Senators: NFL Could Lose Tax Breaks, Antitrust Exemption If Blackouts Continue

(frankieleon)

Earlier this week, the FCC voted unanimously to repeal its 39-year-old Sports Blackout Rule, which that prevented the broadcasting of certain sporting events if they weren’t sold out. While that decision removes federal involvement in blackouts, the pro sports leagues may still negotiate private blackout deals with broadcasters. However, a pair of prominent U.S. Senators have warned the NFL to not go that route.

In a letter (see full text below) to NFL Commissioner Roger “Go Ahead And Boo” Goodell, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut expressed their concerns about the possibility of continued blackouts by the country’s most-watched pro sport.

“[W]e write to urge the NFL to view this as an opportunity to recognize that unpopular blackouts are no longer justified in today’s environment,” reads the letter. “We ask that you capitalize on the FCC’s vote this week and voluntarily rescind your requirement that local television stations blackout games that fail to sell-out.”

The Senators point out that the league has received an awful lot from American taxpayers and the federal government, including antitrust exemptions, special tax status, and taxpayer-subsidized stadiums.

“These generous benefits were extended to leagues like the NFL in part based on recognition that sports leagues play a central role in our national culture, promote teamwork, and generate jobs and economic activity across the country,” continues the note. “But, the provision of these substantial public benefits requires that the NFL meet basic obligations to the American public and loyal fans, and this includes abandoning rules that punish those same fans.”

The lawmakers say that if the league continues to use blackouts, “Congress will be forced to act. We urge you to proactively rescind NFL policies that prevent loyal fans from enjoying the game and reform those practices that cause the league to fall short of the obligation it has to the American public.”

Only a small fraction of games are blacked out each year, so one could argue that both the NFL — which threatened to make the potentially disastrous move of taking all its games to cable — and Sens. McCain and Blumenthal are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Of course, while almost all NFL games sell enough tickets to meet the blackout threshold, the current popularity of the sport will inevitably wane. Certainly the NFL’s ongoing troubles with off-the-field violence and crime, along with growing concerns about the destructive long-term impact the game has on the people who play it, isn’t helping to put butts in seats.

Only time will tell if the league truly needs those blackouts to keep stadium attendance up.

Here is the full text of the letter to Commissioner Goodell:

October 1, 2014

Mr. Roger Goodell

Commissioner

National Football League

280 Park Avenue, 17th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Dear Commissioner Goodell,

As you know, the Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously yesterday to eliminate the agency’s sports blackout rule, which is something we have devoted substantial effort to over the past several years. As you are well aware, the elimination of the FCC rule won’t end all blackouts. Rather, it only removes the regulation that has acted as a government backstop to the NFL’s private blackout policy. As Chairman Wheeler pointed out shortly after the vote occurred, “[e]veryone needs to be aware of who allows blackouts to exist, and it is not the Federal Communications Commission.”

With this in mind, we write to urge the NFL to view this as an opportunity to recognize that unpopular blackouts are no longer justified in today’s environment. We ask that you capitalize on the FCC’s vote this week and voluntarily rescind your requirement that local television stations blackout games that fail to sell-out. The NFL has received substantial benefits from the public in the form of antitrust exemptions, a specialized tax status, and direct taxpayer dollars that subsidize football arenas and stadiums. These generous benefits were extended to leagues like the NFL in part based on recognition that sports leagues play a central role in our national culture, promote teamwork, and generate jobs and economic activity across the country. But, the provision of these substantial public benefits requires that the NFL meet basic obligations to the American public and loyal fans, and this includes abandoning rules that punish those same fans.

