Massachusetts Mulls Giving Video Industry A Break

Helping Companies Help the State?

With the economy in the tank, financial services firms struggling and limited success courting bio-tech firms, some in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have floated the idea of giving video industry companies a tax break/breaks to drive their evolution.

I know. Folks are repulsed by tax breaks for huge and very profitable conglomerates, but the difference here is that we’re talking about relatively tiny companies that are, of course, hit hardest by big increases in everything from fuel to ... fill-in-the-blank.

The state is still struggling with the reality that most of its corporate headquarters for household name companies (Bose, Staples, Genzyme, International Paper) have nothing to do with telecom, with others having left or been acquired by outsiders. That leaves what exactly? Answer: not as much as anyone here seems comfortable with.

Video is a burgeoning market regardless of where a company is in the long ecosystem needed to deliver it to the home, handset or PC. And don’t forget video is more than network hardware and transport, it’s also billing and OSS, testing and measurement, system management, applications, Web sites and content creation and management.

As a Massachussets resident, I don’t see where helping the companies in this industry could be a bad thing. Of course, I’m also tired of reading weekly about small to medium businesses layoffs and/or closures.

At the highest of levels, the key challenge would seem to be dealing with other promising, but challenged, industries that may also want help from the state. A fair and equitable approach to helping those who need it is paramount.

Maybe it’s just the underdog, “Rocky vs. Apollo Creed” thing with me. I see the Feds rushing to bail out blue-blood Wall Street firms and banks that not only lost big time financially, but also did grave damage to the country in the housing department and ... well ... I get to thinking that I’d rather help smaller companies trying to do things the right way, than reward huge ones for making really bad decisions and doing damage to the business world.

Most every state is trying to make it easier for companies to do business – and stay in business – in very troubling economic times. That’s why helping out companies in the video industry seems like a pretty good general idea to me.

That’s just my humble (subjective) opinion. What’s yours?

Stay tuned ...

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines