Boom Time for Broadcast Stocks

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2013

Boom Time for Broadcast Stocks

By ALEXANDER EULE | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Local broadcasters control valuable spectrum that could be leased to wireless operators. Why Sinclair and Nexstar could be worth as much as twice their current quotes.

Something quaint is happening in TV land. Amid all the talk about new technologies for delivering video, it’s the local broadcasters—the companies that carry local news and sitcom reruns—that are stealing the show. Shares of Nexstar Broadcasting Group (ticker: NXST), an operator of 72 local TV stations, are up 254% in 2013. The surge bests even the torrid pace of Netflix (NFLX), the leading proxy for TV’s hyped future. Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI), with 149 stations, is the largest of the pure-play broadcasters; its shares are up 133%. Read more of this post

Cable Fights Netflix to Feed ‘Binge’ TV Viewers

Updated September 20, 2013, 8:09 p.m. ET

Cable Fights to Feed ‘Binge’ TV Viewers

Comcast, Verizon FiOS Vie With Netflix, Amazon for Rights to Show Complete Series

SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN And AMOL SHARMA

The battle for the binge TV viewer is on. Big pay-TV operators including Comcast Corp. CMCSA -0.02% and Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS are taking steps to vastly expand their on-demand TV offerings. In doing so, they are edging toward turf occupied by online players likeNetflix Inc., NFLX +2.73% creating a tug of war over where people turn when they want to “binge” on a full season’s worth of programming. Consumers are watching less programming as it airs on TV and increasingly seeking on-demand entertainment. Netflix and some other online players have largely popularized binge-viewing, and pay-TV companies want to keep pace. Comcast struck a deal to offer all episodes of some 21st Century Fox Inc. broadcast and cable shows on its on-demand service this season, people familiar with the matter say.

Read more of this post

Cracking the Mobile Advertising Code; Real-Time Exchange Poised to Help Advertisers Find Target Audience

September 20, 2013, 11:59 a.m. ET

Cracking the Mobile Advertising Code

Real-Time Exchange Poised to Help Advertisers Find Target Audience

JOHN JANNARONE

Madison Avenue has been slow to follow consumers onto mobile devices, but it’s about to get a helping hand. As advertisers try to track target audiences on smartphones and tablets, there has been a persistent problem: In many cases, app developers simply show all consumers the same images rather than attempt to match them with relevant ads. But this week, advertising-technology firms AppNexus and U.S.-listed Millennial MediaMM -0.26% launched a real-time exchange aimed at that problem. The exchange will compile information about a user such as their location and activity on an app, then let advertisers bid for an ad space—all in milliseconds. If effective, apps will show more relevant ads, such as a pair of skis for someone browsing a travel app for a holiday in the Alps. Read more of this post

Auto industry: Look no hands; Robotic cars offer untold advantages but they might not be enough to convince people to give up driving

Last updated: September 20, 2013 7:25 pm

Auto industry: Look no hands

By Henry Foy and Richard Waters

Robotic cars offer untold advantages but they might not be enough to convince people to give up driving

It is just after 11 o’clock on a warm July morning in Parma, Italy, and a silver Hyundai sedan is cruising the city’s ring road in light traffic. As the car turns towards the centre of the city, the two men in the front are in animated conversation. Neither has his hands on the wheel or is watching the road. The car slows to a stop as a pedestrian steps out into the road. The men in the car gesture to him to cross. He hesitates, bemused that the car brought itself to a stop. The man in the driving seat gets out, walks over to the pedestrian and moves him to the pavement. Then something amazing happens. The car accelerates off along the now clear road. The man previously in the driving seat stands on the pavement and watches the future drive by. Read more of this post

With the magic of tracking “cookies,” however, companies like Rocket Fuel can build more accurate profiles of Web surfers, follow them around the Internet, and help advertisers target them more effectively regardless of what website they are currently visiting

Updated September 20, 2013, 6:30 p.m. ET

Don’t Bask in Rocket’s Red Glare

A Stunning Debut, Yes, but Threats Loom

ROLFE WINKLER

Lots of people watch football. Not all of them drive pickup trucks and drink Coors Light. Fixing that problem online is why shares of online-ad technology firm Rocket Fuel FUEL +93.45% soared more than 90% Friday after its initial public offering. Online advertising can be just as inefficient as TV advertising, argues Matt Ackley, chief marketing officer at digital ad-management company Marin Software MRIN -1.54% . Web publishers often sell ads in one-time deals to advertisers based on the content on their sites. Read more of this post

Twitter Is For People Who Want To Be First; As Twitter grows, its ability to break news and become a “real-time town hall,” as its CEO Dick Costolo calls it, will be realized

Why No One You Know Is On Twitter (But They All Will Be Soon)

ALYSON SHONTELL 17 MINUTES AGO 901 1

Twitter has a problem. Most people you know aren’t on it.

