Secrets of the City

10pm News, WCCO, Monday, Headline from Don Shelby, Serious Reporter/Anchorman/Broadcaster/ Newsman, from that hard hitting legendary news station WCCO: “Oprah had her Most Favorite Things Show Today!”

HHHHMMMM, I wonder why nobody watches local news. Hey Donny Boy and all the numbnuts at ‘CCO: “What happens on a TV show is not news.”

…… and here’s one for MPR/NPR: “What a pundit or some crackpot named Rainbow has to say is not news either.”

no bonus for KK this week, excellent!

Update posted to the FBI story – we’ve obtained (and posted excerpts of) a copy of the letter from the Board of Realtors to all of the local brokers detailing what the feds are looking at, etc. etc. Interesting stuff – looks like we’ve got some real fraud happening in town.

Glen Mason gettng 1.5 mil/year?!?! He sucks! He has losing Big 10 record and overall at MN he’s 59 49 or a measily 54.63%. and to think of all the talent he’s had the last few years.

Here here, we need a new coach.

Some say that Mason is the best coach we could get though. It’s not like high profile coaches want to come here.

It’s only because Mason is such a media darling. Sid practically blows him in his columns.

Noone wants a coach that’s already high profile. For a bit less money, I’d rather see the U take a chance on a younger, hungrier coach that’s ready to start making a name and legend for himself. Five more years of ho hum Mason, I’m contemplating hari kari.

Dear jderusha,

Thanks again for your story on the xbox360. We appreciate very much that you chose to ignore completely how our client Microsoft yet again intentionally shorted retail inventory, spread false rumors about future product shortages, and employed bait-switch tactics for less functional units on preorders all to insure an instant “sellout” and inflate demand.

We very much appreicate that you chose not to take shots at the journalistic integrity of your other local stations and instead join in our savvy marketing plan to copt local media in the run-up to the holiday season. Just imagine the reaction you would have got from those dupes sitting out in front of best buy or wal-mart when you told them microsoft has a huge inventory of xbox360 Premiums they aren’t shipping to retailers at launch in order to inflate demand as they sat out in the Minnesota cold for hours just so they could go home and validate our spin.

Boy, that would have been some embarrasing tape for us. And most importantly, thank you for not following up on any tips or research that would have led you to film the actual warehouses where they are storing the boxed units.

You know our suggestions only included one product placment of an xbox360 per story but you exceeded those expectations by giving us not one but 3 different shots including game footage. Thank you! Look at what you’re helping to create. Maybe you could do a follow up about that tonight or the next day! What a great tie-in.

Does this mean we can count on your support to run a story in a few weeks about how there are still plenty of the “hottest items for christams” remaining on store shelves for purchase to dispel our own rumors? It’s not like there are any media critics in your market left to point out the discrepancy right?

Sincerely,

MS_Marketing

cc: Brad Anderson

PS: Can we get Amy Hockert’s contact info? She would be perfect for some stories we are going to need to run to sell our next operating system at the Minneapolis launch even. Some sweet eye candy. Hey, we’re talking about the software!!

This is one of the strangest comments ever to appear on this site. I can’t tell if we have a controversy, a flame, or a joke.

heavy. some of the complete consoles going for over 2000 bux on ebay, though tv says 500 is the start up cost.

derusha, could we get a line item response to that last post?

it’s not just a game console either, so was this supposed to just piss off parents, or hype it more, or what?

and btw that bachmann blog is hilarious!

luv the pictures of the big chubbies out there cleaning up her adopted stretch of highway. surprised they didn’t need to clean up one of their own due to a heart attack

MS_Marketing better watch his mouth — we’re not gonna put up with any badmouthing of DeRusha unless it’s from a regular on this page.

MS_Marketing seems to have taken a page from the BIG TOBACCO playbook. Another reason to support the smoking ban!

Thanks for the mention of Dump Bachmann. I’m trying to see a theme in these links…..

They’re local, and they’re today, and they’re miscellaneous!

I’m sorry it took me so long to see the post by MS_Marketing… Gotta give him/her credit… very funny post. I’ll give a response a shot.

