» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 07-04-2000

Panorma’s dotcom fever, curse or blessing?
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - April 7, 2000

Last week’s Panorama certainly got under the collars of most new media folks on the list, some decried the poor journalism, others the lack of focus. Is this symptomatic of the way traditional media treats the Internet?

Ian Tester shared his thoughts, "I particularly liked the 3 chaps who were looking for £0.5m funding for a mainstream, b2c & b2b renting & selling property web service, who stated in a presentation to a VC that the £0.5m seed financing would fund all the online and offline marketing/development. The programme was unbelievably cynical and a tad off-balance for my liking. However, that said, managing to find 3 idiots like those guys was a producers' dream - they blatantly didn't know their arses from their elbows. Unfortunately presenting daft nutters like that pretty well sabotages everybody else's hopes. I almost fell off my chair when they mentioned how much they wanted, and how much they were going to give away for it. Every VC's dream - or would be if they had had even the remotest potential, which they didn't seem to."

The 3 entrepreneurs featured drew a lot of comment, particularly with their comments about IPO-ing and leaving the company at their initial VC meeting. Charles Linn observed, "They got the money in the end though didn't they. It was interesting to see how much their attitude had changed by the end of the programme, even to the point of saying that they didn't think that the online bubble was going to burst! Is it?"

Neil Vose shared Ian’s negative reaction to the program. He emailed, "Hilarious because it was so off the mark. Poorly researched programme and not one that Panorama should be proud of. If the majority of the people that they profiled are representative of our industry then we should all pack up now and go sit on a beach."

A number of people thought the programme sensationalist highlighting only one side of things. Glen Collins agreed, writing, "The thing that was disappointing about the programme was that it only showed this side of the start-up industry. It’s probably the majority or certainly a large part of the current UK start-up's that have this purely gold-rush outlook, but it would have been nice to have had an individual or company who actually believe in what they are doing and have a strong management team, strong idea, strong financial basis etc. purely for balance if nothing else."

Gary Pharo shared the group’s cynicism, "For me, all it did was give a couple of companies a free mini documentary and quite a few others the only advertising they will ever get on the BBC!! Oh and a chance to slate the Mirror. All the comments that were made could be equally applied to any business sector - and ramping stocks has been around since the very first IPO. Sensationalism gone mad would have been a better title."

The programme’s negative view of the whole new media industry clearly aggravated UK-Netmarketing’s subscribers. Lisa Hulme wrote, "But on a more serious note, I found it quite disappointing in that the journalist was determined to be on a real downer on the whole industry. That slow motion shattering screen kept re-appearing as if to forecast a grim warning to us all. Yes - some of the valuations and sums involved are seemingly ridiculous, but he was so incredulous that the VC had already made a million."

Lisa added, "Also WHY was the guy from Click Mango so reticent about admitting that Joanna Lumley's role was "to bring people into the tent". Of course that's why she is onboard, she didn't seem bothered about this and it's something I'm sure she's very good at - why was he so adamant that she wasn't there for this purpose?"

Robin Edwards thought that the UK new media industry might begin to follow some of the US trends, "I think we will start to see ... people playing down the dot-com name to avoid being seen as a company that has no facility for making a profit in its business plan. A lot of private investors will have had their fingers gently warmed by the Lastminute.com scenario, and will be wary of sending off 500 quid again in case they do get 500 quid's ‘worth’ of shares next time around. No problem for Lastminute.com though as they raised the necessary spending funds at the time of flotation, so the share price dip is probably just an irritation rather than a signal to line up at the cliffs of Dover for a mass ropeless bungie jump."

Overall it was sad to see a flagship BBC show, with the opportunity to lift the lid on the burgeoning world of the Internet, stoop to the lows of the tabloid press. The programme didn’t really scratch the surface, my favourite comment was Tom Mangold (the presenter) talking about the ICEMobileincubator guys and the success of WebWedding.co.uk and it's staggering 3,000 hits/month. I can only assume the voice over was wrong!

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