can find talent, they can do ticketing. But again and again outsiders fail, because the expertise cannot be quantified, it is built over time, it’s something you feel, it’s something innate. Even as simple as picking the hits. I’d say at least ninety percent of what people e-mail me, saying it’s great and deserves further attention, does not. I’m not saying they can’t like it, but they don’t have the seasoning and the vision to know what will spread to the public.

But it’s not only in music, in politics people have contempt for expertise. There’s this belief everybody can do everything. Then why did it take Steve Jobs to come up with the iPod and iPhone?

Breaking rules all the while. Getting rid of legacy ports on computers, getting rid of the physical keyboard on the iPhone. People are attached to the past, and if you’re busy serving them you’re going to be left behind. Jobs knew the iPhone was going to destroy the iPod, but rather than keep the music player alive, Jobs insisted on pushing the envelope, he was not willing to rest on his laurels, giving competitors a window to leapfrog Apple.

Hell, me-too is everywhere. When was the last time you heard a successful record that was truly surprising, completely different? Labels don’t sign those acts anymore, it’s too heavy a lift. They want it easy. Just like the movie studios, whose lunch was eaten by Netflix. Let me see… You raise the prices, you make fewer movies in obvious genres and then you complain that the theatre experience is dying? Believe me, people will show up for something unique and different. Then again, something might have to percolate in the marketplace for a while to catch on, but these flicks play in theatres for a minute and are then available on TV, which is a better experience.

User experience. That was Jobs’s main focus. But in most avenues of life, this is denied. Purveyors are trying to whittle down and control human behavior, keep it in the past, which is a fool’s errand.

4

The press is all over Apple’s 50th.

But it’s kind of like a lifetime achievement award… Once you get that, you’re usually done.

I get a new iPhone every year. But recently, the changes have been miniscule, almost irrelevant.

Apple is making a ton of money on services, and maybe the days of hardware breakthroughs are done, then again, the days of tech wowing us died over a decade ago, now tech is the enemy.

But the story of going from Motorola to Intel to in-house chips… Once again, the company is always thinking about the future, whereas in entertainment, everybody seems to be constantly blind-sided. Kind of like George Bush and 9-11. Who could envision they’d fly planes into buildings?

Then again, entertainment executives are all about lifestyle, accumulating and displaying. The company is something to milk.

Oh, I just remembered another thing that struck me… This happened again and again, but foremost with the original Macintosh team.

Yes, Jobs asked for the theoretically unachievable, which they always delivered, but once the Mac was released…most of the members of the team were so burned out, they couldn’t work for months, if ever at this level again. Most left Apple. None set the world on fire once again. They’d been to the mountaintop, they’d experienced the ride and the rewards, they just weren’t up for doing it again, like a hit act that cannot create hits anymore.

There are a lot of lessons in Pogue’s book. Not that he bats you over the head with them. But almost no one is going to read this book. They might buy it, but the average punter just doesn’t care about the minutiae of tech, the history of creation. Kind of like cars. You may love Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, but how many people want to go back seventy or a hundred years and hear about the arguments and decisions regarding what kind of engines and suspensions to use, the failures…

However, the thing about Apple is unlike any single car brand, unlike any musician, period, the company’s products and services touch a broad swath of the public. Sure, Android might be bigger internationally, but all the innovation is on the iPhone first, which has over fifty percent market share in the U.S.

And now with the MacBook Neo, Macs are no longer expensive. The last hurdle has been eliminated, you can enter the cult on the cheap.

And once you do…

You get locked in.

And the love for Apple sustains. This is not a musical act or TV show that ultimately peters out. We expect Apple to continue to deliver, to lead us into the future.

Did it miss AI?

I’m not even gonna get into it. Could be their philosophy of licensing turns out to be the best.

But one thing is for sure, Apple is not a one trick pony. So many use their products and they think they know what goes on inside the gold mine. In truth they don’t. And, in truth, they don’t really care that much, they have no need to know.

But if you do…

P.S. Don’t buy the e-book unless you’re going to read it on an iPad… There are numerous color photos.

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

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Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post David Pogue’s Apple Book appeared first on The Big Picture.

