News Blog

Mark Cuban sounds almost giddy in a blog about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's acknowledgment that the company hasn't figured out how to make YouTube profitable.

Cuban, the founder of Broadcast.com and owner of high-def cable channel HDNet all but said "I told you so."

"It is coming up on two years (since I posted) my declaration that only a moron would buy YouTube," Cuban wrote, "and that Google was crazy for actually going through with it...YouTube has become the poster child for the old saying "we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume."

Cuban, a copyright owner and YouTube critic, brings his own baggage to the YouTube debate. But what's interesting about his post is that he traces YouTube's trouble to Hulu, the video portal from NBC Universal and News Corp.

While conceding that YouTube has a vastly bigger audience, Cuban argues that Hulu is "stomping" YouTube in two important metrics: revenue per video and revenue per user.

"Hulu has one huge advantage over YouTube," Cuban wrote. "It has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site. It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy. YouTube on the other hand, has that right for only the small percentage of the videos on its site (where) it has a licensing deal."

Cuban predicted that by next year, Hulu will outpace YouTube in total revenues.

How much revenue does Hulu have to generate to do that?

A report from Bear Stearns estimates that YouTube will see $90 million in revenues this year. Om Malik over at GigaOm says YouTube sales will come in closer to $125 million, according to his unidentified sources. Last year, YouTube made around $80 million, Malik wrote. That means, according to Malik's sources, YouTube revenues grew about 50 percent.

For the sake of argument, say Malik's sources are right and the company will see $125 million this year and grow 50 percent again in 2009. In such a scenario, Hulu would have to book somewhere around $200 million in its second full year in business for Cuban to be right.

Hulu hasn't released any hard financial data but that's still a lot of money for a company that will only be in its second full year of operation.

I wonder where Apple, Netflix, cable companies, and all the other competitors offering video entertainment, fit into Cuban's calculations.

Technology and new media made Mark Cuban a billionaire.

Why would the founder of Broadcast.com and the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks force bloggers into a digital ghetto by limiting their access to his basketball team? Isn't he a card-carrying member of the digerati?

Mark Cuban wants bloggers out of locker room

(Credit: Golden State Warriors blog)

By banning bloggers from the Maverick's locker room, that's what he's doing, according to several journalism poobahs, including the Society of Professional Journalists.

The kerfuffle allegedly began when Tim MacMahon, who blogs for the Dallas Morning News, wrote something to the effect that the Mavs needed a new coach. On the same day the story was published, Cuban bounced MacMahon from the locker room. Days later, the team issued a new policy. No one who writes full-time for the Web is allowed in the Mav's locker room.

The Mavericks said the decision was made because there's too little space in the locker room to accommodate everyone. In an e-mail to CNET News.com, Cuban explained his view.

"The issue is that anyone can be a blogger. In about 10 seconds," Cuban wrote. "I have to make some sort of judgment on who should qualify for access. I'm not prepared to make that judgment yet. I haven't decided what the parameters will be."

He has a point. The Internet enables anyone to blog and to call themselves a blogger. If the Mavericks handed out press credentials to anyone calling themselves a blogger, press row would fill half of the American Airlines' Center, where the team plays.

But by limiting access to bloggers, Cuban is discriminating against a form of journalism that is practiced by every major publication in the country and one which is growing in influence every day. Cuban argues that he's not trying to pick on bloggers as a group.

"Bloggers can be journalists," he said. "Bloggers can have journalistic standards. However, not all do... The one thing I know for sure is that because someone is a blogger for a big company, doesn't make him or her "better" or more qualified blogger."

As a former sportswriter, I've covered Cuban for both sports and technology stories. He is one of the most accessible team owners and technology heavyweights there is. He answers e-mails at all hours and about all subjects. He doesn't duck anyone. But in this situation, it looks like MacMahon's story ticked him off and he saw a way to weed out journalists he doesn't like.

At the same time he's unfairly tarnishing blogging's image.

He has to know if he slammed the door on superstar columnists like Michael Wilbon or Mitch Albom, their employers, The Washington Post or Detroit Free Press wouldn't put up with it. Just ask Al Davis, owner of the NFL's Oakland Raiders, who tried to ban a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles years ago. The major papers and TV stations in town threatened to stop covering the team and Davis soon backed down.

Cuban, as a friend to new media and technology and someone who I think tries to be fair to reporters, should rescind his blogger policy.Bloggers aren't going away.

Come on Mark, do you really want to be compared to Al Davis?

From the earliest days of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s up through the early 1960s, kids bought "45s."

The albums of the period typically had just a few good tunes, and the rest was crap. Then The Beatles changed the rules. Their albums were so chock-full of great stuff, you wanted to hear every tune. Sure, singles were still important, but most of the bands that mattered didn't rely on singles, and even The Beatles stopped putting out singles tied to a specific album (there were no singles released from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

I agree with one thing in Mark Cuban's "The Album is Dead" post--that the major labels and music business have a lot to answer for--but rushing to embrace the commoditization of music won't create an environment for artists to thrive.

