Earning calls are super fascinating when you think about it; For multiple hours a quarter we tune in with the thousands of other tech bloggers to dissect the financials of the public companies we spend our lives covering. Here at TC we’ve started calling covering these calls “putting our Rao face on,” inspired by our star senior editor Leena Rao, who is just amazing at covering earnings.
Like any other collective experience, these calls have their own unique culture; Yahoo earnings calls were particularly hilarious back when Carol Bartz was CEO (“I’m going to go get a Diet Coke,” I recall her randomly interjecting with once). And I’ve played more than one drinking game with fellow bloggers on the Google call (Larry Page says “excited,” A LOT. Like so much that this happened.).
Anyways today’s Apple call was seemingly uneventful, just a bunch of white guys talking about iPads and China and cash money dollar dollar bills y’all until we got to the end, when the call stopped and the most bizarre song started playing abruptly, “IT’S SO NICE TO BE HAPPY/ SHALALALALALALA/HAPPY/IT’S SO NICE TO BE HAPPY.” The song is by, strangely enough, an artist called Alexia, who people @Reply me about a lot, because of the reason that you think.
Anyways, I (seriously) just emailed Apple press about who was responsible for that bizarre and disturbing choice of Outro music (watch the video above, it’s super weird), because yeah, as Jay Yarow points out, that would have never happened while Jobs was still around. They haven’t gotten back to me yet, probably because they’re busy making fun of me for caring like the rest of the TC writing team.
(I’ll keep you posted when/if they do.)
https://twitter.com/#!/dougmorton/status/194909693406232577
https://twitter.com/#!/macosken/status/194910242742603777
https://twitter.com/#!/fromedome/status/194909793134198784
https://twitter.com/#!/jyarow/status/194909030391627777
https://twitter.com/#!/jyarow/status/194909279105466368
https://twitter.com/#!/alexia_tsotsis/status/194910618183147521
https://twitter.com/#!/connerrrr/status/194931582430216192