senior vice president

Advertising: Mun2 Relies Heavily on Reality Shows Starring Celebrities

April 16, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Diana Mogollón, the general manager of Mun2, and Joe Bernard, the channel’s senior vice president for sales, spoke to a small group of reporters in a warehouse space for the presentation, known as an upfront, where networks introduce their new offerings to advertisers and media buyers.

Among the shows expected to make their debut in 2014 are “Viva los Vargas” a reality series based on Fernando Vargas, a retired Mexican-American boxer, and his family life in Las Vegas. “Reinas de Realty” features two Latinas who are trying to build a real estate business in Southern California and “live the American dream one casa at a time.” “Horoscopos” will follow the daily lives of Vicky and Marisol Terrazas, the two lead singers in the Mexican band Horoscopos de Durango.

The last season of “I Love Jenni,” the reality show featuring Jenni Rivera, the Mexican-American singer and television star who died in a plane crash in December, started on Sunday night and drew 366,000 viewers. “She was our star; she was our friend,” said Ms. Mogollón. Regarding the decision to broadcast the last season of the show, she said, “We met with Jenni’s family and together we decided, in Jenni’s words, to finish what we started.”

Additional programming for the 2013 season will include the second seasons of “Larrymania,” a reality show featuring the Mexican singer Larry Hernández, and “Dub Latino,” a show that profiles Latino celebrities.

Mun2 executives also announced a partnership with Telemundo to show a majority of soccer games from the English Premier League in Spanish.

In a video shown before executives and performers took the stage, Mun2 highlighted the fact that it was viewed in 35 million homes and had 26 million video streams last year. The median age of the Mun2 audience is 29, and 52 percent of them are bilingual, in English and Spanish. Mr. Bernard said the channel had signed 30 new advertisers, in categories like wireless, automotive, family dining and “even Starbucks.”

After the presentation, which included appearances by Mr. Hernández, the Terrazas sisters, and Mr. Vargas and his wife, executives were asked whether Spanish-language reality programming, like Mr. Hernández’s show, would have English subtitles. Ms. Mogollón said yes, similar to how the network handles its telenovelas. “It’s about being authentic,” Ms. Mogollon said. “We don’t want to peg ourselves to one or the other.”

Sergio Alcocer, the president and chief creative officer at LatinWorks, an Austin, Tex.-based advertising agency focusing on Hispanic consumers, said the heavy lineup of reality programming that Mun2 was planning was preferable to importing programming from Latin America. “The reality format is an interesting way to capture the U.S. Latino experience,” which is different from that of Latin Americans, he said in an e-mail.

“The big question in our industry now is, How do we make our brands relevant for young Latinos that speak both languages and consume less mass media?” Mr. Alcocer added.

While Mun2 tries to court the millennial Latino, executives at Telemundo are preparing for their network presentation on May 14. It will include a new slate of telenovelas, including one called “Dama y Obrero” that will feature a love story between an upper-class woman and a working-class man. The show keeps the theme but flips the roles of one of Telemundo’s previous telenovelas, “Una Maid en Manhattan.” In that show, based on the American film “Maid in Manhattan,” the working-class love interest was a woman who is a maid.

“Latinas love to see what we like to call modern, independent achievers,” said Jacqueline Hernández, the chief operating officer at Telemundo.

Telemundo will also present a children’s version of the popular NBC show “The Voice” called “La Voz Kids.” Scheduled for Sunday night, it will feature singers ages 7 to 14 and will be hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Jorge Bernal. To accompany the debut of the show, Telemundo will unveil a mobile application that will allow viewers to peruse social media feeds and access additional content like backstage interviews. The app, which was created using a second screen platform called Zeebox, will be sponsored by ATT.

“Advertisers are extremely interested in multiplatform,” Ms. Hernandez said.

Last year, the network showed its first ever bilingual branded entertainment Web series, called Mia Mundo, which included sponsorships by Verizon Wireless and Chevrolet. The series has been renewed for a second season with Verizon and General Motors as sponsors.

