BSkyB to offer sports channels online for daily fee

LONDON (Reuters) – BSkyB will offer its popular sports channels online for a daily fee, seeking new customers to offset slowing growth at its core pay-TV service amid sluggish consumer spending.

Sky, Britain’s dominant pay-TV group which provides fixed-line telephony, TV and broadband to 10.7 million households, has adapted its strategy during the economic downturn after years of chasing new subscribers to its core TV offering.

The group added 25,000 subscribers to its pay-TV service in the three months to the end of December, well down on the more than 100,000 users it used to routinely add each quarter.

In response, it has focused on selling more products such as high definition TV and broadband to existing customers, and moving online to reach those not willing to sign up to a monthly contract. The approach has enabled the group to consistently post strong financial results and pay higher dividends.

“Although we expect the consumer environment in 2013 to remain challenging, we have a strong set of plans for the year ahead,” Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said on Thursday.

Darroch said the group would offer its sports channels, which show everything from Premier League soccer to Formula One motor racing and cricket, on its new online service called Now TV in the next few months.

Viewers, who do not need to sign up to a contract, will be able to pay 9.99 pounds to watch all six Sky Sports channels for 24 hours. It has already shown movies via the online offering to 25,000 customers since its launch last year.

The new internet drive will help BSkyB compete with existing online services such as Lovefilm and with BT Vision, which has won the right to show its own sports content, but it is also having to bet that its existing customers will not downgrade to the cheaper online offering to save money.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY

The group’s performance in the first half of the year showed that, despite the pressures on consumer spending, customer loyalty had remained relatively solid, with subscribers spending on average 568 pounds a year, up 24 pounds on the year before.

“Net additions were slightly below our estimates reflecting the tough consumer environment,” analysts at Numis said. “(But) encouragingly, take up of new products continues to increase, driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

Those customers taking all three main services – TV, broadband and telephony – accounted for 33 percent of the user base, up 4 percentage points year on year.

The rise in customers helped the group to post first-half operating profit up 8 percent to 647 million pounds ($ 1 billion) against a forecast of 632 million pounds. Cost control helped the group pay an interim dividend up 20 percent to 11 pence.

“We believe the BSkyB investment case has evolved over the past year or so, with the challenging consumer environment making the addition of new households to the (pay-TV) service more difficult,” Numis said.

“The group has rightly prioritized the increased penetration of multiple products, notably HD and broadband, which drive average revenue per user and reduce churn over the medium/long term. We are supportive of investment in products such as Now TV which offer an attractive risk/return in our view.”

Shares in BSkyB were up 1 percent to 819 pence in mid-morning trade, following a 21 percent rise in the last 12 months, and valuing the group at 13.2 billion pounds.

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Rhys Jones and Mark Potter)

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E-Trade Baby Has the Time of His Life in Super Bowl Commercial

If this is how his life begins, we can't wait to see him in his prime!

PICS: Inside Beyonce's Super Bowl Rehearsals!

In the new E-Trade Super Bowl commercial, America's favorite talking toddler shows what an investor could do with all the money they could potentially save as an E-Trade client.

Check out the hilarious clip above to see photos of the perennial infant balling out of control at hip nightclubs and posh yachts, complete with bikini clad women.

For another look at E-Trade's big game spot, visit the E-Trade baby's Facebook page.

VIDEO: Rogen & Rudd's Ideas Stifled in Super Bowl Ad

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Hagel was so bad ...

John Podhoretz

‘I’ve said many, many things over many, many years,” said Chuck Hagel, the president’s nominee for secretary of defense, in a Senate hearing yesterday. He was trying, for the umpteenth time during his testimony, to explain away another of the many, many impolitic statements that have come to light over the past couple of months.

Well, as a result of this confirmation hearing — the most disastrous of its kind since another veteran senator, John Tower, blew himself up in his pursuit of the same post back in 1989 — Hagel has probably lost many, many votes to confirm him as secretary of defense.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Embarassing: Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel yesterday actually claimed it’s not a policy-making job, among endless other boners.

Though he was being asked about things he had said over the course of the past 15 years, it was what Hagel said yesterday — and how he said what he said — that had his defenders reeling in shock and even his critics aghast at how poorly he handled himself.

Hagel said many, many things yesterday — incoherent things, confused things, wrong things, untrue things, and things that seemed to contradict other things he had said previously. Some were about Israel, some about Iran, some about American policy.

First he said it was the policy of the Obama administration to “contain” Iran — meaning it will allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon and then try to box it in.

