Has the Great Recession put some truth to big-league sports owners’ perpetual claims of red ink? Recent and pending franchise sales among the Big Four team sports point to lower valuations:

For decades, sports teams weathered recessions remarkably well. Ticket and advertising sales sometimes dipped, but teams continued to sell at a profit despite the headwinds buffeting the broader economy, according to research by Moag & Company, which brokers sales of teams.

But John Moag, the company’s chairman, said this recession had been drastically different. “The impact of the stock and real estate devaluation on franchise ownership is indirectly, but very certainly, impacting the stability of a number of professional sports franchises,” he said.

Real estate is the main factor here. The simplest equation for assessing the value of an NFL, NHL, MLB, or NBA team is the property that comes with it — and that doesn’t refer to the players or equipment. For operational purposes, major-league sports franchises are intertwined with the stadium/arena facilities in which the teams plays. If the barn’s value takes a hit — and commercial real estate has, indeed, been buffeted during this economic crisis — then it follows that the entire business entity, including the franchise, will also get downgraded. And in keeping with this level of integration, any team sale will include the arena (even if it’s a nominal “lease” which effectively gives the team owner control of and revenue from the facility). Add it all up, and team valuations that were approaching $1 billion a couple of yeas ago are now falling back (a bit).

While this impacts highly-leveraged owners, who suddenly have to come up with more hard cash, it doesn’t mean a sudden flood of red ink is flowing out of the big leagues. Team valuations are still healthy, with premier franchises like the Chicago Cubs and Montreal Canadiens commanding anywhere from half- to three-quarters of a billion dollars. And despite the ravages of the current market, the key to sports-team ownership remain enticing: Gaining access to prime, often scarce commercial property that generates tons of money. The revenue levels involved are still sky-high enough to make the usual cries of ownership poverty as hollow as they ever were (especially as they start to roll in during the NFL’s and NBA’s forthcoming labor negotiations).

At the risk of coming off like Uncle Gus from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I find this to be an interesting development:

Following the recent dissolution/reorganization of Greek national airline Olympic Airlines, the only carrier with direct flights between the U.S. and Greece is now Delta Air Lines. While Delta is a born-and-bred American company, it’s got a Greek name and corporate logo, despite origins that are less Hellenic and more Mississippian.

So it’s a happy coincidence that regular fliers between the two countries simply traded one Greek brand for another (more or less). If Greece was a bigger market, I guess Delta could amp up the marketing angle to emphasize the etymological symbolism. As is, it’s probably a more palatable situation to the anti-American contingents over there than it would be if American or United was the main jet-connection to the States.

The dismal science meets spiritual quantification in “The Economics of Sainthood (a preliminary investigation)”, a paper out of Harvard’s Economics Department:

Saint-making has been a major activity of the Catholic Church for centuries. The pace of sanctifications has picked up noticeably in the last several decades under the last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Our goal is to apply social-science reasoning to understand the Church’s choices on numbers and characteristics of saints, gauged by location and socioeconomic attributes of the persons designated as blessed.

Among the econo-ecclesiastical terms applied to this analysis: “Saint-making fatigue” and “canonization per capita”. What, no “initial beatification offering (IBO)”?

Now that the Supreme Court has OKed unbridled corporation spending on political campaigns, one intrepid company is cutting out the middleman:

In a soothing voice, a narrator bemoans that “as much as corporate interests gave to politicians, we could never be absolutely sure they would do our bidding.” The ad includes images of gleaming office towers and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and promises Murray Hill will bring “enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting” to Congress.

It concludes with a rousing call to action: “Vote for Murray Hill Incorporated for Congress — for the best democracy money can buy.”

Yep, Murray Hill Inc. for Congress is dripping with sarcasm, right down to a franchising program for other corporate-politico aspirants:

The first corporation to enter into a franchise agreement with Murray Hill Inc. is Computer Umbrella Inc. of Sterling Virginia. Computer Umbrella’s own Designated Human, Jonathan Stewart, is charting the corporation’s run for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.

