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The proposed merger between Bell Canada Enterprises and Astral Media will shortly be considered by the Canadian Radio and Television Council (CTRC). The merged company will own 70 television and cable channels, more than 100 radio stations, and some of the country’s most popular websites. The combined company will serve nearly one-third of the national TV audience, more than 40 percent of the national cable TV audience, and about 30 percent of the nationwide radio audience. In addition the merger will increase Bell’s vertical integration and its power over distribution systems used by competitors. This later factor is particularly important because Canada lacks much of the regulatory control seen in Europe and the US over business practices of distribution systems that are also used by competing firms. The merger will benefit the two companies by giving them more market power and permitting efficiencies at the corporate and divisional levels. It is also likely to produce efficienc...

Taking The Business to the Spirit World for a special desert session on Thursday August 30th:   Chris Garcia Caitlin Gill Alex Koll and very special guest Moshe Kasher plus Cory Loykasek Donny Divanian and Cornell Reid Thursday August 30th 7:00 & Edelweiss (SE Corner) Black Rock City

The Business is proud to announce a new employee for San Francisco's finest alternative comedy showcase. It's Mike Drucker, regular Business guest and comedian extraordinaire. He's performed at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, written for The Onion, IGN, McSweeney's, and Saturday Night Live, and his cuddly exterior masks a virile man's man. That's what this week's show is about: manliness. Chris Garcia, Alex Koll, and Caitlin Gill are busy taking The Business to the Spirit World with a Thursday sh ow at Burning Man (two admissions for one dream catcher; bring-your-own-peyote), so regulars Bucky Sinister, Sean Keane (and now Mike Drucker!) are leaving out the Burning, and delivering nothing but Men. One such man is Anthony Bedard, of the legendary bands Hank IV and the Icky Boyfriends. Mr. Bedard books Club Chuckles, a monthly comedy series at the Hemlock Tavern, and runs Talent Moat Records, producer of comedy albums by such artist...

Conventional thinking is that without patents,we would not have innovation. Mankind would stagnate in the Dark Ages. Really ??  This port is triggered by the drama between Apple and Samsung . In the tech industry, everybody is suing everybody else over patent infringement. Hundreds of patents are granted over what goes inside one mobile phone. Is this all necessary ? These days, that business seems to be driven by lawyers rather than technology - M&A activity in this industry seem to be driven mostly by patents.The patent industry has exploded so much that this blogger even blogged about the ridiculous patents that have been granted . The central premise that innovation will be stopped if there are no patents is nonsense. Right through human history, innovation has flourished with no help from the patent office, thank you.  Patents are a recent human invention - perhaps in the 15th century. Innovation has not exactly been stifled throughout human history.  You may sa...

If you were lucky enough to get into the sold-out Business last week, you saw what we have all come to call “The Perfect Business”: Two-and-a-half hours of amazing comedy, surprises, fluid energy and rolling laughter. Now you ask: Will lightning strike twice? Can we repeat perfection? Hell yeah, and you best bear witness lest you miss out on the transcendent and supreme, true believers. This week The Business welcomes Cory Loykasek and Mike Drucker to help us reach the top of the mountain again. Testify! Cory Loykasek’s flawless golden mane of hair warms a mind boiling with astute and challenging comedy. Cory uses his stand-up, as well as sketch and video work, to approach a variety of topics with grounded profundity, mixed with left-field thought through a layman's lens. Some call his approach casual, but just because you’re laid back in the drivers seat doesn’t mean your not still steering the ship right. He’s a lion of a man: Commanding, hairy and sometim...

The markets of magazine and newspaper printing firms are undergoing significant changes, reflecting on-going transformations in the customers they serve. Some of the changes have been under way for 2 decades with traditional printing companies morphing into printing service companies offering more profitable value-added services and products.   These included high-end specialized printing capabilities and services, database printing, and wide-ranging distribution services. At the same time, the increasing number of magazine titles, accompanied by lower average press runs, pushed the companies toward higher efficiency and acquisition of presses and systems designed for lower press runs. In this environment, many printers could not effectively compete and consolidation began creating large regional players in the industry. Shorter-term trends have also played havoc with the printing industry by killing off some magazine and newspaper titles, lowering the average number of pages ...

I hadn't met her for 35 years. After school, we went our own ways. Our leaving school was chaotic- we were not even supposed to leave that year, but the powers that be, changed the rules and packed us off to college. Literally overnight we had to run; for the town we were from had no college and we had to go to the big bad city. There was no time for goodbyes. No time for farewells. We simply ran. Thirty five years later I got a call from another ex schoolmate giving me a number. She's at this number ; call her there, the friend said . I did  and discovered that she was in the same city as I am in. Fancy that - no contact for such a long time and then all of a sudden, here she was not more than 5 miles from where I lived. I called her and was delighted to find the same old voice of the days when we were school kids. We were planning for a reunion back in school in a month's time and would she come ?? She took literally 30 seconds to say yes.  We drove down  together to ou...

