Emmitt Smith Hired By ESPN

Emmitt Smith to Join ESPN As Analyst-My comment below end of story..
By Associated Press

BRISTOL, Conn. -- Former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith has been hired by ESPN as a studio analyst for its NFL pregame coverage.

Smith, the National Football League's all-time leading rusher, will appear on the network's NFL Countdown and Monday Night Countdown shows. He will also appear as an analyst on ESPN Radio and ESPN.com, the network announced Monday.

"I am looking forward to sharing my knowledge and insight of football with the fans of the NFL," Smith said in a statement released by the network. "I am excited to be joining the ESPN family, particularly the highly respected Countdown crews."

Smith will join Chris Berman, analysts Mike Ditka, Tom Jackson and Ron Jaworski, and reporter Chris Mortensen on NFL countdown. He, Berman, Jackson, Mortensen and analyst Steve Young will do the Monday Night Countdown show each week from the site of the Monday Night Football game.


This could be one of the smartest moves ESPN could make regarding their Football coverage. Emmitt's personality is so much different then his predecessor and former teammate. Irvin was at times, to argumentative with his elders, and i'm sorry, as skilled as Irvin was on the field, he was not always well spoken off it, he also clashed with the styles of Ditka and Tom Jackson. Smith Knows how to play nice......

Senator Hillary Clinton Thinks She's JFK! - Trying To Steal Barack Obama's Style Not Likely To Work

I just saw this article in the New York Post where Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's comparing herself to John F. Kennedy, apparently hoping to both fire up her supporters and take some of the "Kennedy" tag off Senator Barack Obama.

Well, one thing I've learn is to let others call you JFK and not yourself. Remember Dan Quale? Recall the debate with the now Late Senator Lloyd Bentson, where he says to Quale, "I knew John F. Kennedy, and you're no JFK!"

Seems Hillary just set herself up for the punchline.

CAA Taking A Bath On Sports Division? - Buying Matt Leinart, Tom Condon, and IMG

Someone -- perhaps Leigh Steinberg -- is reading this with glee. But if Hollywood Reporter Nikki Finke's any indication,
Creative Artists Agency , the super-firm of talent agents started by Ron Meyer and Mike Ovitz in 1975, and recently the epicenter of Hollywood's move into athletic talent mining starting with players like Arizona Cardinals QB Matt Leinart, may be losing money in its sports division.

To understand, read this post from Nikki's blog:

If CAA agents this week are looking inconsolable, it's because they now have to give up flying first class. (Those conversations you're trying to overhear at lunch in Century City are the CAA tenpercenters kvetching about it.) So what happened? My sources tell me that CAA called a big all-agents meeting and read the riot act to its spendthrift tenpercenters. To cut expenses by a whopping 20%. To start flying just business class instead of first class. And to take to heart this warning: If you want to get paid, then get your clients jobs.

I hear the motion picture agents are the most upset about the new edicts because they live the high life more and so got hit harder. Look, I've been saying this for a while now: CAA can't keep spending like drunken sailors without having cash flow issues: buying a bevy of agents from other shops and wooing clients by the hundreds, and moving into swank new headquarters while still paying rent back at the I.M. Pei building, and starting a money pit of a sports division where most of the endorsement deal money will be heading back to IMG for years, etc. Now CAA is having the same woes every other agency in town has been having: for instance, William Morris last year asked its departments to slash spending by 20%. What's next? Richard Lovett on Avenue Of The Stars with a metal detector looking for loose change and lost jewelry?



If it's true that CAA's gotten into a deal where it's giving most of its' cash from sponsorship deals back to IMG, then it's officially taking a bath in its sports division. Everyone in the sports business knows its the sponsorship deals that drive the industry, and this is especially true for NFL agents, which are limited to 3 percent takes of an athlete's contract.

By contrast, CAA comes from the world of the 20 percent deal, where they can get as much as that for an actor or actress. So they're giving up 17 percent of a deal, plus a big chunk of endorsement money? Wow. All that plus the fact that CAA and the other Hollywood agencies aren't savvy enough in new media to promote their talents to such an extent they make up for this. One firm I will not name has an extensive website, but you can't find it on Google! (They need to use SBS-ON!)