“We are proud to embrace the Murray Hill Inc. Brand,“ Stewart says. “From steel to silicon, it’s America’s entrepreneurs who find and exploit the new markets. The democracy market in Washington DC today looks like Silicon Valley 30 years ago. CUI wants to position itself as early leader in this emerging market along with Murray Hill Inc.”

There are pesky electoral and Constitutional requirements to overcome before corporate entities start stumping for office. But imagine the possibilities:

- Individual office-seekers setting up their candidacies as corporations, so that any irregularities or scandals later on can be deflected from them personally (“I didn’t hire those hookers, it was my limited liability partnership!”)

- Launching single-purpose business ventures every election cycle

- Watching mergers and acquisitions consolidate a fragmented corporate-constituent landscape

- Initial public offerings and stock market indexes for tracking incumbent performances

And if Murray Hill Inc. doesn’t make it to Capitol Hill, maybe the plucky PR firm could run for a local position in New York. I’m thinking a certain Manhattan neighborhood would be a good fit.

YEOW! Just got a paper cut on my pinkie. Hurts like the devil.

Shouldn’t paper cuts would be a thing of the past? If that “paperless office” that Newsweek had predicted back in 1975 would get here already, I wouldn’t be in this pain right now. Nor would I be compelled to consult dubious preventative cures.

It’s been said before, so why not say it again: New York City’s Internet industry is on a comeback trail.

“Book publishing, advertising, media and even the fashion industry are all located in New York. These are the main industries that are being reshaped and redefined by technology and the Internet,” says AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies regional economics and technology entrepreneurship.

To get a vivid snapshot of this new generation of Web innovation, one needs to look no further than the portfolio of Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures and a force within the New York start-up scene. Run through a list of Web darlings here — Boxee, software that pipes video from the Internet to a television; Tumblr, a microblogging platform; and Foursquare, a mobile social network — and Union Square is an investor.

“The software business has morphed into the Internet business,” Mr. Wilson says. “Ten years ago, maybe 80 percent of software was being built for enterprise. Now, it’s being written for consumers and is more media-centric than ever. And, historically, those have been New York’s strongest sectors.”

The thing is, the same claim was made exactly four years ago. That’s where the accompanying map came from; many of those lean-running operations are still around, and are thriving. Either this latest declaration of five-borough tech-blooming is the result of a critical mass having been established in the middle of the past decade, or else the concept is simply being periodically recycled.

Niger is one African country, Nigeria is another. This subtle distinction seems to elude geographically-challenged oil traders:

“Markets took off at around the same time a Reuters story came out about gunfire erupting in the Niger capital in an apparent coup bid, mistaken by many as being Nigeria,” said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodities.

Reuters first broke news of heavy gunfire and a coup in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Thursday. Prices jumped to a one-month high of $79.29 a barrel during the day. While a coup in Nigeria would almost certainly rock crude oil benchmarks, a coup in Niger — which has yet to produce oil — would almost certainly not, barring linguistic confusion.

Not that everyone on the commodities desk was swallowing false petro-politics:

Traders said that an oil market version of the game “Chinese whispers” rather than poor geography may have been behind the jump, as some scrambled to call the market amid mounting confusion over the titles of the two countries which share the same first five letters. The fact that Nigeria’s main oil producing region is called the Niger Delta and is an area of political unrest probably also stoked the rumours. A popular trading mantra is “buy the rumour, sell the fact”.

The upshot: Budding financial professionals should bookmark Google Maps for quick reference, to avoid such simplistic confusion.

Meanwhile, don’t feel too sorry for Niger’s lack of oil reserves; regardless of its new junta-led political order, it remains the world’s fourth-largest producer of uranium. No word of volatility on the uranium-trading markets; maybe they thought the coup was in Nigeria, too…

If tweeting your every waking thought and action just isn’t enough, Blippy is here to let you add your credit-card purchases to your online lifestream:

It might sound like ridiculous oversharing, but Blippy is serious. While there already are plenty of Web sites focused on what people are purchasing, the site’s founders think it offers a new way to learn about deals and new products. And knowing your spending habits are being transmitted to a flock of friends might make you think twice before spending $500 on a pair of designer shoes.

