Who Owns the Work That Artificial Intelligence Creates?

Some argue bots and AI are simply doing the bidding of human programmers. Others contend they have a unique intelligence of their own, deserving of rights.

The only thing certain is that lawyers will profit arguing the pros and cons.


Paresh Kathrani reports in World Economic Forum:

Maybe machines with AI should be recognised as having copyright in order to protect the significance that we give to intelligence. (But) a wildlife photographer claimed use by Wikipedia of (a) picture – taken by a monkey while his camera was unattended – was  copyright infringement. A case was brought arguing it was (him) breaching the monkey’s copyright. The judge rejected the claim. (Some) believe what intelligent machines are the execution of a program produced by a human. The European Parliament is recognising the need for “a specific legal status for robots”.

How IKEA Has Changed the Way We Think About Furniture

IKEA revolutionized retail by presaging the internet-driven emphasis on price, convenience and style. It was a pioneer in selling not just a product,  but the aesthetic that went with it. JL


Abha Bhattarai reports in the Washington Post:

“Ikea made good design accessible to people of all incomes.” The company transformed the way we think about how we shop for furniture (mazelike warehouses), how we put it together (ourselves) and how it looks (sleek, not stodgy.) With clean lines and practical pieces, Ikea has outfitted millions of  apartments and brought a Scandinavian aesthetic into everyday homes. “Few people can claim to have genuinely revolutionized retail.”

Drivers Don't Trust Uber So This Is How It's Trying To Win Them Back

Uber made a classic growth-oriented company mistake: it focused on recruiting new drivers rather than on retaining the ones it already had.

It is now trying to change that financial and operational focus. JL

Johana Bhuiyan reports in Re/code:

Many of Uber’s problems in 2017 stemmed from its obsession with growth. Expanding its business and growing its marketshare often came at the cost of operational needs, such as providing human resources with training and tools to properly deal with employee issues. Uber invested all of its time and resources in recruiting new drivers and relatively little on retaining drivers.

The Reason So Many YouTube Videos Take Place Inside Cars

For Millennials and their younger successors whose car ownership numbers are plummeting as the driverless future approaches, the car may now be less a status symbol than an ironic reference to a fading era. JL

Inkoo Kang reports in Slate:

Cars have traditionally symbolized aspirations: for freedom and independence, luxury and status, sexiness and aesthetic appeal.Vloggers get to enjoy a kind of makeshift studio in a car cabin: a background noise–free environs and a built-in proscenium made of the car frame. The result is intimate, but not too intimate. But the largely unexceptional nature of automobiles may simply be a reflection of the platform’s younger-skewing demo, which tends to buy fewer cars and drive less than previous generations.

How Much Money Do People Have? By Age, Gender, Education - Etc

To what should be absolutely no one's surprise, older men with advanced degrees have the highest net worth. The more interesting question is what degree that's changing. JL


Price Economics reports

Net worth, cash, and investment account balances generally trend upward as income and age increase, though debt grows accordingly. MBAs have the highest net worth of all higher educational degrees, while doctors and dentists have the most cash (and debt).
Men and women have similar cash and debt balances. People in every income bracket have 1-2 months of monthly salary in cash. Men have more than double the investment account balances, leading to much higher net worth.

The Amazon-ification of Whole Foods

This is part of a much bigger strategy than two hour delivery of a kale salad. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

In the broader context of Amazon’s ambitions to build an operating system for the home, to expand into pharmacies and health care, to become a hit-making television production studio—this is the logical next step in turning Prime into the ultimate “life bundle,” a single membership program to bind consumers to every possible commercial need. It can own the search platform and the product, so that when a dad says to the smart speaker on his counter, “Alexa, I need brown rice and pork,” the product that arrives is an Amazon-branded box containing Amazon–Whole Foods–branded rice and pork.

Louboutin Loses EU Legal Battle To Trademark Red-Soled Shoes

Maybe he'd have better luck with non-primary colors...JL

Elizabeth Paton reports in the New York Times, photo by Carlo Alegri in Reuters:

The court said that Mr. Louboutin’s red soles were not a separate entity from the shape of his high-heeled shoes, and shapes cannot be trademarked under European Union law. Mr. Louboutin previously won a battle against Yves Saint Laurent in a United States federal appeals court, allowing him to protect his red soles as a source-identifying trademark. But (the) opinion for the European Court “could mean that Louboutin would not be able to stop its competitors from offering shoes with red soles.”