At first, I thought CAA's foray into sports would restructure the industry and cause a shakeout of some of the small-time -- at least in behavior -- agents. But given the appearance of their business model, I remain skeptical. It's now logical to me why IMG would give up its NFL operation to CAA without the appearance of a fight; they're getting paid! Moreover, it seems everyone, from Leigh Steinberg to Matt Leinart's trainer Steve Clarkson of Air 7 (which has a better website now), to IMG, and Tom Condon (who was lured from IMG to CAA) has been paid by CAA just so it could leap -- head first -- into the sports business without a battle.

In other words, CAA really did create a money pit!

Let's give it five years, and then review. Unless CAA starts making a ton of sports movies with Matt Leinart and Paris Hilton as the stars, they may see the NFL and sports as a waste of money. It's not, really. It's just that they don't really understand what they've gotten themselves into.

Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani's Abortion Flip-Flop

Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani's Abortion Flip-Flop -- all in caps -- is all over YouTube. There are two video clips that show the former New York Mayor and 9-11 hero making statements both for and against abortion. In the first one, he's running for mayor of New York City and said that he favored public funding for abortions for poor people -- an admirable stance.

Now, he states that he's against abotion. But what's more unfortunate is he stated that he never ran in support of abortion. Check them out here:

Rudy for abortion...



Rudy against abortion...



A person's entitled to change their mind, but he should be up front about why he did so.

Atlanta's MARTA Buses Glow In The Dark To Sell Ads

MARTA an innovator in advertising
Newest creation: Bus wraps that glow in the dark

By PAUL DONSKY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/13/07

One of the most aggressive advertising innovators in metro Atlanta isn't a Fortune 500 company or a scrappy Internet upstart. It's MARTA, the regional transit system, which is selling space on its buses, trains and rail stations with the gusto of a NASCAR racing team.

Ads are shown on video screens hanging from rail platforms and on televisions bolted inside buses and rail cars. Buses and trains have been wrapped to create rolling billboards touting everything from new condominium towers to bail bondsmen. The transit system was the first in the nation to place ads inside subway tunnels in a way that creates short moving pictures for riders in passing trains.

MARTA has wrapped buses and trains to create rolling billboards touting everything from new condominium towers to bail bondsmen.


John Spink/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Advertising produces about $5 million in annual revenue for MARTA, a small percentage of its $324 million operating budget, but its marketing director thinks itÕs an area poised to grow.

This month, MARTA is pushing the envelope again, becoming the first to wrap buses in ads made from a special material that glows in the dark.

Glowing buses? Subway movies? TVs on trains? Welcome to advertising, 21st century style.

Companies are finding they must try new marketing techniques to stand out in today's ad-saturated world, said Ken Bern-

hardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University.

"The key is how do you get noticed, and doing nontraditional things is a very effective way to get noticed," he said.

Marketers say MARTA is a good vehicle for companies because the transit system's ridership skews young, the most coveted demographic for advertisers. And the 100,000 to 120,000 passengers who ride the system each day are a captive audience, with time to kill whether waiting for a train or riding on a bus.

Of course, MARTA isn't the only nontraditional place ads are showing up. They're being beamed onto TV screens mounted in elevators, posted above urinals in bathrooms and, increasingly, disguised as e-mails from friends and colleagues.

But in MARTA, marketers have found an eager participant in the new advertising game. Until recently, the transit system has been struggling to make ends meet and desperate for new revenue streams. The economic downturn after the Sept. 11 attacks eroded MARTA's primary income stream, sales tax collections, and pushed the system to think outside the box.

Unlike most transit systems, MARTA gets no operating money from the state. Advertising brings in about $5 million a year for MARTA, a relatively small percentage of the transit system's $324 million operating budget. But it's an area poised to grow, said Tony Griffin, MARTA's director of marketing.

"The revenue hasn't been what we hoped it would be, but we hope down the road we've opened up a nice revenue source for the future," Griffin said.

MARTA was the nation's first transit system to put television screens in rail cars, and remains the only system with electronic signs in all rail stations.

"MARTA is a leader in terms of trying stuff," said Wendell Reilly, CEO of Atlanta-based SignPost Networks, which is paying MARTA about $144,000 a year to hang digital display screens throughout the rail system.

MARTA doesn't sell ads, leaving that work to advertising and media companies who pay the transit system for the right to wrap buses and place video screens on trains and in rail stations. MARTA doesn't pay for the equipment but does receive a percentage of ad sales.

