TV News Shows = Entertainment

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The awful French TV program on sports betting (where BetFair&#8217-s Mark Davies croaked in French) reminded me of what Robert Scoble said about TV news shows.

They do not intend to educate you..

Robert Scoble:

Last week I was on CNBC twice. Once on “Fast Money” and once on Donny Deutsch’s “The Big Idea.”

The Fast Money segment has been torn apart on the Internet but Roger Ehrenberg of the Information Arbitrage blog had the most intelligent analysis of it.

Here’s the key piece of the Donny Deutsch show, where we had a bunch of bloggers on the Microsoft Blogger Bus asking questions of Bug Labs’ CEO Peter Semmelhack. Bug Labs went onto win CNET’s “Best of CES” award for the emerging tech category.

Some things that are worth underlying about the difference between my video show and CNBC.

1. Expense. CNBC had dozens of people involved in the show, a huge booth, really expensive cameras, satellite time, etc. My show? Get a Nokia phone and go for it.
2. Makeup. Yeah, I wore it. There’s a video out there on the Internet somewhere. I’m not sure why Valleywag hasn’t found it yet.
3. You don’t get to say whatever you want. Donny’s show was tape delayed. If you try doing something wacky, they’ll just cut you out. But even if they keep you on, they have a director who is telling you what they want. She preps you for each segment, giving you “talking points.” If you don’t agree with those talking points you have to negotiate to have them changed. But if they don’t like your talking points they just won’t go with you. Second, she has a big sign and if she thinks you should make a point she makes it clear.
4. These shows are NOT about getting deep, or really getting a good understanding of CES. They were ALL about being entertaining! Hey, who knew? (I tried to pull a bunch of gadgets out and they said “we don’t care about the gadgets.”)
5. They filmed Bug Labs’ CEO for 10 hours for a two-minute segment. Now do you understand why so many CEOs let me come over and film them? I never take more than an hour with an executive, so it’s always easy to get onto someone’s schedule.
6. My show has very little editing, so it’s pretty rare that the context gets lost on an answer. On TV, though, things get cut up, sliced and diced, all for entertainment effect, not necessarily to tell the best story.

STRAIGHT FROM THE TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.

No GravatarThe richer people and countries become, the happier they get.

Wow, that&#8217-s what I call a discovery.

Freakonomics – #2 – #3

New York Times

CNBC video

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Just like the armchair generals (presented on television as “military analysts”) carry the Pentagon’s propaganda, are our economics professors (who need the exchange data to pursue their academic career) in fact John Delaney’s unofficial P.R. agents, hidden behind an appearance of objectivity, and whose agenda is to generate favorable news coverage for InTrade? Is the symbiotic relationship between the prediction exchanges and the economics researchers dangerous for the truth?
  • Can we still trust Betfair? Should we trust Betfair? Or indeed, any betting exchange?
  • Prediction Markets at Google — by Peter A. Coles, Karim R. Lakhani, Andrew McAfee
  • Is that HubDub’s Nigel Eccles on the bottom left of that UK WebMission pic?
  • Collective Error = Average Individual Error – Prediction Diversity
  • When gambling meets Wall Street — Proposal for a brand-new kind of finance-based lottery
  • The definitive proof that it’s presently impossible to practice prediction market journalism with BetFair.

WARREN BUFFETT: I said that the US dollar might be worth less in five to ten years -not that it might be worthless.

No GravatarHilarious. Right-click on the image to open the link in another tab. Enjoy.

Dollar Buffett

Read the previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Eliot Spitzer has simply demonstrated once again that those who rise to the top of organizations are very often the most demented, conflicted individuals in any group.
  • Business Risks & Prediction Markets
  • Brand-new BetFair bet-matching logic proves to be very controversial with some event derivative traders.
  • Jimmy Wales accused of editing Wikipedia for donations.
  • What the prediction market experts said on Predictify
  • Are you a MSR addict like Mike Giberson? Have nothing to do this week-end? Wanna trade on a play-money prediction exchange instead of watching cable TV? Wanna win an i-Phone?
  • The secret Google document that Bo Cowgill doesn’t want you to see

Davos – World Economic Forum

Hey, Davos starts on Monday.

WEF website

And they have a blog, of course. :-D

Twenty20 = Sure Bets and Wildcard scenarios to the year 2020. Nothing on that website, yet, but I&#8217-ll be monitoring it.