Now, that is exactly what many of us fear is the true policy of the Obama administration, especially in light of Hagel’s appointment.

For not only has Hagel spoken approvingly of engaging with the Iranians, he has his own checkered history when it comes to holding Iran to account. It includes voting against a 2007 resolution that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — perhaps the world’s foremost trainer and funder of state-sponsored terrorism — a terrorist organization.

In trying to defend that vote yesterday, he said he had done so (along with newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry) because it was an assault on an “elected, legitimate” government — by which he meant Iran’s theocracy. And because, he said, voting for the resolution would have given the Bush administration a green light to go to war with Iran.

Well, that ludicrous notion is in the past. What’s in the present is that the stated policy of the Obama administration toward the Iranian nuke is “prevention” — that it will not allow Iran to get the bomb, period, and will do what is necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen.

So Hagel corrected himself, kind of: “I was just handed a note that I misspoke — that I said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say that we don’t have a position on containment.” Whatever that means.

Later he said he was sorry he’d called the Iranian government elected and legitimate; rather, he should have said it was recognized.

“I don’t understand Iranian politics,” Hagel said — which would be understandable if, say, Khloe Kardashian were testifying. But Hagel is going to be a key official determining US policy toward Iran, and one would hope he’d bring a bit of pre-existing knowledge to the table.

He was also sorry to have said Israel keeps the Palestinians “caged in like wild animals.” Oh, and he didn’t mean to have drawn a moral equivalence between Israel and Hezbollah by referring to “the sickening slaughter on both sides” during a war inaugurated entirely by Hezbollah’s rockets.

As for American policy, he and his ex-friend Sen. John McCain got into quite a tussle over the surge in Iraq, which Hagel described before it began as “the worst foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam.”

This is something about which he was obviously mistaken — even if you think the war itself was a foreign-policy disaster, the surge certainly made it far less of one — and yet he could neither find the words to defend his 2007 view nor the words to say things had worked out differently from how he had expected them to go.

“There are a lot of things I don’t know about,” Hagel said, when it came to America’s defenses. “If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.”

But why should he bother? After all, he said in perhaps the most head-shaking comment of the day, “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) begged to differ: “It matters what you think,” she found herself saying in response.

Or maybe this was the most head-shaking comment: Defense secretary is “not a policymaking position,” and because he has to work in consultation with others and in service to the president, he won’t be “running anything.”

After yesterday, maybe he won’t. Because maybe, after this horror show, the Senate will decide it just can’t countenance confirming Chuck Hagel. That would be a shocker, but no less shocking than his performance.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Mompreneur jumps into the ‘Shark Tank’

It all started with a 4 a.m. email nearly a year ago: “Do you think a baby bib could change the world? I do...”

Then Susie Taylor included a link to her website, bibbitec.com, and off it went to Shark Tank, the popular ABC television show where entrepreneurs pitch their companies to investors on the show — and by extension, 7 million viewers.

Four months later, as the “mompreneur” was leaving her Biscayne Park home to pick up her kids from school, she got a call from the show asking her to pitch on the spot. Driving with her phone on her shoulder, she told the Bibbitec story.

Shark Tank bit. After a few more back and forths, her segment was filmed last summer.

Friday night, Taylor is scheduled to be on the show pitching Bibbitec’s main product, “The Ultimate Bib,” a patented generously sized, stain-resistant and fast-drying child’s bib made in the USA — Hialeah, to be exact. Bibbitec’s $30 bib can be a burp cloth, changing pad, breast feeding shield, full body bib, place mat, art smock and more, Taylor says.

We won’t be getting any details on what happens Friday night when she and her husband, Stephen Taylor, get into the tank with Daymond John, Mark Cuban and the other celebrity sharks; Taylor has been contractually sworn to secrecy. But whatever the outcome, she believes it will be worth it for the marketing pop.

Taylor was inspired to create her bib after a long and very messy plane ride with two young sons and started her company in 2008. She and her team — her husband is CFO, her sister, Heather McCabe, handles sales and marketing, her uncle, Richard Page, is in charge of production, and her aunt, Marcia Kreitman, advises on design — have expanded the line to include The Ultimate Smock for older children and the Ultimate Mini for babies. Coming soon: a smock for adults.

Taylor already got a taste of what a national TV show appearance can do for sales. In September, Bibbitec’s sales jumped 40 percent after she was on an ABC World News "Made in America" segment. “Within 30 seconds, we started getting sales from all over the country and they didn’t even mention our name on the air,” Taylor says. She said that confirmed her belief that a Shark Tank appearance would be worth it.