We are all looking to make it. And we employ signifiers, status markers, to indicate that we’ve crossed the threshold, that we are no longer trapped amongst the great unwashed, that finally we are SOMEBODY!

And one of the main ways you felt settled, that you were not only on your way, but part of the firmament, was seeing your name in the news.

It’s a thrill when it first happens. You mean you want MY opinion, you want to write about ME? But as time goes by, you find out it’s meaningless, because everybody is expressing their opinion or promoting their wares all day long online, and your triumph gets lost in the shuffle.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with publicity, and sometimes it even gooses projects and careers, all I am saying is it won’t sustain a career. And longevity is everything today.

Used to be, very few people could make it. Could get a record deal, never mind get on the radio and become a star who can sell tickets. Whatever your innate talent, the work of a whole team enabled you to climb the ladder, which is why you see award winners constantly thanking their handlers.

But awards don’t mean much either. I hope you’re thrilled you won, but in a matter of months, seemingly no one remembers your victory. Furthermore, there are a lot of Grammy winners who make their money elsewhere, not in music, or have given up completely. That’s what an award is worth. So if that’s your goal…

I was reading the “Wall Street Journal” yesterday and saw that a friend was quoted. He’s not a public figure; I don’t think his inclusion resonated with a broad swath of the public. For a second there, I thought how they didn’t call me, but that’s just a step on the ladder, a momentary feel-good experience. Most people, after they’ve had that brush with publicity, feel good for a moment and have seen the return was relatively minimal, go back to doing the work.

And it’s all about the work.

Ah, that’s a cliché. Let me try to restate it in other words.

If you want to last a long time in today’s world, you’ve got to keep on creating, because there’s so much news and so much of it reaches so few people that most have already forgotten about you, if they knew about you in the first place.

There’s nothing wrong with a feature in the “Times” or the “Wall Street Journal”… But be wary, these outlets are never completely positive. That David Geffen documentary? The one on Jimmy Iovine and Dre? They were love letters, because THEY PAID FOR THEM! They know it’s all about control, kudos.

But if you give up control, beware.

However, let’s return to basics. Most people are looking to get noticed. They want to get out of the hole that they’re in. They want to throw the long ball; they want to believe there is some grand poohbah out there who can reach out and anoint them, and their career will be made. Today, this is patently untrue.

Let’s start with the number of news outlets.

I know, I know, I’ve lauded Apple News+, but if you read the general feed, your eyes will glaze over; it’s all clickbait headlines…and when you click through, there’s very little there.

You even get the same thing in Google News!

All these outlets fighting for attention have caused people to look elsewhere for information, first and foremost, their friends and family, real or those they’ve met online. It’s like we’re living in the 1800s, prior to modern communication methods. The mainstream has worn out its welcome, been excoriated by those who don’t agree with it, on both the left and the right, and has never meant less.

But we’re not talking about general news here, we’re talking about you.

You’re looking for a leg up; you’re looking for it to be made easier. IT’S NEVER GOING TO BE MADE EASIER! The major label can’t break you, if it will even sign you. Terrestrial radio can’t break you; it takes its clues from Spotify and other streaming media. And Spotify is a great democracy influenced by word of mouth, both online and offline. Social media can drive a hit more than terrestrial radio. But there’s no direct pipeline, no one you can pay to get millions of views.

So…

Paying for streams, for views on YouTube…unless your plan is to leverage these to make a deal with a larger entity, save your money. Your fans don’t care, and it’s only about your fans.

Now I’m not saying fans are irrelevant; it’s just that now there’s a direct conduit from you to them, and you must feed the beast, constantly. Your only hope of growing is via your fans, and if you’re not top of mind, they’re not going to do the work for you. And some fans spread the word, and some do not, and you don’t know who is who, so you have to keep spraying bullets and…

Sounds hard, doesn’t it?

It’s VERY hard.

Anybody can get noticed for a minute or two. Every week in the “Times” Sunday Style section, they hype a book or previously unknown person, and it’s almost like the kiss of death; they’re never heard from again.

TV entertainment news? If you think active consumers are even watching broadcast/cable TV, you’re dreaming. That’s not the bleeding edge, and those who make a difference, who change the world, are always harvesting information on the fringe.

