Archive for July 7th, 2009

IBM consults over pension closure
Computer giant IBM is consulting on the closure of its defined benefit pension scheme to current members in its UK workforce, the BBC understands.More than a quarter of IBM’s 20,000 UK staff will be affected as the scheme closed to new members a few years ago. In an email to staff, IBM’s UK and Ireland general manager Brendon Riley said the plans were caused by rapidly-rising costs and liabilities. The scheme was putting pressure on the firm’s competitiveness, he added. The email read: “For IBM UK also, the rapidly-rising costs and liabilities associated with the provision of defined benefit pensions is placing pressure on our long-term ability to invest for future growth and operate in an intensely competitive global market.” Mr Riley said he understood the changes would be sensitive and difficult for many but were responsible and necessary to ensure IBM UK’s future industry leadership. The announcement follows recent news that Barclays bank is to stop 18,000 staff contributing any more money to its defined benefit scheme. Firms have also been closing final salary pension schemes to save money. In May, computer services firm Fujitsu said it was planning to close its final salary pension scheme. In June, MGM Advantage – using data from the TUC and the Office for National Statistics – estimated that employers have saved themselves 4.5bn by closing final salary pension schemes.
Source:BBC

NEW YORK (CNN) — After years of tweaking and rewording agreements, commercial Webcasters have agreed to royalty rates for music they stream online, according to a statement from SoundExchange, a not-for-profit organization that collects and distributes digital music royalties. The terms of the agreement are complex. The formula, which includes revenue sharing and song monitoring, is considered experimental, however “pureplay” Webcasters say the new terms are viable. 0:00
/2:40The future of radio”Pureplay” Webcasters include Internet radio Web sites and others who stream music online. “For this we are truly thankful and want to express our deepest gratitude to everyone involved,” Pandora Internet radio founder Tim Westergren wrote on the Pandora blog. Pandora is one of the largest Internet radio sites with about 30 million registered listeners, according to Westergren. Under the new terms, “pureplay” Webcasters agree to pay artists and rights owners (through SoundExchange) a minimum percentage of all their U.S. revenues up to 25% and to pay a more significant annual minimum royalty. The agreement provides for three rate classes, under which Webcasters can choose alternative rate structures. “Pureplay” Webcasters breathed a collective sigh of relief once the agreement was announced because many feel the new deal will replace an outdated and unfair rates set by a 2007 issued by the Copyright Royalty Board. “This is an agreement we’re proud of because it shows that both sides can address the business concerns of the Webcasters while giving artists and copyright holders the potential to share in the revenue growth of webcasters,” said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange. Rate classes and fees. Under the new agreement, there will be rate classes: Larger “pureplay” services will pay the top rate, 25% of total revenue. They must also agree to provide more comprehensive reporting about the sound recordings used than regulations currently require, according to the statement. Through 2014, small pureplay Webcasters will have the option of paying the greater of a percentage of revenue or a percentage of expenses and in certain circumstances have less stringent play list reporting requirements in return for payment of an additional “proxy fee.” Bundled, syndicated or subscription services will pay per-performance fees that are the same as those contained in an agreement concluded earlier in the year by SoundExchange with the National Association of Broadcasters. All pureplay Webcasters would pay an annual minimum fee of 25,000 that can then be applied to their royalties owed. Today’s announcement follows agreements concluded earlier in the year by SoundExchange with the National Association of Broadcasters for over-the-air radio stations that stream on the Internet, with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and with other small commercial Webcasters. “This is good for music,” said Dennis Wharton, the executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters. “It sets a rate where artists will receive royalities for the music they produce.”Wharton said although these “pureplay” Webcasts are popular, he doesn’t see this decision affecting local radio stations. He said the 235,000,000 people who listen to the radio every day will probably stick with it. “It’s hard to beat a free and local option,” he said.

