#data source: ratings ryan dot com

[buffydataviz]

Viewership Ratings for BTVS

Thanks to a recent Sunnydale Herald post, I learned of a post on BTVS Ratings by reddit user Normal-Appearance982. Using Nielsen Media Research the ratings cover all seven seasons. The numbers switch from household rating/share to an ages 18-49 ratings starting in S4. While there are average ratings for each season, there are also detailed numbers for each episode on their rating's website. The viewership is for the live showings of the episodes, it doesn't cover re-runs or streaming.

My only commentary is that their recap implies the show ended with S7 because of low ratings. My understanding is that the show was known to be ending early in the season, partially because SMG (understandably) did not want to continue playing Buffy.

I don't care about ratings data but wanted to pass this along as a data source. And if you are into it, there's some good OP comments and discussion on the reddit post.

[bigyack-com]

Venture Capitalists Leave Coasts to Fund Inland Start-Ups

This article is part of our continuing Fast Forward series, which examines technological, economic, social and cultural shifts that happen as businesses evolve.Will Price grew up traveling the world, the son of a globe-trotting banker, and became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. But when he wanted to raise a family, he moved to Montana and started a fund of his own.“We moved just to get out of the Bay Area,” said Mr. Price, founder and general partner of Next Frontier Capital. “I wanted to bring capital to places where capital hadn’t previously invested.”Mr. Price, 48, is part of a growing wave of V.C. professionals leaving the congested, costly coasts for quieter, less expensive locales where they are helping fund start-ups in places like Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and North Carolina. No longer do ambitious young entrepreneurs have to relocate to California, New York or Boston to build a business. Start-up ecosystems coalescing across the United States have sparked a surge in small businesses, many with national or even global ambitions.The trend, focused largely on software companies or online businesses, has been facilitated by cloud computing, which gives anyone with an internet connection and a credit card access to almost unlimited computing power. Beyond that, experts agree that a few key ingredients are necessary to get an innovation hub rolling: a nearby research university, local wealth and an airport with flights to the coasts.In Montana, Mr. Price discovered several businesses that were profitable and growing. Submittable, a company based in Missoula, automates the processing of all kinds of online submissions, including job applications and peer review journal articles. When Mr. Price periodically visited its offices, he noticed another company that kept taking more space in the building. That was LumenAd, which sells software for digital advertisers so they can compare things like video views that are counted differently on different ad platforms.“No one in Silicon Valley had ever heard of them before,” said Mr. Price, although the company was No. 29 on Inc.’s 2019 list of the 5,000 fastest-growing U.S. start-ups. Mr. Price persuaded Ryan Hansen, the company’s founder and chief executive, to let him invest. The subsequent $2 million funding round brought in strategic board members, who have helped Mr. Hansen, 34, look beyond regional markets to a global ones.“Covid-19 will accelerate the demographic shift away from coasts,” Mr. Price said, echoing a sentiment heard from other V.C.s that the demand for capital may dip in a recession, but the inland trend will continue.The big coastal venture firms, the Sequoia Capitals and Greylock Partners, do invest in start-ups in the interior of the country. But their appetite is generally conditional on being able to evaluate the businesses based on financial metrics: How much does it cost to acquire a customer? What’s the customer churn rate?It typically takes several million dollars in revenue for companies to develop meaningful data, so the challenge for entrepreneurs between the coasts is how to raise enough money to build a business that has a track record to interest outside investors.