Plus, Taylor has been hooked on Shark Tank since the first time she watched it in 2008 as she was developing her product. Trained in theater, she admits she didn’t know much about business and learned from the show. She would practice how she would answer the questions.

“I’m all about empowering women who are sitting on the couch watching, because that’s what I was four years ago,” says Taylor. “All I wanted to do was to be on Shark Tank because I believed if I got on Shark Tank the world will see what I am trying to do and that’s all I need. I know it’s a great product.”

Will that theater training come in handy Friday night? Stay tuned. Shark Tank airs at 9 p.m. on ABC and Taylor hopes viewers will join in on Twitter using the hashtag #sharkbib.

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Suspicious note on rental car at MIA leads to evacuation

A floor of the Miami International Airport rental car center was evacuated Wednesday after a report of a threatening note left on a rental car.

Police spokesman Javier Baez said the note was found on a Hertz rental car at the Miami Intermodal Center, 3900 NW 25th St. Service on Metrorail’s Orange Line, which goes to the airport, was temporarily suspended, according to Miami Herald news partner CBS 4.

The note was determined to be a hoax after the vehicle was inspected, police said.

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RIM rebrands as BlackBerry; launches nifty new devices

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Wednesday unveiled the long-delayed line of smartphones it hopes will put it on the comeback trail, but it disappointed investors by saying U.S. sales of its all-new BlackBerry 10 devices will not start until March, sending its share price tumbling 12 percent.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins also announced that RIM was abandoning the name it has used since its inception in 1985 to take the name of its signature product, signaling his hopes for a fresh start for the company that pioneered on-your-hip email.

“From this point forward, RIM becomes BlackBerry,” Heins said at the New York launch. “It is one brand; it is one promise.”

RIM, which is already starting to call itself BlackBerry, had initially planned to launch the new BlackBerry 10 devices a year ago. But it pushed the release date back twice as it struggled to perfect a new operating system.

Ahead of Wednesday’s announcements, analysts had said that any launch after February would be a black mark for the Canada-based company.

“The biggest disappointment was the delay in the U.S., that it will take so long before the devices get going there,” said Eric Jackson, founder and managing Partner at Ironfire Capital LLC in New York.

Heins said the delays reflected the need for U.S. carrier testing, although carrier AT&T Inc offered few clues on what that meant. Instead, the carrier merely stated it was enthusiastic about the devices and would announce availability, pricing and other information at a later date.

“Carriers in all other parts of the world get their devices through the testing process significantly faster than the U.S. carriers do,” said John Jackson, an analyst at IDC, adding that the U.S. process can often take “weeks” longer.

Nevertheless investors were extremely disappointed with the delay and RIM shares on the Nasdaq ended the day 12 percent lower at $ 13.78. Its Toronto-listed shares fell by almost the same margin to close at C$ 13.86.

RIM launched its first BlackBerry back in 1999 as a way for busy executives to stay in touch with their clients and their offices, and the company quickly cornered the market for secure corporate and government emails.

But its star faded as competition rose and the BlackBerry is now a far-behind also-ran in the race for market share, with a 3.4 percent global showing in the fourth quarter – down from 20 percent three years before. Its North American market share is even smaller – a mere 2 percent in the fourth quarter.

RIM shares have tumbled along with the company’s market share and the stock is down 90 percent since its 2008 peak. Despite the pullback on Wednesday, RIM‘s share price has more than doubled over the last four months, reflecting the growing buzz about its new devices.

TOUCH COMPETITION

The new BlackBerry 10 phones will compete with Apple’s iPhone and devices using Google’s Android technology, both of which have soared above the BlackBerry in a competitive market.

The BlackBerry 10 devices boast fast browsers, new features, smart cameras and – unlike previous BlackBerry models – enter the market primed with a large application library, including services such as Skype and the popular game Angry Birds.

The BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen device, in black or white, will be the first to hit the market, with a country-by-country rollout that starts in Britain on Thursday.

A Q10 model, equipped with a small “qwerty” keyboard that RIM made into its trademark, will launch globally in April.

“I’m still confident that a lot of the subscriber base are going to want the upgrade to BlackBerry 10. It’s a very strong improvement over what they currently have. This is not going to cause mass defections from iOS and Android, but it doesn’t have to be a success for RIM. You’ve got to start somewhere,” said Jackson of Ironfire, which owns shares in RIM.