Source:CNN

(Fortune Magazine) — I can give you three reasons I shouldn’t be reviewing Cooperstown Confidential, by Zev Chafets (Bloomsbury). First, Chafets and I discussed his book a few years ago while he was doing research. Second, he says some nice things about me in a footnote. And third, I’m in the grip of a raging case of envy. But please — let’s try to look past all this. Cooperstown Confidential brims with excellent reporting, cogent analysis, and delicious dish. At times it’s awfully funny (one widely respected player was married, writes Chafets, “but he wasn’t a fanatic about it”). And it demonstrates that the Hall of Fame is more hollow than hallowed. We’re not talking about the fine museum that anchors Main Street in lovely little Cooperstown, N.Y. This book is about the roster of immortals, and how it has been assembled. Sure, numbers count — RBIs, ERAs, etc. — but Chafets demonstrates that cronyism, prejudice, and financial self-interest play a huge part as well. He addresses a variety of factors that have influenced the people who make (and unmake and remake and unremake) the rules. In 2009, in the looming shadows cast by Clemens and Bonds, the rule that matters most is No. 5, the one about character. It’s been used to keep out witnesses to gambling (Joe Jackson) and gamblers themselves (Pete Rose) but has somehow not been applied to cheaters (Gaylord Perry), racists (Cap Anson), sociopaths (Lefty Grove), and cheating racist sociopaths (Ty Cobb). Nor to a quantity of drunks, drug users, and other lowlifes that could fill the reservation book at Hazelden. About those druggies: Most people who follow baseball closely suspect that a large share of Hall members from the ’70s and ’80s got their games up with the help of amphetamines. But Chafets has turned up evidence that steroids go back as far as the 1950s. 0:00
/2:51Tennis, a boon to WimbledonHis source is The Long Season, pitcher-writer Jim Brosnan’s 1959 classic about life in the big leagues. No one besides Chafets appears to have read it since the steroid scandal broke. Otherwise, we’d all be familiar with Brosnan’s matter-of-fact description of the Cardinals’ trainer handing out uppers (for energy), downers (for a pitcher concerned about his control), and a potent glucocorticosteroid called Decadron. From Brosnan’s tone, it’s obvious it was an everyday practice. Cooperstown Confidential does include a few factual stumbles. Worse — as far as this Cubs fan is concerned — the author’s conviction that Steve Garvey should enter the Hall before Andre Dawson is a capital offense. But I’ll let him get away with those missteps. Zev Chafets hits it out of the park, and he doesn’t cheat.

NEW YORK: General Motors’ rapid trip through bankruptcy is almost done. Now comes the hard part.To start, the automaker has to stem a decades-long slide in U.S. market share.Despite having made significant progress closing the labor cost gap, GM still faces significant costs, such as those for underfunded pension plans, not faced by its nonunion Asia rivals.It also needs to turn around consumer opinions about the quality and fuel efficiency of its vehicles, and meet tough new fuel economy requirements.And on top of all that, it has to hope that the U.S. economy turns around and that the overall industry starts to recover.Any one of those obstacles would be difficult for a company that has been as weakened as GM (GMGMQ). The need to do all of them is one reason why there are many in the industry who still doubt its long-term viability, despite all it did to shed tens of billions in liabilities, along with unwanted factories, dealerships and brands, during bankruptcy. “They’re coming out with a clean balance sheet and new cost structure. But they’re going to continue to struggle in the short to medium term, particularly with the U.S. market,” said Stephen Spivey, senior auto analyst for business consultant Frost & Sullivan. “It’s way too early to say if they’ve done enough in bankruptcy.”Market share declinesEven experts hopeful that GM will emerge from bankruptcy a competitive company admit the company needs to stop the long-term decline in market share. A decade ago, GM sold 29% of all vehicles sold in the United States; today it’s less than 20%.”The share loss isn’t going to stop overnight, but it has to stop at some point for the company to be truly viable,” said Steve Rattner, the Treasury Department’s chief adviser on the bailouts of GM and Chrysler Group. “GM has to be competitive in the U.S. market for this plan to work.”While Rattner thinks that GM does have good cars in the pipeline, not everyone is so confident.0:00
/09:21One-on-one with GM’s CEO”Can they put out less products but more successful products? The jury will still be out on that for a couple of years at least,” said Bob Schulz, Standard & Poor’s senior auto credit analyst. “A product pipeline doesn’t turn on a dime.”Others are more confident of GM’s plans, including a new small car due next year — the Chevrolet Cruze — and the plug-in Chevy Volt later in the year. “Their product portfolio in my opinion was on a good trajectory,” said Michael Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts for auto consultant CSM Worldwide.But even the Malibu sedan, a critical success that won car of the year honors a year ago, still badly lags the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord in sales. That just demonstrates the problem with turning around GM sales.”Everybody acknowledges that the Malibu is a superior product, but you can’t just jump from 150,000 sales to 400,000 overnight,” said Tom Libby, president of the Society of Automotive Analysts.Labor costsThe United Auto