For those of you who pay for or receive complimentary copies of Stephen Platt’s online rag ‘Platt Retail Institute’s Journal of Retail Analytics [1]‘ the Fourth Quarter 2009 Issue has an interesting piece from Trotter’s Independent Traders [2] – for anyone interested in some of the history of Tesco Screens it’s definitely a must-read.
Many people close to the action in the UK over the decade the author describes will possibly tell you that it is not entirely accurate – it certainly leaves out any description of an obviously-very-clever-but-egomaniacal-dictatorial-manager who (shock / horror) knew-it-all. No-one could work with this guy for very long and so very, very good employees soon parted company with him – surely the major factor in his business empire crumbling around his ears.
Interesting also that he should still be trying to talk up the once great aka.tv, the author says “AKA is still, I believe, the only subscriber-based news medium for the sector, still a subsidized business model not dependant on ad revenue, and still trying to promote the sector”.
No sir you sold aka.tv [3] for nothing to the owners of The Screen Forum Ltd. because of your pride when you were offered good money for it elsewhere AND you seem to conveniently forget that in the early days under your stewardship Scala were paying you something like GBP 36,000 a year to sponsor the site. Even now BroadSign have a prominent banner ad at the top of the site now that’s hardly ad-free is it?
aka.tv remains a plaything of the rich with part time staff playing at covering the space and is not a business taken seriously – either by the owners or by the industry. Oh if we could only afford to run a business and NOT make any money!