Griffin stresses that the video and TV screens do much more than show ads.

The rail station monitors, for instance, provide riders with a steady stream of news, from sports scores to local headlines, sandwiched between short ad spots. At the bottom of the screen, a new feature counts down the minutes until the next train arrives. The bus TVs air local news reports, entertainment programs and MARTA news.

Sidney Daniels, 48, a regular MARTA bus rider, said he likes the feature.

"It's entertainment," he said. "It's convenient to everybody."

Advertising on MARTA has worked well for one small Atlanta company, Free at Last bail bonds, which has been putting its logo on MARTA buses since November 2005.

Business has gone up, prompting the company to sign a second yearlong contract. About half of Free at Last's marketing budget is now spent on MARTA bus ads, said Jennifer Greene-Dallam, the company's CEO.

The ads are successful because it takes little effort to watch a bus rolling by, she said.

"The Yellow Pages, you have to actually open the book," she said. "Hopefully, you've seen our bus running on the streets. It's brand recognition."

Until the 1990s, MARTA took a restrained approach to advertising. Buses completely wrapped in ads didn't become common until just before the 1996 Summer Olympics.

MARTA's advertising thirst does have limits. MARTA has no plans to sell naming rights for a rail station. Liquor ads are not permitted, either.

The subway tunnel ads remain a pilot project. No plans are in the works to make the ads a permanent part of MARTA's arsenal, officials said. The lone subway ad in place, for Lexus, is scheduled to be removed within three months.

At least one MARTA board member, the Rev. Walter Kimbrough, says he'd like to see the system stop wrapping buses.

"If you see a MARTA bus that is wrapped, you don't really know that it's a MARTA bus," he said, noting that suburban bus systems have begun running in downtown and Midtown in recent years. "There will be markings on it, but you really have to look for that. And the uniformity is gone."

Reilly, the SignPost CEO, says the 145 digital screens he's installed in MARTA rail stations reach about 300,000 individual viewers each week — a figure measured by Arbitron, the same agency that monitors radio station listenership. If SignPost was a radio station, Reilly boasts it would rank among the top 10 in metro Atlanta.

To attract viewers, SignPost broadcasts news and information in 10-minute loops and developed the "next train" feature, what Reilly calls his "killer app." Short ads are shown every 10 to 20 minutes. The information's providers include CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Reuters. SignPost gets the information free, while the content providers are able to spread their brand name to MARTA riders.

"What we're trying to do is give the MARTA rider the same thing that the automobile rider has, which is a radio," Reilly said. "It's visual radio."

YouTube - Did-It's Mr. Mark Simon Presents Copyright Problems As End-All; They're Not - "The Rules Of Industry Dynamics"

I just read a post on "Search Insider" -- a blog presented by MediaWeek -- which proves once again just how little many, even some of those who are in search engine marketing, understand how YouTube's used, let alone what its advantages are.

For evidence, I present the blog of one Mark Simon, the VP of Industry Relations at Did-It in New York City. He had the never to try to make a jump from stating that Google may be harmed by the growing Social Networking wave, to the now tired idea that YouTube, which is owned by Google, will fall on its sword because of copywrite problems. Implying that YouTube's content is not original.

As I explained in the response to his blog, his argument is not logical because YouTube has a great deal of original content. Mr. Simon writes "By providing the capability to easily search for copyrighted material, YouTube --which is to say, Google -- makes YouTube a more effective hosting service for pirated content, even if it conducts that hosting against its will. That opens Google up to copyright complaints...For media sites like Yahoo and MSN, which have large amounts of unique content, these problems are far less serious. First, their unique content creates other avenues of monetization, should copyright issues ever threaten a part of their search business."

That's one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever read. YouTube has a milions of video clips that are original, from Renetto, to LonelyGirl, to Kate On Sports, the list goes on and on. This -- Mr. Simon's article -- is yet another expression of East-Coast misunderstanding of, and lack of respect for, the growing video distribution industry, of which YouTube is the current leader. This is a constant song -- so common I liken it to the old desire that California fall into the Pacific Ocean.

YouTube's located in San Bruno, California, in the San Francisco / Oakland / San Jose Bay Area -- ok, the Bay Area but I did that for those who don't know what it is.