So, you’ve got to keep on working, or you’re going to be forgotten. Most of the public does not know you’re a one-hit wonder, and there’s a tsunami of product, and you’re not going to get many streams in the future.

Now wait just a minute, you say… I won, I triumphed, I SUCCEEDED!

Maybe by old school metrics.

There’s no overlord with fairy dust spraying it on the lucky few.

No, you’re not only the creator, but you’re also the fairy too.

And be wary of getting away from your mission. That brand extension might be a mistake if it takes your focus from the core work, if it undercuts your credibility.

In other words, unless you’ve got a plan to get in quick and get out nearly as fast, the world has completely changed. It’s not about momentary vertical success; it’s about continuing to be in the landscape. For year after year after year.

If you’re doing this for an annum or two, before you go to graduate school, don’t even bother; go enroll at the academy. Because it takes longer than ever to gain a following, and you never quite know when you’ve made it, if you’ve made it at all.

Read the news. The trades. Look at who is featured, who is promoted, but don’t feel left out. That’s a moment in time. Used to be it was a rarefied world, only a few could get ink, now EVERYBODY can get ink.

That’s true. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember what a thrill it was to be on TV. You told your friends to look for you at the baseball game. Now you don’t even mention it, because it’s no big deal. The barrier to entry is so low that it’s not hard to get on TV, and so many of the people who cross that threshold are nincompoops. Why is it that the “Housewives” are always getting into legal trouble and getting divorced? If they were that rich, this wouldn’t happen. No, they believe if they are on these shows, they are stars, whereas truly they are laughingstocks, fodder for the machine. You know the number one rule of reality television…DON’T BE ON IT!

So it’s just you. In the wilderness. Trying to grow a fan base. Even a hit isn’t going to mean you’ve got a career. No, you must do foundational work, one-on-one. You must nurture your image, not do anything out of character. People need to be able to trust you. And what the press says or doesn’t say about you is essentially irrelevant. Certainly here today and gone tomorrow.

Of course, there are people who make it a full-time job to appear in the press, but that does not mean they’re rich, that they’ve even got a career, or even fans, just that some people see their names on a regular basis.

But so many still want to believe. That if they hire publicity and promotion people, if they get their name out in the news, they will be winning.

Today, winning is something you feel inside. No one else can claim victory for you. No one else can anoint you with pixie dust. There are social media influencers making more money than most of the people in the Spotify Top 50, even though very few know their names. Young people acknowledge this change; old people pooh-pooh it because they don’t like having their cheese moved, they don’t like the evisceration of rules. There must be rules, right?

There are no rules; you make it up as you go. And chances are those jumping the track, doing the out of the ordinary, never mind extraordinary, are going to win.

So if you’re railing against the system…

You’re the system. Only you. It all comes down to you.

Keep producing. Doesn’t matter what the general public thinks, just what your fans do. And if you’re good enough, you’ll grow a fan base and sustain it. But that’s too heavy a lift for newbies; they want someone exterior, in the firmament, to say they’ve made it, that they’re a star.

But that paradigm went out with the internet. And the internet’s been around for thirty years.

So it’s time to acknowledge where we are. A Tower of Babel world where you’re the act, the bus driver, the social media maven…one in which you wear all the hats, and if you want to have a conference, you look in the mirror.

