Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Streaming Wars: From Broadcast.com to the Future of Digital Media by Patrick Seaman.  This book just dropped last June and how I found it is an interesting story.  I am currently working on Laws of Life – Book Two.  I was working on a chapter this weekend where I included some information about my work with the author Patrick Seaman back in 1999-2000.  Wanting to be sure I got some of the timeline stuff correct given it is 25 years ago, I looked up what Patrick was up to today.

I found that he just dropped this book a couple months ago and immediately ordered it.  Now for me there is a lot of nostalgia in this.  I was into early innovations on the internet a lot in the 90s, then I did several datacenter designs for Broadcast when Patrick was there.  I also ended up doing a design for Patrick’s house right after the Yahoo buyout.  At the time you didn’t just slap in a wireless router so we did a full cable design for his home including cabling not just for computers but for a full-on recording studio.

I got to talk to him quite a bit during and after all this.  Patrick is a solid guy and the guy who really built what made Broadcast.com a success.  Here’s the thing.  When Mark Cuban sold Broadcast to Yahoo, Yahoo, bluntly, screwed the pooch with it.  So I have heard people say dumb things like, “Mark Cuban became a billionaire by selling domain name”.  Not only is that dumb it misses an incredible story about business, technology and disruption.

The truth about Broadcast.com is that it was one of the only dot com boom companies that actually had solid revenue, solid sales, solid marketing and a solid product.  Broadcast was the first streaming service provider in the world.  Their model was quite impressive really.  They streamed live sporting events, radio station content and a full library of on demand content.  That is what Yahoo bought for 5 billion dollars and then ruined.  Oh yea and Broadcast did all this in the days of 56K dial up internet!

This book begins in those early years and tells the story of how Broadcast came to be and how Patrick was actually Broadcast’s first official employee.  How he would fly into cities for projects and have to jerry rig products from Radio Shack to get streams to work, and in fact did get it to work.  How the company rapidly grew into something amazing.

You will also get to read about fun things like how Patrick at times had to “break into” Mark Cuban’s house to reboot servers.  Hint – It was really Mark’s brother’s fault.  You can read how Patrick and his team did the first ever live stream of an NFL Super Bowl.  We are talking point to multi point broadcasting to 500,000 people over dial up.

The reality is what Broadcast built had the potential to become one of the most significant technological disruptions of the modern era.  Before there was Netflix and dozens of streaming services, before you could just tick a button on Youtube or Facebook and “go live” Broadcast was already doing a lot of it.

So who will love this book?  First I think anyone who was an adult in the mid 90s or earlier that watched the technology evolve will love going back through the history.  The book doesn’t stop where Broadcast.com ended, it comes right up the current day.  It is hard to remember that the start date of the timeline in this book being 1995 was 30 years ago now.  Any person interested in technology and business will love this book.   The Broadcast business model was many years before its time.  It isn’t just about the tech it is about the deals that had to be made with content libraries, NFL teams, investors, radio stations and more. For younger people who do not remember dial up, trust me read this book and you will have a new appreciation for the technology you have today.

In other words it is a book for everyone.  I will say if you like the documentaries they do about the 80s the 90s etc. on TV you will really enjoy this book.  I think we can all agree the most interesting history to explore is often the history we ourselves lived through.  And if you enjoy this show and have heard me talk over the years about my time in telecommunications, outside plant construction and data center design, this will really give all the stuff I talk about a lot more context.

I will end with one more thing, reading how one company changed everything by simply coming up with an idea and executing it will open your mind to current opportunity.  I actually have come up with an entirely new idea I am thinking of developing after reading this book.  Something that has been sitting right there all along but I just never really saw before.  So if you are an innovator looking for inspiration definitely grab a copy of this bill.

So check out Streaming Wars: From Broadcast.com to the Future of Digital Media by Patrick Seaman today. It is modern tech history, business brilliance and inspiration all in one.  Pretty tall order for a business book but Patrick delivered it.

 * Remember, you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com.