Workers union gave GM and Detroit rivals Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) and Chrysler Group tremendous cost savings in recent contracts. The union agreed to a two-tier wage structure for new hires. It also eliminated a jobs bank that continued to pay laid off workers during the life of a contract.Most importantly the UAW agreed to a plan to shift responsibility for retiree health care costs away from the companies to union-controlled trust funds. And it then allowed GM and Chrysler to essentially fund those trust funds with company stock rather than cash.But the gap GM suffers in labor costs with its nonunion rivals, while greatly reduced, is not forgotten. Health care costs for active employees are still significantly higher than at the U.S. plants of Asian automakers, which have younger workforces, let alone overseas auto plants where the governments pay for health care.And GM still has obligations for U.S. pension plans that are now underfunded, mostly because the company repeatedly used plan assets to pay for buyout packages for tens of thousands of workers as it slashed staffing in recent years.The pension plans were underfunded by 13.6 billion at the end of 2008, a gap that may well have grown with some additional buyouts since then.Many times a company in bankruptcy can save a lot of money by shedding its pension obligations as well, passing them off to the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. Such a move by either GM or Chrysler would have prompted a battle with the UAW. And the Obama administration, whose funding was keeping both companies alive, didn’t want to go down that path.While GM said it doesn’t anticipate needing to make contributions to the plans soon, future funding needs could cause problems down the road. It was a pension shortfall that caused GM to sell many of the 27 billion in unsecured bonds that it used the bankruptcy process to shed.”Maybe it’s the third rail nobody wants to touch, but it’s the key to these companies being healthy long-term,” said Jeffrey Manning, managing director of investment bank Trenwith Securities LLP, specializing in bankruptcy and restructuring. “You’ve left these anchors on both of these businesses.”Other challengesMarket share losses aren’t the only problem dogging GM. There’s the recession, rising unemployment and continued tight credit.CSM’s forecast for new vehicle sales calls for 2009 U.S. industrywide sales to come in below 10 million vehicles; that would be the worst sales performance in decades. And it projects sales of barely more than 11 million next year.GM and Treasury officials insist the cost-cutting will allow the company to break even at those depressed sales levels. But that will be difficult to do, and a strong rebound in profits isn’t likely.Even before the plunge in auto sales, high gas prices had caused American consumers to start to shun pickup trucks and SUVs — GM’s strength, and its source of profits back when it was making money — for sedans and smaller cars instead. In 2008, cars outsold light trucks for the first time since 2000. That has been the case this year as well, even with lower sales.”The key for everybody, not just GM, is to consistently make money on the sale of small cars in the U.S. market,” said CSM’s Robinet. “That’s a tall order, particularly for the U.S. automakers.And if GM does produce a stronger line of competitive fuel efficient vehicles, it will be harder for the company because of the long-held perception that it is primarily a pickup and SUV maker, said Jesse Toprak, an auto sales analyst with Edmunds.com.”Even if GM had the same portfolio mix as Honda, GM would be at a disadvantage simply because of this perception problem,” he said.Finally, even if fuel prices don’t rebound to the record 4 a gallon level of a year ago, tougher fuel economy standards being imposed by the Obama administration will require average fuel efficiency of 35.5 miles per gallon.”Long term, the [fuel economy rules] do move the industry in the direction of Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC),” said Libby.

NEW YORK: Obama’s Justice Department is getting serious about its antitrust crackdown, but what will that mean for consumers?In the past three months, the DOJ has announced investigations into Google’s (GOOG, Fortune 500) book search program and payments by brand-name drugmakers to companies that make generics.Reports also circulated last month that there was a preliminary investigation underway of hiring practices at Big Tech companies, including Google, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and Genentech. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that telecom market leaders Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) and AT&T (T, Fortune 500) were under the microscope. The companies said they weren’t aware of any investigation and the Justice Department declined to comment.The investigations mark an about-face from the Bush administration’s more laissez-faire approach to antitrust. In May, Christine Varney, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, laid out the Obama administration’s policy, saying the government agency would be “aggressively pursuing” monopoly and antitrust cases against dominant companies to “ensure the American consumer’s access to the best products at the lowest prices.”What it all means for you. Some experts say targeting dominant companies engaged in anti-competitive practices helps consumers, since increased competition usually results in lower prices. “Antitrust is just a fancy word for consumer protection,” said Richard Brosnick an antitrust attorney at Butzel Long. “These investigations are intended to be pro-consumer by preventing exclusive deals that heighten prices or reduce selection.”But others say clamping down on antitrust — especially in a recession — will only hurt consumers. They argue that targeting big companies will hamper innovation and limit choice for consumers. “I don’t think there’s ever a time to go after successful businesses that are helping the public,” said James Gattuso, senior fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. “The best system is where consumers decide for themselves. But by cracking down on ill-advised antitrust laws, you are telling companies, ‘Don’t make investments, don’t try to be successful and help consumers.’ “Gattuso also believes that the Obama administration’s antitrust policies could slow an economic rebound. “There’s a very strong chance it could hurt the economic recovery, which won’t come from Washington by spending money out of Congress, but by people putting their own savings into new ideas that they hope will be successful,” he said. Drilling into telecom. If the telecom investigation is indeed taking place, experts say the government may investigate exclusivity deals like the one Apple has with AT&T for the iPhone.Through that deal, iPhone consumers’ choice in wireless provider is limited to AT&T, and AT&T can set its service costs without a worry that competitors will undercut them. RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry smartphone, on the other hand, is available on all carriers, and has benefited from providers’ promotions, including Verizon’s buy-one-BlackBerry-get-one-free deal.”Exclusivity deals like Apple and AT&T led some consumers to hack into their iPhones,” said Brosnick. “There will be a lot more scrutiny going forward when it comes to those kinds of deals.”0:00
/1:17EU fines Intel 1.45 billionSome believe that just the threat of an investigation into the telecom industry will help lower prices and provide consumers with more control over their phone plans.”The U.S. and Canadian markets in particular have very limited price-based competition among carriers,” said Andy Castonguay director of mobile and access devices research at Yankee Group. “Before the government gets involved in any antitrust issues, operators will have to take very tactical and practical measures to avoid governmental intervention.”Castonguay said government pressure could lead companies to change their payment structures so that overage charges would be a thing of the past. For example, a customer with a 450-minute plan that uses 650 minutes could be automatically bumped up to a 700-minute plan, which costs, say, 10 more per month, rather than 45 cents per extra minute charge, which would cost 90.He also said the telecom industry could be forced to make it easier to switch phones to rivals’ networks or alert users before they are charged for going over their minutes.”There are a number of things that are bizarre about mobile industry,” said Castonguay. “To the extent that they can implement these tactics, they would come across as much more fair and reasonable.”Still, others argue if the telecom and wireless industry is indeed in need of a crackdown, it should come from consumers.”In the wireless industry, there is more choice than in most industries,” said Gattuso. “Consumers have been able to choose what they want and benefit from that choice. Antitrust should be confined to where that choice doesn’t exist.”

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Reuters) — A company run by former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg did not breach a trust when it ended an executive retirement scheme at the insurer more than four years ago, a federal jury ruled on Tuesday.The final decision in the case between American International Group Inc. (AIG, Fortune 500) and Starr International, heard over the past three weeks in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, will be made by Judge Jed Rakoff, and is expected at the latest by next month.AIG had sought to establish that there was the creation of an oral trust in 1970, entrusting Starr International to use the block of AIG shares acquired in a company restructuring to fund an executive retirement scheme for generations of AIG employees. It had charged Starr International breached that trust, and with a second claim of conversion related to sales of the stock for the company’s own use.The eight-person jury returned their verdict after 4-1/2 hours of deliberation. It ruled Starr was not liable on the two claims.Rakoff said in court on Tuesday he would take the jury’s determination “very seriously” in coming to his own decision.The verdict is a personal vindication for Greenberg, 84, who was forced out of American International Group Inc. after 38 years as CEO when he did not cooperate with an internal investigation into accounting practices at the insurer that once claimed global dominance.AIG said in a statement after the jury announced its verdict that it was “disappointed.”"We await the court’s final ruling. We continue to believe in the merits of our claims,” the statement said.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Digg, the once-hot social news website, has become the middle child of the premiere web 2.0 companies.Facebook has attracted an older, loyal following, and Twitter is the darling of tech and media circles. Now Digg is pushing through growing pains — the company is adding a slew of new features and its executives are aggressively promoting the site — in the hopes of winning more users and recapturing some of its earlier buzz.CEO Jay Adelson says Digg’s overhaul of new features will build a stronger experience for its current 36 million users — and attract newcomers.”I want Digg to be an international force in providing a global pulse of what’s happening in the world,” Adelson says. “All our focus is on users of the community and giving them what they want.”0:00
