In case you're not a sports fan or have other things to do, Zuffa LLC (the owners of the UFC and WEC) have purchased Pride Fighting Championship. To be more specific Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, III have bought Pride.

Pride will be officially owned by Pride FC Worldwide LLC with its President being Lorenzo Fertitta.

What does this mean?

Well for one, it means that the two biggest organizations are more or less under one umbrella. The biggest match ups in MMA will now take place such as Chuck Liddell vs Wanderlei Silva or Dan Henderson vs Anderson Silva.

For those of you who don't know this sport (or what I do) I now work for the biggest fight organization in the World. Seriously.

These two organizations are the biggest in the World. Pride sells out major Arenas in Japan. To put this into perspective I think Lorenzo Fertitta said it best. He compared this to 'the NFL merging with the AFC.'

In any event I was at work at 4:30 am yesterday due to the 16 hour time difference and when the announcement was done.

I don't know yet what this means for me. I'm sure whatever it does mean will trickle down to me eventually but in any event I think I better refresh my Japanese.

NBC Universal and News Corp (FOX) are getting together to form an online distribution network with MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! They will offer movies, and TV shows, etc in an ad supported/pay model.

Could this spell the end of YouTube? No. But it will alter the landscape.

The bigger question being presented was brought up by The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg. He is the tech geek at the paper and wrote a column last Thursday that appeared in the Marketplace section that talked about how "fair use" and where the consumer is left in all of this.

Mossberg's point is that in the end the consumer is the one holding the bag. Media companies, Studios, Record Labels, are going to court and Congress and writing laws that turn an a relatively innocent acts into a crime.

I download an album from itunes and think my mom would like it so I burn her a copy. I am now a criminal in the record company's eyes.

Mossberg points to some ideas like "fair use" and I agree with him.  His main concern is where the consumer is left in all of this.

While these companies lobby Congress to write laws that help them the consumer is now being turned into a criminal in a lot of ways

That's not how the free market is suppose to work.

Congress, according to Mossberg needs to not only protect intellectual property but also the consumer. If the only protect the companies then who will buy the content?

So when you look at it, we're screwed if were depending on Congress to protect us.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article in Broadcasting & Cable about how KUSA, a Denver TV station, dealt with a major winter snowstorm.

It wasn't an in depth multiple page article. In fact it was only one tabloid size page and had a couple of pictures. Anyway, the part that I found myself laughing out loud at (in Terminal B at the Las Vegas Airport) was when they talked about how they sounded the alarm about the oncoming snowstorm:

Although Denver's fleet of meteorologists had sounded the alarm days before, the city was unprepared for the onslaught. People were stranded in their cars, highways were shut down, and commuters took refuge in hotels.

The part I found so funny is how unobservant the writer was and how old school these TV stations still think even in a major market like Denver.

First people are idiots. Seriously you can scream all you want about the volcano erupting and leave town now and people will still stay and actually go towards the volcano!

Second maybe the TV stations in Denver should focus more on getting their information out to people on different formats. Later in the article it said:

"Our web traffic exploded," adds KUSA's (News Director Patti) Dennis. "We had 30 million page views in December, up from an average of 4 million."

Well there Patti, do you see a pattern developing?

The part that gets me is the writer Paige Albiniak. This person placed that information about the web towards the end of the article and didn't even touch on how the KUSA used their web site. Was there a place on KUSA's web site for people to send their own video's of the storm? Were there links to emergency information? Was their forum's for people to share their stories? How did the station change as a result of the storm? People obviously didn't heed the warnings so is the station trying to reach out to other platforms to get the information out?

I just found this article more narrow minded than anything else. This article wouldn't have caught my eye in a negative way 3-4 years ago. In fact I would have found it informative. Now I see this article in a negative light because it shows how far local tv hasn't progressed.

Tennessee, after Coach Bruce Pearl was featured in today's USA Today, which meant of course that Tennessee would blow a 20 pt lead and lose to Ohio State. Don't ask me how I know this stuff I just do.

In other news, Dick Vitale is an idiot and let me tell you why. He is all fired up at alumni and whoever else at Kentucky becasue Tubby Smith is leaving for a job coaching hoops at Minnesota.

Vitale yells about how the NCAA tournament has become a monster and alumni are out of control and how could they do this to such a good guy and a family man.

Give me a break. Dick, this is the game.