So the benefit for users is less to brag on what you just bought, than to instill preemptive shame for a potential impulse purchase. That’s a tough sell for Blippy when it comes to recruiting business partners, who otherwise might like the possibilities of peer recommendations/influences on purchases.

Although I wonder just how many people are serious about “sharing” their status-updated transactions. Glancing over at the Blippy-stream for the past hour, the most prevalent posting goes like this:

“[Blippy User] spent $0 at iTunes”

In other words, folks don’t mind disclosing all the free apps they “purchase” with their iPhones, since it’s all free. But when it comes to laying down real e-money? Apparently, that’s still too close to the vest to just webcast willy-nilly. Societal attitudes don’t seem to be in sync with this level of Web transparency (yet).

How much of a jolt is yesterday’s announced $1.08-billion sale of local pharmacy chain Duane Reade to Walgreen to New Yorkers?

Well, not that much, really. True, Duane Reades are one of those far-too-ubiquitous cornerstore fixtures in Manhattan, right there with bank branches and Starbucks. And I suppose there’s some provincial pride in having a locally-sprouted business always within footsteps — even when those footsteps take you between competing corners on Broadway, as the photo above illustrates.

But at the end of the day, it’s just another retailer, and so it doesn’t engender all that much sentimentality among the locals. And it’s not like New Yorkers will “lose” those Duane Reade signs, as Walgreen intends to keep the brand alive after acquisition (although I’m betting that within five years, that’s go out the window, and those 257 stores will be transformed into generic ol’ Walgreens). The main plus side is that people living on Duane and Reade Streets will, at some point, not get their packages erroneously delivered to some random drugstore.

Underwater homeowners are voting with their wallets, and paper (i.e., the house deed) is losing out to plastic:

In the past, strapped consumers typically would let their credit cards slide and make sure their mortgages were covered, said Sean Reardon, the [Trans Union study's] author and a consultant at the Chicago-based credit bureau. But those priorities flipped in the first quarter of 2008, according to the study, and the trend has been picking up steam…

Why the change? A “perfect storm” of deteriorating housing prices and rising unemployment is likely the reason, Reardon said. It’s much easier for consumers to walk away from mortgage payments when their homes aren’t building equity, he said, than to neglect their credit cards when that may be the only way they’re covering daily expenses.

Preserving the pocket-sized line of credit over the four-bedroom spread really underlines the upside-down valuations that have taken hold. At least national spending levels will remain high — even if there’s no place to store all the purchases.

This past weekend’s tussle between Amazon and Macmillan over the right to set pricing on ebooks included some curious phraseology by Amazon:

We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles…

A “monopoly over their own titles”? In other words, Macmillan does, indeed, control the wares that it provides for sale — just like any other company that puts together products for mass consumption. And somehow, Amazon in implying that this is wrong. The term “monopoly” here is intentionally loaded: It makes the publisher seem exclusionary and greedy — again, for simply asserting the right to set its own prices. In other words, just like any other wholesaler or manufacturer (i.e., the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” that’s an accepted part of retail).

Sour grapes, basically. It also reflects Amazon’s roots as a Web company, and the general ethos that intellectual property should be free for the taking, business be damned. It’s hard to see how you can sympathize with Amazon at all, given this attitude.

It’s the end of an era — or the end of an error, depending on your outlook. “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” breathes its last breath tonight, bringing a close to a messy divorce between O’Brien and NBC over the network’s late-night talent shuffle.

The final show is definitely a must-see. I don’t know if we’ll see a Jack Paar-level of kiss-off from Conan, but a sendoff is a sendoff, regardless of the parting shots.