/4:19Andreessen launches fundThe features Digg has rolled out in the past few months reflect this: creating story suggestions, making it searchable and enabling a toolbar. But two of the projects under development — fresh efforts to attract online advertising and a push to become a “real time” service (a la Twitter) — seem squarely aimed at making sure Digg remains relevant to marketers and influencers alike.During its launch five years ago, Digg was credited with redefining the way people read online news. Founder and chief architect Kevin Rose gave the power back to the people. A simple “digg” meant the reader liked the story and the piece with the most “diggs” made its way onto the home page. To date, about 20,000 stories are submitted a day, 150 of which make it onto the home page.Traffic has soared, quadrupling from 2006, and now, most news sites let readers “digg” a story. It has definitely proven its place on the Internet, even creating what is commonly referred to as the “Digg” effect, where sites temporarily crash because Digg directs so many readers there. It was considered revolutionary.Much has happened in the 2.0 world since. That’s not to say Digg isn’t loved — the geek squad still chases and screams after Rose like he’s Brad Pitt — but Digg just isn’t…”it” now.”They don’t have that sort of vibe of being the darling of Silicon Valley anymore,” said Charlene Li, digital strategy thought leader of Altimeter Group. “The problem is people don’t think about going to Digg. They go to Facebook and Twitter.”And that’s the strange and tough position Digg is in. It’s doing well — with tens of billions of Digg button impressions a month — but all day long the Internet world hears how great Twitter is at this or how wonderful Facebook did that. It’s always Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, as Jan Brady would say.Even though its reach has gotten broader and bigger through the years, Digg’s growth or traffic numbers don’t really stack up next to Facebook and Twitter. In May, Digg came in at the 301st most-visited site in the country, compared with Twitter at 42 and Facebook at five, according to Hitwise, an online traffic measuring company. (Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) is number one.)It’s not entirely fair to compare Digg to these two social media giants, which both CEO Jay Adelson and analysts say serve a different purpose. With Facebook and Twitter, that’s a place to engage in conversation, while Digg is more a bookmarking and aggregation tool.By comparing Digg to its bigger (and different) Web 2.0 brethren, it’s easy to forget that Digg is the champ in its division — and pounding the competition. Digg had almost 25 million unique visitors worldwide in May, according to ComScore figures, slaughtering its closest rival Yahoo Buzz, which only had 9 million visitors for the same month.Digg stays above the fray because of its dedicated user base and strong algorithms that have made “tons of imitators fall by the wayside,” Li says.That’s why they’ve gotten so much attention over potential acquirers through the years. Persistent speculation about possible deals with Google and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) penetrated the web (rumors ranged from 200 to 300 million), and then there was talk that Digg might go public. But Digg’s done with all that for now, saying all the talk was too much of a “distraction” from work, and now Digg’s concentrating on its new features.Its lineup includes Digg Ads, which industry analyst Josh Bernoff says is “brilliant,” where users can Digg or “Bury” ads in the same fashion that they do with stories now. These sponsored placements will rotate through what is commonly referred to as the “river,” or Digg’s home page. Some power users are already skeptical of how it’ll change Digg’s appearance and wonder if it’ll actually work, considering how easy it is to Bury on the site. Either way, Digg’s already got big names like Intel involved, and Bernoff says Digg Ads will finally give advertisers an opportunity to get direct, immediate feedback.”If you have an ad that is pretty interesting or attractive, you’ll have an opportunity to be recognized or promoted in every atmosphere,” Bernoff says.Rose says the Digg team is also developing an algorithm, based on current user patterns, that will “find the hot stories before they become hot” so it’ll be more real-time, although they don’t have a clear mobile plan as of yet. That’s expected more in the next six months or so.So will these features solve Digg’s identity crisis? Analysts think it’s the step in the right direction, but Digg needs to look further and be careful. Bernoff thinks the most important part of the equation is Rose, who should be celebritized more for the Digg brand, whereas Li says Digg should watch its growth because its most interested buyer, Google, doesn’t typically buy big companies.Regardless of how innovative these features may be or how much it’s ruling the pack of social bookmarking, Digg should worry about its bigger competition. Only makes sense to, says Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, associate professor of strategy at Harvard Business School.”Twitter is kind of like Digg, but on steroids,” Piskorski says. “Twitter can replicate the functionalities of Digg. Suppose Twitter wanted to generate a Twitter page with the most tweeted links for the hour, then what does Digg do?”