The Z10 device won a lukewarm review from The Wall Street Journal’s tech blogger Walt Mossberg, who complained of a shortage of apps.

On the other hand, David Pogue, who writes for The New York Times, apologized for describing BlackBerry as doomed in the past. The Z10 touchscreen device was “lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas,” he said.

While technology analysts conceded that RIM has done quite a remarkable job on many of the features of BlackBerry 10 and on the array of its app selection for a new platform, many argue it will be a very tough slog for RIM to regain its crown.

“I don’t think that RIM will return to its glory days,” said Charles Golvin, analyst at Forrester Research. “Success for them looks like staunching the bleeding and clawing back a percentage or point or two of market share.”

Announcements about pricing so far have been in line with expectations. U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless said the phone would cost $ 199 for a two-year contract, while Canada’s Rogers Communications is quoting C$ 149 ($ 150) for certain three-year plans.

GLITZY LAUNCH

RIM picked a range of venues for its global launch parties, including Dubai’s $ 650-a-night Armani Hotel, which occupies six floors of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower.

The New York event took place in a sprawling basketball facility on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, just north of the Manhattan Bridge. The BlackBerry has been “Re-designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented,” RIM said.

RIM, which is splurging on a Super Bowl ad to promote its new phones, also introduced Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys as its global creative director.

“I was in a long-term relationship with BlackBerry and then I started to notice some new, kind of hotter, attractive, sexier phones at the gym, and I kind of broke up with you for something that had a little more bling,” Keys said at the New York launch.

“But I always missed the way you organized my life and the way you were there for me at my job, and so I started to have two phones – I was kind of playing the field. But then … you added a lot more features … and now, we’re exclusively dating again, and I’m very happy,” she said.

($ 1=$ 1.0029 Canadian)

(Writing by Janet Guttsman; editing by Frank McGurty, Lisa Von Ahn, Peter Galloway, G Crosse)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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First Look at Iron Man 3 Super Bowl Trailer

Tony Stark is back!

ET was first to preview Iron Man 3's highly anticipated Super Bowl spot tonight, and just in case you missed it, you can watch the :10 second teaser right here!

Pics: Stars on Set!

Be sure to tune in Sunday for the full spot.

In theaters May 3, 2013, Iron Man 3 pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy's hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man?

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Just sold!

Manhattan

HARLEM $1,995,000

111 Central Park North

Three-bedroom, three-bath condo, 1,914 square feet, with glass balcony, floor-to-ceiling windows, walk-in closet, washer/dryer and Central Park views; building features doorman, parking, roof deck, gym and party room. Common charges $2,170, taxes $467. Asking price $1,995,000, on market 34 weeks. Brokers: Michael Rosenblum, Douglas Elliman and Kristina Ojdanic, The Corcoran Group

UPPER EAST SIDE $1,400,000

300 E. 74th St.

Two-bedroom, two-bath co-op, 1,450 square feet, with windowed kitchen, dining room and balcony; building features doorman, gym, laundry and storage. Maintenance $2,042, 45 percent tax-deductible. Asking price $1,425,000, on market 21 weeks. Brokers: David Wolfenson, Maxwell Jacobs and Linda Chen, The Corcoran Group

Westchester

BEDFORD HILLS $2,385,000

33 Bedford Center Road

Five-bedroom, five-bath stone house, 6,731 square feet, with two-story conservatory, formal living and dining rooms, family room, guest wing and four antique fireplaces; landscaped property features fenced yard, pool and tennis court. Taxes $45,923. Asking price $2,750,000, on market 50 weeks. Broker: Angela Kessel, Houlihan Lawrence

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In later life, many Americans turn to ‘encore careers’

Don Causey was beginning to plan his retirement, selling off his profitable sporting newsletters when his life took a horrific turn. While on a safari on a long anticipated trip to Africa, a tree tumbled onto him, breaking his back. The process of getting a medical transport to take him from a remote village back to Miami proved arduous and costly.

Today Causey’s back is healed and at 70 he finds himself in a post retirement career — consulting for a company that sells travel memberships that include medical evacuation benefits. It’s a profitable part-time gig that Causey believes is an important service to travelers. Plus, he says, “It keeps my mind alive and keeps me connected with a community I care about, just in a different way.”

Like Causey, most Americans are crafting their own version of meaningful work in their later stages of life. It’s a direction that brings balance and an ability to be impactful in a whole new way.

“More and more people — sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice — are forgoing traditional retirement and investing a new state of life and work,” says Marci Alboher, with and author of The Encore Career Handbook.