And with Conan out of the way, the battle between Letterman and Leno resumes. I’m curious to see if Leno’s audience is as portable as it’s been to date: Keep in mind that that 5-million viewership for “The Jay Leno Show” matched what he pulled in nightly when he was on “Tonight”. It’s not the same exact crowd watching him at 10:00 as at 11:30, but the bulk of it probably is. Does that mean Leno slides right back into the lead versus Letterman and CBS? Or has this episode damaged Leno’s appeal, as many critics speculate?

I’d bet that Leno will be back on top in short order. Ultimately, the audience doesn’t care about the off-camera machinations. Plus, Letterman’s been reluctant to make any necessary changes to his show, regardless of the competition — he won versus Conan through little action of his own. A sort of sick entropy will take hold over late-night, once again…

The old saying about the shelf life of the printed daily newspaper takes on new life with the sale of hiatused Editor & Publisher to, of all things, a company that publishes boating and fishing magazines.

[Previous owner] Nielsen officially closed Editor & Publisher on New Year’s Eve after announcing in early December that the magazine would cease publication. Duncan McIntosh Co. is also publisher of several boating magazines and newspapers, and hosts the Newport Boat Show and the Lido Yacht Expo, both held in Newport Beach.

Not a promising sign for the newspaper industry when its flagship trade pub goes through such an ignominious transfer. At least there’s no danger of E&P becoming overloaded with rod-and-reel news: Fact is, McIntosh already puts out its own FishRap News.

Unbeknownst to most of us — including safety regulators — a three-and-a-half-mile-long train rolled through Southern California this past weekend:

The 18,000-foot-long train was two to three times the length of a typical freight train… It linked 295 rail cars, carrying more than 600 cargo containers, mostly double-stacked, said Tom Lange, a Union Pacific spokesman. Nine locomotives were spread along the train and additional personnel were on board to monitor equipment.

The train, the longest ever assembled by Union Pacific, was permitted to travel up to 65 mph as it crossed the Los Angeles Basin, Lange said. He said the train needed three to five minutes to clear a grade crossing.

Good luck when getting caught at an intersection by one of these behemoths, which is the chief concern of Los Angeles-area leaders (especially for ambulances and fire engines). You’ll need that “three to five minutes” to figure out how anyone could sneak such a supersized convoy into the nation’s second-largest city…

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a week after NBC announced its salvage plans to move Jay Leno back to 11:35, Conan O’Brien announced that he’s extracting himself from the network’s resultant late-night traffic jam:

Mr. O’Brien’s statement Tuesday said that he so respected the institution of “The Tonight Show” that he could not participate in what “I honestly believe is its destruction.”…

The statement also took NBC to task for not giving the show more time or supplying stronger lead-in audiences, which could be interpreted as a shot at Mr. Leno’s poor performance at 10 p.m. (Though Mr. O’Brien mentioned Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon in his statement, he never referred to Mr. Leno by name, only by the title of his show.)

“After only seven months,” Mr. O’Brien wrote, “with my ‘Tonight Show’ in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime time by making a change in their long-established late-night schedule.”

So NBC basically gets its wish: Leno back as “Tonight Show” host for the full hour, followed by Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly (like either of those two matter). Conan will eventually get a new show with FOX. Letterman will have on-air gloating material for months to come. And Leno gets back to his old digs, which is what he wanted all along (so color him complicit in pushing out Conan).

I personally like Conan’s comedic sensibilities, but I’ll point out that none of this would have happened had he not tanked in the ratings versus Letterman. Even during the last couple of years of his “Late Night” run, O’Brien really seemed to be drifting in his output. Maybe this shock to the system will rejuvinate him, in whatever direction he chooses to go.

As for NBC: This would be their second failure at handling a talent overload in their late-night roster, going back to the Leno-Letterman battle to succeed Johnny Carson. In the future — assuming there is one for them — they should just bite the bullet and let the also-ran jump ship early, and avoid the longer-term headaches.

