New Scaratings

Buzztime said they were going to make major changes, most notably eliminating Buzztime boxes/tablets and converting all locations to Bring Your Own Device location (along with a much lower price). This has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth, set to the tune of "Your incredibly important veteran players don't want you to change a thing."

This is what I call The DooWop Option: cater to the remaining old timers, and all will be well.

What could go wrong with that? Well, it already has. Gameplay has dropped 90-95% from its peaks. What is left? With few exceptions, a dwindling bunch of old men. Who are slowly but surely either dying, or going senile, or at the least frozen in their old ways. And, like doowop, there are few if any new fans coming around.

Buzztime couldn't make money when it had 10-20 times the number of players. Economies aside, do you think it's gotten better after losing most of its customers and revenues?

Like doowop, the old Buzztime business is as doomed as the hula hoop. Yes, there are still doowop concerts (one of those oldsters told me about them before he had his car taken away from him because he couldn't find his way home). Think they're going to be around ten-fifteen-twenty years from now?

The owner of Buzztime has said that he is putting his family's fortune on the line to make this business a success. Obviously, things have not worked out so far; the doowop option has been a dead end.

The way you ought to look at these changes is that Buzztime is doing the business equivalent of throwing a Hail Mary pass. Throughout its history, the high price of Buzztime has been the major reason for its lack of success. Cut a major expense, cut the price, maybe we'll see a resurrection. Lose a lot of your long-time players? Acceptable losses since you can't survive with just them, and the Grim Reaper is picking them off anyway. This is a gamble that your losses are more than replaced by a much bigger fresh crop of players and locations,

What if it doesn't work? Then it's time to cut your losses and pull the plug.

Two takeaways from this:

1) Buzztime has no good options. You don't throw Hail Marys when you're winning the game. You only do it when you are faced with defeat.

2) Either the Hail Mary works, or this game is going to end.

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“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville

Buzztime is in an untenable spot which has very little or nothing at all to do with past decisions.

BT's greatest asset was it's uniqueness, way back in the 1980's you could compete against players across the nation from a barstool through a television set. This was back in the day of the Walkman and Betamax, it was a concept way ahead of it's time. And people couldn't get enough of it. It wasn't necessarily about the trivia per se, it was about the concept. At least for the average player.

But now, it's no longer unique and there are much cheaper ways to put out a similar product. Which BT is trying.

Twenty years ago, in 2004 was when the first crack in the armor appeared for BT and it was not their fault. QB1 was always the cash cow, it brought in the advertising, trivia never made money. Starting in 2004 TV networks started upgrading their signals from analog to digital. Now, this doesn't seem like a big deal but it was the biggest killing blow to QB1 there was. In the analog days, the signals across the nation were basically synchronous which QB1 needed in order to succeed. When digital landed, it was obvious from the get go that the digital signal took longer to process and was therefore behind the analog signal. In short, you saw the play several seconds earlier from an analog broadcast than digital.

But it didn't stop there, the timing of digital signals was all over the place. You might see the play 2 seconds earlier from a digital channel in LA, compared to a digital channel in NYC. The playing field was no longer level across the nation leaving no valid way to compete for the huge prizes that were offered. Players left, then advertisers left and took their money with them.

So then BT was hurting for money which has continued to this day. Without QB1, the locations made less money seeing as how football fans drink a wee bit more than trivia players. And BT made less money without the football advertisers. They tried many things but there was just no way to replicate the financial impact of QB1.

In it's heyday, BT had 4000 locations each paying between $500 and $1000 dollars a month for the service which was roughly $2.5 million a month or $30 million a year. In retrospect, they probably should have charged a lot more for a service so far ahead of it's time. The company was a lot bigger at that time with field reps in over a hundred cities who would actually take the time to show locations how to properly advertise and make money with the system. But that hasn't existed for a long time now and most sites have no clue how to promote it. Let's face it, how often does the average person off the street walk into a BT location and have no clue they could play? With the pads it doesn't have to be on any TV.

It's a really tough nut to crack at present. If I was given carte blanche, I'm not sure I'd even know where to start to try and make a go of it. They've just got a get a ton more eyeballs on the product which requires people who are also familiar with what it can do.

There are people here that have a clue on these things, perhaps if ideas were suggested the company might be inclined to take them under advisement.

Amen, brother. Especially without a ton of money to promote it.

_________________
“When I see the right and the ability to do everything granted to any power whatsoever, whether it is called people or king, democracy or aristocracy . . ., I say: there is the seed of tyranny, and I seek to go live under other laws.” --de Tocqueville