Last year, we introduced the Furthering Access and Networks for Sports (“FANS”) Act as a legislative answer to the various causes of sports blackouts. Specifically, this bill would condition the antitrust exemption the league enjoys through the Sports Broadcasting Act on ending sports blackouts. If the NFL fails to show leadership to finally end blackouts once and for all, Congress will be forced to act. We urge you to proactively rescind NFL policies that prevent loyal fans from enjoying the game and reform those practices that cause the league to fall short of the obligation it has to the American public. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

John McCain

Richard Blumenthal

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Neuromarketing: Cómo impactar en los clientes a través de las emociones #marketing #psychology

Hola:

Una presentación sobre Neuromarketing: Cómo impactar en los clientes a través de las emociones.

Un saludo

Archivado en: Marketing on line Tagged: Marketing, Psicología



from TICs y Formación http://ift.tt/1x3T4B3

via Alfredo Vela Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

Why Doesn’t Chipotle Franchise? It Has Money, Promises Organic Meat

(Kerry Lannert)

Franchising is the business model behind the massive homogenization of the American foodscape. A local entrepreneur licenses a larger brand, often buying supplies and other necessities for running a restaurant as well. This has worked very well for many fast food and quick-serve chains, so why isn’t popular burrito eatery Chipotle interested in opening franchises?

When it works, franchising is a system that helps a business to expand rapidly while minimizing risk. The franchisee puts up capital to open and rent or build the restaurant, but they have the security of opening a restaurant with an existing brand, recipes, and supply chain. The larger brand gambles its reputation on the competence of the franchisee, but they aren’t the one putting up money to open a new restaurant.

Right now, fast-food and table service restaurants alike are depending on the franchise model more, not less. TGI Friday’s, for example, recently announced plans to sell more than 300 corporate-owned restaurants to current franchisees who probably know how to run a restaurant by now. Burger King has sold more than 1,200 corporate-owned restaurants to franchisees in the last four years, keeping only 52 to test new ideas and products. The King also expanded globally, opening almost 1,500 new restaurants with franchisees making the investment. If the cutting-edge chain restaurants are just sitting back and raking in franchise fees, why doesn’t Chipotle do that?

Hayley Peterson over at Business Insider wondered about this and did the logical thing: she asked. A Chipotle spokesperson explained that in the chain business, franchising is how companies raise money for further expansion, or how they find local people willing to work hard to make a business succeed. “We have plenty of money for growth (more than $1 billion in cash on our books) and don’t have trouble attracting great people to run our restaurants,” the Chipotle representative explained.

Owning all of its restaurants also lets Chipotle control the company’s “food culture,” as they phrase it. It isn’t just the experience in restaurants that is important to customers, but whether the brand operates according to its reputation. When they market antibiotic-free meat and GMO-free tortillas, how do they know an operator won’t go rogue and serve conventionally raised meat to cut costs?

Why Chipotle Doesn’t Franchise [Business Insider]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

FDA: Use Of Vital Human Antibiotics In Animals Increased 16% In 3 Years

(Photo: Sjogren’s Syndrome Foundation)

Even as a growing number of people — from consumers to scientists to physicians — expressed concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed, a new FDA report shows that farmers continued adding more drugs to their animals’ diets, and that almost every one of those antibiotics was purchased and administered without a prescription.

Antibiotics given to farm animals already account for around 80% of all antibiotics sold in the U.S., and according to the FDA’s latest report [PDF, between 2009 and 2012, the total quantity of just those antibiotics deemed medically important to humans that were sold or distributed for use in food-producing animals increased by 16%.

More than two-thirds (67%) of the medically important drugs fed to animals in 2012 were tetracyclines, which are used in humans to treat everything from urinary tract infections to chlamydia to Lyme disease, but whose use has declined because of the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria.

Various forms of penicillin accounted for 11% of these drugs, macrolides — used to treat strep, pneumonia, staph infections and other ailments in humans — made up 7% of the drugs fed to animals, while sulfonamides (6%), aminoglycosides (3%), lincosamides (2%), and cephalosporins (less than 1%) brought up the rear of the drug train.

The FDA gives no specific reason for the jump in sales of these important antibiotics. But even if, as the drug and livestock industry now claims, these antibiotics are being used judiciously and for disease prevention, only a tiny fraction of them are actually prescribed by veterinarians.

