Filed under: Late Night, Industry, OpEd, Talk Show, WGA Strike

Variety has an interesting piece about how the TV shows that have writers are faring against the shows without. To my personal chagrin, Leno is still beating Letterman in the ratings. Also, Conan O’Brien’s show is topping the ratings of Craig Ferguson.

What does this state? Are the NBC shows so entrenched in American culture that it wouldn’t matter if Shakespeare were writing Letterman’s monologue?

Continue reading How are the written shows faring against the non-written shows?

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Filed under: Late Night, Industry, OpEd, Speak Show, WGA Strike

Variety has an interesting piece about how the television shows that have writers are faring against the shows without. To my personal chagrin, Leno is still beating Letterman in the ratings. Also, Conan O’Brien’s show is topping the ratings of Craig Ferguson.

What does this state? Are the NBC shows so entrenched in American culture that it wouldn’t matter if Shakespeare were writing Letterman’s monologue?

Continue reading How are the written shows faring against the non-written shows?

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Filed under: Industry, OpEd, WGA StrikeAfter taking a three-year hiatus, ABC is returning The Bachelorette to the small screen. The series began as a spin-off to The Bachelor, but having a female lead contestant rather than a male one.This is yet another example of the American Gladiator phenomenon, in which networks over-rely on reality television (including returning ones that have been off the air) to fill the gap left by the striking writers. At this stage, I question if scripted television will ever return.Continue reading Yet another reality TV show returns

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Filed under: Deals, Management

You would think that having sold millions of shares at inflated prices would have been enough for Angelo Mozilo, who is now dumping Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) on Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) for less than a fifth of what the company traded at earlier this year.

The company has taken huge writedowns on ill-advised subprime loans, even as Mozilo sold about $140 million worth of stock during late 2006 and 2007. But according to the Los Angeles Times, “If he engineers a sale of battered Countrywide Financial to Bank of America, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to walk away with a severance package worth more than $110 million.”

The Times adds that Mozilo and wife will get health benefits for life, three years of life and financial planning help, and “tax gross-up payments” to compensate for any penalties he has to pay on a package that the IRS will likely consider grossly excessive.

This is an absolute parody of corporate governance. It’s hard to envision anyone less entitled to any severance than Mr. Mozilo. The irony is that by selling to Bank of America at a depressed price, Mozilo reaps a windfall far larger than he likely could have earned through continued employment with the company. And he won’t have to work any more!

On the bright side, he’ll have more time to work on that wonderful tan, though it appears that he’s already been spending time doing that as the company has slid to the brink of bankruptcy

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Continuing from yesterday with comments on Russia’s Vladimir Putin Person of the Year through the eyes of a thirty-something Russian entrepreneur Nick Mikhailovsky, CEO of NTR Lab.

Most of Putin’s support by the nation comes from the growth of ordinary people’s living standards. The largest part of this economic equation—growth of oil prices—cannot be reasonably attributed to Putin’s effort, although people do associate their financial improvements with Putin. Also, to his merit is the fact that oil money has not run into other countries.

Actually, the stability and investment climate in the last four years has been extremely good and resulted in a large flow of capital into Russia. On the other hand, Putin’s administration has not been efficient in performing any complex economic reforms. Pension reform has actually failed, as did the program to provide people with reasonably prices real estate—while homes are built in record volume the prices have skyrocketed, especially in Moscow. Attempts to fight high inflation rates have also failed so far.

Yet another factor in the improvement of people’s living standards is the decline of street crime and the move of organized crime into legal business (the way it did in the US in the 1930s), but I am not sure that Putin has anything to do with that.

There are lots of less important things to discuss, but this is already way too long, so I’ll try to summarize:

Putin has been true to the national interests when and how he understood them, and reasonably efficient in achieving related goals. He has been lucky that oil prices have grown during his rule and has used this luck well enough. Russia has become more predictable during his rule and the business climate has significantly improved, which resulted in significant growth of direct foreign investment in the last four years.

You can reach Nick at nickm@ntrlab.ru.

What do you think? Does Nick’s view of Putin match up with what you’ve read about him?

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