The Reason Facebook and Google Won't Save Local News

Substituting local ranting for national or global ranting will not reduce fake news - or growing questions about Facebook's and Google's role in modern society. JL

Alex Shephard reports in The New Republic:

Half of the newspaper jobs that existed 15 years ago have disappeared. The lack of local journalism makes Facebook and Google’s initiatives vulnerable to the problem they are trying to distance themselves from: fake news. Local news is an opportunity to push more positive content—something that isn’t Donald Trump. (But local) news feeds don’t distinguish between news and user posts about local events. This intermingling of reporting and ranting ends up getting prime placement (for) divisive content the social network is trying to distance itself from.

Why Your Data May Be Worth More Than You Think

Data value is not carried on financial statements. Mispricing intangible assets can lead to resource misallocation and suboptimal strategic decisions. JL


John Akred and Anjali Samani report in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Understanding the impact of exposing data to third parties on the value of a company’s data for indirect monetization can guide whether to pursue explicit monetization. Despite increasing recognition of potential benefit, organizations are conservative about what data they expose outside. Good valuation helps leaders understand if selling their data would affect their competitive position or  realize their own benefit from it. Only 30% to 50% of data warehousing projects successfully deliver value.

How Netflix and Amazon Earn Customers For Life

Ease of use, reinforced by an electronic ecosystem based on familiarity that makes the mental and financial cost of leaving harder than that of staying. JL

Lisa Solomon reports in Singularity Hub:

They’re always thinking about how to make it as easy as possible for customers to get exactly what they need when they need it, without them having to put in a lot of effort. What we want is to have things that will make our lives better and easier. They turned the model on its head. Instead of saying “we’re going to be an online retailer that sells transactions” they said “we’re going solve the problem for our members.”

Markets: Loaded For Bear?

Many of those claiming the markets could go up for a long while are now assuring investors a correction was overdue. So much for conventional wisdom.

The larger truth is that the era of easy money is ending just as price of recovery is coming at the cost of a debt burden - including yesterday's US budget deal - that may be unsustainable. Markets may overreact, they may well come roaring back, they may fall again, but just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean the reality isnt lying in plain sight. JL


Dambisa Moyo reports in Project Syndicate, Sarah Ponczek and colleagues report in Bloomberg:

The inevitable reckoning is beginning to dawn. The market is mispricing perennial structural challenges, in particular mounting and unsustainable global debt and a dim fiscal outlook, particularly in the US, where the price of recovery is a growing deficit. In other words, short-term economic gain is being supported by policies that threaten to sink the economy in the longer term.

New York Times Debuts First Augmented Reality-Enhanced Story On Apple Devices

The third party in the initiative is US Winter Olympic team uniform designer Ralph Lauren, which is underwriting the effort. True convergence of interests. JL

Sarah Perez reports in Tech Crunch:

In The NYT’s iOS app for iPhone and iPad, the company is debuting its first AR-enabled article, offering a preview of the Winter Olympics. The article focuses on figure skater Nathan Chen, snowboarder Anna Gasser, and hockey goalie Alex Rigsby. Readers can view the athletes appear in the room beside them, zoom in and out, and walk around in 360 degrees to see how high Chen’s skates are off the ice when performing a jump or how open Alex Rigsby’s glove is when making a save.

Tablet Shipments Decline For 13th Straight Quarter

Which means they have declined now for over three years. Though Amazon's share increased thanks to the impact of Alexa/Echo.

Think the market is trying to tell manufacturers something? JL

Emil Protalinski reports in Venture Beat:

The only silver lining is that declines for 2017 haven’t been in the double-digits, like they were in 2016. Amazon shipped 2.5 million more tablets, gaining a massive 6.0 percentage points. The holiday quarter is typically the company’s strongest, but this year was a standout as the company managed to steal second from Samsung. This was thanks to steep discounts as well as the fact Alexa is available on Amazon’s latest tablets.

Artificial Intelligence Has Learned How To Boost the Brain's Memory

And now the larger question arises as to whether manipulating human brains this way is safe, ethical - or even worthwhile. JL

Robbie Gonzalez reports in Wired:

Machine learning algorithms—notoriously inscrutable systems themselves—can be used to decode and then enhance human memory by triggering the delivery of precisely timed pulses of electricity to the brain. Epilepsy patients had electrodes implanted in their brain to record high-resolution brain activity during memory tasks. Algorithms learned to associate patterns of electrode measurements with a patients' likelihood of memorizing a word.