They don’t understand what it’s for, or why there’s a need to tell strangers what they’re thinking every moment of the day. Twitter currently has 250 million monthly active users.  That’s smaller than Twitter would like. Its CEO Dick Costolo anticipated having nearly double the amount of active users by 2014. That’s also a far cry from Facebook’s 1 billion users. Just because Twitter hasn’t gone mainstream yet doesn’t mean it won’t. I’m of the strong opinion that Twitter is the most important consumer-facing company to go public since Google. I also see it outlasting Facebook. I’m not alone. Matthew Knell, VP of social and community at About.com recently told CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla: “I think Twitter’s probably the best-positioned major social network, and I kind of see Facebook on a decline.” Also, Saudi billionaire Price Alwaleed and his investment arm, Kingdom Holding invested $300 million in Twitter in 2011. Alwaleed recently told Reuters he doesn’t plan to sell a single share when Twitter goes public. “We believe that it is just beginning to touch the surface,” Alwaleed said. “We will be selling zero, nothing, at the IPO.” Here’s why Twitter is a big deal, and why most people overlook it. Read more of this post

The Care and Feeding of a Tech Boom: This time the tech explosion doesn’t have to end in tears. How one industry’s growth can benefit us all

The Care and Feeding of a Tech Boom

Farhad Manjoo | Photo: Brittany McClaren | September 20, 2013

This time the tech explosion doesn’t have to end in tears. How one industry’s growth can benefit us all.

By the time I catch up with Austen Allred this summer, he’s already an expert in voluntary homelessness. At age 23, he self-identifies with three tribes: “Minimalist. Nomad. Entrepreneur.” runs the bio line on his blog. A Mormon reared in Provo, Utah, he spent two years on a mission in eastern Ukraine and couchsurfed for a while in China before realizing what he wanted to do with the rest of his life: Yes, he had an idea for an Internet company. Read more of this post

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Makes One Last Pitch To Wall Street In Farewell Meeting; “Today I’m speaking as an investor. You all own Microsoft stock, cheer for it, for God’s sake.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Makes One Last Pitch To Wall Street In Farewell Meeting

REUTERS SEP. 20, 2013, 6:22 AM 1,840

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has made an impassioned plea to investors to support his vision of the world’s largest software company as a unified devices and services powerhouse in his swan song before Wall Street. Ballmer, who in August said he planned to step down within 12 months, told investors and analysts in an annual meeting on Thursday that Microsoft had a bright future, despite missteps under his 13-year tenure. “We have the tools. There’s economic upside here. In the long run, we are almost uniquely poised to seize the opportunity,” he said, in a typically high-volume presentation. “Today I’m speaking as an investor. You all own Microsoft stock, cheer for it, for God’s sake.” Read more of this post

BlackBerry Is Seen Mimicking Palm’s Decline; For BlackBerry, Consumers Aren’t the Only Problem; Share of Business Customers Is Down to About 5%

BlackBerry Is Seen Mimicking Palm’s Decline

BlackBerry Ltd. (BBRY) reported a more than 40 percent plunge in sales and vowed to cut a third of its workforce, raising concern that it’s on the same downward spiral as Palm Inc., though without prospects for a last-minute buyer. The company said yesterday that it’s eliminating 4,500 jobs and recording an inventory writedown of as much as $960 million for the fiscal second quarter. BlackBerry expects to report a net operating loss of as much as $995 million in the period and sales of $1.6 billion — about half the $3.03 billion that analysts had estimated, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read more of this post

Asustek’s Shih open to potential merger with Acer

Asustek’s Shih open to potential merger with Acer

Staff Reporter

2013-09-21

Jonney Shih bangs the drum for Asus at an event in Taipei on Sept. 18. (Photo/Nien Geng-hao)

Asustek chairman Jonney Shih said on Sept. 18 that he is open to the idea of a potential merger with local rival Acer. Approached for a response to rumors that Taiwan’s two leading PC makers could merge, Shih, said, “There are major changes and transformations going on in the industry at this time and everybody is looking for a way to break out of the difficulties,” Shih said. “I would open the door to all kinds of possibilities.” Maverick Shih, head of Acer Cloud and son of Acer founder Stan Shih, said in response that he admired Jonney Shih’s leadership but that he would not comment on a potential merger. Asustek has begun to shift its focus from laptops to tablet computers and smartphones. Jonney Shih said smartphones have never been one of Asustek’s major products in the past but smartphones and cloud business are now the biggest tech growth areas. “We began from high-end smartphones but we will continue to introduce more entry-level smartphones in the future,” Jonney Shih said.