But never forget, people are still looking for great, and there’s very little great out there. So if you are truly great, people will find and promote you…just don’t expect it to happen overnight.

~~~

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Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Lefsetz: Anybody Can Get Publicity appeared first on The Big Picture.

Why the Traditional Media No Longer Serves Our Needs
The Truth Matters, Chapter 1
Bruce Bartlett
Bartlett’s Notations, Feb 09, 2026

With the decimation of the Washington Post newsroom by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the crisis of the media seems to have reached an apex. I saw this coming in 2017 and wrote a book about it: The Truth Matters. Since I believe that the message of the book still resonates, I’ve decided to serialize it here on Substack. It’s a short book so it shouldn’t occupy too much of your time. Following is chapter one.

Key points:

· The fairness doctrine was obsolete and cannot be revived.

· Conservatives were underserved for many years by traditional media.

· Progressives were slow to embrace new media such as talk radio.

People have never been happy with the news media, always blaming it for lying, misinforming and being unfair to one side or the other. Thomas Jefferson expressed views on this subject that many people today no doubt would share. In an 1807 letter to John Norvell, Jefferson said,

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day….

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

The complaint that the news media have a built-in bias is an old one and there is truth in it. The major media have long been based in our major cities where people naturally tend to be more socially liberal. That has been one of the great attractions for living in cities rather than small towns and rural areas that tend to be socially conservative. Additionally, it’s a fact that people with a liberal disposition have tended to gravitate toward journalism as a profession, while conservatives gravitate elsewhere.

Media consolidation also tended to make it more liberal. In any town with more than one newspaper, one would usually be conservative if only for competitive reasons. Partisan affiliation and ideological compatibility in editorials, news judgement and among columnists was one reason people subscribed to a particular paper. But as newspapers have closed, those with a conservative bent tended to be the first to go because they were usually the afternoon papers. Those with no competition tend toward bland mushiness when it comes to politics.

Radio and television have always tended to be more even-handed because news presentation focused on breaking stories where audio or video was available. It didn’t lend itself to commentary or editorializing. Moreover, there was a government rule called the fairness doctrine that required both sides to be presented when political endorsements were made or opinions expressed. But the main effect of this rule was to discourage the presentation of any opinions at all, rather than waste precious air time presenting alternative viewpoints.

In 1987, the fairness doctrine was abolished. Many rue this day as the one when fairness itself began to disappear from the media. But the fairness doctrine never applied to the print media and it was already clear by 1987 that cable—CNN went on the air in 1980—was ushering in a new era of news coverage. It was untenable to maintain restrictions on over-the-air media that didn’t apply to print publications or cable. It’s likely that the fairness doctrine would have been struck down by the courts if it wasn’t repealed.

It is indisputable, however, that abolition of the fairness doctrine gave rise to talk radio. Developments in the radio market were also critical; the AM band had been suffering for years as the FM band was better suited to music. Rush Limbaugh was the first to recognize that the end of the fairness doctrine meant that he could do an entire show devoted to nothing but expressing his opinions, of which he had many, all strongly felt and vigorously expressed. The AM band was well-suited to talk and was cheaper than employing disk jockeys to curate music selections.

It’s perhaps an accident of history that a strong conservative like Limbaugh was first to recognize the political potential of talk radio. It was probably also true that conservatives were underserved by the liberal sameness of conventional journalism at the time. At least in his early years, Limbaugh was a genuine news source, giving national attention to stories, research and viewpoints that were hard to find elsewhere. Before him, the only national publications with a broad reach that reflected a conservative bent were the Wall Street Journal and Reader’s Digest.

Limbaugh’s success led to the creation of Fox News by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, based on a vision long nurtured by Republican media guru Roger Ailes. With most television tilting a bit to the left, they cleverly positioned Fox in the middle of the political spectrum, which made it slightly to the right of its competitors.

The enormous financial success of conservative talk radio and Fox News stimulated growth of a vast conservative media network. Meanwhile, efforts to copy its success by progressives have uniformly failed. No one is quite sure why; it may be that those on the left are inclined to be satisfied with the traditional mainstream media. The problem is that it is dying a slow death. Something will replace it, we don’t know what just yet. Many analysts believe that virtually all print publications will disappear in a few years.

It may be that progressives have more to gain from developing new methods of acquiring news and information than conservatives, who seem very satisfied with the availability of compatible news and views on Fox, talk radio and the internet. But conservatives should avoid complacency. By having a closed-loop of news sources, they are more prone to deception by charlatans peddling conspiracy theories, fake news and extreme views far outside the mainstream. These are likely to be political albatrosses in the future.