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

  • Hilarious.
  • Prediction market sessions of the O’Reilly Money-Tech Conference suffer fatally from the absence of the world’s most knowledgeable, most innovative and most trustworthy prediction market expert.
  • Bet2Give Presidential Widget —REDUX
  • Professor Leighton Vaughan-Williams becomes embroilled in BetFair blog controversy.
  • Bet2Give Presidential Widget
  • Did the BetFair blog use trading data from InTrade to hint at BetFair’s accuracy??
  • WordPress powers the MSM’s blogs: NY Times, WSJ, CNN, Fox, Time and People.

Producing a CNBC show = just like making sausages

Robert Scobble:

Last week I was on CNBC twice. Once on “Fast Money” and once on Donny Deutsch’s “The Big Idea.”

The Fast Money segment has been torn apart on the Internet but Roger Ehrenberg of the Information Arbitrage blog had the most intelligent analysis of it.

Here’s the key piece of the Donny Deutsch show, where we had a bunch of bloggers on the Microsoft Blogger Bus asking questions of Bug Labs’ CEO Peter Semmelhack. Bug Labs went onto win CNET’s “Best of CES” award for the emerging tech category.

Some things that are worth underlying about the difference between my video show and CNBC.

1. Expense. CNBC had dozens of people involved in the show, a huge booth, really expensive cameras, satellite time, etc. My show? Get a Nokia phone and go for it.
2. Makeup. Yeah, I wore it. There’s a video out there on the Internet somewhere. I’m not sure why Valleywag hasn’t found it yet.
3. You don’t get to say whatever you want. Donny’s show was tape delayed. If you try doing something wacky, they’ll just cut you out. But even if they keep you on, they have a director who is telling you what they want. She preps you for each segment, giving you “talking points.” If you don’t agree with those talking points you have to negotiate to have them changed. But if they don’t like your talking points they just won’t go with you. Second, she has a big sign and if she thinks you should make a point she makes it clear.
4. These shows are NOT about getting deep, or really getting a good understanding of CES. They were ALL about being entertaining! Hey, who knew? (I tried to pull a bunch of gadgets out and they said “we don’t care about the gadgets.”)
5. They filmed Bug Labs’ CEO for 10 hours for a two-minute segment. Now do you understand why so many CEOs let me come over and film them? I never take more than an hour with an executive, so it’s always easy to get onto someone’s schedule.
6. My show has very little editing, so it’s pretty rare that the context gets lost on an answer. On TV, though, things get cut up, sliced and diced, all for entertainment effect, not necessarily to tell the best story.

Watching CNBC = a waste of time.

Presenting on CNBC = a waste of time.

Viva office-made videos and YouTube.

Viva video blogging.

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

  • We regret to inform you of the passing of BettingMarket.com.
  • Niall O’Connor, the one-data-point analyst
  • The best headline of the day –post Michigan
  • Enterprise prediction markets will be the next big thing when… hierarchies are flat.
  • Prediction Markets vs. Bookmakers — The Ultimate Argument
  • The Michigan primary as seen thru the prism of the InTrade prediction markets
  • BitGravity = video distribution network

Bet2Give on CNBC: High impacting media infiltration

No GravatarCNBC – The Closing Bell – Maria Bartiromo interviewed NewsFutures&#8217- Norris Clark about Bet2Give and about NewsFutures&#8217- enterprise prediction markets. It was great. Great.

The VideoThe Video

If Emile Servan-Schreiber or Norris Clark put the video on YouTube, I will embed it in a blog post on Midas Oracle. And if they send me the transcript, I will publish it. It was great. The visuals were great &#8212-like slides. Very good. We&#8217-re making progress, folks.

Some remarks: I didn&#8217-t like that Norris Clark defined Bet2Give as a &#8220-prediction market&#8220-, as opposed to a prediction exchange. And I object about talking about a &#8220-stock market of future events&#8221-. It&#8217-s a derivative exchange for future events, rather.

Bet2Give on CNBC

UPDATE: NewsFutures CEO Emile Servan-Schreiber comments&#8230-

This &#8220-Sinning &amp- Winning&#8221- tag line below the screen is very strange, since Bet2Give is explicitly about neither. It goes to show how deeply the association between betting and sinning is rooted in the American psyche. By that measure, we&#8217-ve got a looooong way to go still before widespread acceptance of PMs [= prediction markets], not to mention legalization.

Read the previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Michael Gerber – The E-Myth Revisited
  • Changes to TradeFair prediction markets
  • Eric Zitzewitz, laughing all the way to the bank
  • Michael Bloomberg: I’m not running… but, beware, I am a King maker.
  • Meet the 3 Iowa Electronic Markets co-founders: George Neumann, Forrest Nelson and Robert Forsythe.
  • When Markets Beat The Polls – Scientific American Magazine
  • GLOBAL COOLING