We Were Wrong

Yes, it's true, the Curmudgeon is occasionally wrong. We're man enough to fess up.

A couple weeks ago we said that NBC's monopoly on Olympic coverage would prevent Americans from seeing many Olympic events, and suggested that it would be better to sell television rights to categories of sports (gymnastics, track & field, bicycling, equestrian, etc.) to maximize exposure on various cable networks.

We were largely wrong. NBC owns a number of cable stations now, including MSNBC, CNBC, USA and Telemundo, and it made the most of those additional outlets to provide broad coverage, much of it live, of many Olympic sporting events.

In addition, NBC made available just about every competition on its special Olympics website. We enjoyed, a couple of evenings, streaming the women's archery competition on our laptop while watching the main NBC coverage on television.

Indeed, if anything, NBC has undercommercialized its web opportunities in connection with the Olympics. There wasn't much advertising accompanying the webcasts, and what there was tended to be generic--the same advertisers as on its television broadcasts.

If we were NBC, we'd create a separate webpage for each category of sports and open it to advertising from companies that can't afford television, but that have a connection to the sport and would love the specific audience. For example, the archery page could have a lot of useful info about archery, and be sponsored by various manufacturers of equipment, or archery clubs, or whatever.

Anyway, we were wrong. The Olympics were fun, and well-covered.

NBC's "Lucky Case" Rip-off Scheme Spreads Like A Cancer Through Television

Suppose Howie Mandel, on NBC's popular "Deal or No Deal" game show, took time out from each broadcast to urge viewers to send in $1 apiece for the chance to "win" a $10,000 prize. And suppose far more than 10,000 viewers sent in their $1 in the hope of winning, leaving NBC with a tidy little profit?

That would be an illegal lottery, and pretty soon some folks--maybe even Howie--would be in jail.

About a year ago, we wrote about NBC's shameful "Lucky Case" promotion on "Deal", characterizing it as not much different than an illegal lottery because it requires entrants to pay a $.99 "premium text messaging charge" to enter.

Unfortunately, this scam is now spreading to other NBC shows, and even to mighty American Idol on Fox. NBC has a similar promotion on its "1 Vs. 100" game show and on Donald Trump's "The Apprentice". These "contests" are heavily promoted during the shows, during just about every commercial break.

The similar promotion on American Idol is not quite so pervasive--we've only seen one quick promo for it during each show, probably because Idol commercial time is just too valuable to squander.

So why are these rip-offs spreading? Easy: its all about the money. Just take a look at this June 2006 press release from the company that manages the Lucky Case game for NBC. According to the press release, there have been 57 million entries to the game, with just $1 million paid out! That means someone--presumably the cellular carriers and NBC--is pocketing nearly $56 million. No wonder this phenomenon is spreading like a cancer throughout television.

(To be sure, you can also enter these games on the internet, for free--if you can parse through the extremely small print on your television screen to figure that out. Presumably, only a very small fraction of entries are over the internet or NBC wouldn't devote so much time to the promotion.)

Furthermore, there is some small print in NBC's rules that suggests entrants may end up paying more than $1 per entry. The rules contain this little notation:

"In addition, a premium text message charge of $.99 will apply to all text messages sent and received in connection with the Promotion. You will receive a "thank you" text message the following day including a DEAL OR NO DEAL Insider message."

In other words, it appears that you will get charged another $.99 for the "thank you" message--isn't that sweet, paying for a thank you! (If you don't want to get the thank you's, you can pay another $.99 to text a message asking not to receive them.)

So it may be that NBC and its cell-phone carrier cronies have earned not $56 million, but over $100 million on this scam, and that's just from Deal or No Deal.

These slimy promotions should be OUTLAWED, plain and simple. They're actually more devious than a lottery. At least if you enter a straight lottery, each ticket you purchase has an even chance of winning the prize. In these TV contests, roughly 80 percent of the entries don't even have a shot at the drawing--but if you buy multiple tickets, i.e., pay a lot more, then you have shot!

Back when Eliott Spitzer was Attorney General of New York, we could've counted on him to do something about such an egregious scam. We hope a few legislators will get up the gumption to put a stop to this nonsense.