During the same three-year time period in which sales increased by 16%, the FDA says that the percentage of medically important antimicrobials sold over-the-counter to farmers effectively remained flat at around 97%.

And the FDA data seems to call shenanigans on this “disease prevention” mantra that the industries trot out to defend their use of antibiotics. In 2012, antibiotics with a proven use for growth-promotion outsold antibiotics with only a therapeutic use by a ratio of 2.2:1.

“Antibiotic use in U.S. livestock is huge and continues to escalate, even while many leading meat exporting countries have halved their livestock usage,” says David Wallinga, MD, from Keep Antibiotics Working. “If the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services are serious about addressing the threat to the American public from worsening resistance, it cannot adopt a ‘wait and see’ stance. It must push the U.S. livestock sector to lead, not follow in reducing use of precious antibiotics.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Intruders Massacred 920 Foster Farms Chickens With A Golf Club, No One Knows Why

(Jess)

Two weeks ago, an act of vandalism and animal cruelty occurred in a shed housing chickens belonging to meat producer Foster Farms. Someone entered a farm through a hole in the fence and clubbed 920 chickens to death for no clear reason.

No one is pretending that the chickens were being raised for any purpose other than becoming meat, but modern methods of chicken slaughter are generally quicker and a lot more humane than clubbing the birds to death with a golf club and another unidentified blunt instrument.

This week, four suspects were arrested for the chicken clubbing, and they were charged with felony burglary and felony cruelty to animals. Three of the suspects are under 18.

“It would take a long time to do it,” one detective investigating the crime told the Los Angeles Times. “People should be alarmed at something like that.”

Authorities used tips from the public to find the suspects. It probably helped that Foster Farms and the Animal Legal Defense Fund had each offered $5,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of the people responsible for this crime.

“It is the express policy of Foster Farms to treat its birds humanely and with compassion,” a company representative told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Any intentional act to the contrary is unacceptable.”

What we don’t know yet is why the suspects massacred chickens. It’s also a strange coincidence that 920 chickens were killed, and the crime occurred on September 20th.

Fresno teens arrested in 920 chicken deaths [San Francisco Chronicle]

Intruder uses golf club to kill nearly 1,000 Foster Farms chickens [LA Times]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

More Price-Matching, Better Staffing And Other Black Friday Predictions

(Michael Holden)

It’s October, and those falling leaves and brisk temperatures can only mean one thing — that no professional baseball is being played here in Philadelphia. It also means that the official start of the holiday shopping season is a mere eight weeks away.

So what will make this Black Friday (11/28, for those who haven’t marked their calendars yet) any different from ones that came before it? The folks at DealNews have some predictions, including:

1. More Price-Matching

It’s no longer enough for retailers to rely on those shoppers who line up early to take advantage of doorbuster deals. Many consumers who previously waited for the Black Friday hullaballoo to calm down before hitting the stores are now just shopping online and staying away from the melee altogether. So retailers will need to follow the lead of Walmart, Best Buy and others who price-match Amazon and its ilk.

“Expect to see many more price match announcements as Black Friday approaches,” writes DealNews’ Louis Ramirez. “And as always, make sure to read the store guidelines as not everyone will offer no-questions-asked price matching.”

2. More Discounted Shipping Offers (But Be Warned!)

There’s good news and bad news about a recent decision by the U.S. Postal Service to cut costs for certain businesses. On the one hand, you can expect more online retailers offering cheaper or free shipping. But then you also have to worry that USPS might become overloaded with parcels, leading to late deliveries and other messes. Additionally, the USPS parcel tracking system is all but useless for anyone actually trying to determine the status of an impending delivery.

Writes Ramirez, “Your best bet — shop early and keep an eye on those tracking numbers.”