Tech investors unfazed by China crackdown

September 20, 2013 2:27 pm

Tech investors unfazed by China crackdown

By Sarah Mishkin in Hong Kong and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Investing in China’s social media appears to be less risky than blogging on it. One day after a popular blogger – 12m followers and counting – was paraded on state television in handcuffs, the market capitalisation of Hong Kong-listed social site operator Tencent hit $100bn, overtaking Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s. The disconnect between government action and investors’ response is not restricted to the online world. Chinese property prices continue to spiral higher despite government measures to cool the real estate market. Read more of this post

The Explosion In Mobile-Centric Audiences And What It Means For The Tech And Media Industries

The Explosion In Mobile-Centric Audiences And What It Means For The Tech And Media Industries

TONY DANOVA SEP. 19, 2013, 3:00 PM 490

By year-end 2013 there will be some 2 billion active smartphones and tablets in the world, and they will outnumber PCs by a significant margin. The proliferation of these gadgets is happening right under our noses, but many analysts still underestimate mobile device diffusion, and the flow-through effect on usage. Smartphones and tablets take desktop functionality and put it in a more appealing package, which is why they’ve already attracted one-fifth of total media consumption time. Read more of this post

Entertainment: Generation next; How will media groups reach millennials, who control $990bn in spending but do not buy books, music or magazines

September 19, 2013 8:19 pm

Entertainment: Generation next

By Emily Steel

How will media groups reach millennials, who control $990bn in spending but do not buy books, music or magazines

Alexandra Gombar cannot remember a time before the internet existed. Since the first-year student at the University of North Carolina was born, people have been browsing Yahoo, finding rentals on Craigslist and shopping on Amazon.com. She remembers surfing the web at about the same time that she learnt how to read and write. The 18-year-old seldom watches television programmes on a TV set. She rarely buys music albums or books. She does not subscribe to magazines or newspapers. Yet she expects millions of videos, songs, books, blogs and tweets to be available at the touch of a screen. Ms Gombar is a member of the first generation of adults who have not known life without instant messages or immediate access to the web. They have documented their teenage years on social media. They live in an on-demand media world and do not feel the need to own any of it. Read more of this post

Tapping China’s ‘leftover treasure’, Alibaba online funds platform nears $3.3 billion

Tapping China’s ‘leftover treasure’, Alibaba online funds platform nears $3.3 billion

5:17pm EDT

By Matthew Miller

BEIJING (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s online mutual funds platform, which launched in June allowing customers to buy and sell a single money market fund, is set to attract more than 20 billion yuan ($3.27 billion ) by the end of this month. That would make the Zenglibao fund, managed by the fledgling Tianhong Asset Management Co, the most successful fundraising by any mutual fund in China this year. Read more of this post

Alibaba’s Stock Market Quest; Why the Chinese Internet company won’t list in Shanghai

Updated September 19, 2013, 6:03 p.m. ET

Alibaba’s Stock Market Quest

Why the Chinese Internet company won’t list in Shanghai.

It looks ever more likely that the world’s largest tech IPO since Facebook will have to wait until next year. China’s Alibaba, an online trading portal, expects to raise at least $10 billion when it lists, but it is struggling to figure out where it will sell its shares. New York and Hong Kong are the main competitors. Less often discussed is that Shanghai is not on the short list, or even the long list. This is the result of China’s slow pace of financial reform. Twenty-three years after the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened, the exchange is still ineffective at mediating capital flows between global investors and growing companies. Chinese entrepreneurs face the hassles and costs of heading overseas to list instead. Read more of this post

Why This TV Season Will Confirm Mobile’s Unstoppable Rise As A Complementary ‘Second Screen’

Why This TV Season Will Confirm Mobile’s Unstoppable Rise As A Complementary ‘Second Screen’

MARCELO BALLVE SEP. 19, 2013, 8:05 AM 3,218

These days, TV shows and ad campaigns are planned with a smartphone or tablet-toting TV viewer in mind. A wide majority of U.S. audiences now use a second screen while watching TV, and about half of them do so on a daily basis. The second screen industry has grown up around this now-established consumer habit. Social media is a big part of it. Social media helps to determine whether a piece of TV content will go viral, or flop. TV and ad executives spend a lot of time getting their second screen and social TV strategies right.  In a new report from BI Intelligence, we take stock of how far the second screen industry has come and explain why this new TV season will confirm its importance. We look at mobile-social behavior and how it overlaps with the second screen trend, and reveal the data behind consumer shopping on mobile for products they see advertised on TV. Finally, we discuss winning second screen strategies like that of TV series “Duck Dynasty,” and explain why stand-alone second screen apps and show-focused apps probably won’t take off. Read more of this post