“It’s a catch-22,” said Mr. Price. “Without a local source of capital to get start-ups over that hurdle, the big firms will never look at you.”These new hubs are following the trajectory of Silicon Valley, which got its start in the mid-1950s. But Silicon Valley — and New York City and Boston, the other places where start-up capital is concentrated — have been victims of their own success. Real estate prices have soared, salaries have surged and competition at all levels has intensified. For a young person, it is now almost impossible to buy a house in Silicon Valley or New York.Even Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has said that he would not start a company in Silicon Valley these days. “The infrastructure exists for people to do stuff like this in more places,” he told a crowd in late January at a conference in Utah.Tore Steen grew up outside of New York City and worked in Silicon Valley until the dot-com bust of 2001. After that he spent a few years in Atlanta before deciding with his wife that they wanted a less stressful lifestyle. They moved to Portland, and Mr. Steen, 51, worked at a website analytics company before the 2008 financial crisis interfered. “We made the tough choice not to pack up and scurry back to the Bay Area, because this is where we wanted to raise our boys,” he said.Mr. Steen found an opportunity with a digital identity company, Janrain. Then, in 2013, he left to co-found CrowdStreet, a commercial real estate investment platform. His partner, Dino Vendetti, is another transplant from Silicon Valley, who had started one of the first early stage venture funds in Oregon years earlier.Mr. Steen’s story is being repeated across the country, where venture funds are setting up to fund smart people who are coming out of local universities or corporate offices, or who are returning after years working in larger cities.“After the financial crisis, the careers of many people stalled, and they moved to lower-cost, higher-quality-of-life places to reinvent themselves,” Mr. Vendetti, 58, said. He moved to Bend, Ore., in 2011 after years working in California’s venture capital industry. He visited 10 Western cities on start-up scouting trips and found that there were outstanding entrepreneurs in all of them struggling to find funding because there was insufficient local venture capital.Many promising cities have angel investor groups formed by local investors. They are enough to get an entrepreneur started, but not to scale up to any size. “There’s usually a gaping hole in what’s classically called early stage venture capital,” Mr. Vendetti said. Having a $25 million to $50 million fund in a market is critical to completing the equation.Without that, the most promising start-ups move to the coasts where the talent and money from their success stays. “The wealth that gets generated gets reinvested in the next wave of funds and start-ups,” said Mr. Vendetti, adding that very little of it makes its way back to the regional markets that the entrepreneurs came from.In Canada, Jordan Jacobs, managing partner and co-founder of Radical Ventures, said that Toronto, too, had suffered from a lack of venture capital. Start-ups were steadily siphoned off to Silicon Valley. But the growth of artificial intelligence research in the university-rich region led even California funds to encourage A.I.-related start-ups to stay. They encouraged him to start a fund that could build start-ups into which they could then put money. “What was missing was local capital,” Mr. Jacobs said.Mark Kvamme, the co-founder of Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, has $1.2 billion under management. He grew up in the Bay Area, worked at Apple in the early years, started and sold a company and went into venture capital with his winnings. Then, in 2010, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a friend, asked him to come work on economic development. Mr. Kvamme never left.“I think the best market for venture capital happens to be Middle America,” he said, adding that if the region were a country, the Midwest would be fourth largest by gross domestic product and include nearly half the U.S. population.In 2019, Mr. Kvamme, 59, said 6,000 companies came looking for capital. The Midwest could support a dozen more funds of the same size, he said. “If we had co-investors here, this place would be just going crazy.”His investments include several robotics companies because there is so much manufacturing in the Midwest. One is a fully robotic vertical farm that produces leafy greens, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. The Pennsylvanian start-up’s 60,000-square-foot solar-power warehouse grew 500,000 pounds of produce in its first year of operation.“If you have access to capital, you have access to customers, you have access to talent, why not stay where you are?” he said.Craig S. Smith is a former correspondent for The Times and hosts the podcast Eye on A.I. Read the full article

[smartwebhostingblog]

2019 - The Game Changers

New Post has been published on http://loanstop20.com/2018/12/16/2019-the-game-changers/

2019 - The Game Changers

Looking back is not always that easy and sometimes painful. Your vision may not be 20/20 but reasonable clarity may be had by sticking to the facts and the actual data. Having said this, looking forward is a much tougher proposition. You are looking into the unknown. We haven’t gotten there yet.