3. Expect More Staffers At Stores

With retailers opening earlier and earlier — to the point where most major Black Friday participants are now opening on Thanksgiving — many employees and worker advocates have complained about employers’ ruining staffers’ holidays. But the complaints haven’t stopped shoppers and you can expect some stores to have more checkout lines open to deal with the Black Friday crowds.

In August, Walmart announced that it intends to have all of its registers staffed during the busiest days and hours of the holiday shopping season.

4. More “Guaranteed” Doorbusters

Every year, retailers advertise $25 computers and other effectively free “doorbuster” sale items, many of which are gone almost immediately (even though they’re sometimes outdated junk that the stores couldn’t give away during the rest of the year). And with stores opening around the same time as Uncle Paul is doing his annual job of insisting that he crudely carve the turkey, some shoppers have stayed away from Black Friday because they know those doorbusters will be long gone by the time they tuck the kids in bed and hope they don’t wake up in the middle of the night wondering where mommy and daddy went.

So DealNews predicts that more retailers will follow the lead of Toys R Us and offer “guaranteed” doorbuster deals, where shoppers eligible for the promotion receive wristbands or vouchers that guarantee they’ll eventually get the coveted item, even if supplies run out. You might not get the item on Black Friday, but at least you won’t pay more for it elsewhere. More importantly to the retailer, you’ll probably snap up a few other items while you’re in the store.

For more Black Friday predictions, including thoughts on 4K TVs, smartphones, and credit card safety, go to DealNews.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

FAA Protecting Baby Walruses By Rerouting Planes Away From Giant Clump Of Marine Mammals

These guys have buddies who don’t want to be stampeded. (USFWSAlaska)

Proving that a walrus emergency is an emergency for everyone, the Federal Aviation Administration is taking preventative measures to make sure no baby marine mammals get stampeded, rerouting flights around an Alaska beach where a big cluster of 35,000 walruses have gathered.

If an airplane flying overhead were to spook all those walruses — I really just want to call’em walri — the whole gang could up and start moving around in a panic, putting the wee baby bairn walruses in danger as well as the whole group, reports The Guardian.

The walruses ended up crowding on that beach in northwestern Alaska because of melting sea ice, prompting officials to warn not only gawkers away but also pilots flying nearby.

It’s the largest group of walruses to flee to land ever observed in the Arctic under US control, scientists say.

“You have all these animals that are normally distributed on a flat surface. When they lose their sea ice habitat and come ashore in places that are accessible – like flat, sandy beaches – they gather in large numbers, and it becomes like a giant pig pile,” Margaret Williams, managing director for the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program told The Guardian. “When they are disturbed it can cause stampedes in large numbers.”

As such, the FAA wants pilots to stay more than 2,000 feet in the air and half a mile away from the walrus pod. And helicopters have to stay up even higher at 3,000 feet and a mile away, as they’re louder.

US reroutes flights around Alaska beach in attempt to avoid walrus stampede [The Guardian]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Guy Who’s Been To 11,000 Starbucks Outlets Would Rather Get His Coffee Elsewhere

(afagen)

He’s been around the world in the last 17 years, visiting about 11,000 Starbucks locations in his (likely neverending) quest to visit them all. But when it comes to his own tastes, the man who drinks 10 cups a day says he would rather not drink the coffee at Starbucks.

It’s all about his list, see? And checking off the visits is more of this Texas man’s focus than actually drinking coffee, he tells The Telegraph, as he’d rather pick up cup from a local independent spot rather than Starburns. Oops, Starbucks.

“I respect Starbucks for its business sense, customer service and amenities including clean bathrooms and WiFi,” he told The Telegraph. “But unless I am checking a new store off my list, I would not go there for the coffee.”

So far he’s spent an estimated $100,000 dropping by 11,733 Starbucks on six continents, a quest he started just to do something different, at least at first. ANd of course, he came up with the idea while sitting in a Starbucks back in 1997 in Plano, Texas.

“However, since that time, I have discovered many joys in the traveling, the photography and the puzzle-like challenge of my mission,” he says on his website.