Why taxi cab drivers cannot put down their smartphones; Every Silicon Valley buzz-phrase, from the app economy to the internet of things, has converged on the industry

Last updated: September 18, 2013 6:49 pm

Why taxi cab drivers cannot put down their smartphones

By John Gapper

Every Silicon Valley buzz-phrase, from the app economy to the internet of things, has converged on the industry

The New York minicab service I used to favour communicated in code. When you rang and gave your address, the radio dispatcher would reply “five minutes” and hang up. This meant a cab would arrive at any time from one to 10 minutes later. “Seven minutes” meant 20, and “10 minutes” meant that anything, or nothing, could happen. This week, when I wanted a ride to London’s Heathrow airport, I used a computer account with Addison Lee, the biggest London service. The software told me when the car would come, showed me the likely route and deducted the fare from a credit card. A clean Ford Galaxy van arrived early and took me there smoothly – at twice the price of my former, less predictable journey to John F Kennedy International. Read more of this post

Why big IT projects crash; The history of embarrassing failures offers clues to where things tend to go wrong

September 18, 2013 8:13 pm

Why big IT projects crash

By Henry Mance

There are several ways the US Air Force could have wasted $1.1bn. It could have poured tomato ketchup into 250m gallons of jet fuel or bought a sizeable stake in Bear Stearns. Instead it upgraded its IT systems. Work began in 2007 to reconfigure how the force managed its logistics, with the aim of replacing 200 dated networks with a single piece of Oracle software. By the time the project was abandoned last November, it was at least four years behind schedule and would have required an additional $1.1bn to become usable. Yet in making such mistakes, the Air Force is not flying solo. This week a UK parliamentary watchdog described a failed National Health Service patient IT programme – the cost of which has spiralled to £9.8bn – as “one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector”. Earlier this month the Department for Work and Pensions admitted that it had written off £34m of IT costs, incurred in an attempt to overhaul how social security benefits are paid. A week earlier Co-operative Bank said it had written off the £148m cost of a new IT system that would no longer be implemented.

Read more of this post

Tesla’s Musk Uses Twitter to Find Engineers for ‘Autopilot’ Car

Tesla’s Musk Uses Twitter to Find Engineers for ‘Autopilot’ Car

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s unconventional chief executive officer, has turned to Twitter Inc. to further his goal of developing self-driving cars by posting a “help wanted” ad on the social media site. Musk, who told Bloomberg in May that Tesla would eventually develop its own “autopilot” technology for cars, wrote in a post on Twitter yesterday that the Palo Alto, California-based maker of electric cars is serious about developing such a system. “Intense effort under way at Tesla to develop a practical autopilot system for Model S,” said Musk, 42. “Engineers interested in working on autonomous driving, pls email autopilot@teslamotors.com. Team will report directly to me.” Read more of this post

Stratasys’s millionaires; The 3D printer company’s secondary offering is an opportunity to look at its remarkable stock market performance, and the people who benefit from it

Stratasys’s millionaires

The 3D printer company’s secondary offering is an opportunity to look at its remarkable stock market performance, and the people who benefit from it.

16 September 13 14:01, Tali Tsipori

So far as is known, the 3D printers made by Stratasys Inc. (Nasdaq: SSYS) are not used for printing money or coins (not even as toys), but the company and its share’s performance, especially since the merger between Stratasys of the US and Israel’s Objet, have turned the Rehovot-based company into a constantly working printing press (at least so far), and in terms of the capital market, into a major creator of value. Read more of this post

Startup Kiosked links images on the Web to online stores; “We timestamp every single event, how the mouse moves, what is clicked and so on. We know in real time what products sell at which price and in which color where.”