With so many homeowners irretrievably underwater on dollar value of their mortgages, it’s a wonder why more people don’t voluntarily walk away from their homeowner obligations — or why they’re not encouraged to do so by demonstrated economic example:

There are two reasons why so-called strategic defaults have been considered antisocial and perhaps amoral. One is that foreclosures depress the neighborhood and drive down prices. But in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? Every oil speculator helps to drive up gasoline prices. Every hedge fund that speculated against a bank by purchasing credit-default swaps on its bonds signaled skepticism about the bank’s creditworthiness and helped to make it more costly for the bank to borrow, and thus to issue loans. We are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse.

The other reason is that default (supposedly) debases the character of the borrower. Once, perhaps, when bankers held onto mortgages for 30 years, they occupied a moral high ground. These days, lenders typically unload mortgages within days (or minutes). And not just in mortgage finance, but in virtually every realm of our transaction-obsessed society, the message is that enduring relationships count for less than the value put on assets for sale.

Think of private-equity firms that close a factory — essentially deciding that the company is worth more dead than alive… Indeed, the owners of any company that defaults on bonds and chooses to let the company fail rather than invest more capital in it are practicing “strategic default.”

I can think of a major macroeconomic problem coming from an en masse default by consumers: A subsequent loss of confidence by lenders. Why should banks make loans available if there’s a penalty-free environment in which borrowers can get out of paying back the money? Without that underpinning of trust — or, absent that, real teeth in default penalties, like the ability to go after the individual’s other cash assets — there’s less incentive to make loans. All that leads to a less-robust economy.

A socio-economic order in which strategic default is a regular go-to option would be disorder — a disaster. It’s unfair that too-big-to-fail companies get to take mulligans when consumers don’t, but that’s the reality. The alternative would be even uglier than the current mess.

Looks like NBC’s bold cheap 10PM experiment with “The Jay Leno Show” has crashed and burned, with a scramble-back plan about to take effect:

The network has a plan in the works to restore Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 each weeknight for a half-hour, while pushing the man who replaced him, Conan O’Brien, to a starting time of 12:05 a.m. Mr. O’Brien would then have a full hour…

The moves are being driven by pressure from NBC’s affiliated stations, which have seen ratings for their late-night local newscasts plummet since September. That was when NBC began “The Jay Leno Show,” a prime-time version of Mr. Leno’s old late-night show. Mr. O’Brien succeeded Mr. Leno as host of “The Tonight Show” in June.

Though Mr. Leno’s prime-time show has not fallen below the ratings guarantees that NBC gave to advertisers, it has averaged only about five million viewers a night. The NBC station managers have blamed consistently low lead-in audiences for much of the falloff in their news ratings — and local stations rely on news programs for the majority of their revenue. The affiliates are due to meet with NBC on Jan. 21.

Good luck keeping that configuration in place. Chances are good that Leno will instantly start lobbying for a full hour, which will entice O’Brien to ultimately jump ship to a competing offer from FOX. Unless NBC discovers a power to add an extra hour to the clock, there’s simply not enough room to accommodate both personalities.

As for the notion of transforming 10PM into the new gateway for late-night, that was doomed from the start during this era of the DVR:

The upshot of this is that, of course, the 10PM slot and most/all of Friday primetime is a challenge for original network programming. It makes you wonder why NBC is so big on “The Jay Leno Show” to occupy five days’ worth of late-primetime slots. Could they not have seen this viewer-habits trending forming a year ago? Or did they see it, and still gambled on the combination of Leno’s appeal and lower production costs carrying the day?

Obviously, the gamble crapped out. The fallout will follow.

Aside from the municipal debt-load, what does Donald Trump think is New York’s most pressing problem heading into the new year? Guardrails:

“Whenever I drive the roads in this city, I see these terrible, truly awful guardrails. They’re dented, they’re broken, some of them are completely rusted out. To me, it’s supposed to go hand in hand: You fix the roads and then you fix the guardrails simultaneously, but it doesn’t seem to happen that way. So debt and the guardrails — but almost more, I’d say the guardrails. The guardrails are just in such bad shape.”

Funny what you see from a limo’s-eye view. Maybe those unsightly guardrails scare that thing on his head…

After teetering on the brink of collapse a year ago, the big banks are suddenly coming up with billions of dollars to put toward TARP repayments.

