Last week was a doozie in the crow-eating department. Billionaire HDNet owner Mark Cuban (the fiendish cherubic dictator who put Dan Rather back to work) and Mr. Gravitas Beard himself, TimeWarner CEO Richard Parsons, had all their “YouTube ain’t worth a bottle of spit” claims hurled back in their faces as the company was snapped up by Google for an incredible $1.65 billion (in Google stock). The two naysaying moguls were quick to cover their tracks though. First, Cuban said, “Would Google be crazy to buy YouTube? No doubt about it. Moronic would be an understatement of a lifetime.” Then, hours after the sale, he said, “I still think Google is crazy … I think there will be subpoenas to get the names of YouTube and Google Video users.” Then, a few days later, after the reality of the deal set in, he said, “I was wrong …” No duh, Nowitzki-hugger. Despite the billions, we think it’s safe to say that this guy doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about when it comes to Web 2.0. As for Parsons, he’s proven to be surprisingly steadfast in his doubts about YouTube. After the mega sale, the would-be mayor of New York said, “The question is, where is it going and how do you make a business out of it? Is it going to take over edited or professional content? No. I don’t think its going to overrun TV or movies.”
Despite all the protestations from the Air America chiefs, it has finally come to pass that the self-described liberal radio network has filed for bankruptcy. Not one to pass up an opportunity to kick an enemy when they are down, ousted former Air America host Janeane Garofalo crawled out of her Greenwich Village digs to tell the media, “The problem was we got conned in the beginning by some shysters.” Ouch! Shysters! Despite the fact that the network’s top host, Al Franken claims he hasn’t been paid in weeks, there’s still no word yet on whether Air America’s New York host, WWRL 1600 AM, will kick the network off the air. After taking out two NYC African American radio stations (the first was WLIB) in their quest for a New York radio home, the only one left would be WBAI—the left leaning radio station (owned by the Pacifica Network) that has seen so much drama in the last ten years it makes Air America’s brief history look positively healthy.
And now it’s time for yet another round of very important questions … Why would Chicago Sun Times critics Ebert and Roeper allow the doughy patrician of the New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott, to befoul their studio as a guest host? Suddenly we’re wishing Ebert a more speedy recovery. Why did the attacks on the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell only start after he started a blog? Why hasn’t someone pranked Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Borat aka Ali G) yet? Why is it not obvious to everyone that Lloyd “Herman Munster” Grove left the Daily News to start working in the digital media business? (HDNet? Radar Magazine? AOL? Sweet Smell Of Success blogging anyone?) Finally, when will the first reports of an overly aggressive Metro newspaper hawker beating the hell out of a foaming-at-the-mouth-please-take-this-damn-paper AM NY newspaper hawker surface? We’re getting impatient!