Facebook Hired a Full-Time Pollster To Monitor Zuck's Approval Ratings. After 6 Months He Quit

He quit after six months because he 'didnt feel great about the product and didnt feel proud to tell people I worked at Facebook.' Ouch. JL

Casey Newton reports in The Verge:

“It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they can trust him, and whether they’ve even heard of him. Especially outside of the United States.” Also Sheryl Sandberg. The company measured how Sandberg’s public image compared with Zuckerberg’s."I decided after six months that it was a waste of my time. I didn’t feel great about the product. I didn’t feel proud to tell people I worked at Facebook. It was a very unusual role.”

Is the Decrease in Startups A Sign of Broader Economic Stagnation?

Despite the chest-thumping  rhetoric, business leaders abhor competition: it increases risk and reduces margins.

But fewer startups are not just a problem for big company CEOs, tech entrepreneurs or  venture capitalists. New research suggests it reflects a wider and deeper economic stagnation driven by lower productivity,  fewer financial incentives to challenge oligopolies and fewer new job opportunities. JL


Eduardo Porter reports in the New York Times:

Rich market democracies have lost much of their dynamism. Their companies are getting old, their labor markets stuck. Productivity growth has slumped. Many workers in their prime are peeling off from the labor force. Fewer start-ups mean fewer new ideas and fewer young, productive businesses replace older ones. The decline in companies entering the market since 1980 has trimmed productivity growth by 3.1%. Allowing gargantuan companies to develop, dominating the markets they serve, the American economy shut out disruption. And thus shut out change.

How Blockchain May Be the New Supply Chain: Case Studies From Walmart, British Air

The promise of greater accuracy at lower data management cost is beginning to be realized. JL

Kim Nash reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Walmart Inc. is beginning to use online ledger technology to manage supply-chain data for mangoes, berries and a couple of dozen other products. British Airways tested blockchain to maintain data on flights between London, Geneva and Miami to stop conflicting flight information appearing at gates, on airport monitors, at airline websites and customer apps. The data, encrypted and unchangeable, is always up-to-date on all participants’ systems. "Separate copies tend to drift out of sync."

The Biggest Challenges Facing Robotics In the Next Decade

All appear to be manageable. JL

Edd Gent reports in Singularity Hub:

New materials and fabrication. Bio-inspired and bio-hybrid. Power and energy. Swarms. Navigation. Brain interfaces. AI. Medical. Ethics and security. And, if robots are to enter human environments, they will need to learn to deal with humans. This will be difficult, as we have very few concrete models of human behavior and are prone to underestimate the complexity of what comes naturally to us.

Is Your Delivery App Killing Off Your Favorite Restaurants?

Restaurants are a low margin business and payments to make deliveries shrink those margins even further. JL


Elizabeth Dunn reports in The New Yorker:

“We know for a fact that as delivery increases, our profitability decreases,” she said. For each order between twenty and forty per cent of the revenue goes to third-party platforms and couriers. In the past three years profit margin shrunk by a third, and that the only obvious contributing factor is the shift toward delivery. In 2016, delivery transactions made up about seven per cent of total U.S. restaurant sales. Aresearch report published predicted that number could eventually reach forty per cent of all restaurant sales.

The Way More Efficient Machine Learning Could Upend the AI Paradigm

The disintermediation process gets faster: could more powerful neural nets render data processing investment - and the tech industry segment dependent on it - obsolete? JL

Yiting Sun reports in MIT Technology Review:

If neural networks were to become capable of “one-shot learning," the cumbersome process of feeding reams of data into algorithms to train them would be rendered obsolete. This could have serious consequences for the hardware industry, as both existing tech giants and startups are currently focused on developing more powerful processors designed to run today’s data-intensive AI algorithms.

Managing the Threat of Online Advertising

The factors that make it so useful are also those that make it dangerous. The challenge is gaining agreement on how to manage the threats without killing the promise. Dont hold your breath. JL

Farhad Manjoo reports in the New York Times:

The digital ad business corrals and transforms latent attention into real money. Ads are the source of funding for just about everything you read, watch and hear online. But the online ad machine also collects and profiles data about our behavior, creates incentives to monetize our most private desires and unleashes loopholes that the shadiest exploit. If you want to fix  what ails the internet, the ad business would be the perfect perp to restrain and reform.

