Its Bottom Line Certainly hasn’t Suffered
1970, and is the longest-running series on American television. More importantly for ABC, it’s also one of the highest-rated TV series on the air, especially with young male viewers, a key demographic for advertisers. Part of me feels bad playing the armchair quarterback and making fun of these companies for making what turned out to be colossally bad business decisions. ABC moved the show to sister network ESPN in 2006, where it continues to bring in record audiences every week. For lots more lists of both successful and sorry businesses, check out the related HowStuffWorks links on the next page.
As for me, please be nice. Clifford, Stephanie. “JC Penney to Revise Pricing Methods and Limit Promotions.” The New York Times. Brenner, Joel Glenn. “The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars”. Douglas, Danielle. “Blockbuster may cut more locations as part of bankruptcy.” The Washington Post. Arango, Tim. “How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong.” The New York Times. Cheung, Nadine. “Digital Camera Inventor Explains How Technology Took Down Kodak.” Huffington Post. Daneman, Matthew. “Kodak to stop making digital cameras.” USA Today.
Incredibly, this is exactly what Excite is still doing. Still, to think that Excite could now be worth billions, instead of sputtering along as a subsidiary of IAC, is fairly mind-blowing. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin first offered to sell their fledgling search technology to Excite for $1 million, but dropped the price further when Excite showed no interest. To Excite’s credit, Google was just an unproven bundle of algorithms back in 1999, not the world-dominating technology goliath it is today. A movie named “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” doesn’t exactly scream “box office gold.” Maybe that’s what Mars candy executives were thinking back in 1980 when they passed on Universal Studios’ offer to feature M&Ms in their new alien flick.