Telemundo executives have been visiting with advertisers in advance of the official upfront presentation this year and are showcasing concepts for two new branded entertainment series. One includes a traveling chef who helps people make fast and healthy meals, the other is a series about a group of college friends. So far, neither has signed a sponsor.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/business/media/mun2-relies-heavily-on-reality-shows-starring-celebrities.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: mexican singer, senior vice president, telemundo

Bucks Blog: An A.T.M., With a Real Teller on the Screen

April 4, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Bank of America Bank of America’s new A.T.M.’s offer on-screen help from human tellers.

Bank of America is introducing new automated teller machines that evoke the bridge of the starship Enterprise, where captain and crew spoke remotely with others in outer space.

The bank’s “teller assist” A.T.M.’s let customers get on-screen help from a remote bank teller over a live video link for transactions like check cashing. Unlike the intergalactic characters on “Star Trek,” though, the bank’s on-screen tellers are sitting in call centers in Florida and Delaware.

The bank is introducing the new machines at a branch in Boston this month, and it will add more sites there and in Atlanta this spring, for a total of 12 locations in those two markets. More machines will be added in other cities throughout the year. They will be located at drive-up lanes as well as inside bank lobbies and 24-hour vestibules.

Shelley Waite, senior vice president and head of the A.T.M. business at Bank of America, said the new machines could handle most transactions that can be done by an in-person teller. In addition to cashing checks, customers will be able to conduct “split” transactions, in which part of a check deposited goes to a checking account and part to a savings account. Eventually the machines will allow payments for mortgages and other loans. (Some transactions, like obtaining a cashier’s check, must still be done in person.)

“Customers want expanded capabilities,” Ms. Waite said, and the new machines allow the bank to meet that demand. The remote tellers at the new A.T.M.’s will effectively expand branch hours, she said, by being available from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

In a demonstration video I viewed, a bank customer is shown speaking to a teller, who appears on a screen wearing a headset. The teller greets the customer by name and helps her cash a check. The machine dispenses the exact amount of the check, including change. The new machines can dispense bills in varying denominations, including $1, $5 and $100 bills. (With a traditional A.T.M., you can deposit a check and then make a separate cash withdrawal, but you’ll receive bills in standard denominations.)

If customers don’t need help, or if they’re using the A.T.M. outside the “teller assist” hours, they can use the machines just like traditional A.T.M.’s. Or they can visit tellers in person during normal branch hours.

The new machines are being added as the bank tweaks its A.T.M. strategy. Last year, it removed machines at some locations, like convenience stores and shopping malls. The bank has more than 16,000 A.T.M.’s.

What do you think of A.T.M.’s with video tellers?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/an-a-t-m-with-a-real-teller-on-the-screen/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: bank lobbies, senior vice president, tellers

Faux Fur Case Settled by Neiman Marcus and 2 Other Retailers

March 20, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The problem was that the faux fur was, in fact, real fur.

That’s right: it was faux faux fur.

In a forehead-slapping development, Neiman Marcus and two other retailers, DrJays.com and Eminent, on Tuesday settled federal claims that they had marketed real fur as fake fur. The supposedly fake stuff was actually rabbit, raccoon and, possibly, dyed mink.

Animal protection groups applauded the settlement, reached with the Federal Trade Commission, saying many retailers have been selling real fur disguised as fake fur.

On the face of it, the real-for-fake switch might not seem to make business sense. But because many people are no longer buying real fur, manufacturers and retailers are scrambling to meet growing demand for faux fur. As a result, some products are being mislabeled.

“The lines between real and fake have gotten really blurry,” said Dan Mathews, a senior vice president with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “In this global marketplace, there are fur farms in China that raise dogs for clothing that is labeled as fake fur here in the U.S. because that’s what the market best responds to.”

Others chalk up the incorrect labeling to sloppy product descriptions.

Hymie Betesh, the founder and chief executive of DrJays.com, says his company sells about 50,000 styles of products each year on its Web site.

“There were a handful of instances where a word may have been omitted in our product descriptions, and others where the word ‘fur’ was used to describe the style of a product, not intending to describe fabric content,” Mr. Betesh said in an e-mail.

Eminent, doing business as Revolve Clothing, according to the F.T.C., did not respond to an e-mail requesting a comment.

Under the F.T.C. settlement, which is preliminary and carries no financial penalties, the retailers will be subject to significant fines if they mislabel fur again in the next 20 years.

Mislabeling real fur — inexpensive rabbit as luxurious mink, say — is an old game. But mislabeling real fur as fake fur is relatively new. The three retailers were accused of violating a fur law that was enacted in the 1950s and, at the time, was meant to prevent people from marketing furs like rabbit under its English name, Coney, or selling muskrat as Hudson Seal.

The F.T.C. investigation was prompted by a petition filed last fall by the Humane Society of the United States.

Each year since 2006, when the Humane Society received an anonymous communication that a retailer was going to be advertising an animal fur product as fake fur in a printed circular, the group has conducted investigations. It scours Web sites and stores for mislabeled products. Suspected real-fur items are sent to a lab for testing.

Last fall, the group found fur where it was not supposed to be in a handful of products sold at 11 retailers, including the three in settlement announced Tuesday, as well as Dillard’s and Barneys New York, according to a complaint filed by the organization.

“We continue to find animal fur sold as faux fur every single season,” said Pierre Grzybowski, the research and enforcement manager of the Fur-Free campaign for the Humane Society.

Neiman Marcus is a frequent target of the group. In 2007, for instance, the Human Society found a children’s Andrew Marc jacket whose label said it was 100 percent polyester.

Testing, however, identified fur from a raccoon dog, a member of the Canid family, which includes dogs, wolves, foxes and coyotes.

A later investigation by the F.T.C. resulted in no action.

In 2008, when the Humane Society discovered raccoon dog fur misidentified as fake fur on several coats sold at Neiman Marcus and other national retailers, it sued the retailers. In 2010, Neiman Marcus paid a $25,000 judgment after a District of Columbia court found that the retailer had violated consumer protection laws.

That same year, a $1,895 St. John coat that was advertised as raccoon fur on the Neiman Marcus Web site tested as being raccoon dog.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokeswoman for Neiman Marcus said the company maintained a robust program to comply with all laws and regulations. And under the F.T.C. agreement, Neiman Marcus “has committed to identify correctly and promote accurately the fur and faux fur products offered in our catalogs and on our Web sites,” the statement said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/faux-fur-case-settled-by-neiman-marcus-and-2-other-retailers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: business sense, fake fur, senior vice president

Bits Blog: Google Puts Android and Chrome Under One Boss

March 13, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Stephen Lam/Reuters Sundar Pichai’s appointment could have broad implications for the mobile business.

3:30 p.m. | Updated Added comments from Andy Rubin in letter to Android developers.

Google announced on Wednesday a change in its executive ranks that could have broad implications for the mobile business.

Andy Rubin, who had been senior vice president in charge of Android, Google’s mobile operating system, has been replaced by Sundar Pichai. Mr. Pichai is the senior vice president of Chrome, and will now oversee Android as well.

Google has been in a confusing position because it has two unrelated operating systems: Chrome and Android.

At first, Google said they were separate: Chrome was for computers and the Web, and Android was for touch-screen mobile devices and apps.

But the lines among devices have blurred. Now, some computers (like the Chromebook Pixel that Google introduced last month) have touch screens, and people use mobile devices the way they used to use computers.

The personnel change is a sign that Google now sees the need to somehow coordinate or merge the two operating systems.

Though Android has been wildly successful, with 750 million devices activated worldwide, computers running Chrome’s operating system have not.

At a press event to introduce the new Chromebook, Mr. Pichai drew less of a distinction between the two operating systems than Google executives had in the past.

