The Onion On Mark Cuban And The SEC

As always, it's funny because it's true:

The Onion: Mark Cuban Sued For Insider Trading

"First Martha Stewart, now Mark Cuban. It's like the SEC knows exactly who I hate."
"As with all of his predicaments, Mark Cuban will find some way to yell at an official for this."
"Hey, sometimes you've got to break a few SEC rules to do whatever it is that Mark Cuban does all day."

In case you're not up to speed on what the SEC is accusing Mark Cuban of doing, the fine folks at Clusterstock have given the pending case some superb coverage that you can skim by clicking here. Not to mention that you can read about what Cuban himself has to say on the subject, on his blog.

This story is especially interesting because, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first insider trading case where the accused publicly admitted to the act of selling his shares on his blog, for the whole world to see. What's at issue is whether or not his receipt of private information made him an insider or not.

This is far from over.

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The Realities Of Modern Television Advertising

Opinionated businessman Mark Cuban has a recent blog post where he rails against something that gets on all our nerves: loud TV commercials:

Mark Cuban: How Advertisers Shoot Themselves In Their Collective Feet

With all the technology and alternatives to watching commercials on TV I would think that advertisers would do everything humanly possible to eliminate any elements that would immediately trigger a viewer to fast forward to change the channel.

Is this not commen senese ?

If it is, then why in the world do advertisers JACK UP THE VOLUME OF THEIR COMMERCIALS ?

Like any other business endeavor, some advertising gurus are brilliant, others are average, and some are stupid.

Way back in the 80's when the "mute" button came into common use, good advertisers learned that they needed to make their commercials get their brand message across even with the sound off.

Nowadays, all of my TV watching is pre-recorded on my PVR, which means that I skip past the commercials on 3x fast forward. Something I've noticed is that even at high speed, some commercials still make a branding statement, whereas others only show confused glimpses.
Obviously, some marketers are doing a good job of dealing with the modern realities of getting through to viewers. But of course, we don't remember the ones that do a good job, we remember the ones that anger us.

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