June 30, 2016
Today's Special
This Week in eSports... Can competitive gaming translate into TV rating hits?
This week in eSports news... eSports is already a huge market but can it make it in the world of traditional TV broadcasting? Also, the White House answers ancient question, “Are eSports sports?” and Amazon throws its weight behind mobile eSports.
Did You Know…
LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
NBC says it’ll provide over 6,700 hours of Olympic coverage distributed among their many channels and web streams. It’ll also be the “most live ever” according to the station, thanks to Rio being just an hour ahead of Eastern US.
YOUR POLITICAL FORECAST
According to Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight, Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. Silver said HRC has a 79% chance of winning the White House; Donald Trump has a 20% chance at what he calls a political halftime. Silver predicted 49 out of 50 states correctly in the 2008 race and batted a thousand in the 2012 presidential election.
YOU’RE GONNA PAY [Song]
Why it’s important to you: If you use Facebook to market to guests this change hurts.
In a change that feels more like a money grab than an enhancement, Facebook announced a change to the algorithm that lists content on individual newsfeeds. The adjustment will insure more content from friends and family is displayed than from publishers. Of course, if you boost your post or pay for Facebook Advertising you will still get access to your own audience. There is some speculation that this change was also driven by the sharp reduction in personal content being posted by individuals.
Either way, change has been a fairly standard practice at Facebook and many times it’s great, like Facebook Live. However, this newest change is bad for those of you that rely on Facebook to connect with guests or inform them what’s happening at your location. Yes you can still interact with them, but if you want them to see your content, you’re gonna start paying for it.
WHEN A STREAM BECOMES A TORRENT
Why it’s important to you: The rise of internet streaming content provides new options for guests.
When Vertical on Yahoo out ‘audienced’ ESPN for the NBA Draft, it was a bit of surprise to folks in the broadcast industry (not us we’ve been telling you this for ages!). But now they are taking the next logical step and instead of competing with ESPN, they are doing their own special program on NBA Free Agency. Tonight at 11:30pm ET until 1:00am ET, you can tune into Vertical and get all the breaking news as the free agency period opens for the NBA. Arguably the reason Vertical crushed it on the Draft was they were breaking the selections before ESPN even had a whisper of insight. With breaking news being a staple of free agency, tonight’s Vertical coverage will be the first place to get news on who’s going where and for how much. Will you be sharing this stream with guests?
THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Why it’s important to you: Are you paying all of your employees equally for equal work?
Anyone that tells you all PR is good PR doesn’t work for the Pizza Studio. Recently, a 17-year-old female employee at the 34 unit chain was fired because she challenged why her wage was less than her male co-worker. The story has gone viral. The manager (also a woman, by the way) informed her that sharing her hourly rate with another employee was against company policy and she was terminate because she had.
To start, your staff has every right to share their salary arrangements with each other, so don’t count on them not to know what each other earns. Then realize how utterly stupid it is today to not have a wage policy that makes it impossible to make this mistake. It’s fairly simple at an hourly level to just set the wage for every position at entry without exception. According to Pizza Studio, that’s where their manager went off the rails, because she didn’t follow company policy. As a result, the manager was terminated herself.
Gender pay equality is a significant issue for Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform. So when Jensen Walcott’s story went viral it was only fitting that the presumptive nominee for President gave her a shout out and mentioned her by name.
YUP, THINGS CAN GET WORSE
Why it’s important to you: This Olympics may be “must watch” for everything except the sporting events.
Imagine you have a great day planned at the beach and as you are wading into the ocean to cool off, a human body part floats by you. Ugh! Well that is exactly what happened Wednesday afternoon at the Copa Cabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The mutilated body parts washed up just yards from where the beach volleyball tournament will take place in August during the Olympics. Amid the government corruption scandal, spreading fear about the Zika Virus and the instability of Rio’s financial situation, there is plenty to keep the world’s attention after the opening ceremonies on August 5th. So stay tuned, who knows what will happen next.