Mr. Simon, here are some basic rules of industry dynamics I want you to pay attention to:

1) The video distribution industry will grow in indirect proportion to the ease of use of video recording devices, their decrease in price, and the ease of use of systems to upload material they produce.
2) "Dynamics Rule One" will continue the reduction in the "barrier to entry" for those who want to make video shows.
3) The combination of Dynamics Rules One and Two will maintain a constant demand for and production of original content on all of the 77 "YouTube-type" video distribution portals.

Given those rules, you're absolutely wrong regarding Google / YouTube, but I enjoyed reading your take nonetheless.

Google - Who Do They Use For Transit? Bauer's Worldwide Transportation

Bauer's Worldwide Transportation , which helped me in my effort to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland, has only grown., offering Hybrid Cars and stretch Lincolns, taking over the "Pure Rush" party brand. The firm, ran by Founder and President Gary Bauer, is now responsible for shuttling Google's employees too and fro. Here's the NY Times article:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The perks of working at Google are the envy of Silicon Valley. Unlimited amounts of free chef-prepared food at all times of day. A climbing wall, a volleyball court and two lap pools. On-site car washes, oil changes and haircuts, not to mention free doctor checkups.

Stephen Weis, a software engineer for Google, uses the company’s shuttle bus service. Bicycles can be stored on exterior racks.

But the biggest perk may come with the morning commute.

In Silicon Valley, a region known for some of the worst traffic in the nation, Google, the Internet search engine giant and online advertising behemoth, has turned itself into Google, the mass transit operator. Its aim is to make commuting painless for its pampered workers — and keep attracting new recruits in a notoriously competitive market for top engineering talent.

And Google can get a couple of extra hours of work out of employees who would otherwise be behind the wheel of a car.

The company now ferries about 1,200 employees to and from Google daily — nearly one-fourth of its local work force — aboard 32 shuttle buses equipped with comfortable leather seats and wireless Internet access. Bicycles are allowed on exterior racks, and dogs on forward seats, or on their owners’ laps if the buses run full.

Riders can sign up to receive alerts on their computers and cellphones when buses run late. They also get to burnish their green credentials, not just for ditching their cars, but because all Google shuttles run on biodiesel. Oh, and the shuttles are free.

But if the specifics sound quintessentially Googley, as insiders call the company’s quirky corporate culture, it is the shuttle program’s sheer scale that befits Google’s oversize ambitions. This is, after all, a company whose stated goal is to organize the world’s information — and whose founders’ corporate jet is a Boeing 767.

“We are basically running a small municipal transit agency,” said Marty Lev, Google’s director of security and safety, who oversees the program.

Not that small, really. The shuttles, which carry up to 37 passengers each and display no sign suggesting they carry Googlers, have become a fixture of local freeways. They run 132 trips every day to some 40 pickup and drop-off locations in more than a dozen cities, crisscrossing six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and logging some 4,400 miles.

They pick up workers as far away as Concord, 54 miles northeast of the Googleplex, as the company’s sprawling Mountain View headquarters are known, and Santa Cruz, 38 miles to the south. The system’s routes cover in excess of 230 miles of freeways, more than twice the extent of the region’s BART commuter train system, which has 104 miles of tracks.

Morning service starts on some routes at 5:05 a.m. — sometimes carrying those Google chefs — and the last pickup is at 10:40 a.m. Evening service runs from 3:40 p.m. to 10:05 p.m. During peak times, pickups can be as frequent as every 15 minutes.

At Google headquarters, a small team of transportation specialists monitors regional traffic patterns, maps out the residences of new hires and plots new routes — sometimes as many as 10 in a three-month period — to keep up with ever surging demand.

Many employers run programs for commuters, including van pools, shuttles to and from transit hubs and subsidies for public transit and alternative modes of transportation, but several transportation experts say Google appears to have built an unparalleled transit network.

“I don’t know of any program in the Bay Area or in a metropolitan area nationwide larger than that,” said Tad Widby, the project manager for the 511 Regional Rideshare Program, who has studied transportation systems nationwide.

As much as it is a generous fringe benefit or an environmental gesture, the shuttle program is a competitive weapon in Silicon Valley’s recruiting wars.

One of the biggest challenges facing the Google juggernaut, with a staff that has been doubling every year, is to continue to attract the best. Many technology workers say that the potential benefit from stock options for new hires is limited, since the company’s shares have already surged more than fourfold since its 2004 public offering of $85.