How Blockchain and the Internet of Things Are Becoming Mutually Reinforcing

Capturing and making sense of all the data generated by the growing number of IoT devices could be made far easier - and more useful - if Blockchains can be employed for recording, analysis and - with the help of artificial intelligence - application. JL

Bernard Marr reports in Forbes:

Put them together and you have a verifiable, secure and permanent method of recording data processed by “smart” machines in the IoT. The “smart contract” provided by some blockchain networks allow agreements executed when conditions are met (such as) authorizing one system to make a payment when delivery has been provided. Blockchain and IoT convergence will become a necessity (w)hen systems become bloated, as data volumes, as well as connected devices, increase.

Why Amazon Fulfillment Centers Are Not Generating Employment Growth

The issue is not Amazon, or even the best means of stimulating job growth.

It is whether regional bidding wars are a misallocation of resources whose impact and return on investment could be more productively applied to infrastructure and other improvements in order to produce optimal economic results for governments, the workforce and the private sector. JL


Janelle Jones and Ben Zipperer report in Economic Policy Institute:

When Amazon opens a new fulfillment center, the host county gains 30% more warehousing and storage jobs but no new net jobs overall, as the jobs created are offset by job losses in other industries. This seems to add evidence to an already-strong research base indicating that the zero-sum strategy of attracting existing employers away from other regions does not guarantee good economic outcomes.

Tractor Hacking: Farmers Are Taking On Big Tech's Repair Monopoly

Manufacturers like John Deere are claiming that farmers have to use the companies' repair services because the farmers dont actually own the machinery they bought; they just licensed the software on which all major implements now run. The result is time-consuming and expensive.

The farmers are fighting back by hacking the systems - and using bootleg software from places like the Ukraine to do it. This is part of the much larger battle about what pricing and ownership mean in the age of technology. The winner is not yet clear. JL


Cory Doctorow reports in BoingBoing and Jason Koebler reports in Motherboard:

John Deere is fighting farmers who say they want to fix their own tractors and access their data by saying that doing so violates the prohibition on bypassing copyright locks. Deere's joined by auto manufacturers and many other corporations, all arguing that since the gadgets you buy have software, and since that software is licensed, not sold, you are a licensee, and you have to use the gadget according to the license terms, which spell out where you buy your service, parts, consumables, apps.

WeWork Has Become London's Largest Business Office Space Tenant

WeWork's strategy epitomizes the intangible value of knowledge capitalism.

It is arbitraging the uncertainty over Brexit and technology's impact on employment by providing flexible work space to large banks and corporations unsure of their future growth and hesitant to commit to tangible assets. JL


Jack Sidders and Giles Turner report in Bloomberg, Rich Bockmann reports in The Real Deal:

WeWork has leased more than Google, Amazon, JPMorgan, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. WeWork is second only to the U.K. government in the amount of space it occupies. WeWork’s strategy is  to capitalize on banks’ uncertainty over Brexit by leasing them flexible office space. (It’s) success in London depends on demand for flexible office space growing fast enough to keep rental income above the historically high rates the company pays to lease its properties.

How Apps, Music and Other Services Can Grow Apple Beyond the iPhone

Given the reality of global smartphone saturation, Apple will have to focus more on services. Fortunately, it can do that while continuing to grow profitably. JL

Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Apple isn’t a hardware company. Nor is it a software company. Apple is an ecosystem company. As Apple increasingly emphasizes device prices over volumes for revenue gains, it confronts a fundamental tension—between charging people more for hardware and, more for services to access it. The former puts profit margins ahead of prevalence, while the latter emphasizes maximizing the number of gadgets in customers’ hands. Services (are) proving durable than any single iPhone generation.

AI In the Court: When Algorithms Rule on Jail Time

The larger question is at what point society is willing to suspend human judgement in favor of an algorithmic answer based on data - without necessarily understanding the quality of the data or who designed the model. JL

Matt O'Brien and Dake Kang report in the Associated Press:

In a growing number of courts, judges are now guided by computer algorithms before ruling. Experts worry the algorithms will make judging more automatic and rote over time — under the mask of data-driven objectivity. Research has shown that when people receive specific advisory guidelines, they follow them in lieu of their own judgment. Judges — like all people —find it easy to drop their critical thinking skills when presented with what seems like an easy answer.

