Cheap TV Spots Takes Cheap Shot At TiVo Rumor

If you ever wanted proof that the business press is woefully behind the blogosphere on news, Cheap TV Spots has just given us a great example. When I checked the business wires this morning for TiVo news, I came across a funny press release from Cheap TV Spots explicitly disavowing “blog speculation” that they are in the process of acquiring TiVo. Minutes later, both Briefing.com and FlyOnTheWall, two Wall St. “news companies” dedicated to breaking business news, reported the press release as if there was credibility behind the rumor to begin with.

The problem is though, as someone who contributes to speculation on TiVo, I can tell you that there hasn’t been any “blog speculation” about Cheap TV buying TiVo. In fact, if you run a technorati search for Cheap TV Spots, you can see that they actually don’t get much blog love at all. In the past 60 days there are only two blog posts that have even been written about them and both of those seem to be from their own blog.

Cheap TV is probably just trying to get some link love, by cashing in on all the hoopla over the Apple/TiVo rumor, which incidently Briefing.com reported as “breaking news” last Friday (a full five days after the rumor broke :roll: ), but it’s still a tad irresponsible for them to try and turn this into a news event, when it’s clearly a non event. Saying that they have no plans to acquire TiVo is like me saying that I don’t plans of undergoing a hostile takeover of Yahoo! today. It’s just simply not going to happen.

Trying to cash in on blog speculation on TiVo is a bit of a cheap shot by cheap TV, but I’m even more disappointed that Briefing.com and FlyOnTheWall bit on this head fake and reported this event as news to begin with. As a business publication, they have a greater responsibility to research the merits of what they are reporting, even if their mission is try and get news out as quickly as possible. With news reporting like this, they may as well give up their Bloomberg feed and adopt a WordPress feed instead. In related news, Panasonic plans on unveiling a 500 disc CD changer to challenge the iPod.

Posted on December 11th, 2006 by Davis
Filed under: Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TiVo

4 Responses to “Cheap TV Spots Takes Cheap Shot At TiVo Rumor”

  1. Dale Dietrich, on December 11th, 2006 at 6:12 pm Said:

    OK, but isn’t this blog post cashing in on a cheap shot by cheap TV? :)

  2. davis, on December 11th, 2006 at 6:41 pm Said:

    A cheap shot by Davis at Cheap TV? Ah touche good sir, touche.

  3. Dan, on December 11th, 2006 at 10:23 pm Said:

    Here is the last press release from cheap-tv-spots.com

    http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061002/clm502.html?.v=54

    You may see a pattern.

  4. davis, on December 11th, 2006 at 10:29 pm Said:

    I’m sure that the management at Spot Runner must have been relieved to see that press release. And to think all those sleepless nights they worried that they could lose their job in a hostile takeover. TV Cheap Shots must be an awful powerful company to be able to attract such outlandish speculation.

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