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Fortune) — At 6 a.m. this morning, the Sci Fi Channel officially became Syfy, and if fans commenting on its site are to be believed, science-fiction lovers everywhere went into a self-satisfied state of mourning, convinced that the corporate makeover of their fringe fantasyland was at last complete. As one fan wrote, “NBC is what happened to Sci Fi.” But on the Web, as in life, hard-core fans aren’t always the best judge of business strategy. Syfy parent company NBC Universal’s USA and Bravo networks have both undergone high-profile revamps in recent years, with what most would call positive results. And at the Sci Fi Channel, says network president Dave Howe, transformation has been a topic of conversation for years. “We were always talking about changing the name,” says Howe, “because it didn’t capture all that we could do. The network wasn’t just about aliens, space, and the future, but that’s what people thought when they heard Sci Fi.”Rebranding a successful network is no small undertaking, though, and so executives took only small steps, such as updating the logo in 2002. And whatever the limitations of the “Sci Fi” moniker, they didn’t stop the network from growing, culminating in 2008 with its best year ever: Average viewership grew 7% to 1.3 million total viewers, making Sci Fi the No. 5 cable network with adults 25-54 and the No. 9 network among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen. (Female viewers, who make up 45% of total network viewership, also increased, with a 13% spike in women ages 18-49.)These milestones, along with the spreading global dominance of sci-fi- and fantasy-themed film, television, and gaming properties, actually made the issue of rebranding all the more pressing, as Sci Fi looked to expand onto new platforms, into bigger businesses, and around the world. As the network explored its possibilities in gaming, mobile and films, “Sci Fi” proved problematic. Because the word itself was just an abbreviation of an existing genre, it was impossible to trademark. “That might not have been an issue when we started in 1992 and there were a handful of networks just on television,” says Craig Engler, Syfy senior vice president of digital, “but today, you’d type ‘Sci Fi’ into Hulu, and, sure, you’d get hundreds of results. But not one on the first page was a Sci Fi Channel show.” Hulu has since partnered with the network to rectify that, Engler says, but it’s emblematic of Sci Fi’s ownability problem — one that execs couldn’t fix without changing the network’s name. 0:00
/02:32Hollywood helps Michigan joblessThen there was the question of global presence: Last year, Sci Fi had 15 channels primarily in the West. By the end of 2010, Syfy will reach 50 channels globally. In many of those places, “Sci Fi” is as much a nonsense word as “Syfy” — and it presents myriad comical pronunciation possibilities to non-English-speakers, as Howe is fond of demonstrating. (“Skiffee,” anyone?)That may sound like a whole lot of spin, but the numbers have already begun to bear out the business case for this multimillion-dollar rebrand. According to Chris Czarkowski — who, in a vote of confidence from NBC Universal, became Syfy’s first dedicated ad sales representative last year — news of the rebrand drew 12 new advertising clients to the network in the first quarter. “These are high-end clients who wouldn’t have considered us before,” says Czarkowski, citing Cheerios, Twizzlers, and embedded automotive and travel advertisers for network hits “Eureka” and “Ghost Hunters,” which is cable’s No. 1 show on Wednesday among adults 25-54. For advertisers and viewers alike, the essential hurdle has been envisioning Sci Fi Channel as more than niche programming. That shouldn’t be so hard given science fiction’s increasing mainstream cachet with films such as “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” bringing in big box-office numbers, says Czarkowski, “but when I walk into a presentation and ask who’s a sci-fi fan, only a few people will raise their hands. Then I’ll ask what movies people saw in the last year. “Ironman?” “Dark Knight?” Do they like “Star Wars” or “The Matrix?” And all these hands go up. Then someone might say, ‘Okay, but my wife or daughter doesn’t like it.’ And I’ll ask, ‘Well, did they see “Twilight?’”It’s those fans — fans who don’t even know they’re fans — that Howe hopes to attract with Syfy’s “brand evolution.” That’s why the rebrand will launch with the premiere of Syfy’s newest addition, “Warehouse 13,” a show about two federal agents sent to a remote warehouse that holds the world’s supernatural relics. “It’s a human story — about relationships, about isolation — and when we tested it, people said they’d never expect it on Sci Fi,” says Howe, who also counts the upcoming “Alice” miniseries (based on “Alice in Wonderland”) and “Battlestar Galactica” prequel series Caprica among the network’s diverse offerings. “It isn’t about abandoning our dedicated fanbase,” he says. “It’s about including all those people who don’t realize Syfy has anything to offer them. The point at which we change identity is when people don’t see us so narrowly.” Of course, the Sci Fi Channel’s notoriously vocal fanbase isn’t necessarily inclined to believe Howe, so the rebrand has been a carefully orchestrated process of fan chats and focus groups that Howe says has muted the backlash a bit and brought new fans onboard. “We all thought we were going to get laughed out of the room when we walked in to the focus group to show this for the first time,” Howe