Our guests this week are so great we could just EAT THEM UP. Since we can’t literally devour them, here are some quotes about things they have eaten in the past: Mr. Ian Karmel on delicious things enjoyed on recent travels: “I had cheese steaks in Philly, BBQ in Austin, breakfast burritos in Austin and Panda Express in the Mall of America... but the best thing I had on the whole trip has to be the Juicy Lucy in Minneapolis, a hamburger with cheese INSIDE of it. WHAT!? HOW? Dark magics, only explanation.” Mr. Kyle Kinane on accidentally eating a chocolate chip cookie with bacon in it: “Yeah, it was disgusting at first, but it got better the more that I ate it.” These two are making the Business their dessert after some seriously sexy Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction ( http:// www.brownpapertickets.com/ event/263704) where they will be battling a few of your Business regulars for erotic supremacy. We are happy to welcome Ian Karmel. Ian came from an improv background, which inclu...

I am now in some serious trouble. It appears, I am responsible for all the stuff you lot comment on my blog. If anything you write is untrue or misleading, it looks like I will go to jail. Good Lord! As usual, this blogger is guilty of hyperbole. But, as has been repeatedly stated, any prose, sans some journalistic license, is a sure cure for insomnia. So with some hyperbole, I am musing about Diageo's Facebook page, that has got into trouble with the Australian authorities . If you don't know Diageo, it is the company that makes Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys etc. Because their Board has been told that they must be "in" to social media, they have a Facebook page for their brands such as Smirnoff. The site encourages reader comments, opinions, etc, which you would expect to be a fairly harmless thing to do. Now anybody, who knows anything about social media, know that the vast majority of comments on anything (notable exception, this blog) will be vulgar,...

I recommend that Benjamin Lawski, head of New York state's Department of Financial Services takes my good friend Sriram 's  Geography 101 course . He might want to learn where the borders of the United States lie and where his jurisdiction is. The laws of the United States are enforceable in the United States. They are not enforceable on the world. I am referring to the spat between the DFS and Standard Chartered Bank . The problem is this. US law does not allow US entities to have any business dealings with Iran - neither the country nor its nationals. The US is perfectly entitled to have such a law - its merits or otherwise is for US citizens to decide. The problem is that the US would like everybody in the world to follow that law. That deserves the response - mind your own business. Standard Chartered Bank is a UK headquartered bank that largely deals with Asia and Africa. It has very little business in the US. However it does have a branch in New York where transactions ar...

There’s gold in these here guests! This week at the Business we welcome comics from lands of great riches. Two Canadians and two Sacramentans (Sacramentese? Sacramenti? Sacatomatoes?) will be joining us and presumably teaching us how to use a sluice box to get our own nuggets. We happen to know Ray Molina is from Sacramento, but when asked he usually responds by saying a "Random City." When asked for a bio, he will tell you "A bio won't make me funnier" but added "my favorite food is mermaid." W e have fresh mermaid on the grill just for him. Also coming to us from Sacramento but starting from a humble beginning in Parts Unknown, Johnny Taylor has fought against the struggle and has emerged as an amazing stand-up comedian, humanitarian, and incredibly nice guy. If you asked most people, they would agree with the part about him being a nice guy. He is also attractive and loves cats. And now the Canucks! “Julia Hladkowicz is not onl...

NBC’s Olympic coverage in the U.S. reveals the conflict media companies face as they try to simultaneously manage traditional media delivery and digital distribution. The company is getting it right with the traditional broadcasts, garnering excellent audiences and more than $1 billion in advertising—a figure that surprised even its most optimistic executives and may allow the broadcaster to break even on the games which have traditionally been a loss leader for the company. The company is also giving audiences more coverage than every before by streaming additional content on cable channels and digital live streams. These are provided on platforms that consumers have come to expect will give them the power to choose when, where, and on what device they will be viewed.   In order to support its traditional, advertising supported services, however, NBC has used tape delays on the broadcast services and has excluded many sports or blacked them outs on live streams—ange...

Here's a quiz. Who won the gold in the following events in Beijing 2008. 1. Men's decathlon -  for the title of the greatest all round athlete 2. Women's 1500m - the metric mile 3. Men's football -the most popular sport on earth 4. Women's individual all round in gymnastics - the most "wow" event 5. Men's 50m freestyle swimming - the fastest swimmer in the world If you scored zero out of five, congratulations. If I modify the questions to simply say which country did the winner come from in each of the above events, and if you still scored zero out of five, then even more congratulations. We are all in the group of 99% of the human race. If you are wondering where I am going with this post, let me just say that I was inspired to write this by a brilliant column in today's Hindu by Nirmal Shekar .  It is an outstanding piece of writing, even by Nirmal Shekar's high standards and is a perfect exposition of the spirit of sport. Yes, sport is about...

The News Corp’s launch of the tablet newspaper The Daily in February 2011 was heralded as the future of news and revealing opportunities for major new entrants in the news market. After a year and a half of operation, the digital newspaper has lost more than $30 million, managed to gain only 100,000 subscribers—not a trivial amount but low for a global player, and has just announced that it is cutting 1/3 of its editorial staff and ending original production of sports news and commentary. Journalistically The Daily is not a bad news product and its app is facile and effective. So why hasn’t it been more successful? The fundamental problem is that the digital-only paper has been overshadowed by the success of legacy print newspaper brands in the market for digitally delivered news. The Daily has never been so brilliantly written and edited that it could gain the significant attention and acclaim needed to overcome the brand advantages of legacy news providers. Major newspaper—s...