Tuesday 26 April 2005

NHL Bombshell!
NHL Owners Prepared To Go With Robot Players in 2005
Players Stunned, Outraged; Issued Ultimatum To Take CBA

The NHL owners stunned its Players Association yesterday, abruptly halting the recently restarted talks with an ultimatum - Take the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) or the league opens with robot players in the Fall of 2005.

Commission Gary Bettman gave the order to NHLPA President Bob Goodnow in a late afternoon session. Goodnow, visibly shaken, sat stunned as Bettman calmly walked out of the room, witnesses say.

The NHL was the first North American sports association to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute.

The Players Association was clearly caught off-guard. Hanging over the negotiations was the prospect that the owners would use replacement players, from their minor league system and open tryouts, to start the 2005-2006 season in the event an agreement wasn't reached. The use of robots was never looked at.

Bettman declined comment last night. A spokesman for the NHL owners stated that the owners began looking at robots, fairly recently, with the news Qatar is switching to robots for their camel races and that this year's Kentucky Derby considered robot jockeys (See The Garlic, Friday 15 April: Derby Considers Child Jockeys From Qatar).

The nation of Qatar recently, and successfully, replaced its child camel jockeys with robots.

Very quietly, a small committee of owners was put in place to study the use of robots for NHL play. They met with the Swiss manufacturer to discuss the needs, which included hard-hitting and rough play, as well as skilled and finessed passing and shooting. The manufacturer indicated that their robots could be adjusted for the physical nature of the NHL play and it was a matter of reprogramming their software to accommodate the skills needed.

Reportedly, an exhibition game was played, in a small town in Northern Italy, pitting a team of robots against a Swiss junior team and the robots competed surprisingly well, losing by a score of 6-5. The owners, noting the crisp, pinpoint passing by the robots, walked away satisfied that they could recommend the move to robots to the other owners.

The owners deferred questions as to how records would be kept, being, would the existing records be broken by robots or if the league would start with a blank slate.

The NHLPA also refused comment last night. Reports indicate that they have hastily called a meeting, bringing in current stars, as well as retired former greats, to strategize a response to the owners and to condemn the use of robots to replace them. It was said, they are targeting August as having a proposal in place to counter the owners offer.

Said one owner, who wished to stay anonymous, on hearing the news on using robots;

"I guess, unless you program them, we won't have any candy-asses or big ego jerks anymore"


Amazon Earnings Due Today; Modest Bump Up
Adjusts DVD Profits To Come Early in 2017; Overall Black Ink in 2045

Amazon.Com, the on-line retailer, will be reporting its quarterly results at the end of today's market session and CEO Jeff Bezos predicts that all will be happy

After the dismal last quarter, in which Amazon missed its estimated earnings by a significant margin, analysts are anticipating a modest bump, perhaps in the 25-cent-a-share range, with revenue growing by roughly 20% to nearly $2-billion.

Last year Amazon was NASDAQ's best performing stock

Bezos gave analyst a bit of surprise when he adjusted the sales projections for Amazon's anticipated entry in the DVD rental market.

Amazon has reached out to its competitors, including Blockbuster Inc and Netflix Inc, seeking a partnership. Amazon has such revenue sharing agreements with other major retailers, like Target, The Gap, Toy's 'R Us and Circuit City (Ed.Note: Amazon recently ended it's partnership with Circuit City and is in litigation with Toys 'R Us to end their agreement)

Amazon originally pegged profit for DVD sales in 2025. However, with a pending partnership, and factors that Amazon cites, such as the continued growth of digital entertainment, Bezos felt that profits will likely come sooner, in 2017.

Bezos kept in place the overall profit for Amazon coming in 2045.