“So far, we have been in a world which has been pretty straightforward: Android phones and tablets and Chrome laptops,” Mr. Pichai said. “But lines do blur.”

“The way we think about it internally,” he said, “is as a user, you sign in to both these devices, you use search, Maps, Gmail” and other Google products. “All your Google services work seamlessly across devices.”

The company did not provide any details about how Chrome or Android might change under the new leadership.

“Today we’re living in a new computing environment,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, wrote in a company blog post announcing the change. “People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices.”

Mr. Pichai has had a fast rise at Google and has experience developing hardware, a new area of focus for the company. In addition to Chrome and Android, he also oversees Google Apps, like Gmail and Drive, for consumers and businesses.

Mr. Rubin is a big name in the mobile world. He is a co-founder of Android, which Google bought in 2005 and turned into Apple’s biggest mobile competitor and the most-used mobile operating system.

Google did not say why Mr. Rubin was replaced. Despite Android’s success, it is at a crossroads as device-making partners like Samsung and Amazon increasingly become competitors.

Mr. Page praised Mr. Rubin and said he would stay at the company in a new position, though he did not say what it would be. But there were hints that Mr. Rubin could join Google X, the company’s lab for creating new technologies like driverless cars, Google glasses and other wearable technologies. The glasses run Android.

Mr. Page wrote, “Andy, more moonshots please!” Google refers to Google X as a lab for “moonshots,” or world-changing ideas.

Motorola, the Android cellphone maker that Google spent $12.5 billion to buy, could also benefit from Mr. Rubin’s perspective as it tries to make phones that compete with those from Apple and Samsung. While Mr. Rubin was overseeing Android, Google tried to keep a strict wall between the two companies to appease Motorola’s competitors.

In a letter to Android developers on Wednesday, Mr. Rubin praised the Android team and wrote, “Today, the success of Android combined with the strength of our management team, gives me the confidence to step away from Android and hand over the reins.”

“As for me, I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google,” he said in the letter, which was first published by The Wall Street Journal.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/google-puts-android-and-chrome-under-one-boss/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: maps, operating systems, senior vice president

Eli Lilly to Conduct Additional Study of Alzheimer’s Drug

December 12, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The newest study is expected to get under way in the third quarter of 2013 and will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. It comes after Lilly released results of two clinical trials in August that showed the drug, called solanezumab, did not significantly improve either the cognition or daily functioning of people with mild and moderate forms of the disease. But despite that failure, the results also showed some reason for hope: when patients with mild Alzheimer’s were separated out, the drug was shown to significantly slow their decline in cognition.

In a statement Wednesday, the company said it decided not to pursue approval of the drug based on existing study results after it met with officials from the Food and Drug Administration. However, a Lilly executive said the company was still optimistic.

“We remain encouraged and excited by the solanezumab data,” David Ricks, a senior vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in the statement. “We are committed to working with the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities to bring solanezumab to the millions of patients and caregivers suffering from this devastating disease who urgently need this potential treatment.”

The Lilly drug is the second Alzheimer’s drug to fail in clinical trials this year. Pfizer and Johnson Johnson stopped development of a similar treatment, bapineuzumab, after it also was not shown to work. Both drugs target beta amyloid, a protein in the brain that is found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Lilly shares were down about 3 percent, to $49.05, by midmorning.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/eli-lilly-to-conduct-additional-study-of-alzheimers-drug.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: mild alzheimer, senior vice president, target

Rising Consumer Optimism Fuels an Annual Spree

November 25, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Consumers have voiced increasing optimism in recent months as employment rises and their home values (finally) go up, or at least stabilize, even as government talks about taxes and spending remain at an impasse. Bargain hunters put that upbeat mood into action on Thursday night and the wee hours of Friday morning at department and discount stores around the country.