Kiosked Linking Kobe Clips to Nike Store Draws Investors

Kiosked Oy, a startup that links images on the Web to online stores, plans to triple its workforce after attracting a Digital Sky Technologies partner to its board in its second round of multimillion-dollar funding. The Finnish company collected $6.9 million from private investors including John Lindfors, who is joining the board with event producer Kevin Wall. Lindfors has been at Digital Sky, billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment firm that backed Facebook Inc., for three years, and previously ran Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Europe technology investment banking. Read more of this post

Smartphone Cameras at 41-Megapixels Pressure Canon, Nikon

Smartphone Cameras at 41-Megapixels Pressure Canon, Nikon

The global camera business, centered in Japan, is headed for a shakeout. With industry revenue falling to the lowest level in a decade amid surging smartphone sales, Nikon Corp. (7731), the world’s No. 2 camera maker, has cut prices to lure consumers. Market leader Canon Inc. (7751) may follow suit to keep pace, according to UBS AG, putting pressure on smaller producers and possibly leading them to retreat from the business. Read more of this post

San Francisco’s Blighted Market Street Reborn as Tech Hub

San Francisco’s Blighted Market Street Reborn as Tech Hub

An office shortage in San Francisco’s traditional technology district is aiding the revival of a blighted neighborhood known as Central Market, as young companies migrate to a new hub with fast-growing rents. Asking rates on Market Street between Fifth Street and Van Ness Avenue — northwest of the popular technology area called South of Market — jumped 18 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier to an average of $46.48 a square foot, data from brokerage CBRE Group Inc. show. Internet firms have driven gains, with mobile-payment service Square Inc. moving this month to a converted bank data center. Read more of this post

Priceline became the first company listed in the S&P 500 to trade at $1,000 in the index’s 56-year history.

September 18, 2013, 7:24 p.m. ET

Priceline’s Share Price Crosses $1,000 Mark

BEN FOX RUBIN

Priceline.com Inc., PCLN +2.56% the online travel agent, on Wednesday became the first company listed in the S&P 500 to trade at $1,000 in the index’s 56-year history. The company reached a high of $1,001, before settling at $995.09, up 2.6%. It’s up 60% so far this year. Its previous intraday high was $994.98, reached last month after Priceline’s better-than-expected earnings report. Read more of this post

Microsoft to Develop More TV Programs as It Readies Xbox One

Microsoft to Develop More TV Programs as It Readies Xbox One

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said it will expand its TV programming beyond the show based on its best-selling “Halo” game as it tries to position the new Xbox One console as a portal for games, videos and music. Phil Spencer, corporate vice president at Microsoft Studios, declined to elaborate in an interview in Tokyo today before the Tokyo Game Show. Microsoft is returning to the show this year as it competes against Sony Corp. (6758)’s new PlayStation 4 console and online games in a $63 billion industry. Read more of this post

Kevin Spacey’s Scheming Politico Lures Europe TV to Netflix

Kevin Spacey’s Scheming Politico Lures Europe TV to Netflix

Kevin Spacey is poised to scheme his way into more European homes as the politician-star of “House of Cards” should Virgin Media Inc.’s novel deal integrating Netflix Inc. (NFLX) into its cable offerings pay off. Netflix’s subscription-video service has only been available via the Web until last week, when it signed an accord with Liberty Global Plc (LBTYA)’s U.K. pay-TV provider to place its original content, film and TV archive on Virgin Media users’ TiVo Inc. (TIVO) set-top boxes. It’s a new model of collaboration and a talking point as European cable executives gather today in Barcelona for CTAM Europe’s annual cable marketing conference. Read more of this post

How Etsy crafts an artsy, homegrown culture

How Etsy crafts an artsy, homegrown culture

By Jessi Hempel, senior writer   @FortuneMagazine September 19, 2013: 7:13 AM ET

Each Friday two Etsy employees outfitted in full-body jumpsuits load roughly 150 pounds of paper towels, banana peels, eggshells, and other organic waste into an orange wagon welded to the front of a bike. They peddle their trash across the cobblestones of Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood to nearby Red Hook to unload it at a community farm. “I was looking for a way to minimize our wasteful ways, lower the carbon footprint, and curb our modern decadence,” says Jakob von Eichel, a former employee who founded the program. Read more of this post

Chinese Consumers Shrug at Apple; Chinese reaction to the new iPhones show that Apple could learn a thing or two from its competitors

September 18, 2013, 12:29 p.m. ET

Chinese Consumers Shrug at Apple

Chinese reaction to the new iPhones show that Apple could learn a thing or two from its competitors.

PAUL FRENCH

Apple‘s AAPL +2.06% China journey has been a rather rocky one. Sure, the tech giant has sold a lot of kit, but it has never been without problems in the background. Start with the 2011 n-hexane scandal, in which a manufacturer of iPhone screens poisoned workers. Apple incited widespread ire by responding slowly and ignoring journalists. This was followed by more employee rights and health and safety issues at the Foxconn assembly lines, as well as problems with the highly vocal China Consumers’ Association over warranties that appeared to disadvantage Chinese customers. Read more of this post