The shuttles may not be able to lift Google’s stock price, but they have struck a chord with employees.

“It’s the most useful Google fringe benefit,” said Wiltse Carpenter, a 45-year-old software engineer. Mr. Carpenter has been with Google only a few months, but before that he had commuted from San Francisco to the same Highway 101 exit since 1992, having worked at Silicon Graphics and Microsoft, two Google neighbors. “It’s changed my quality of life,” he said.

That sentiment is not surprising. Even Googlers have to worry about the area’s high real estate prices, which have sent families to the outer confines of the region in search of cheaper housing. And the hopping cultural and social life of San Francisco remains a magnet for young workers, even though the commute to offices in Silicon Valley, some 35 miles to the south, can take well over an hour. A recent survey showed that traffic was the No. 1 concern for the area’s residents — for the 10th year in a row.

But on a rainy winter afternoon, as some 20 Google employees hopped onto the 4:40 p.m. back to the Mission and Noe Valley districts of San Francisco, those concerns seemed distant. The shuttle merged onto Highway 101, made its way across three lanes packed with slow-moving vehicles and into the carpool lane, where it began speeding past hundreds of commuters.

Inside, most riders appeared to abide by the shuttle’s etiquette rules. Cellphone conversations are allowed if they are work-related and sotto voce. But loud personal calls are definitely out. In fact, except for a couple snuggled together, no one sat on adjacent seats. Many took out iPods or laptops and worked, surfed the Web or watched videos.

“People tend to be quiet and respectful that this is people’s downtime,” said Diana Alberghini, a 33-year-old program manager.

Google will not discuss the cost of the program, which it operates through Bauer’s Limousine, a private transportation company in San Francisco. But the shuttles appear to be having the desired effect on recruiting. Michael Gaiman, a 23-year-old Web applications engineer who lives in San Francisco and was recently hired, said he turned down an offer from Apple before accepting the job at Google. “It definitely was a factor,” Mr. Gaiman said of the shuttle.

Colin Klingman, 38, who works at Google as an independent software contractor — and hence has to pay a small fee for the shuttle to comply with tax rules — said he waited to apply to Google until there was a stop near his San Francisco house.

Those types of decisions have been noticed around Silicon Valley. Yahoo, a leading competitor to Google, began a shuttle program in 2005 that could be described as the Pepsi to Google’s Coke. It shuttles about 350 employees on peak days to and from San Francisco as well as Berkeley, Oakland and other East Bay cities. Yahoo’s buses also run on biodiesel and are equipped with Internet access, but the company’s commute coordinator, Danielle Bricker, said the program was only “indirectly” inspired by Google’s.

Meanwhile eBay recently began a pilot shuttle to five pickup spots in San Francisco. And some high-tech employers are coming up with other approaches. Instead of making it easier for employees to live far from work, Facebook, the social networking site, makes it easier for them to live nearby: it offers a $600 monthly housing subsidy for those who live within a mile of the company’s Palo Alto headquarters.

There are signs that Google’s shuttles could be affecting — albeit in small ways — the region’s housing market.

When Adam Klein, a 24-year-old software engineer, moved to San Francisco in 2005 to take a job at Google, he looked for a rental apartment within a 15-minute walk of a shuttle stop. His walk to the Civic Center stop turned out to be a bit longer. “I didn’t take into account the hills,” Mr. Klein said. Many of his friends are moving close to other shuttle stops. “Those stops have attracted people,” he said.

The area surrounding one of the shuttle’s Pacific Heights stops had a dozen or so Googlers living nearby in 2005. That number has surged to more than 60.

For all their popularity, the shuttles have yet to earn Google the title of most commuter-friendly employer. The top spot in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Best Workplaces for Commuters went to Intel, which allows telecommuting, offers transit subsidies to employees and helps pay for shuttles that bring workers from transit stops, among other benefits. Google tied Oracle for third; Microsoft came in second.

But Googlers hooked on the convenience of the shuttles say nothing tops their commuting perk.

“They could either charge for the food or cut it altogether,” said Bent Hagemark, a 44-year-old software engineer who boarded a Google shuttle in Cow Hollow, an upscale neighborhood in the north end of San Francisco. “If they cut the shuttle, it would be a disaster.”