In the long run, political parties and movements are best served by truth, accuracy and responsible news reporting. It may be that this needs to be subsidized in some way. The federal government has long done this by giving newspapers and magazines subsidized mailing rates; and radio and television stations were given extremely valuable spectrum for literally nothing. Legal requirements that certain public notices be published in local newspapers is another sort of government subsidy. Given the importance of a well-informed electorate to the functioning of democracy, it is not unreasonable to think that market forces alone may be inadequate to the job.

One idea I have had is to allow foundations and other groups to endow reporting positions at news organizations as has long been common for university professorships. Something like this is already being done at the Boston Globe, where local nonprofits are subsidizing the cost of employing a music critic, with the paper retaining full editorial control over the critic’s work.

Bruce Bartlett is a longtime observer and commenter on economic and political affairs in Washington, D.C., who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, and many others. A bestselling author, his latest book is The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks.

His prior writings on the Big Picture are here,

@BruceBartlett

The post Bartlett: Traditional Media No Longer Serves Democracy’s Needs appeared first on The Big Picture.

So let’s say you want to buy a concert ticket. You search in Google and you see a multitude of offers. All from the secondary market, i.e. scalpers, i.e. brokers. And if it’s a superstar, you may have the ability to purchase a ticket to what is supposedly a sold out show. However, many times the secondary market is offering tickets when primary tickets are still available on Ticketmaster, AXS, whatever ticketing company the promoter is using.

Watch this video:

1. This is Rory Sutherland, an English advertising executive who proffers wisdom on TikTok. He didn’t sit down and try to become a famous influencer, it all happened by accident. During Covid one video of him was posted and the public was hungry for his insights and his following burgeoned. This is what we call “pull” instead of “push.” Pre-internet marketing was all about pushing things on people, making them aware of them and getting the public to buy/partake. However, to succeed in the internet world, people must desire you. Push doesn’t work. There are too many marketing messages which are transparent hucksterism and people are turned off. But when they find something they like, they want more and tell everybody about it. This is the essence of success. Something that has been lost in the music business. We’ve got all these acts complaining they’re not getting paid, but if they were great, the public would desire them, they would pull their songs and more, make them a success. But nobody wants to own the truth.

2. Earlier this week I sent a TikTok video of Big Jim’s review of Yang Chow, a restaurant in Chinatown that a group of us go to on a regular basis. One of the recipients said she was not on TikTok. To quote:

“I’m barely engaged in social media. I don’t want to spend more time watching people I don’t know and will never meet. I can barely keep up with my friends and family!”

This is an old school, Facebook/Instagram view of social media. That it’s all about connecting with old friends, people bragging, trying to create FOMO. But no, on TikTok, a lot of the videos are informational. You learn. The algorithm divines what you are interested in and serves it up. You know I’ve got a bug up my ass about this, but I will say it once again, to counter the tide of oldsters…I’ve never heard a youngster complain about TikTok. It’s the oldsters who think it’s the devil. Social media is like AI, it’s here to stay. Furthermore, it has distinct advantages. Why are all the Boomers and Gen-X’ers so self-satisfied? They were addicted to television, but when there’s a new platform they pooh-pooh it. It would be laughable if traditional news and the so-called elite didn’t rail against technology constantly. The internet is the best thing that ever happened to me, I’m connecting with you right now! I can find information in niches that was previously unavailable to me, I can connect with people all over the world. Please change your perspective and get a TikTok account, to watch the videos in this piece, if nothing else.

2.a. Big Jim is a restaurant reviewer who popped up in my feed. He tends to review holes in the wall, unknown places in the San Fernando Valley, the ones no one talks about. I haven’t heard of most of the locations, but he’s piqued my interest. However, he gives a positive review to everything. This is the video on Yang Chow:

So Google is a B2B enterprise where the consumer gets screwed. Here’s another Rory Sutherland clip that talks about this:

Bottom line… Google is in cahoots with advertisers who are oftentimes using subterfuge to make their money. Google doesn’t police this whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Google is proud of the fact that it’s all done automatically, online. But, the truth is Google has a responsibility to the consumer to deliver accurate information. However, the secondary market spends a fortune on ads with Google and the tech company looks the other way. The primary market is buried and can’t compete.

All this talk about the secondary market vs. the primary market… How can the primary market succeed if Google is helping the secondary, looking the other way?

The music industry must change its focus. It’s myopic, i.e. the secondary market is bad. It is, but it’s being enabled by Google, which should be shamed into changing its policy.

It’s not only concert tickets. Advertisers purvey all kinds of things for sale at exorbitant rates, far beyond the price the original seller is offering them at. But the original seller can’t compete, because these secondary market enterprises without the underlying costs of the original sellers spend a fortune on Google ads and dominate mindshare.

This can be changed.

Google said “Don’t be evil.”? It’s actively harming the concert industry, and many more verticals to boot!