says. “But they loved it. They thought it looked cooler, more innovative, like a fun, modern brand they’d want to check out. It was an amazing moment, actually.” And even getting to the focus group stage was a slog, as execs — anticipating the response to anything less than a stellar idea — labored over potential names and logos. “I’m sitting in my office, bleary-eyed, staring at hundreds of S-C-I-F-I logos created by some of the best talent in the country, lamenting the fact that no matter what we do, how sharp a design we create, we can never really own a category,” says Michael Engleman, Syfy vice president of creative. “I knew how important our roots are, and knew where we wanted to go in the future, and I asked myself a simple question. What if we could change the name without ever changing the name? Five minutes later, with a ballpoint pen and a piece of scrap paper, Syfy was born.”Since then, the logo has been at the root of a massive marketing plan. An entire nine-page document was devoted to the question of how to present it in press and advertising materials (in black, white, or purple — and never, ever, in a box) and intercaps — Syfy or SyFy? — were the subject of heated debate. But the logo’s most important role, says digital head Engler, has been as a symbol of a new, happier, more relatable Syfy. “It allows us to do so much more,” he says. “The letters just look like they’d be great big plush toys, the ‘y’s smile at you, and the added dimensionality and expanded color palette inspire the design of all the branding, especially on the site. There was only so much that could happen with purple, black, and Saturn.”Endless opportunity, naturally, has also meant endless work for Syfy’s rebrand task force, helmed by creative head Engleman — from the minutiae of overhauling the network’s stationery and stenciling, to huge projects, such as creating an elaborate two-minute “brand film” to introduce the new Syfy brand. (Called “House of Imagination,” it stars a slate of network talent and visual effects by the Moving Picture Company, whose credits include “Watchmen” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”) And there have certainly been bumps: After careful changeover negotiations with all the cable providers, the Syfy team was horrified to find last week that Time Warner Cable had mistakenly posted the new branding — with (gasp) intercaps! And the week before that, as promotional cards for “Wyfy from Syfy” in New York City were hitting the presses, Engler — looking over a prototype passed around the task force meeting — noted they didn’t actually include the new syfy.com address, sending the young woman overseeing them rushing out of the room to catch the printer. Then there was the announcement, a few weeks before that, that the Empire State Building would not in fact be purple for July 7. (There had been talk.)Syfy was officially unveiled in the form of giant letters this morning at “Imagination Park” — a Syfy creation featuring props like a giant View-Master, from the brand film — in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza. Syfy will also be providing public Wi-Fi for a year in Rockefeller Plaza and, starting later this summer, in Union Square and other pedestrian hubs in Manhattan. While the service stresses Syfy’s civic-mindedness, says Howe, it offers the additional upside of directing the million projected users to a Syfy-branded login page. And Syfy will be sponsoring “Movies with a View” at the Brooklyn Bridge this summer, as well as a retrospective of Tim Burton’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art starting in November. And all this, the Syfy faithful hope, will be enough to woo both the sci-fi faithful and fresh fans around the world to — as the new tagline goes — Imagine Greater.”

NEW YORK (Fortune) — The latest polling looks great for President Obama: It shows that Americans love national health care. If history and polling trends are any guide, however, that will change. Voters right now are in what the famous pollster Daniel Yankelovich called the Wishful Thinking stage — a moment in the life of an opinion analogous to the dreamy early days of a relationship. Yankelovich believed opinion evolved through seven stages: Dawning Awareness, Greater Urgency, Reaching for Solutions, Wishful Thinking, Weighing the Choices, Taking a Stand, and Making a Responsible Judgment. In the next few weeks, when voters discover what national health care will cost and how it would affect their own care, romance will give way to reality.Americans favor by more than 3 to 1 “the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan that would compete with private health insurance plans” and other large-scale federal initiatives. At least that’s what they thought as of mid-June in a New York Times-CBS News poll. But the respondents in that poll were opining about an idea, not hard facts.Only after most of the polling was complete did the Congressional Budget Office release its bombshell evaluation of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s reform bill, which would just begin to do what the poll respondents so enthusiastically favor. The report’s sobering bottom line: The bill would increase the federal deficit by 1 trillion over the next decade yet make only a dent in the number of uninsured, who would decline from 19% of the non-elderly population to 13%.That combination — huge cost, minor benefit — is probably not what most people thought they’d be getting. Another bill, from the Senate Finance Committee, would cost still more. Legislators are scrambling for fixes, but