Shoppers stood in line Friday for the 7 a.m. opening of Sam’s Club in Eagan, Minn., enduring freezing temperatures and biting winds, and clinging to free Starbuck’s Holiday Blend coffee as they collected vouchers for laptops and big-screen TVs.

“I didn’t even want it,” Meshia Flood, 36, a student from nearby Eagan, told a worker standing near the exit, referring to the 40-inch Sanyo LED TV on her cart. She and her 13-year-old daughter had come for a 96-cent Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, but did not snag one before they disappeared minutes after opening.

Hundreds to thousands of consumers lined up outside Sears, Target, Macy’s, Old Navy and other retailers offering time-sensitive deals. Some turned up Thursday night for newly extended hours that some merchants have been experimenting with.

Bryan Everett, Target’s senior vice president for stores, said that Target’s decision to open at 9 p.m. on Thursday rather than midnight meant that there were more families in the store, and that customers stayed longer.

“Usually, it’s just a parent with a child, or mom and dad, or just a single guest in the store,” he said. “This year, we were seeing four- to five-person families.”

As a result, he said, customers stayed longer, and there was more “cross shopping.” Usually the Black Friday shoppers make a beeline for the electronics and toys, he said, but this year in addition to the surge in big-screen LCD TVs, iPads, iPods and Xboxes “we saw a nice pattern of shopping in the apparel and home departments.” Children’s pajamas, blankets, sheet sets, pillows and scarves all did particularly well.

The official sales numbers will not be reported for a few days, but analysts are expecting a strong sales day, with results comparable with last year’s gain of about 3 percent, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which is a metric for total American retail sales across all payment forms, including cash and check. The earlier hours from a few select chains seem unlikely to increase the size of the spending pie, but they may reapportion it.

“Black Friday has always been and always will be about being first: first to open, first to price, first to offer that special item,” said Michael Brown, a partner in the retail practice of A. T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm.

He said the race to open earlier and earlier would probably continue in coming years, although there was some question about how early was too early. Some Midtown Manhattan stores that were open at midday on Thursday did not seem to get blockbuster traffic, at least compared with the postdinner doorbusters.

In addition to longer hours, stores also experimented with ways to slow the creep of online competitors onto their turf and prevent consumers from using brick-and-mortar locations as showrooms for the goods they planned to purchase online.

Best Buy, Target, Fry’s Electronics and Staples all agreed to match prices with at least some online competitors. Physical stores may also benefit from decisions by some states to force online retailers to pay sales taxes. That is chipping away at the pricing edge of some major companies like Amazon.com, according to Nelson Granados, an assistant professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

Reporting was contributed by Christina Capecchi from Eagan, Minn.; Christopher Maag from Columbus, Ohio; Cindy Wolff from Memphis; and Rebecca Fairley Raney from Upland, Calif.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/business/rising-consumer-optimism-fuels-an-annual-spree.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: government talks, senior vice president, wee hours

Media Decoder: NBC Moves to Shake Up ‘Today’ Leadership

November 13, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

NBC Universal Alexandra Wallace.

NBC is completing a plan to change the leadership at the “Today” show, the longtime first-place morning show that slid to second place this year during the controversial removal of Ann Curry.

Alexandra Wallace, a senior vice president of NBC News, will be the new executive in charge of all four hours of the highly profitable “Today,” according to people at the network who described the plan on condition of anonymity because it had not been announced. She and a producer yet to be selected will succeed Jim Bell, who has been in charge of the show since 2005. Mr. Bell led the campaign for Ms. Curry’s removal from the show earlier this year and received much of the blame for the damage done by the transition.

After being the No. 1 show for 16 consecutive years, “Today” lost to “Good Morning America” on ABC for a few weeks in April and May.

Ms. Curry — who had been on the job only a year — was replaced by Savannah Guthrie in June. Since then “Today” has lost to “G.M.A.” consistently (save for two weeks during the Summer Olympics) and the reputation of Ms. Guthrie’s co-host Matt Lauer has taken a beating, as many of Ms. Curry’s fans have blamed him for her dismissal.