~~~

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Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post It’s A Google Problem appeared first on The Big Picture.

Note: The Big Picture has been re-publishing Bob Lefsetz’s work for over 20 years(!). His contrarian perspecitve is always insightful and unvarnished. This is Bob’s take on Tuesday’s election results… 

The story for me is how out of touch the press is.

The right said Trump had a mandate.

The left said the party had to run to the center.

And everybody in the pundit class, everybody in D.C., seemed to have no understanding of the mindset of the people. And the question arises, if the press is wrong on this, what else are they wrong on?

If you’ve made it all the way to TV or Congress, you’re pretty self-impressed; you ran the gauntlet and emerged victorious. But did you know that the median age of an MSNBC viewer is 72? This isn’t even your parents, this is your GRANDPARENTS! And this is my generation, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s as baked into its ways as the generations before it. We thought it would be different for boomers, after all, they had the greatest number of people and changed the world, but not anymore.

The world runs on tech and the internet, yet Andrew Cuomo spent double-digit millions on TV ads. Do you know anybody under thirty who watches traditional television, whether it be network or cable? Most don’t even have access, and they don’t care. If there’s a show worth seeing, and there are very few, it’s on a streaming outlet. As for the news, it’s at your fingertips online! As for the cable channels themselves, good luck finding one that has in excess of a million viewers, in a country of 340 million; a lot of these outlets don’t even have 100,000 people watching at one time. But because they’re part of the cable package old schoolers think they count, when they don’t. YouTube and TikTok count much more.

After the last election cycle, AOC told the Democratic Party to give her their campaign funds, that she knew how to spend them, unlike the establishment. She was talking about online… And two years later it’s even clearer. It’s nearly impossible to reach anybody, and if you want to make contact at all, you’ve got to do so online.

And if it’s not reported on Fox or in the “New York Times,” that does not mean it does not matter. Those outlets are still operating on the old paradigm of if they don’t report it, it doesn’t exist. We no longer need the imprimatur of an authority for a story to have legs; it can spread like wildfire without even making it to the so-called mainstream.

Sure, Mamdani had innovative policies that spoke to the issue of affordability, but his roots were planted online, with limited merch and gamification, and…until the primary last June, the mainstream had no idea of the size of his following. It’s about getting people excited with honesty and credibility, such that they will spread the word. Your only hope is virality. I don’t mean going nuclear, although that’s great, but engendering any word of mouth at all. If people don’t want to talk about you and what you’re doing, you’re dead in the water. The days of a media outlet shoving something down the audience’s throat to the point of success are done. Gatekeepers are history. You go directly to the audience. It’s a whole new ball game, one oldsters are not prepared to play, never mind that they don’t want to believe change has happened, and they’re out of date.

As for affordability… That’s all I heard on the cable channels today, both MSNBC and Fox. As if this were a revelation. Been to a grocery store recently? That’s all you’ve got to know. But if you’ve got enough money not to look at the receipt…you’re one of the chosen few, the masses are positively stupefied. Sure, inflation has calmed down, but grocery prices keep going up, it’s harder to make ends meet, and all we’re getting from both parties is platitudes, which the consumer can’t understand and don’t move the needle anyway.

D.C. is the land of no. Not only is there gridlock, no one wants any innovative legislation or action; they don’t want to take a risk. They believe in the status quo. But out in the hinterlands, the status quo went out the window long ago. Furthermore, change keeps happening, faster than ever. You might not be able to keep up, deciding you want to turn off the smartphone and see people face to face, but that just means you’re missing out, you’re losing touch with the pulse of the nation. What are the odds you’re hanging with those who have opposite opinions anyway?

As for the last election…

Can the Democrats just admit they f*cked it up? That Biden was too old and hung on too long, and the only people who wanted Harris anointed without a primary were Joe and Kamala herself? Democrats felt ripped off. They may hate the Democratic party, deservedly, but that does not mean they’ve given up on Democratic VALUES!

Immigration was a problem that the Democrats didn’t adequately address. The educated know that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens and they oftentimes do jobs citizens are unwilling to do. But that doesn’t speak to the UNFAIRNESS! The public is sick and tired of the rules being bent for everyone but them; they’re saying NO MAS! Which is part of what they said yesterday.

