#FAKERATINGS FOLLOW UP:  On Friday when I featured a story about NBC misspelling the name of its NBC “Nitely” News to avoid having the lower-rated Memorial Day program counted in the week’s overall ratings, I wondered why the other networks weren’t howling over the scam.  So why the silence?  Apparently they all do it!  Over the past year ABC has intentionally misspelled its evening news six times, and CBS has done it 12 times.  The networks are taking advantage of a Nielsen loophole called the “titling rule”, which allows for special names of things like Christmas and Thanksgiving specials.  Obviously the rule wasn’t designed for abuse like this.  Besides being flat out unethical, the intentional renaming of shows to inflate average ratings hurts brands/agencies who overpay for TV rating points every time this happens.

SAMSUNG GETTING ITS REVENUE SWAGGER BACK:  If it’s Q2’17 earnings are any indication, it looks like Samsung has fully recovered from the Galaxy Note battery fire fiasco of 2016.  Samsung is poised to announce its quarterly earnings results this week, which will include an estimated $12B in earnings . . . in just three months.  If this total holds it will top Apple for the same period.  Most people think of Samsung as the perennial runner up to Apple in the smart phone race.  But the primary revenue driver comes from their microprocessor business – Samsung has just surpassed Intel as the world’s top chip manufacturer.  In fact, Samsung is even the top supplier of chips to Apple for its iPhones.  Just goes to show you how interconnected the entire tech industry is behind the facade of the consumer facing brands we all use every day.

BILL GATES’S CRYSTAL BALL:  One of the things I love are those look back articles from years ago when someone tries to predict what our lives will be like at some point in the distant future.  In the attached Business Insider link 15 of Bill Gates’s “20 years from now” tech predictions are revisited.  His guesstimates about how technology will be woven into the fabric of life are remarkably spot on.  In fact, almost every element of all 15 points have come to fruition.  Some of these seem pretty basic – like online monitoring of your home (#5).  But others, like the rise of mobile devices (#2) and social media (#6), have been total game changers for our society.  If you’re working at Microsoft these days you might wistfully wonder what their role in this future tech world would have been if Mr. Gates had stayed at the helm.  As for me, I’m just bummed that he didn’t call out the Jetson’s flying cars to be on road by now. . . which I’m still patiently waiting for.

Have a great day guys!