Does Google Really Need To Innovate?

Former Google exec Steve Yegge follows up on his viral article about why he was leaving Google.

When you have as dominant position as Google, innovation may not be crucial. At least for a time. Just ask Microsoft. Or IBM. JL


Steve Yegge comments in Medium:

Most big companies don’t innovate at a large scale. The safest thing to do is wait for an innovator to become hugely successful.You can acquire the innovator or one of their competitors. Google (is) too slow to respond. They waited years too long to get into both the Cloud and Social spaces. If they’re too conservative to innovate like Jeff Bezos does, then they need to get a lot better at responding and executing quickly as markets open up.

Automakers' In-Dash Nav Systems Battle Smartphone Apps For Primacy Over Cars' Future

Navigation is one small factor in a much larger contest over which systems will control autonomous vehicles - and the valuable data they generate. JL

Eric Taub reports in the New York Times:

Most in-dash navigation systems aren’t as smart as your phone.  (But) in-dash navigation systems will be getting smarter, crowdsourcing sensor information from connected vehicles to assess traffic conditions, connected to the cloud and easily upgraded via an over-the-air data connection.. Next-generation nav systems are a crucial step in the development of autonomous vehicles. "In-dash navigation systems are at a disadvantage compared to smartphone apps. But soon, we’ll be at an advantage.”

Are Execs Finally Starting To View Cyber Security As a Business Risk Rather Than An IT Problem?

Yes, although there is still resistance to the financial and operational investment required to limit the risk - and tech professionals still get blamed when a breach occurs. JL

 
Mike Orcutt reports in MIT Technology Review:

Big insurers have offered cyber policies since the late 1990s, and 80 companies sell them, most focused on data breaches. Yet insurers are struggling to grasp the nature of cyber risk, and how to structure policies that won’t leave them vulnerable to catastrophic losses. Catastrophic risk model data is  inconsistent. Starting to view cybersecurity as a business risk instead of an IT problem means recognizing this is not a problem with a clear solution, but a risk that can be managed, though not eliminated.

A Patented Wristband Tracks Workers Movements

A bit Orwellian, but then what about the data new technology is generating isn't? JL

Ceylan Yeginsu reports in the New York Times:

The patent disclosure goes to the heart about a global debate about privacy and security Tracking (is) “stalkerish.” Workers might be unfairly scrutinized if their hands were found to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time.They want to turn people into machines. The robotic technology isn’t up to scratch yet, so until it is, they will use human robots.”

NFL and MLB Teams Use AWS Statistics Package Driven By Machine Learning

There is increasing chatter that some teams are using the first minutes, quarters, innings or even halves of games to input data about their own and opposing teams' play into their AI systems in order to then craft second-half strategies that increase the odds of winning. JL 

Ron Miller reports in Tech Crunch:

No industry illustrates the power of a data-driven world quite like sports. Fans and teams use statistics to evaluate players and teams. With the popularity of Fantasy Sports, people are looking to  advanced statistics to help build their fantasy teams. Data can be used to heighten the broadcast experience by showing viewers a data-driven view of play on the field. Teams can also use this data to review game film and figure out what players did well and what they didn’t do well. They go over this with the players to improve play.

How Amazon Rebuilt Itself Around Artificial Intelligence

The most important change was cultural: the company not only had to embrace AI and machine learning as a business driver, but become more collaborative so the learning would spread faster and wider within the company. JL

Steven Levy reports in Wired:

Amazon recognized this era’s most critical competition would be in AI—Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft were betting their companies on it. Once millions of customers began using  Echo and  other Alexa-powered devices. Amazon started amassing a wealth of data, possibly the biggest collection of interactions of any conversation-driven device ever. That data rocketed (it) up the list of places where machine-learning experts might want to work. AI expertise is distributed across its many teams. There is a unit dedicated to the spread and support of machine learning.

The Tentatively Emerging Market For Digital Currency Theft Insurance

Coverage is expensive for an intangible asset few recognize and even fewer understand.

