Listen Live
Donate
 on air
Schedule

KCRW

Read & Explore

  • News
  • Entertainment
  • Food
  • Culture
  • Events

Listen

  • Live Radio
  • Music
  • Podcasts
  • Full Schedule

Information

  • About
  • Careers
  • Help / FAQ
  • Newsletters
  • Contact

Support

  • Become a Member
  • Become a VIP
  • Ways to Give
  • Shop
  • Member Perks

Become a Member

Donate to KCRW to support this cultural hub for music discovery, in-depth journalism, community storytelling, and free events. You'll become a KCRW Member and get a year of exclusive benefits.

DonateGive Monthly

Copyright 2025 KCRW. All rights reserved.

Report a Bug|Privacy Policy|Terms of Service|
Cookie Policy
|FCC Public Files

Back to Martini Shot

Martini Shot

Cancel my subscription

Rob pitches a simple app that would change the television business forever: something that makes it easy to cancel all of those channels we pay for.

  • rss
Download MP3
  • Share
By Rob Long • Nov 1, 2017 • 3m Listen

Here's how it used to work, in the television business: you'd make a show and hope that a lot of people watched it. Through a series of measurement techniques — some of which seemed then, and still seem now, a little suspect — you'd wake up the next day and find out how many people watched your show the night before, and roughly how old they were. From that you could deduce how much money they had and what they liked to spend it on, and if those numbers were high enough and rare enough, you'd have what was called a hit TV show. The only trick to the whole business was, do not let the customer change the channel...

  • https://images.ctfassets.net/2658fe8gbo8o/AvYox6VuEgcxpd20Xo9d3/769bca4fbf97bf022190f4813812c1e2/new-default.jpg?h=250

    Rob Long

    Host, 'Martini Shot'

    CultureArts
Back to Martini Shot