The media underestimated Trump’s power, his acolytes, his total vote in 2024 and they underestimated the margins of victory of Democrats yesterday. They’ve got their heads so far up their asses that they can’t see the truth, never mind that horse races get good ratings and they don’t like perceived in advance blowouts…who’s going to tune in for that?

Meanwhile, the right-wing media machine convinced Democrats that they should operate on the back foot, play defense, and that the Republicans were in charge of the agenda.

No one likes taxes. But people hate income inequality even more. And Trump is busy giving the rich breaks, never mind all the corporate titans coming to kiss the ring. As if one corporate titan equals a hundred thousand votes. These CEOs are no longer adored, they’re seen as whores ripping off the nation…and if you think they’re in touch with the nation… Zuckerberg may control Facebook, but that does not mean he’s knowledgeable about the conversation on his platform. Never mind everybody knowing the algorithm is f*cked, and showing you inflammatory stuff to keep you on. The public is not as stupid as you think.

But not everybody is informed. More people know more than ever before, as a result of the internet, but most people don’t get in the weeds; they vote on personality, on broad issues. But Biden and his ilk were wonks. Just make my life easy enough so I don’t have to think about you, so I can live my life without worrying about what is happening in government…that’s what people want.

So the lunatics have lost touch with the asylum. Yes, the elected officials, the government industrial complex, and the media enthralled to it. Want to know what is going on in America? You must be online hours a day, like youngsters. And if you decry this, you’re as out of touch as your parents, who hated the Beatles.

Can an aged congressperson play a video game, do they even know the names of them? Video games are bigger than movies, but all we’ve got is all this press about films whose grosses are declining.

I’d say it’s a disinformation campaign, but it’s really a misinformation campaign; reporters have no idea what is really going on! One fat cat opinion writer after another sits on his or her high horse and tells you what’s going on because they spoke with insiders…how about speaking with OUTSIDERS, you’d learn more, know what is going on more!

Then there’s this story:

“There are no hip-hop songs in the US top 40 for the first time since 1990”

www.nme.com/news/music/there-are-no-hip-hop-songs-in-the-us-top-40-for-the-first-time-since-1990-3905278

Now the “Billboard” chart itself is flawed, but we’re constantly told we live in a hip-hop nation, that rap rules. But it hasn’t meant this little in thirty-five years!

Just like the press tells us all about the antics of Taylor Swift, when the truth is most people just aren’t listening to her and just don’t care. And they’re listening to nobody more, except maybe Morgan Wallen, but this narrative doesn’t fit with the media’s agenda… The music scene today is more steel wool than clear windowpane. It’s messy, hard to decipher…but they keep anointing the past.

As for the new…

The media completely missed Zach Bryan on his way up.

So you have two choices. Either keep your head in the sand, believe in everything you were into previously, refuse to question your preconceptions, or…dive in knowing there are no clear answers, but he or she with the most information has the best understanding of what is happening in America, however flawed their viewpoint might still be.

I’m not saying to expect free and fair elections in the future, I’m not saying Trump’s march towards authoritarianism won’t proceed, but to think that the public is asleep and/or okay with the trajectory of our nation is just plain wrong. The public has been taking it up the a*s since the eighties, when tax rates were lowered and boomers became greedy. And they’ve been punched in the face multiple times thereafter, especially in 2008. People are both angry and disillusioned. They don’t care which party it is; neither is in touch with their feelings. Some will vote so the other won’t get power, but most people no longer believe in government, have no hope, in a completely changed world.

It’s not very complicated. The evidence is in plain sight. All you’ve got to do is connect with the great unwashed, whom the rich and those in power have contempt for. People believe in America, just not this America, they want CHANGE!

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter

~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Tuesday’s Election appeared first on The Big Picture.

You may not want to buy a new electric car, but when it comes to buying a used automobile…

America’s isolation is leaving it in a backwater. Especially when it comes to electric cars. If there were no tariffs on Chinese EVs, they’d wipe out the American manufacturers overnight, they’d dominate sales in the U.S. They’re that advanced, they’re that good, and they’re not that expensive.

