Actually, Bigfan; I think its better NOT to call North on statements like that. Because the thinking public can make up their own minds then.

No matter how they spin it, the numbers just don't add up.

Spaceball says he had $250,000 in ads committed. Well, that amount of revenue can't finance the salaries they were paying, and was already short $50,000 of what they spent on promoting the venture. A web station can't be profitable paying out that much for programming.

All of them-Sherman, North, Rogers, Spaceball, Ofman live in a fantasy world.

I'll put up the Jonathan Hood-Tim Doyle show (11 a.m.-3 p.m.) up against any show in town," Mr. Rogers said. "We had a nice base of listeners. We heard from them through emails and texts. I'm not going to say it was in the hundreds of thousands, but we know people were listening."

Jesse Rogers said:

Not in the hundreds of thousands?
How about the tens of thousands?
How about the thousands?
Maybe the hundreds? Huh?

The first 2/3 of that article sounded like a promotional spot for selling investors on North's webio. Sherman better be careful as he has crossed the line from journalist to shill selling for North. If investors get taken again by North Sherman's sales pieces like this would be part of the scam. Imagine inviting investors to take advantage of the buzz created by a swindler and a snake oil salesman. Sherman is a joke and its clear Crain's has laid off the editorial staff like every other paper in town.

Also, we calculated here earlier that salaries totaled $800,000 plus not counting North, Bebe, Space etc. You've got Spaceball, your top salesman saying he's not sure he could take the $250K in ad commitments to $500K and you've got salaries and overhead likely in exces of $1.2-$1.5 million. This dog don't hunt. It only works if your top guys make $50Kper year and your average employee makes $30K or so...remember there were two dozen employees. To work you can only have one guy per time slot and a total of 8-12 employees...max. Given their prospects I bet you could get the talent for $50K or less but with fewer hosts and employees the product would be even worse than it was...which is hard to imagine.

Oh, and I forgot one other thing...NOBODY WAS LISTENING.

This dog don't hunt and anyone that would invest a penny in it deserves the pain they'd feel.

The first 2/3 of that article sounded like a promotional spot for selling investors on North's webio. Sherman better be careful as he has crossed the line from journalist to shill selling for North. If investors get taken again by North Sherman's sales pieces like this would be part of the scam. Imagine inviting investors to take advantage of the buzz created by a swindler and a snake oil salesman. Sherman is a joke and its clear Crain's has laid off the editorial staff like every other paper in town.

Also, we calculated here earlier that salaries totaled $800,000 plus not counting North, Bebe, Space etc. You've got Spaceball, your top salesman saying he's not sure he could take the $250K in ad commitments to $500K and you've got salaries and overhead likely in exces of $1.2-$1.5 million. This dog don't hunt. It only works if your top guys make $50Kper year and your average employee makes $30K or so...remember there were two dozen employees. To work you can only have one guy per time slot and a total of 8-12 employees...max. Given their prospects I bet you could get the talent for $50K or less but with fewer hosts and employees the product would be even worse than it was...which is hard to imagine.

Oh, and I forgot one other thing...NOBODY WAS LISTENING.

This dog don't hunt and anyone that would invest a penny in it deserves the pain they'd feel.

"We're the most famous Internet talk show site in the country," said Mike North, the co-founder in Webio with Mr. Hernandez. "It was a bad deal with what happened, but people know about Webio."

Jesse Rogers said:

Not in the hundreds of thousands?
How about the tens of thousands?
How about the thousands?
Maybe the hundreds? Huh?

Famous and infamous are not the same thing.

I happened to come across this in a New York Times article on Internet radio from last October:

"Advertising is also hard to come by for small stations without large listener bases. SomaFM, a San Francisco-based Internet radio station with 450,000 listeners, found it could make more money by soliciting listener contributions, like public radio, than it could from advertising. Even so, a plea on the site says the station will fall $35,000 short of its budget this year. Last year, the station made a $20,000 profit on $250,000 in revenue and put all of it into improvements for the station, said Rusty Hodge, the site’s founder."

Three things:

(1) This gives an idea of just how tough it is to turn a profit in this game, even with 450,000 listeners. Even if Hernandez was clean as a whistle, anyone who thought something like this was going to make it with the salaries alone they had committed to--not to mention Ofman's "posh hotel" stays that he enjoyed so much--was a damn fool.

(2) I think this should be the new model for North if he's still intent on starting this up again. He can have pledge drives like Channel 11 and give away gifts for contributions like his book, his CD, Spada coffee mugs, etc. Maybe a nice Chicagosportswebio tote bag.

(3) Can the media also stop all the gratuitous references to Mike North "inventing the webio concept"? Web broadcasting has been around in some form or another almost since the infancy of the Internet explosion.

I happened to come across this in a New York Times article on Internet radio from last October:

"Advertising is also hard to come by for small stations without large listener bases. SomaFM, a San Francisco-based Internet radio station with 450,000 listeners, found it could make more money by soliciting listener contributions, like public radio, than it could from advertising. Even so, a plea on the site says the station will fall $35,000 short of its budget this year. Last year, the station made a $20,000 profit on $250,000 in revenue and put all of it into improvements for the station, said Rusty Hodge, the site’s founder."

Three things:

(1) This gives an idea of just how tough it is to turn a profit in this game, even with 450,000 listeners. Even if Hernandez was clean as a whistle, anyone who thought something like this was going to make it with the salaries alone they had committed to--not to mention Ofman's "posh hotel" stays that he enjoyed so much--was a damn fool.

(2) I think this should be the new model for North if he's still intent on starting this up again. He can have pledge drives like Channel 11 and give away gifts for contributions like his book, his CD, Spada coffee mugs, etc. Maybe a nice Chicagosportswebio tote bag.

(3) Can the media also stop all the gratuitous references to Mike North "inventing the webio concept"? Web broadcasting has been around in some form or another almost since the infancy of the Internet explosion.

This was my original idea for the WEBIO,which I had mentioned in an email to spaceball.
Don't give away your product,sale the content to subscribers for say 5/10 bucks a year.
Get some exclusive TV rights on the site also to like a UFC type of fight league or Chicago Slaughter football. Something small,that would not break the bank.
At least they could actually see money coming in. With some publicity,saling a subscription for 10 bucks to even 50,000 listeners is a good start.