He takes a photograph of each visit, including a selfie, and averages 10 cups of java per day. He even spent $1,400 on a plane ticket just to get to a Starbucks in British Columbia before it closed.

This could be a Sisyphean effort, however — when he started his journey, there were only 1,400 stores in the world. Now there are more than 17,000 Starbucks locations around the world.

But heck, he’s got plenty of time.

“As you can imagine, Starbucks is not going anywhere. I can see myself visiting new stores as an old man,” he says, adding that he’s changed the rules to allow for only a sample of coffee at each spot, at minimum.

Ultimate coffee fan spends 17 years visiting every Starbucks in the world [The Telegraph]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Samsung Insists Galaxy Note 4 Gap Is A Feature, Not A Flaw

A phablet is a super-sized mobile phone that is more like a tablet. This fall, Samsung has released the fourth version of their Galaxy Note phablet, a much-anticipated device all over the world. As the first devices hit stores, some people noticed something odd: the phone has a gap between its screen and frame just wide enough to fit a piece of cardstock.

Are you supposed to go cramming pieces of paper in your phone? Has Samsung introduced “business card holder” as a new feature for the Galaxy Note 4? Not really and no.

#gapgate really? http://ift.tt/1nSmmmx

— blesio (@blesiek) October 2, 2014

At least I'll have somewhere to keep my business cards with the #Note4. Thanks @Samsungtweets! #GapGate #Imindthegap http://ift.tt/1pIKJgo

— P a t r i c k (@dailyplotvomit) October 1, 2014

After the Internet spent a few days freaking out and minding the gap, Samsung pointed out to the world that the the gap causes no problems, and they actually point this out in the device’s user manual. What, they expect us to read the manual before complaining online now?

Samsung describes this gap as a “necessary manufacturing feature.” Either there’s quite an elaborate cover-up, or this wasn’t a manufacturing error after all.

Officially, the device is only available in South Korea and China so far, with the U.S. version becoming available in mid-October. Will the version sold here include the mini-gap? We can’t wait to find out!

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 Contends With ‘Gapgate’ [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Oops: Cops Distributing Spyware To Families As “Internet Safety” Tool

(Mike Saechang)

Over the last couple of decades, internet safety has become as much if not more of a concern for many parents and families as physical safety. To help, many local police departments have given out free safety software to families as “the first step” to keeping their children safe online. Sounds great, right? Sure… except that “safety software” is really a keylogger that sends your family’s every word zipping unencrypted over the internet, ripe for anyone to steal. Oops.

The ComputerCOP software, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports in a detailed investigation, is usually handed out at “internet safety” events. Police, sheriffs, and district attorneys doing community outreach buy the software, then have it rebranded with their own agency name, logos, and imagery before handing it out to local families at schools and libraries.

However, as the EFF explains, “as official as it looks,” the contents of the disc are just spyware, purchased in bulk from a company in New York that exists solely market and distribute ComputerCOP to government agencies.

If it seems like a CD of supposed safety software is a relic of the era when you got “the internet” from an AOL 3.0 disc they handed out at Staples, you’re right. In the name of child safety, it has two major functions: a hard drive search and a keystroke logger. The idea is that parents can use the software to keep an eye on the images, text, and websites their children are encountering.

The search tool runs from the CD without installation, and checks out all the files on the hard drive for thousands of terms related to gangs, hate groups, drug use, and of course sex. The EFF tested the searches, however, and found them deeply unreliable. Results were routinely laden with false positives, including “items as innocuous as raw computer code.” Meanwhile, actual files that did have words like “drugs” in them were not found but still turned up on standard Mac or Windows searches.

And image searches, meanwhile, can’t differentiate between downloaded or cached content and all the images that exist on a computer as part of the software installed on it — that’s everything from Office clipart to the preview images some graphics card driver updaters use — and so returns so many tens of thousands of hits as to be useless.

