Through the Wire
by Kent Gibbons, Todd Spangler and Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 4/14/2008 2:00:00 AM
How Auction Net Could Get an Edge
The Edge is at it again.
U2’s ace guitarist and falsetto vocalist will be front and center at a May 31 celebrity auction at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York’s Times Square, benefiting Music Rising, his three-year-old campaign to aid musicians whose livelihoods were devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region. It’s called Icons of Music 2008.
A year ago, Edge donated a 1975 Cream Gibson Les Paul guitar at a similar event at the same locale, listed at $60,000 to $80,000. It sold for $240,000.
The cable-TV angle? Startup Auction Network, a Tulsa-based Web and cable network headed by a passel of former TV Guide Network executives in Oklahoma, will produce a six-hour Webcast of the auction on Juliensauction.com, working with Julien’s Auctions of West Hollywood, Calif.
While Edge is front and center on the Julien’s Web site, sitting behind a gorgeous tie-dyed looking guitar, other items in the lot will include a signed Miley Cyrus guitar, suits worn by The Beatles while promoting A Hard Day’s Night, a Miles Davis-owned and used trumpet — 400 lots in all.
The Wire has been trying to connect the dots. Work with us: The Cable Show is in New Orleans May 16 to 18. There are efforts surrounding the show to benefit denizens of the recovering host city. Auction Network, which announced launch plans in July 2007, is on the exhibitor list (Booth 3341).
What better way to promote the auction, the network and add some star power to the Cable Show than to bring in The Edge?
Auction Network has nothing to say on the subject, officials tell The Wire. But we remain vigilant.
TiVo Misplays Its 'Idol’ Hand
As Simon Cowell might say, “TiVo got it absolutely, 100% wrong.”
The DVR maker last Thursday issued a press release predicting Syesha Mercado, the Whitney-esque hopeful on Fox’s American Idol, would get kicked off the show. TiVo based its prognostication on an analysis of how frequently 20,000 of its DVR users watched the time-shifted performances of the final eight contestants from the April 8 broadcast. For the previous four weeks, according to TiVo, the singer with the least-viewed performance garnered the lowest vote totals.
Mercado was among the bottom three vote getters. But it was Aussie charmer Michael Johns who got the hook. “I’m definitely surprised,” a visibly stunned Johns told Idol host Ryan Seacrest.
Besides proving that PR stunts can misfire, TiVo’s “Dewey Beats Truman” moment also shows the limitations of correlating TV viewing data with voting results, consumer buying behavior … or, really, with anything other than watching TV.
Pirate Shorthand An 'Arr’-t Form
The lawsuit between Dish Network and NDS Group over compromised smart cards will reveal a lot of inside information on how security is developed and decoded, as well as revealing the lengths some will go for the information.
The Wire has already learned a nifty shorthand: 3M. Nope, not the Minnesota company, but pirate shorthand for the Three Musketeers.
The motto of the literary heroes was “All for one and one for all.” To hackers, 3M is a label for coding that will hack a system for which one has legitimately bought one, basic level of service so that the same system will open to receive all levels of service.
The trial could also decode the identity of “Nipper2000.”
According to early testimony, NDS engineers, who broke Dish Network security in an effort to learn how it worked and to develop improvements for their own security technology, found the word “nipper” in the Dish smart card code.
That detail was allegedly in an NDS report on the hack, the 3M Headend Report. Information from that report showed up on the Internet in 2002 by someone who used the screen name “Nipper2000,” according to early testimony.
It’s up to Dish attorneys to try to make the link from the report to the pirate.
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