But in a knowledge economy, there's a price for everything, however uncertain the underlying value. JL

Suzanne Barlyn reports in Reuters:

For insurers the challenge is how to cover risks for customers they know little about, who use technology few understand and represent a young industry that lacks data insurers rely on in designing and pricing coverage. “The first challenge was to figure out if there was a product here.” Annual premiums for $10 million in theft coverage would run at about $200,000, or 2% of the limit. That compares with about 1% or less for traditional financial clients

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Reassessing Leadership In the Open Source Era

Technology has empowered employees because everyone has good data at their fingertips. Which means leaders are more exposed than ever. JL

Knowledge@Wharton interviews Rajeev Peshawaria:

Ordinary people are more empowered than ever because everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket. Leaders, on the other hand, are exposed. We equate title and position with leadership. Just creating shareholder value is not enough. The world is getting too complex for one person to have all the answers. Leaders have to earn the right to be autocratic at the same time being humble and respectful. Companies have to crowd source innovation: who has an idea to solve this problem or exploit that opportunity.

Google Already Knows Your Flight Is Delayed

The next advance, presumably, will be for Google to not just anticipate but prevent delays...JL

Mark Wilson reports in Fast Company., photo by Nam Huh, in AP:

Google Flights has grown to twice the size of Expedia and it’s doing more revenue than Priceline Group and TripAdvisor combined. It’s simply very hard to compete with Google when it comes to data crunching. The service will now leverage AI, all of its historical travel delay data, and a number of third-party aggregators to label flights that are delayed–even before airlines disclose the bad news. The information is flagged in real time within Google Flights,

Say Goodbye To Garages As Builders Reimagine the Future

Designing for a car-less future today. JL

Peter Grant reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Developers are starting to build offices with internal parking structures that can be converted to office space if demand for private parking decreases. New master-planned projects in cities like Toronto, Los Angeles, Oslo, San Francisco and Boston are being designed with features like curbside drop-off areas for passengers and e-commerce deliveries that replace traditional parking lanes. “The term that we’re hearing over and over again is ‘future-proof,’”

The Strange Little - Discontinued - Car That Everyone Still Wants

In an era of copycat design, differentiation sells. JL

Kyle Stock reports in Bloomberg:

A 2014 iteration is now trading hands for two-thirds of the sticker price, far higher than the average 43% garnered by other vehicles from the same era. 74 Cross Cabriolets were listed on Cars.com, with a median price of $25,000. A cherry version now commands more money than a new Nissan Murano. It makes very little sense as a car—one of the main reasons people love it. Few things in commerce feel as good as an irrational purchase. “Personally, I tend to go for highly differentiated products.”

The Reason You Cannot Quit Amazon Prime Even If Maybe You Should

It may no longer be cheaper or faster. But it remains more familiar and easier - and that may be enough. JL

Geoffrey Fowler reports in the Washington Post, illustration by Kathleen Brooks:

Prime becomes a habit.Less than 1% of Amazon Prime members even consider other sites in the same shopping session. People might not be saving much money with Prime anymore.But Prime has mastered something much more valuable: the psychology of being a consumer in an era of too many choices.

Half of New US Jobs Were Created In Just Five States

The rich get richer. JL

Rex Nutting reports in MarketWatch:

California, Texas, Florida, New York and Georgia have about 36% of U.S. population, but captured 51% of the job growth. The same thing happened in 2015 and 2016: The biggest, most dynamic economies in America got bigger and more dynamic, largely because these states are home to the big cities that create a preponderance of new jobs. Big and growing cities, such as Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Riverside, San Francisco and Orlando, are the powerhouses of the economy.

Why NFL Ratings Are Plummeting: A Structural Decline In Viewership - And Content

It's Super Bowl Sunday. As the United States prepares to eat and drink itself into oblivion there are concerns about the future of football. Popular but inaccurate story lines about the cause aside, there is a structural decline in viewership of all TV content as more people, especially younger ones, cut their cable connections.

But according to the data, there is also a content problem. Not as popular myth would have it, related to Colin Kaepernick, players kneeling in protest during the national anthem or Donald Trump. The real issue is that the most popular franchises have not done as well of late, while the one that has done well - the New England Patriots - represents a relatively small region and has a miniscule national following. Until fewer star players are injured and more nationally-exciting franchises regain their mojo, this trend is likely to continue. JL


Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic and Peter Kafka reports in Re/code:

Televised football has a television problem and a football problem. The television problem is prominent yet simple. Fewer people are subscribing to pay TV, which means that ratings are declining for just about everything on cable and broadcast. TV has a harder time attracting eyeballs, because people are doing things instead of watching TV. There is (also) evidence that football has suffered as its most popular players and teams have disappointed: Ratings dive when the most popular teams take a dive, too.