However, staring into the future is a task that must be undertaken from time to time. I stare hard at pending “Risks.” Others stare hard at pending opportunities. “Preservation of Capital” demands that “Risks” come first, as “avoidance” is often the key to success. If you can stay out of the potholes, you can keep going and proceeding ahead is what gives us all the ability to win at the “Great Game.”

One of the biggest “Game Changers” is the breakage of a fifty year cycle where the United States, and Europe, had to depend upon hostile nations for oil and natural gas. We were hemmed in by them and many political decisions and economic decisions were based upon the fact that we needed their energy. With fracking and re-fracking and horizontal drilling, this has all changed and to the significant benefit of the Western world.

Last week the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced a groundbreaking oil and gas discovery in the West Texas Permian Basin. According to the organization’s statement, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are now believed to lie untapped in the Texan and New Mexican Permian Basin. The figures in last week’s announcement are more than double the previous resource assessment.

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in response to these rather incredible numbers.

American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy. Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.

Dr. Jim Reilly, the Director of USGS, a part of the U.S. Department of Interior, highlighted how remarkable the discovery was in the larger context of the industry.

In the 1980’s, during my time in the petroleum industry, the Permian and similar mature basins were not considered viable for producing large new recoverable resources. Today, thanks to advances in technology, the Permian Basin continues to impress in terms of resource potential. The results of this most recent assessment and that of the Wolfcamp Formation in the Midland Basin in 2016 are our largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released. Knowing where these resources are located and how much exists is crucial to ensuring both our energy independence and energy dominance.

What this all means is that we are now capable of breaking OPEC’s back. They have lost control. The United States has gained control. We can now tell them to “Stuff It,” as we not only gain energy independence but a whole new source of revenues, and taxes, that can be used to our advantage, as we export oil and natural gas to both Europe and Asia.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

– Albert Einstein

The next, far less pleasant “Game Changer” is the Democrats taking over the House. This is going to cause all kinds of turmoil, in my estimation. They are likely going to try to impeach President Trump and the markets may take a bath if this happens. Bonds or equities, the rancor of serious political infighting is never good news.

Then we have Brexit becoming quite unwieldy, Italy still fighting over its budget with the European Union and the economy of China slowing down as both their internal and external debts rise to record levels. Then there is the Chinese currency, which could get “re-evaluated” several times during the next year. The tariff stand-off with the United States is, in fact, a “Game of Thrones” as each nation vies for global power and influence. All of these issues could change the Game and cause roller coaster rides in the markets.

Next, there is the Fed. They are the central bank of the United States and the continual raising of interest rates is not helping the economy of the country. “Will they stop or will they go on,” is the central question. The Governors have 14 year terms and they can brandish their “Independence” as they wish, but the Fed was created by the Congress in 1913 using the Federal Reserve Act and what is given can be taken away, or muted, if the Congress does not feel that the Fed is acting in the best interests of the country. The Fed is NOT a Constitutional mandate, I remind all of you.

Then there is the CLO market. There are some large financial institutions that are worried that the bottom is about to drop out of this market. As an observation, the total outstanding volume of leveraged loans is about $1,130 billion or 5.5% of the U.S. GDP. CLOs, which are repackaged corporate debt, has made up most of the appetite for these loans.

These instruments hold approximately half, or $600 billion, which is roughly 3.0% of the U.S. GDP. The catalyst for the concern is not so much the drop in prices as the fund flows, with Lipper reporting that loan funds saw a record outflow of $2.53 billion in the week ended December 12, as we are now in the fourth consecutive week of selling. A significant “Game Changer” could be happening here.

The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.

– Will Rogers

“Game Changers” now abound all around us. Look closely, think, plan, execute, don’t slow down. Stay out of harm’s way. Avoid the Risks. Choose wisely!

[hostingnewsfeed]

2019 - The Game Changers

New Post has been published on http://loanstop20.com/2018/12/16/2019-the-game-changers/

2019 - The Game Changers

Looking back is not always that easy and sometimes painful. Your vision may not be 20/20 but reasonable clarity may be had by sticking to the facts and the actual data. Having said this, looking forward is a much tougher proposition. You are looking into the unknown. We haven’t gotten there yet.

