The Ultimate in Grasping Your Niche

You have to give it to Hasbro, they know how to market their goodies.

I grew up on GI Joe and Transformers as 30 minute commercials for toy products.

Last year, they cut a deal to basically buy a cable network. Nothing wrong with that. The fact that it WAS Discovery Kids has plenty of folks up in arms. But the channel had become a money loser, thus was born- the Hasbro TOY network.

I have NO issue with this. First, because I can share stuff I remember watching with my kids.

Second, with thousands of other channels with educational programming, if you have a problem- go to the next channel. Finally, the next channels are Nickelodeon and Disney, which are now nothing more than glorified ads for Disney and Nick products, yes?

This is the ultimate niche! Hasbro is turning a ton of their properties including board games into televised shows. See a cool list here. A good chunk of the Discovery programming survived, but the more interesting thing is how many old shows are in the mix. Batman from the 60s! Happy Days, Fraggle Rock, Doogie Howser, Wonder Years, and Family Ties all join new shows like the cool Family Game Night to really market to kids and families.

I suspect we might see more and more commercial entities getting to creating their own channels- why not? They have to compete with Youtube, traditional non-cable networks, and others. Why become beholden to all these other entities for airing your commercials when you can have a dedicated stream of the customers you want!

I can see it now- General Mills partners with FoodTV to create "Frankberry: The Series."

Are you working with others in your stream for such lucrative opportunities?

Check out my appearance on the The Toddcast Podcast

Click and watch the podcast recording of my appearance on the Toddcast Podcast Such a fun time!

New Life

It's weird, sad and slightly freeing. I've been headed towards a completely different life for a lot longer than I even knew. It took me a while to catch up to realize it was happening. Thankfully, I was cognizant enough to see it finally and mostly ready for it. It's amazing when you have the rug completely pulled out from underneath you. The adjustments are jarring. I made mistakes, but like most I learned from them, adapted, and tried my best to do better. The reason you see that truck next to a storage place? That's the sum of my life right now. Never take for granted that you will work hard for something or someone, and it will end up meaning very little. You are guaranteed nothing, owed nothing, promised nothing. Anything and everything can be taken away in a heartbeat. I wrote this to my kids a while back: I tried to be the best father I could be based on what I knew when I knew it and how I could. One of the lessons for your life needs to be: you need to b

Guiding Light

Most folk who know me, know I lost my father when I was 14 years old. However, before he passed, he shared a timeless secret with me—a practice that would shape my life in ways I could never have imagined. He didn't teach me meditation in the traditional sense, with incense and crossed legs. Instead, he showed me how to meditate by gazing at a lone light on the ceiling. When I was very young, I had night terrors that would wake me in the middle of the night. I'm sure it was terribly frustrating to calm a child from that. But my father had the way. I never understood how he came to the practice. But over the years, I've come to understand that my father's unique approach to meditation was, in fact, a profound lesson in mindfulness and presence. In a nearly pitch black room, he would tell me to find a speck of light, not unlike a star. Then focus. He would say, "Just watch the light, like you're watching a story unfold. Be the observer, not the thinker." I

Todd Lyden

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