Why do alumni have a say? Oh I don't know, maybe because they open their checkbooks and write very big checks to support the program. Family Man? What the hell does that have to do with coaching basketball? Personally if I were an Athletic Director I would find people who were not married so they would have more time to work and win and make me look good.

It seems like every year Vitale gets liket his when coaches get fired or change jobs. And let me remind him and you home gamers, Tubby Smith left, he wasn't fired.

Vitale, calm down. Smoke a joint or do something.

Tennessee...well at least the Coach Summitt and the women's team is still alive.

I picked up a Business 2.0 magazine sometime in the last week or so (possible at an airport where I usually do my magazine shopping) and it was talking about the Next 25 folks on the Internet. Who will be the next Amazon.com and so forth. What's the next big service or software.

Well like most of the electronics makers in the World, the Sony's and Phillips and so forth, most the software applications are proprietary. One kind of video embed will work on this blog and not on that one etc. A Google gadget works on their homepages but not on MSN's.

Didn't any of these people learn anything from the Beta Max-VHS war?

Now you have cell phone providers like Cingular and Verizon using different types of video delivery methods.

People, the sooner we start having a standard the quicker the standard can make providers and content providers money.

Frontline tackled the news. It tackled itself and did a good job it.

Lowell Bergman did the first three parts of the four part series called News War.  I saw episodes 1 and 3 but missed 2 and 4. What I saw I liked. In fact I really liked it.

I worked TV marketing and promotion in 3 different medium and small markets for nearly 7 years. I learned a lot and met some interesting folks along the way. Granted I've always been critical of the news business and I feel for good reason. This series didn't tell me anything I didn't already know but it was still a good, informative series and did show me some things that I didn't know people were doing.

Part 1 was all about the Plame Affair. It was interesting to see and reflect on and see the history of reporters and their souces and how lawyers spin decisions and how judges interpret them.

Part 3 I found particualrly interesting because it focused more on the state of news and where it could be heading. The kicker was the fact that they started the episode by talking about The Daily Show on Comedy Central and talking with the producer of the show. A couple of years ago The Daily Show was voted something like best news program on TV. Funny for a show that's a FAKE NEWS SHOW.

The producer was even more concerned. He said something to the effect that they won the distinction not because what they were doing was so good but because everyone ealse was doing things so poorly.

I couldn't agree more.

The episode went on to cover many more angles from the current economics of the news media to the changing distribution model. Again, it wasn't ground breaking but for the outsiders looking in I think it would have been very insightful.

In the end Frontline did an amazing job of repoirting. It's a shame that other programs can't or won't be this good.  

'Geography is just a place on a map' is what I was told Saturday. Dan is my friend Erin's boyfriend. They live in a loft in Midtown Atlanta with a huge floor to ceiling window. The rooftop area has a pool, gym, and area for a small party. Let us also not forget the 60' Sony Wega.

In other words, it's where I would live.

The trip was not for fun and games. I went to see my friend from college Erin who is battling leukemia. When I arrived Saturday morning I went with her to the clinic for her daily dose of arsenic and magnesium.

This is about 5-8 hours of sitting in a recliner with tubes coming out of her chest and into a machine. They have TV's on arm's and free wi-fi to try to make the time go by a little faster but it usually doesn't.

This was not all gloom and doom. We did all go out Saturday night and had dinner and listened to some music at a place called Eddie's Attic where some cat named Bobby Yang. It's Yang on violin, a guy on acoustic guitar, a cello, and a jazz drummer. An interesting combo and they covered The Police. Pretty interesting.

It's always good to see friends. Distance is just a decision away. My advice is to see them.

So remember that Samsung Blackjack I bought? Well I finally go my refund...in the form of a VISA credit card.

No check.

The VISA card has my refund preloaded. It does however have an expiration date, restrictions, can only be used in the US, and I can't pull cash out of it.

Now this was all kinds of news to me when I received the card. I was under the impression that Cingular would do what they did last time, send me a check.

Nope.

I got carded. Bitches.

I am back in Las Vegas. Not much changed it still has the slot machines, strippers make a great money until crazy NFL defensive backs show up, and everything is pretty much a strip mall.

The event went very well. I went to bed Sunday morning around 8:30 am for a little bit before I had to get up and pack.

I didn't get to see much of the town, in fact I only made it outiside the hotel a handful of times. I really wanted to see the Ohio State campus just for the hell of it but never had the time.

It is warmer in Vegas than it is in Columbus but I suppose that that isn't much of a shock to anyone.