However, staring into the future is a task that must be undertaken from time to time. I stare hard at pending “Risks.” Others stare hard at pending opportunities. “Preservation of Capital” demands that “Risks” come first, as “avoidance” is often the key to success. If you can stay out of the potholes, you can keep going and proceeding ahead is what gives us all the ability to win at the “Great Game.”

One of the biggest “Game Changers” is the breakage of a fifty year cycle where the United States, and Europe, had to depend upon hostile nations for oil and natural gas. We were hemmed in by them and many political decisions and economic decisions were based upon the fact that we needed their energy. With fracking and re-fracking and horizontal drilling, this has all changed and to the significant benefit of the Western world.

Last week the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced a groundbreaking oil and gas discovery in the West Texas Permian Basin. According to the organization’s statement, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are now believed to lie untapped in the Texan and New Mexican Permian Basin. The figures in last week’s announcement are more than double the previous resource assessment.

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in response to these rather incredible numbers.

American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy. Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.

Dr. Jim Reilly, the Director of USGS, a part of the U.S. Department of Interior, highlighted how remarkable the discovery was in the larger context of the industry.

In the 1980’s, during my time in the petroleum industry, the Permian and similar mature basins were not considered viable for producing large new recoverable resources. Today, thanks to advances in technology, the Permian Basin continues to impress in terms of resource potential. The results of this most recent assessment and that of the Wolfcamp Formation in the Midland Basin in 2016 are our largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released. Knowing where these resources are located and how much exists is crucial to ensuring both our energy independence and energy dominance.

What this all means is that we are now capable of breaking OPEC’s back. They have lost control. The United States has gained control. We can now tell them to “Stuff It,” as we not only gain energy independence but a whole new source of revenues, and taxes, that can be used to our advantage, as we export oil and natural gas to both Europe and Asia.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

– Albert Einstein

The next, far less pleasant “Game Changer” is the Democrats taking over the House. This is going to cause all kinds of turmoil, in my estimation. They are likely going to try to impeach President Trump and the markets may take a bath if this happens. Bonds or equities, the rancor of serious political infighting is never good news.

Then we have Brexit becoming quite unwieldy, Italy still fighting over its budget with the European Union and the economy of China slowing down as both their internal and external debts rise to record levels. Then there is the Chinese currency, which could get “re-evaluated” several times during the next year. The tariff stand-off with the United States is, in fact, a “Game of Thrones” as each nation vies for global power and influence. All of these issues could change the Game and cause roller coaster rides in the markets.

Next, there is the Fed. They are the central bank of the United States and the continual raising of interest rates is not helping the economy of the country. “Will they stop or will they go on,” is the central question. The Governors have 14 year terms and they can brandish their “Independence” as they wish, but the Fed was created by the Congress in 1913 using the Federal Reserve Act and what is given can be taken away, or muted, if the Congress does not feel that the Fed is acting in the best interests of the country. The Fed is NOT a Constitutional mandate, I remind all of you.

Then there is the CLO market. There are some large financial institutions that are worried that the bottom is about to drop out of this market. As an observation, the total outstanding volume of leveraged loans is about $1,130 billion or 5.5% of the U.S. GDP. CLOs, which are repackaged corporate debt, has made up most of the appetite for these loans.

These instruments hold approximately half, or $600 billion, which is roughly 3.0% of the U.S. GDP. The catalyst for the concern is not so much the drop in prices as the fund flows, with Lipper reporting that loan funds saw a record outflow of $2.53 billion in the week ended December 12, as we are now in the fourth consecutive week of selling. A significant “Game Changer” could be happening here.

The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.

– Will Rogers

“Game Changers” now abound all around us. Look closely, think, plan, execute, don’t slow down. Stay out of harm’s way. Avoid the Risks. Choose wisely!