A couple housekeeping items to start. Jay Leno joined me on The IAm Show. Jay talks The IAm Jay Leno App, about if he’ll be appearing on David Letterman’s new show, what it would take for him to host another talk show (think $100 million), whether or not he’ll do a TV show for Apple or Netflix next, why it’s so fun to watch Jay Leno’s Garage on The IAm Jay Leno’s Garage App, why the best way to buy tickets for his stand up comedy is on The IAm Jay Leno App and much more! You can choose to listen on iTunes, on the web or watch it on YouTube:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/codywillard/id863326890?mt=2
https://soundcloud.com/cody-willard/jay-leno-on-the-iam-show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTpw1QboIwk&t=2s

Post a cute picture of your kids or pets on in the Chat screen on The IAm Cody Willard App right now. Best picture, as judged by my wife, wins a signed Trading With Cody hat. Click here to download The IAm Cody Willard iPhone app: https://goo.gl/95QJXu and click here to download The IAm Cody Willard Android app: https://goo.gl/1EG3E1

All right, I want to make a couple moves today, just doing some portfolio maintenance and taking my own advice about doing some more trimming while stock markets and so many of our own stocks continue to hit new all-time highs.

First, I’m going to sell another 10% of my Axogen AXGN position. I still think there’s a lot of potential upside in years ahead, but the stock is up nearly 500% since we bought it less than two years ago. I’ve trimmed it repeatedly and am okay with continuing to lock in some small profits on this name if it’s going to climb this quickly.

I’m going to trim about 1/5 of my Lion’s Gate position. It’s up 3% today to new highs and we haven’t trimmed it even as it’s now rally more than 70% since I bought it 18 months ago. We have shares of LG’A and LG’B and I’ll trim 15-20% of each today.

Here’s a look back at something I wrote about streaming vs broadcast analysis a couple years ago when I was looking at buying Lion’s Gate…the stocks I’d mentioned in this article to buy, including Lion’s Gate, Sony, Apple, Google and Netflix, are all up huge in the last two years and the ones I’d mentioned were short candidates have really struggled.

Streaming vs broadcast analysis

November 2, 2015 by Cody Willard

For more than 10 years, I’ve been explaining that content is king as broadcast television is dying, and today young people especially, are increasingly “cutting the cord from cable.”

But it’s about to get even worse for satellite companies and the traditional broadcast television business model. Why? One of the last bastions of strength for broadcasters is “event programming” like sports, from daily baseball and basketball to weekly NFL games and underscored by the ever-growing one-day audience for the Super Bowl. The NFL makes tens of billions of dollars every year by selling the rights to its games.

Clearly, the broadcast channels like NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN are then turning around and selling ads for those broadcast games, also generating tens of billions of dollars in revenues and billions in earnings every year.

But as the world’s sports fans increasingly consume TV and movies on apps on their smartphones, tablets and TVs, the need to subscribe to a cable package that used to be the only way to get access to those TV shows and movies fades.

I still vividly remember how nobody even understood what I was talking about when I asked them if they were looking forward to the day when they would be able to stream any show at any time from anywhere back in 2006 when I did a Cody Cam segment on the future of video for Kudlow & Company on CNBC. I later explained to Carl Quintanilla that the cable and satellite companies were going to eventually be in big trouble because being able to stream even live TV events was a more efficient way for users to get much lower prices than you get with a traditional TV cable/satellite contract.

Well, with the wild success that Netflix (NFLX) is continuing to have and more recently the relative success of Yahoo! (YHOO) live-streaming the Jaguars vs. Bills NFL game in London around the world, everybody finally gets it. But it’s still very early in this media world tectonic plate shifting. The impact that streaming has had so far on broadcast TV is minimal. Streaming vs. broadcast is in the first inning, about equivalent to the limited but soon to be outsized impact that the Internet had on newspapers back 15 years ago when everybody realized that the Internet would forever revolutionize the newspaper business.

If the NFL can directly reach billions of people on their smart devices, streaming boxes and smart TVs, why wouldn’t they go ahead and cut out the middle man, the broadcast networks? Ten years from now, it’s likely we’ll all tune in to the Super Bowl on the NFL Android/iOS app using the HD projector in our smartphone (or smartwatch or other small wearable projector device) to stream it live on a 6-by-6-foot clear space on your living room wall. And the NFL itself will eventually be selling subscriptions for direct access to all its content and games and capturing the tens of billions of ad dollars spent from companies advertising in that content.

You already see some of this happening as the NFL Network, NFL Red Zone and other major sports leagues create their own cable subscription networks and increasingly stream their product (games included) on apps and websites.

Cable at least has the upside of being a broadband pipe to the home and business. But that’s not going to be enough to offset the losses of cable TV subscriber fees. And anyway, cable broadband technology, with its expensive trenching and wiring costs, will lose to wireless over the long term.

Wireless is going to the dominant means of broadband connectivity in future decades, too. Distribution costs via streaming over a broadband pipe you’re already paying a set monthly fee for, whether via wireless or cable or DSL/Wi-Fi, are going to zero vs. paying $100-$200 a month in cable and satellite bills. We’re talking about a slow-motion movement that will pick up steam in small part due to the surprising success of the Yahoo! NFL live stream, but especially because of the ongoing outsized success of Netflix.

So broadcast is truly dying. Streaming is the future. And it’s not too late to get on the right side of both trends. It’s this very concept that has always kept me wanting to invest in content owners, rather than distributors.

Netflix, with all its original programming plus the app platform, is both. And speaking of Netflix, what if Netflix gets into streaming live sporting events?

ESPN is at least leveraging this new trend and allowing users of its Watch ESPN app to stream live events already. I also use Dish’s (DISH) Sling service to stream games including the NFL RedZone channel on my iPad or iPhone when I’m on the go, but its quality of signal is lacking. Believe it or not, back in early 2007, I actually also used Sling to show myself being streamed live on CNBC back on Kudlow & Company, too, using it as an example of the future.

Some conclusions then: Stick with companies like Netflix that are investing in their apps (and original content) because the future for all forms of media increasingly will center around apps rather than sites, channels or stations. Stick with content owners like Sony(SNE) or Lions Gate (LGF). Keep investing in the smart-device platforms like Google’s(GOOGL) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iOS. Stay away from (or maybe get short) satellite broadcasters of all sorts from DISH Network (DISH) to AT&T (T) to Sirius XM. It might be time to take a look at Akamai (AKAM), which is getting slammed after a disappointing earnings report recently and I am indeed digging into that name. Losers include satellite and broadcast TV companies, which has me digging into the potential of shorting AT&T (T), though the nearly 6% yield there has me sidelined for now.