Because of all the turbulence, the producer change is seen as inevitable in the halls of NBC News. But it is unclear when the changes at the top will take effect. Some people with knowledge of the plan, who said they could be fired if they were identified, cautioned that it was still subject to change.

A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment. NBC is part of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast.

According to NBC, Ms. Wallace will be the first woman ever put in charge of the “Today” show — a milestone for the media industry because “Today” invented the morning television format 60 years ago. “G.M.A.” has had a female executive producer on two occasions, and “Today” briefly had a female executive for morning programming, but for the most part men have run the network morning shows, which rise or fall mainly on their ability to get women to watch. Women make up about 65 percent of the “Today” audience and about 70 percent of the “G.M.A.” audience.

The changes are being overseen by Patricia Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the newly created NBCUniversal News Group, which includes NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, along with Steve Capus, news division chief.

Stephen B. Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, put Ms. Fili-Krushel in charge of the group in July, and since then she’s been exploring what to do with “Today,” the most valuable piece of NBC News real estate, according to people who have spoken with her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel declined an interview request on Monday. She is expected to pick a day-to-day producer of “Today” under Ms. Wallace and may direct other changes to the show as well.

A shake-up like this one has been rumored about for months — making “Today” an awkward place to work in the meantime. Mr. Bell, who took over “Today” in 2005 and kept it No. 1 until this year, has continued to run the show this fall while fending off rumors about his future there. He had a second job this year producing NBC Sports’ Summer Olympics coverage. Mr. Bell will become the full-time executive producer of NBCUniversal’s Olympics coverage, reporting to the chairman of NBC Sports Group, Mark Lazarus, a spokesman said.

The search for his replacement has been an open secret, even at NBC’s competitors.

“Résumés are flying,” said a senior executive at a competing network. Among those interviewed for the day-to-day job were Izzy Povich, a producer at MSNBC, and Amy Chiaro, a former “Today” show producer who now helps run “The Dr. Oz Show” in syndication. Ms. Povich declined to comment. Ms. Chiaro said in an e-mail that she had “no plans of leaving” “Dr. Oz.”

Ms. Wallace did not respond to a request for comment. She came to NBC in 2005 from CBS, where she was a senior producer of the morning show for that network.

At NBC she produced “Weekend Today” before moving to the evenings, first as an executive overseeing “NBC Nightly News,” then as its executive producer. Most recently she was the top deputy to Mr. Capus. In September he asked her to take over “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” the prime-time newsmagazine that was introduced last year and has struggled to build an audience. She could remain the producer of “Rock Center” while overseeing “Today.”

The new producers will be taking over a morning show that’s not accustomed to losing. But that’s where “Today” finds itself now, having suffered what one executive called a “slow fade” in the ratings that predated Ms. Curry and worsened while she was co-hosting with Mr. Lauer. Her tearful goodbye seemed to tip the scales, sending “Today” deep into second place.

Lately, though, there have been positive signs for “Today”: after losing for 10 consecutive weeks in the category that matters most to advertisers, viewers ages 25 to 54, the show beat “G.M.A.” by a few thousand viewers in the last week of October. “Today” still lost among total viewers, with 5.27 million, compared with 5.49 million for “G.M.A.” The ratings results were incomplete because of show pre-emptions and power failures across the Northeast caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Ms. Curry has not appeared on “Today” for more than a month. She is in charge of a new reporting unit that most recently contributed a story about Sandy’s destruction on Staten Island to “Rock Center.” The executive in charge of Ms. Curry’s unit is Ms. Wallace.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/nbc-moves-to-shake-up-today-leadership/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: matt lauer, morning television, senior vice president

Question Mark: How AARP Learns People’s Birthdays

November 9, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Some recipients may feel irritated by an unwelcome reminder of an even more unwelcome milestone. Others may be excited at the prospect of Comfort Inn discounts. And some – you know who you are – are AARP haters who post scathing comments on blogs if the group is mentioned even peripherally in an article.

