Resistance Is Futile
Rothenberg, Randall
"Resistance Is Futile" John Tauras also did some research on nicotine replacement therapy, presumably a "better" behavior than smoking. They found that demand for the patch, nicotine cigarettes and similar alternatives to...
...On the one hand, they say they abhor destructive behavior and have bitten a huge piece out of the side of the tobacco industry through anti-tobacco litigation...
...Convergence boxes able to hold terabytes of digitized music, video and still pictures are trickling onto the market...
...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE BY RANDALL ROTHENBERG The outcry over televised liquor advertising reminds me that banning the commercials will certainly make a difference...
...Allen also controls cable company Charter Communications...
...Film-and-video is becoming a fast follower...
...That's why trying to limit kids' access to TV liquor ads is so futile...
...In a world of convergence devices, how can regulating one medium ever make a difference...
...Some might applaud today's Carrie Nations, taking the regulatory ax to anything that might sully the innocence of children...
...In fact, the two vain struggles are linked...
...Thus, as Salomon Smith Barney's Martin Feldman points out, citizens of Connecticut last fall were subjected to the spectacle of hearing their governor, John Rowland, intone on the virtues of fiscal solvency ("state government should strive to spend no more than it takes in"), even as he prepared to push for higher tobacco taxes and increased state revenues through the lottery...
...Lest the network chieftains applaud too loudly, I append another cautionary note: Regulating broadcast spots for Demon Rum is as pointless as the TV industry's quest to quash SonicBlue, the personal video recorder company...
...For several Randall Rothenberg, the chief marketing officer at Booms Allen Hamilton, writes a column for Advertising Age, where this article first appeared...
...But technological logic has a way of defying financial logic...
...Convergence was a controversial concept long before Wired magazine raised its profile in the Roaring '90s...
...Cable companies generally are impatient to bring convergence devices to market they're an easy way to add Internet access revenues to their TV subscription fees and increase the allure of next-generation pay services...
...On another planet...
...Of course, some nicotine gum chewers use the product to feed their addiction, rather than to end it...
...In February, Digeo, owned by Microsoft Corporation co-founder Paul Allen, announced plans to distribute such "broadband media centers...
...Then there is Mike Bloomberg, New York's new mayor, who has proposed a tobacco tax increase of 1,700 per-cent, bringing the price of a pack of cigarettes to $7...
...Still, even the most avaricious states have steered away from taxing nicotine replacement, which is regarded as medicine...
...years, we early adopters have been trying to put our integrated perceptions into a single box...
...It's also why TV's battle to kill SonicBlue—whose broadband media center provides an astounding 320 hours of multimedia storage and includes a built-in broadband port—is so inane...
...The flood's not far away, rendering moot not only the distinctions between broadcast and cable, but between TV and PC, game shows and brochureware, advertising and e-mail...
...Download the peer-to-peer programs Limewire or Morpheus and watch the requests for bootlegged full-motion entertainment fly across your screen...
...They found that demand for the patch, nicotine cigarettes and similar alternatives to smoking was also elastic...
...Of course such revenue hounds defend themselves by claiming they are achieving two goals: balanced budgets in the short run and reduced smoking in the long...
...Media companies conglomerated after seeing opportunity in properties that could be synergistically exploited from one medium to another...
...MARCH/APRIL 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 29...
...The ad industry's 1980s mega-mergers were premised in part on the idea that consumers were "integrated perception units," and that marketers would benefit from unified plans that crossed media silos...
...But where does this leave the states...
...Let me explain...
...Rest assured, broadband media centers are the future of Microsoft's Xbox and Ultimate TV, and Sony's PlayStation 2. The convergence fun is just beginning—and it will be very hard to regulate...
...This is troubling, especially when you consider that taxes on tobacco, like those on liquor, are regressive: they tend to weigh most heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.To make matters worse, the states not only tax, but actually encourage, another form of sin: gambling in government-sponsored lotteries...
...Still, the most visible addiction in the saga of taxes and cigarettes is not smoking —it's public sector greed...
...All will be readily available on your big-screen, Dolby Digital home-theater system...
...Music got there first: digitized and Napstered, tunes landed by the thousands in our PCs, Nomad Jukeboxes and now our Apple iPods...
...But such efforts are futile if they are premised on the ability to single out one or two media from a rapidly converging pack...
...When the mega-mergees failed to match the growth of the S&P 500—and when the dot-corn bust put the kibosh on so many media dreams—the convergence idea was discredited...
...And already, pioneering hobbyists are giving way to major media, entertainment and home-electronics companies...
...On the other, they are eager for revenue and morally committed to obtaining it, even if it means profiteering from bad behavior...
Vol. 35 • March 2002 • No. 2