And it’s not hard to figure out why:

Look what’s happened in the past two weeks. First, Bank of America agreed to pay back $45 billion in TARP funds. Bank of America found that the pay restrictions were complicating the search for a new boss to replace Ken Lewis. It raised $20 billion from the public and agreed to sell $3 billion in assets. The smaller, leaner, better-capitalized bank was able to hire a new CEO on Wednesday.

Citigroup, which is keeping its CEO but which wants to retain its legions of highly paid investment bankers, also sprang into action. Earlier this week, it announced it would pay back $20 billion in TARP funds and terminate an agreement under which taxpayers were guaranteeing losses on a big chunk of its loans. Citi raised $20.5 billion of capital, said it would give employees $1.7 billion in stock rather than cash for bonuses. Once the money was paid back to the Treasury, Citi noted, “it will no longer be deemed to be a beneficiary of “exceptional financial assistance” under TARP beginning in 2010.” Translation: [TARP executive pay czar] Ken Feinberg won’t be allowed to tell us how much to pay our folks.

In other words, the megabanks are paying back in order to pay out. That’s one way to maneuver around a salary cap — and it doesn’t even involve getting mired in some sort of messy financial-world caponomics.

The marketing war-of-words between AT&T and Verizon Wireless has been notably high-profile, thanks to the litigious route it took. More recently, I’ve noticed the beginnings of another aggressively-competitive campaign between big brands:

A case in point is a company that has been the object of a competitor’s recent less-than “on-brand” marketing behavior. For several years, Lexus has used an iconic big red bow to help promote its “December to Remember” campaign, created to make it easier for those with the means to surprise a loved one with the perfect gift, purchased at a merrily lower than usual price…

Feeling the intense pressure wrought by the economy, BMW, the competitor of note, is taking some sardonic swipes at its automotive colleague through an advertising campaign not quite in keeping with its cool and cordial brand character. Long known and recognized as a car brand of good breeding and exceptional engineering, BMW, from my point of view, is allowing the economic pinch to get the better of its good manners. While many consumers may find the Lexus big red bow annoying given the size of the average wallet, my belief is that BMW’s holiday campaign tactics are uncharacteristically below the belt, even one less tightened.

Additionally, it seems like Target is going “off-brand” from its traditional brand messaging, apparently in response to market-share loss to competitors like Kohl’s and Walmart.

All’s fair in love and retail, and it seems silly to criticize businesses for going after customers with added brio. But these are highly-polished brands that are supposedly operating on a perceptional plateau that obviates the need for bad-mouthing Brand X. That they’re engaging in a race to the bottom hints that the Great Recession has really taken a toll.

When I bought a new videogame for my iTouch yesterday, I didn’t give much thought to whether or not the game’s soundtrack was also available for purchase. (In fact, one of my persistent gripes about App Store games is that too few of them allow you the option to override in-game music in favor of letting the iPod music play; but that’s something for another post…)

But indeed, the oddly-named hovercraft-racing game “Ground Effect” comes with an embedded iTunes link to buy the theme music. Here’s the philosophy behind the move:

Diefenbach, a really cool Danish indie band, have allowed us to feature an instrumental version of one of their most amazing tracks “A Rock in a Pond” as the soundtrack for “Ground Effect” from their album “Dark Spinner”.

[App developer Glenn Corpes] was really excited as an indie developer about the prospect of teaming up with an indie band; much has been made recently about the cross-promotional possibilities and it makes sense that if gamers habitually listen to music on their iPhones it would be shame not to use the opportunity as a game developer to introduce them to great bands they might otherwise have not been exposed to.

That last part is the heart of it: Providing an opportunity for exposure on the audience’s preferred platform. This is the same concept as what’s driving music sales via “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” console interfaces. You take your wares where the action is.

I’d be surprised if there aren’t more apps that meld this experience — not just games either. The ability to push sales of multimedia elements within an app could soon be a commonplace and expected aspect of iPhone/iPod interaction.