Then there are those people who just want to know how the organization ferrets out information that many might go to considerable lengths to conceal.

“Some people are shocked that our membership letter hits their mailbox on their exact birthday,” Lynn Mento, an AARP senior vice president, said by e-mail. “For some people who aren’t comfortable yet with turning 50, it can be seen as a bit of a ‘downer,’ but for millions of people, they’re excited about being able to take advantage of our benefits.”

The organization says it amasses birthdates from “companies that specialize in providing information to direct marketers.” Those companies, it says, gather information from a variety of sources to which people provide personal information on things like product warranties and sweepstakes forms.

When AARP learns that someone is turning 50, it sends a letter as close to the birthday as possible. It may then send five to eight follow-up letters that year, it says. The nonprofit group, which advocates on issues affecting older Americans and markets services to members, claims to have signed up more than 37 million people at a cost of $16 a year.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy group based in San Diego, noted that AARP is doing nothing illegal or even uncommon — though the group may be far more adept at it than other businesses. But that doesn’t mean people on the receiving end of those letters have to like it.

“Different people have different sensitivities,” said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the clearinghouse. “I think for a lot of people, age is something that they are very sensitive about. It’s something that they’d prefer not to be publicly available.”

Ms. Mento noted that all the information was there for the taking. “The data we – and all direct marketers in the U.S. – purchase from these companies doesn’t carry any privacy issues at all with it,” she said.

Questions on aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/booming/how-aarp-learns-peoples-birthdays.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: e mail, senior vice president, those letters

Media Decoder Blog: Under Copyright Pressure, Google to Alter Search Results

August 11, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

6:58 p.m. | Updated
Big media companies won a battle in the fight to combat online piracy on Friday when Google said it would alter its search algorithms to favor Web sites that offered legitimate copyrighted movies, music and television.

Google said that beginning next week its algorithms would take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices Web sites have received. Web sites with multiple, valid complaints about copyright infringement may appear lower in Google search results.

“This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily — whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music Web site, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify,” Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, wrote in a company blog post.

The entertainment industry, which has for years pressured Google and other Internet sites to act against online piracy, applauded the move.

“We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online,” Michael O’Leary, a senior executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement.

Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, also commended Google’s move. “Google has signaled a new willingness to value the rights of creators,” he said in a statement.

But the two men expressed caution and urged Google to carry out the change with the vigor it adopted in combating pirated videos on YouTube, which Google owns.

“The devil is always in the details,” Mr. O’Leary said. While Mr. Sherman added, similarly, that changing the search algorithm “is not the only approach and of course, the details of implementation will matter.”

The announcement comes just over six months after a heated battle between big media companies and technology companies, who were sparring over proposed legislation intended to crack down on pirated online content, particularly by rogue foreign Web sites.

In January, media companies like Viacom, Time Warner and the Walt Disney Company backed two antipiracy bills, one in the Senate and the other in the House of Representatives, while Internet activists and companies like Google and Facebook argued the bills would hinder Internet freedom. Buoyed by a huge online grass-roots movement, and aided by Wikipedia’s going black for a day in protest, the bills quickly died.

That tension has decreased somewhat as media companies have met with Silicon Valley executives over how to solve the problem to everyone’s satisfaction.

Google said it would not remove pages from copyright-infringing Web sites from its search engine unless it received a valid copyright removal notice from the rights’ owner. “Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed,” Mr. Singhal said.

Google said it had received copyright removal requests for over 4.3 million Web addresses in the last 30 days, according to the company’s transparency report. That is more than it received in all of 2009.

Amy Chozick is The Times’s corporate media reporter. Follow @amychozick on Twitter.

A version of this article appeared in print on 08/11/2012, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Under Copyright Pressure, Google to Alter Search Results.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/google-to-alter-search-results-to-reflect-a-sites-history-of-copyright-infringement/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: battl, entertainment industry, senior vice president