When I was assigned the story (no doubt by some lackey for Microsoft. Hey– hasn’t Rex just taken a job with MS? Hmmm…. it’s an MNSpeak conspiracy)… there were already 75 people in line at the Best Buy in Richfield.

My story was focused on the cost of the item and how parents should say no to their kids. We had two soundbites from a child psychologist telling parents to establish boundries, two more soundbites from a parent talking about how her kid wasn’t getting it. In my live shot at the line, we also talked about the insanity of kids in that line not showing up for school the next day because they were playing the game. (Thanks Ironic for that tidbit!)

I did ask the people at the Game Insider Magazine about the artificial shortage issue. They said they got their test models just 2 weeks ago (normal lead time is one month) and they believe that MS just got the game finished in time for launch date two days ago. They say the reason for the small shipment is because it was an overseas rush shipment, very expensive. MS is already losing money on the boxes (they make it up in the games), and they lose more money with the shipping costs. Spin? Maybe. But I can only go with what I know… not with conspiracy theories. Anyway- my story wasn’t about the frenzy. my story was about saying no to the gift? Is that really the publicity you guys wanted?

Incidentally, if you know of any warehouses where they’re storing a bunch of Xboxes, in or near our local area, let me know.

And thanks for watching, WCCO.

Trolls on the Internet: What can be done about them? Story at 10.

yeah, i thought it was funny too. i don’t watch tv news, but you’re ok derusha.

I’m only watching if ‘CCO covers more Oprah

Thanks Jean! I try to be ok. Yesterday, I was out shooting a story on our own Alexis… it’s supposed to air on Friday at 10.

And I agree Taylor — I think only registered MNSpeak members should take shots at me. I’ve done the decent thing and registered, I post under my own name. Not bad for an evil, vapid, local TV-type. I’d accuse myself of being blow-dried, but I don’t have enough hair for that.

I think you’re OK too derusha! Just having some fun. C’mon though, you have to admit, an Oprah show is not really news. It’s really marketing!

No question. I subscribe to the “Spoonful of sugar” theory of news. To get people to watch the stuff they need to know, you need to give them a little of what they want to know. We’re not like a newspaper, where you can turn the page or throw out the section that talks about Oprah. Unfortunately, you get stuck with the items you don’t care about. But if we got 300 people who were interested in Oprah to watch us, who wouldn’t normally watch, hopefully we were able to share some news they needed to know.

The problem is when the balance tips… .and instead of a spoonful of sugar, we’re serving up a pound of it. This area is fairly well served in that regard, compared to the rest of the country.

I could have a beer with this DeRusha fellow, but only of he brought along Hutch.

Mr. DeRusha, you are spicy grain of salt lost in a giant bowl full of sugar. Thank you for making local news interesting for me again. You’re my hero.

Jason, looks like we are both being spoofed/flamed/mocked on MNSpeak.

Like you, I’ll go along with the joke. Sounds like we have both arrived as local bloggers — in the same way a celebrity hits the big time when they start being mentioned in the tabloids. Anyway, I’ll shut up on smoking bans for awhile on this site — readers can visit our blog anytime for that information.

I can never say “tabloids” without thinking of this classic bit from “The Thin Man.”

On the front page of the morning paper, he reads about the previous night’s shooting in their bedroom:

Nick: …I know as much about the murder as they do. Oh, I’m a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.
Nora: I read you were shot five times in the tabloids.
Nick: It’s not true. He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids.

Ok so just to sum up:

1) You are using as a trustworthy source “Game Insider Magazine” (which became a source to you how exactly?) to discount the allegations rather than asking other more reputable independent industry watchers who reported on the artifical shortage plans months ago.

2) “Game Insider Magazine” told you in answer to these allegations that they know what the average lead time for gaming platform hardware delivery to reviewers from Microsoft is when MS has done exactly one (1) other such launch in their entire corporate history. And since this delivery was shorter than the “average”, the allegation is false.