ComputerCOP also claims that it will let you view a history of your child’s web visits, but as might be expected for a relic of an earlier age it’s extremely browser-limited and only works on Internet Explorer or Safari.

The keylogging program, however, does work — and that’s a problem. Once installed, the EFF writes, “if the user isn’t careful, it will collect keystrokes from all users of the computer, not just children.” On a Windows computer, ComputerCOP stores the full keystroke logs completely unencrypted on the hard drive. (On a Mac, the log is encrypted but can be decrypted with the ComputerCOP default password.)

Parents can set up the software to e-mail them an alert whenever a certain word, like “marijuana” or “sex,” is typed in. But to generate those e-mail alerts, the software sends the unencrypted key logs to a third-party server that then sends the e-mail.

So the police have been cheerfully handing out free keyloggers to anybody who wants one for over a decade, and it’s easy as pie to use them illegally on people who aren’t your kids. Which is a problem. But even aside from that, the unencrypted data itself is an enormous vulnerability. As the EFF explains:

Security experts universally agree that a user should never store passwords and banking details or other sensitive details unprotected on one’s hard drive, but that’s exactly what ComputerCOP does by placing everything someone types in a folder. The email alert system further weakens protections by logging into a third-party commercial server. When a child with ComputerCOP installed on their laptop connects to public Wi-Fi, any sexual predator, identity thief, or bully with freely available packet-sniffing software can grab those key logs right out of the air.

The EFF contacted ComputerCOP by e-mail about these issues. Their head of operations, Stephen DelGiorno, responded, “ComputerCOP software doesn’t give sexual predator or identity thieves more access to children’s computers, as our .key logger works with the existing email and Internet access services that computer user has already engaged,” which is a completely useless non-answer that has nothing to do with the problems at hand.

ComputerCOP’s history, as unearthed by the EFF, is also not encouraging. DelGiorno also told the EFF that the keylogging feature was a recent addition to the software, but the EFF found references to it going back as far as 2001.

ComputerCOP also claims in its marketing materials to law enforcement agencies that it has received endorsements from the ACLU and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The NCMEC did enter a one-year agreement allowing ComputerCOP to use their name in 1998. However, as a spokesperson told the EFF, the agreement was not renewed and the two organizations have had no contact with each other in the past 15 years. When the NCMEC found out, via the EFF’s queries, that ComputerCOP was still using their name, an attorney for the organization said that they would tell ComputerCOP to stop immediately.

But at least an agreement did once exist, back when the parents of today’s web-using children were themselves still kids in school. The ACLU, however, never endorsed it at all. The closest they came was a 2005 story in the Detroit Free Press where the head of the ACLU’s Michigan office “[endorsed] the idea that parents should take responsibility for monitoring their children as opposed to relying on the government to act as a babysitter,” the EFF reports.

The deputy director of the Michgan ACLU confirmed to the EFF, “I can say unequivocally that it was not an endorsement of the product. Our position as an organization is not to endorse technology like this.”

Being super-shady, however, has not stopped ComputerCOP from becoming widespread. The list of participating agencies that distribute copies is definitely not small, and agencies at every level — city, county, state, and federal — are among them. The EFF’s full listing includes over 245 agencies in 35 states, as well as the U.S. Marshals. And it’s not cheap: cash-strapped agencies are spending tens of thousands of of tax or grant dollars on every set of discs they order.

Adding up the purchased batches, the EFF estimates that anywhere from several hundred thousand to well over a million copies of ComputerCOP have been purchased by law enforcement. It’s impossible to say how many of those actually wound up being given to families, and then to guess how many of those families installed and regularly use the software. Still, if the number is greater than zero, it’s clearly too many.

Should you happen to use a computer that has this hot mess installed on it, the EFF also provides detailed instructions for removal.

ComputerCOP: The Dubious ‘Internet Safety Software’ That Hundreds of Police Agencies Have Distributed to Families [Electronic Frontier Foundation]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist