Finance Matters

Archive for February 11th, 2010

Here comes NBC, brought to you by Wal-Mart.

GE’s NBC is giving Wal-Mart a two-hour timeslot to air a TV movie called Secrets of The Mountain.

Secrets, which was produced by Wal-Mart and Proctor & Gamble, will focus on a single mother and public defender who takes her family to visit a mountain cabin.

Granted, Secrets is now set to air on Friday, April 16 during their 8 to 10 p.m. timeslot–a ratings deadzone. But if NBC could greenlight an entire series.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the two companies will control all the ad revenue generated by the show, essentially buying out the time from NBC.

So, essentially, NBC is going back to an old TV model of having a company sponsor and fund entire show from beginning to end.

Remember black & white TV hours sponsored by Colgate or Pepsi?

As P&G notes in the release: “For over five decades, P&G Productions has produced nearly 50 movies of the week, 35 years of ‘People’s Choice Awards,’ 20 soap operas and a number of beauty pageants and variety shows.”

But guess when most of those shows were made? Let us check Wikipedia:

Procter & Gamble also was the first company to produce and sponsor a prime-time show, a 1965 spinoff of the daytime soap opera As the World Turns called Our Private World. PGP also produced Shirley, a prime-time NBC series starring Shirley Jones, in 1979; it lasted thirteen episodes. They also produced TBS‘ first original comedy series, Down to Earth, which ran from 1984 to 1987 (110 episodes were produced). It also produced the 1991 TV movie A Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story. It also produces the People’s Choice Awards.

This is the same kind of old school, brand-tastic content partnerships former NBC Entertainment head Ben Silverman was creating for the Jay Leno Show, and is taking with him to his new company under Barry Diller’s IAC.

Now, Wal-Mart and P&G are the new TV production studios. It’s back to the future!

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• How NBC’s ‘Manage-For-Margins’ Strategy Trickled Down To Affiliates
• NBC Wants 200 Million Viewers For Olympic-Sized Payback
• Jeff Zucker’s Master Plan to Fix NBC

Former President Bill Clinton has been hospitalized with chest pains in New York City.

Obviously we hope for the best.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Bill Clinton Walks Away From Burkle and $20 Million

Tonight on the PBS newshour, business and economics correspondent Paul Solman takes a look at Goldman Sachs and how they’ve made a profit over the past several years.  Solman explores whether Goldman Sachs is an investment bank “doing God’s work,” as CEO Lloyd Blankfein claims, or actually a hedge fund. Solman looks at the issue and practice of front-running at the investment bank, and risk management.

Perhaps the most interesting segment comes when former Reagan administration budget guru David Stockman and former Goldman trading strategist explain how Goldman Sachs makes so much money trading. Here’s snippet of the transcript:

Narrator: But consider HOW they’re making those bucks, says Nomi Prins. On knowledge that, as when she was there, comes in with every trade a client asks Goldman to make.

Nomi Prins: And just by evidence from the profits they make and where they make them, what divisions they make them in, they’re not sitting on that knowledge. They are trading on that knowledge.

Paul Solomon: So they know somebody is going to buy a commodity or currency so they either buy that commodity or currency first or a commodity and currency very much like it.

Nomi Prins: Any information that you get, particularly if it’s going to move the markets a lot, is going to filter into the trading positions you take.

Narrator: But isn’t this “front running” — trading ahead of your clients (to profit from the price changes that will come from the clients’ trades) for your OWN firm’s benefit? And isn’t that, strictly speaking, illegal?

David Stockman: The long and ancient secret of Wall Street is they’ve always been front running their clients! In other words when you’re in the customer trading business and then you’re in the proprietary business, which trade are you making first? I don’t know and if it’s in milliseconds how’s anybody going to figure it out? So I don’t know if you ought to get all exercised on that or not but the fact they make all this money in proprietary trading is clearly part and parcel of being a massive player and dealer in the markets for both customer trades and house trades.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Why The Goldman "Front Running" Memo Is A Total Non-Story
• Goldman To Clients: We May Be Front-Running You

From All Things Digital:

Veoh, one of several well-funded startups that have tried and failed to cash in on the Web video boom, is finally calling it quits. The company let go of the remainder of its workforce yesterday, and sources say it plans on filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the near future.

Continue reading at All Things Digital »

Join the conversation about this story »

All those folks calling for a Treasury selloff are seeing their prediction come true.

The latest note from Waverley Advisors tells the story:

With an anticipated $2.4 trillion total issuance on deck for this year (1.7 net of maturities),
the US Treasury market has become the obvious focal point for global risk capital. 
Despite a staggering projected deficit and still weak overall economy, the recent concerns
about sovereign debt in Greece and other nations have helped extend the flow of money 
based on the perceived quality of US, helping to sustain the low yield environment.  Now
however, with faint tightening signals starting to emerge from the Fed, the speculative
opportunities presented by the yield curve are increasingly compelling. 
 
In the game of deciding when, not if, yields will rise, yesterday was significant.  The selloff
following the  $25 billion 10 year auction was a clear indication of how volatile the mood
is among investors. The notes garnered 3.692, higher than forecast with a bid-to-cover of
2.67, driving yields higher in tandem with Chairman Bernanke’s vague testimony before
the house regarding future increases in the discount rate. 
 
Today’s $16 billion 30 year auction also saw weakness, with a yield of 4.72% and a
bid to cover of 2.36 providing more data to confirm deteriorating demand. 

Now don’t miss our 15 creditors who have us by the balls >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Ten Year Treasuries Nose Dive At Auction
• 80 Years Of History Says Treasuries Will Rally This Year
• Taleb: "Every Single Human Being" Should Short Treasuries