Alboher is part of a movement that has named this later-in-life stage “encore careers,” paid or volunteer work that has a social impact. An encore career can last from a few years to 20 or more. While 9 million Baby Boomers already have entered their encore phase, another 31 million will soon make the leap in that direction, according to Encore.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes second acts for the greater good.

The concept of an encore career is being buoyed by a convergence of trends: financial realities, layoffs, long life spans and the desire for a more purposeful existence during the aging process. “It’s a way to leave a mark that makes things better for future generations,” explains Alboher. “But usually it’s not quick or easy. It’s a slow metamorphosis involving baby steps, detours, persistence, creativity and a do-it-yourself spirit.”

An encore career job might be a nurse or health aide. It could be a teacher, tutor or fundraiser, founder of a nonprofit, or even an entrepreneur that solves a social problem. For many, it has become the answer to “now what?” and “what will be my legacy?”

Knowing what’s ahead, some people plan their encore career for years, beginning as early as their 50s. They use travel time to build alliances or weekends to take a community college course.

Though he’s far from retirement age, my 50-year-old husband surely will need an encore career. Even now, he can’t sit still on days off from work, filling his days with house projects and coming up with new ones once the current list is exhausted. Yet he regularly talks about how he looks forward to retirement — a disaster-in-the-making for a man without a mission.

The reignite-rather-than-retire movement has been recent, but it may already have played a role in curbing the high rate of suicide for older males. David Cohen, author of Out of the Blue, and a professor of psychology at University of Texas had previously discovered a high rate of suicide for males in the 65-to-74 year old age group, observing that this set was susceptible because of its preoccupation with lost status and higher risk of apathy and isolation. That high rate has lowered in recent years.

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South Miami police supplier hires chief's son

The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics said last week that the South Miami Police Department can continue to purchase equipment from Lou’s Police Distributors, a company that recently hired the police chief’s son.

“The son has no direct or indirect financial ownership in the company and will not be involved in the local contract, or profit from it,” the commission on ethics said in a press release.

Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro had asked for the opinion.

The opinion comes at time when a majority of the commission wants Martinez de Castro out of a job. The chief has a case pending with the commission on ethics, after investigators reported finding evidence there were a few transactions involving the police department and his wife’s business. Also, Mayor Philip Stoddard has been accusing the chief of breaking state rules when he signed off on a $9,998 gun repair expense that used state forfeiture funds to pay for gun repairs at Lou’s Police Distributors.

Stoddard said that the police department broke Florida rules of use, because the purchase was an operating expense and it was not part of an “extraordinary” program.

Meanwhile, the chief’s eldest son, Christopher Martinez de Castro, is the new vice president of international sales at Lou’s Police Distributors, which has been a South Miami supplier for about two years, has contracts with many departments in Miami-Dade County and also sells weapons and tactical equipment in Central and South America.

“It’s an entirely different department. Where the city will piggyback on a bigger contract to get a better deal, I work with clients from around the world,” the chief’s son said. “I have nothing to do with sales to South Miami – absolutely nothing. It is just being brought up because they [commissioners] want to attack him.”

Stoddard and his supporters have been poring over public records related to the chief’s use of public funds. Most recently, Stoddard threatened to file a lawsuit against the city, after Maj. Ana Baixauli refused to release records related to ongoing criminal investigations, which are exempt from the state’s public records law.

Commissioners have accused the chief of abusing his position to target those who oppose him, after two commissioners’ friends were arrested — including Commissioner Bob Welsh’s friend who was a homeless Canadian undocumented migrant with a criminal record.

Commissioner Walter Harris said Martinez de Castro has continued to show a special interest in cases involving politicians’ friends and family. The chief has said that his officers have only been doing their job when the politicians’ friends and family have broken the law, because “any special treatment” would mean breaking the law.

On Jan. 5, Harris’ wife, Eda Sagi Harris, who has been active in South Miami politics for years, damaged a parked silver Honda Odyssey while backing out of a parking space at the Dadeland Station Mall garage in Southeast Miami-Dade. She was driving the commissioner’s blue Toyota Corolla and told police that she “scratched” the car but left the scene, because she didn’t “hit it.”

Several cars from Miami-Dade police and South Miami police showed up at her home, after surveillance video identified her. Miami-Dade police cited her for “leaving the scene of an accident,” which is a misdemeanor. The police reports referred to the incident as a hit-and-run and estimated the “minor” damage at $500.

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