3) You did not ask a fundamental of the story in your followup from either Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Microsoft to go on record and comment on the allegations of an artifically created shortage.

4) You did not receive via the CCO tipline the location there in Minnesota specifically where the excess inventory was located for distribution by BB.

5) You did not followup with “kids” in line as to how they had come to be there and would definitely not receive an answer that they had been advised by the retailer to get in line for the store opening because they would not be able to cover their preorder sales for which they had already accepted payment because of inventory shortfalls.

6) The story was assigned to you by someone at CCO who just happened to notice or lines organically forming at retail outlets in the Twin Cities and was not acting on press releases or information from media contacts in the industry.

I’m certain that the appropriate reps from MS or BB would just say “No Comment” instead of denying the allegation and that wouldn’t tell you, a seasoned reporter, anything anyway, right?

Again, thank you for further putting out more of my marketing spin on the loss leader of the xboxes! We definitely want people to believe that my client is selling xbox360s at a loss but regaining that investment on game purchases which is a valid business strategy rather than have everyone know that the entire Xbox division (including games) of MS loses money – $391 million USD in the last fiscal year alone on sales of $3.2 billion USD. It would be really bad if the consumer knew that MS was utilizing its cash position from prior monopolistic gains in order to push others out of this market and insure that its hardware platform is the sole hub for entertainment delivery and digital home automation in the next decade.

Please make sure in your next post not to point out that my client’s competitors Sony and Nintendo both sell their hardware for a slight profit.

It’s not like there is a story here anyway. MS isn’t breaking any laws by holding back inventory, this happens all the time in the retail industry during the holiday season, and no one in Minnesota is interested in some tech industry news byte trivia concocted by conspiracy theorists. Save that stuff for the newspapers and blogs. That is the line to take if things ever get interesting, ok?

Thanks again for those free tv minutes for product placement. They make even less sense for the story if the angle was supposed to be how parents should not give into my marketing spin to their kids by buying our product because of the price point. Pure gold.

Have a happy holiday shopping season and I’m looking forward to working with you again in the future!

MS_Marketing

FYI to all: (Just plain) Bob from ALAMN is now registered MNSpeak user “alamn”

More registered users on MNSpeak. Another reason to support the smoking ban!

Registered users have doubled in the past week. I’m not sure what happened, but I think I like it.

Cool!

I am, like, weirded out by this, man. Is he for real?

I for one have never seen a local news feature picked apart in such detail over something like the sale of Xboxes. I think I am glad that I am not Mr. DeRusha.

MNspeak: Your xBox Conspiracy Headquarters

Andrea, I’m very afraid. Wow, MS_Marketing. I suppose about 4 of our viewers would be interested in your intense insider views about the XBox. Did you actually watch my story? My story was not about the shortage at all. It wasn’t full of tips on “HOw to get the XBox.” It talked about how kids want it, and parents are worried that it’s too expensive. Chill out, man! There’s bigger issues out there than the XBox 360, Microsoft’s latest, greatest contribution to gaming. I need to step away, so I can play on my free XBox, provided by the geniuses at Microsoft. Thanks MS! Geez. I usually have so much fun posting here! You’re bringing me down, man!

Jason: Please don’t let the loony guy get to you. I’m not sure how he expects that story (if it actually turns out to be a story) to be a WCCO story.

MS_Marketing: Tell you what… you email me the location of this stash of xBoxes, and I’ll make sure to make it a much bigger story than WCCO ever could.

Don’t leave Jason, we like you! (except for crack-pot over there, that is, and he doesn’t speak for the rest of us (he’s not even registered!))

hey, screw that, post the location here, and I’ll meet ya’ll there with crowbars after you get done at the 331

Rex is bigger than a CBS affiliate?

As much as I dislike Microsoft’s business practices, I don’t see how anybody could publish or stand by a story based on that information either.

Might be interesting for WSJ or a newsprint business feature if it was somehow verifable.

I never got into consoles. I think that means I’m old

Oh i’m not leaving. This place is too much fun (and the source for my story tonight at ten, and Friday at ten!). I’m all about converging MSM and new media…