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More Antitrust Action (12/6/99)
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"Redmond Justice" may be a fun-filled ride of thrills and chills, but if it's just not enough entertainment to slake your thirst for antitrust drama, fear not: there's a spin-off on the horizon. Lackeys working closely with the creative team report that the working title is "Cupertino Justice," though the action will probably take place primarily in distant, exotic lands in hopes of boosting ratings. Remember when Saved By The Bell went to Hawaii? Ratings gold! But Hawaii's been overdone in the "exotic TV locale" department (everything after the Brady Bunch Tiki God episodes was derivative), so the producers are thinking about making "Cupertino Justice" into "Tokyo Justice" instead. Faithful viewer Tim Rzeznik noted that Bloomberg has an abstract of the first episode.
As you have probably guessed, this latest antitrust project involves our hero, Apple Computer, and its hijinks in the Land of the Rising Sun. But don't go jumping to conclusions-- this isn't about Apple's lawsuit against Sotec for stealing the iMac's design. Nope, this time it's Apple in hot water. In the gripping, edge-of-your-seat pilot episode, the Japanese Fair Trade Commission raids the offices of Apple Japan Inc. and its "affiliated wholesalers," searching for evidence to support charges of price-fixing. See, price-fixing is illegal here in the States, too, but Apple doesn't force resellers to comply with its "minimum advertised prices" (MAP). Instead, it's more like an "incentive program"; resellers who stay above MAP are rewarded with "co-op funds," which help the reseller pay for its Mac advertising. What's that you say? Sounds like a bribe? Well, that's not for you or us to decide, and so far the FTC here on Apple's native soil hasn't sent in the SWAT teams.
In Japan, however, apparently it's a different story. The Japanese FTC suspects that Apple Japan "violated antimonopoly laws by forcing retailers to sell its products at designated prices." Unfortunately, without a script, we don't have any details beyond that. Is Apple Japan just withholding co-op funds from MAP-breakers, like here in the States, or is it a darker scenario involving the Yakuza and those pesky ninjas that surface every so often on AtAT? We can't say for sure, but with a twenty-office raid in the shooting script, it sure sounds like something fishy's going down in Tokyo, and it ain't the sushi...
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/6/99 episode: December 6, 1999: "Redmond Justice" not enough for you? Then brace yourself as "Cupertino Justice" heads to Japan. Meanwhile, Future Power's entire staff takes the word "clueless" to new and interesting heights, and all you need are BusinessWeek's review of the WebPC and an application that does global search and replace, and you, too, can enjoy a stroll down Memory Lane...
Other scenes from that episode: 1955: Asleep At The Server (12/6/99) It's like seeing a bridge collapse and then sticking around to watch the authorities haul off the debris; we just can't stop checking the Future Power web site to see how long it takes them to fix the hack... 1956: Global Search & Replace (12/6/99) Wow, what a weird feeling of déjà vu! We just read BusinessWeek's review of the WebPC (kindly forwarded to us by faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri). The WebPC, of course, is Dell's "cool" new consumer computer, and as we scan through this review, we inexplicably get the feeling we've read all this before...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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