Cuban's musings--"Consumers are buying music one track at a time. I think people will pay 99 cents to get a single rather than steal it. I think people would rather steal a full album rather than pay 10 dollars or more for it."-- may turn out to be true, but ultimately, we'll all be the poorer for it.

You oldsters may remember that in the '60s, albums sold for $3 to $5, which is a lot more than $20 in 2008 dollars. No one was whining that music was too expensive 40 years ago, and movie ticket prices in the '60s were $1 to $2.

If you applied the same pricing ratio to movie ticket/albums prices, CDs would be closer to $30 today. The ever-escalating price inflation of baseball, football, basketball, and Broadway show tickets are now many multiples of CD prices.

For some reason, people no longer want to pay for recorded music, but millions of Led Zeppelin fans would have happily paid big bucks for tickets for their recent London show.

"The Album is Dead" mantra surely isn't true yet. Witness Radiohead's In Rainbows and the Magnetic Fields' Distortion: these albums aren't merely slapped-together assortments of songs; no, they're cohesive works.

Mark Cuban is a businessman. He clearly knows how to make a buck, but if he was a big shot in the music business in 1966, The Beach Boys would have stuck with singles and never made Pet Sounds.

The "album," a collection of songs, goes back decades before the LP, to when multidisc sets of 78rpm records were popular. The discs were inserted in "pages" of the album, hence the name.

Sure, the LP vinyl record and CD are still referred to as albums, but according to Wikipedia, the album is almost 100 years old. For something to last that long, you'd have to hope it must have some intrinsic value.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur, sports mogul and future ballroom dance legend Mark Cuban

(Credit: Golden State Warriors blog)

Have you set your DVR yet? I sure have. On Tuesday night we'll see the ballroom dancing debut of Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur extraordinaire Mark Cuban as he leaps onto the stage of the corny ABC reality show Dancing with the Stars, which pairs celebrities of various calibers with professional dance partners and then pits the couples against one another.

Cuban, always the subtle one, is encouraging his blog readers to dial in and vote for him and his curvy blond dance partner, Kym. "I'm up against all the pretty boys, athletes and entertainers tonight," he acknowledged in his blog entry, "so jump on board and vote for us."

He then gave some hints of what we might see in the eagerly anticipated episode, naming a handful of what he called "traditional guy dances," the sort of comedic frat-boy moves that you're more likely to see at college reunions than ballroom dance competitions. "As far as a hint for tonight, all I can tell you is that I couldn't get the lawnmower or sprinkler in tonight's routine, but I did get 'churn the butter' in," he wrote.

"Hopefully, tonight will lead the way so that future generations of guys can walk into any wedding reception or nightclub knowing that Churn the Butter and in the future, the Sprinkler, Lawnmower and the Motorboat can bring joy and happiness to your wives and girlfriends."

The motorboat? If that's what I think it is, ladies, you might not want to get on a dance floor with this guy anytime soon.

ABC chose the wrong tech billionaire.

I read the news today (oh boy) about Mark Cuban's upcoming appearance on the ABC television series Dancing with the Stars. I don't know what kind of shape Marky Mark is in though the good folks at ValleyWag managed to dig up a photo depicting Cuban in pre-strut form.

Still, the programming geniuses at ABC think this is a good choice. Maybe so. Could be the guy is a regular Fred Astaire in geek's clothing. However it turns out, one can only hope Cuban doesn't bark at the judges if he fails to win. Better known to the general public as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Cuban has paid a veritable fortune in fines for criticizing the NBA's referees over the years.

Crazy like a fox. I've known Cuban since he was a computer retailers back in Texas in the 1980s. The guy knows how to wrap the media around his left pinky. And he's done it again.

If the suits are open to listening to second opinions, who wouldn't prefer to see Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer take a spin on the floor with a scantily costumed partner (and I'm not talking about Bill Gates.) Anyone who's ever watched the "Monkeyboy" video can't wait for a second installment.

Ballmer versus Cuban? Forgetaboutit. It's not even close.

Gazillionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban might hate YouTube, have a feud with Donald Trump, and think that the Internet is dead and boring, but clearly Dancing with the Stars falls into his favor.

According to the Associated Press, the Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet founder will be on this fall's season of the reality show that pairs celebrities with professional dancers and then pits the couples against each other. This rumor had been floating for a while, but now--barring a sudden change of heart on Cuban's or the network's part--it looks like it's all but confirmed.

Cuban's co-participants will include boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., former Spice Girl Melanie Brown ("Scary"), actress Jane Seymour, and Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves. The next season of Dancing with the Stars will premiere on September 24 on ABC--set those DVRs!

Who's next? Steve Ballmer? Let us know which tech celebrities should also go for a spin.