But as a result of our present Administration, the focus is now on coal and traditional fossil fuels. And this has become a tribal issue. Elon Musk may make electric cars, but really, they’re for the coastal elites who believe climate change is real.

But your beliefs are no challenge to your pocketbook.

Used EVs are a stealth incursion into the market; they’re how electric cars are going to come to dominate the U.S. fleet. While GM and Ford are icing their EV investments/production, and as conventional wisdom leads people to choose hybrids, the supposed best of both worlds, everybody is ignoring the obvious…

EVs REQUIRE ALMOST NO MAINTENANCE!

If you follow the news, used EVs are selling prodigiously, at prices below those of equivalently aged used gasoline vehicles.

Now, in the past, you didn’t want to buy a used EV; the technology was moving too fast. Which is why those with bucks lease their electric cars…I mean what are the innovations right around the corner, how long are the companies going to support the software?

But we’ve hit maturity in batteries. In excess of 300 miles per charge is de rigueur, never mind the Chinese offering more for less with a new technology.

Now, as a result of this belief in innovation, a zillion cars are coming into the market after the expiration of three-year leases. And they’ve become too attractive to pass up. That’s how cheap they are. And people who would never have considered an electric car are purchasing them. And once they drive them and don’t encounter the endless repairs of a typical used car…

Word of mouth will spread, and everybody will want a used electric vehicle.

Buying a used vehicle, which is where all the action is, because the average price of a new one is over 40k, is a crapshoot. It’s just a matter of when they’re going to need maintenance. Some expected, some not.

There’s the new timing chain somewhere between sixty and a hundred thousand miles. And that’s not cheap, but you can foresee that.

But the other items…

Every car I’ve taken over 100,000 miles has needed a new radiator.

I mean, every car needs new brakes at some point, but a new fuel pump? New injectors? You’re buying a time bomb when you purchase a used car, what if this was not the case?

That’s the story with eclectic cars. The batteries are good for 300,000 miles or more. You’re not going to have any engine repairs; there are almost no moving parts.

As for a hybrid… It’s really the worst of both worlds. You think you’re winning, but the bottom line is your machine still has a gasoline engine, which needs traditional maintenance and is subject to breakdown. WHO WOULD WANT THAT?

A lot of ignorant buyers.

This is like digital photography. We heard it was coming for the better part of ten years. But it never did. Kodak continued to flourish. But seemingly overnight, digital photography took hold. Same is going to happen with electric cars.

So someone complains to you about the repairs to their car, but you’re going to tell them you have no problems, because you drive an electric car.

All the focus has been on NEW electric automobiles, whereas the penetration, the growth, and the ACCEPTANCE are going to come from USED electric automobiles.

As for running out of juice:

“See How E.V. Road Trips Went From Impossible to Easy”

“Long drives that were once effectively impossible with an electric car have become doable. Routes that once required careful planning now have abundant fast chargers.”

And the pace of charger installation has picked up:

“America Keeps Adding EV Chargers. Will There Be More Drivers to Use Them?”

As for Chinese battery technology:

“Five-Minute EV Charging Is Here, but Not for U.S.-Made Cars”

CATL’s and BYD’s rapid-charging technologies underscore China’s dominance in the EV sector, a technological priority for Xi Jinping”

You can’t stop the hands of progress. You can bury your head in the sand, but that does not mean that time does not march on, that innovation ceases.

This is what the public wants… Not electric cars per se, but maintenance-free USED CARS!

You hear the story all the time… My car broke down and I have no way to get to work. Or my car broke down, and I don’t have the money to fix it. Those complaints are kaput with electric cars. Who wouldn’t want a used electric car?

Sure, they won’t have the latest innovations, but neither does your used gasoline car. And they may not be able to get the latest software, but the old software is good enough to keep them running.

All this news about the death of the electric car because of the elimination of governmental subsidies is just plain wrong. There are now enough used electric vehicles in America to create a market… People are clamoring for them. And what sells everything these days is word of mouth, and word of mouth on used electric cars is about to become DEAFENING!

~~~

Visit the archive:   http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

@Lefsetz  http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
–
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter

~~~

Originally published by Bob Lefsetz at the Leftsetz Letter

The post Used EVs: Modern Cutting Edge Bargains appeared first on The Big Picture.