even if they find them, they’ll face a separate problem. Health-care reform is going to cost major dollars no matter what, and those dollars will have to be extracted mainly from those most able to pay, the top-earning 40% of the population. When these top earners figure out that they’re being asked in a recession to shell out more — through increased taxes, higher insurance premiums, or other mechanisms — for benefits that will go mostly to others, they won’t be happy. And that top 40% knows how to make itself heard in Washington.This isn’t just speculation. Similar scenarios played out in 1992 when the Clintons pushed for their ill-fated Clinton Care plan and in 1988 after Congress passed an insurance plan to protect the elderly against the costs of catastrophic illness. In 1988 polls had shown that Americans overwhelmingly favored such a plan in the abstract, and large bipartisan majorities passed it in both houses. Only the top 40% of seniors would have paid a tax surcharge to fund the plan, but those were the people who tended to carry supplemental insurance already. Once they realized what was happening, they howled in a way that legislators couldn’t ignore. Seventeen months after President Reagan signed the bill into law, Congress repealed it. None of its provisions ever took effect.0:00
/2:47Health insurance nightmareToday, with more ambitious reforms on the table, a scenario not unlike 1988 could be taking shape. Dig deep into the latest polling, and you’ll find that while most Americans believe health care is a serious problem, 77% are satisfied with “the quality of health care you receive.” When that large majority finds they’re being asked to pay more for something they’re basically happy with, they will enter Yankelovich’s fifth stage, Weighing the Choices.Yankelovich wrote rather presciently in the pages of Fortune back in 1992 that stage five is the hardest because it is the moment on the journey to a rational judgment when people must come to grips with the painful tradeoffs inherent in all complex issues. So when will that happen? I predict that stage five will begin in August, assuming the House passes a bill before Congress takes its August recess. Only then will we discover what citizens truly believe about health care. The result could be far more modest reform than we’ve been led to expect.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Reuters) — The dollar rose against the euro Tuesday as risk aversion rose amid uncertainty about the outlook for economic growth and U.S. corporate earnings.The euro had gained earlier as an unexpected increase in German factory orders gave a boost to investors looking for signs of economic recovery and raised risk tolerance.But there was still underlying caution ahead of the U.S. corporate earnings season, providing strength to so-called safe-haven currencies such as the dollar and yen.Sterling remained in negative territory against the dollar and euro as weaker-than-expected U.K. industrial production data reinforced doubts about an economic recovery.No major economic data was scheduled for release in the United States on Tuesday, which added to the lack of direction.”The greenback is mixed against most major currencies as randomness is the norm and news flow paints an inconsistent economic picture,” said Andrew Busch, global FX strategist at BMO Capital Markets in Chicago.Midway through the New York session, the euro was down 0.1% at 1.3960, closer to the session low of 1.3904 than the session peak of 1.4050, according to Reuters data.The dollar index was up 0.2% at 80.516 .Sterling dipped to the day’s low after data showed U.K. manufacturing output fell 0.5% on the month in May, versus expectations of a 0.2% rise. The wider industrial production measure also fell by 0.6% against forecasts of a 0.2% gain.Sterling last traded down 0.8% at 1.6151, according to Reuters data, close to the session low of 1.6145.”The risk is clearly that the ‘green shoots’ are turning dry,” said Michael Klawitter, senior currency strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort in Frankfurt.The dollar was down 0.2% at ¥95.12. The euro was down 0.4% at ¥132.81.G8, earningsChina, Russia and Brazil will use this week’s Group of Eight leaders summit in Italy to push their view that the world needs to start seeking a new global reserve currency as an alternative to the dollar, officials said on Tuesday. But they also said that such a shift would take time.A draft of the communique obtained by Reuters made no reference to the issue.U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not discuss oil prices or the dollar in Moscow on Tuesday, according to a U.S. official.0:00
/0:57Signs of recovery in EuropeCommodity-linked currencies such as the Australian and New Zealand dollar also retraced losses.The Australian dollar was little changed at 0.7974, recovering from a fall to 0.7935 after the Reserve Bank of Australia left interest rates at a record low 3.0% on Tuesday and left the door open to more easing. The New Zealand dollar was last up 0.1% at US0.6362 .Traders are bracing for second-quarter U.S. corporate earnings, which will be released in coming weeks. Analysts said poor results, especially from financial institutions, would likely crank up dollar demand.”Traders may still be committed to the risk trade at the moment, but if bank earnings disappoint in any way or the S&P breaks crucial levels traders will probably start reducing long positions in (high-risk currencies) and the dollar could be bid more,” said Chris Turner, currency strategist at ING in London.

Source:CNN