Shrink Ray Renders Mini Coke Cans Even More Mini

Shrink Ray Renders Mini Coke Cans Even More Mini: "

Sure, you can call Coke's new 7.5-ounce mini can an exciting new marketing ploy, giving customers a nice, even, guilt-free 90-calorie gulp of soda. But reader Josh sees the change for what it is: a fancied-up version of the Grocery Shrink Ray. And not even his wife can convince him to buy them anymore.

My wife sent me to Walmart last night to pick up several things, one of which was an 8 pack of the 8oz cans of Diet Coke. Now, being a good Consumerist, I’ve known for some time that these mini cans are the absolute worst deal you could possibly get, even at Walmart. Hardly ever on sale, an 8 pack (64oz for those mathematically inclined) of these will set you back around $3.50, while a 12 pack of 12oz cans (144oz) usually run between $3.50 and $4. So, already you can tell that this is a horrible deal. I’ve explained this time and again to my wife but she fails to see the big picture and notes that they’re “just enough to satisfy my craving for Diet Coke without making me commit to an entire cup and a half of the stuff that she will never finish and end up wasting”.

So, I made my way to Walmart and grabbed the other items before making my way to the beverage aisle. When I got to where the cans should be, I didn’t find what I was looking for. Traditionally the cans were in a cardboard holder and looked like a smaller version of a 12-pack. What I did find were cans held together by the dolphin-unfriendly plastic rings. Also amiss, the cans were no longer short and squat. Instead they resembled a “Mini Me” tall can of beer or those weird 6oz cans of orange juice you sometimes find in rest area vending machines. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the volume of each can had not only become taller and thinner, but also .5 oz less. That’s right. These cans are now 7.5oz instead of 8oz. Holy cow, Coke has been hit by the Grocery Shrink Ray.

But surely they can’t be charging the same for this obviously less-than-normal amount? Oh yes they are. Not only are they charging the same price, they didn’t even bother to change out the aisle tag. It still shows the old 8oz cans listed and total volume of 64oz. The UPC codes are the same, so all the stockers had to do was put the new product in the same place and everything scanned as normal. I did manage to find an old 8-pack in the section (the last one, I might add) and took a comparison shot, along with a picture of a regular Coke can up close and the aisle tag (I couldn’t find one for the Diet Coke so the regular Coke tag will have to suffice). This will be the last time I let my wife manipulate me into buying these. There is now the same amount in these 8 cans as there are in 5 - 12oz cans…which, at this particular time, were on special 2/$5 for 12-packs. (I apologize for the blurriness…taken with an iPhone 3G).

So, financially speaking, one actually is actually better off drinking 2/3 of a 12-ounce can of Coke and throwing the rest away. God bless America!

RELATED:

100 Calorie Packs Makes You Fat

100 Calorie Packs Are Still A Scam, Cost More For Less Food

"

Great Best Buy Deal: Get Free Program Tweetdeck For Free

Great Best Buy Deal: Get Free Program Tweetdeck For Free: "

Matthew sent us this page from today's Best Buy advertising flyer. They're offering an amazing deal this week--buy a CD from certain Interscope musicians, and you can download Tweetdeck for iPhone absolutely free. Which would be a very nice deal if Tweetdeck weren't already free.

Actually, the custom version of Tweetdeck comes pre-loaded following sixteen Interscope musicians, so it's even less of a deal.

"

Paramount Pissing Off Neighbors with Disney

Paramount Pissing Off Neighbors with Disney: "

Sent at 3:46 a.m. to Last Days, and a dozen other media outlets:

Dear Paramount Theater,

For the second night in a row you have insisted on broadcasting a continuous loop of 'It's A Small World.' I've been informed that you are doing this in an attempt to discourage the homeless community from sleeping on theater property. Although I understand (to some degree) your frustration, you are driving your neighbors insane!

I live next door at Tower 801 apartments. Last night you started this nonsense at 2 am and continued until at least 7 am. Tonight you are doing it again. You have infuriated the residents here. Many of us are appalled and saddened that a member of our community, a member we support and cherish would choose such an inappropriate solution. Could the Board of Directors of the Paramount get a good night's sleep if they had to listen to 'Disney Ride' all night long?

We need to get up in the morning and work. We are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of our homes. Some tenants have health issues. We would like to think the Paramount has some degree of respect for its neighbors, but at this moment that is a little hard to imagine.

I hope you will see your error in such an ill-advised decision. In the meantime, I have forwarded this letter to the local media, the Tower management, all city council members, the City Attorney, The Mayor, Our U.S. Congressman, and many of the tenants here in the Tower. It is my hope that they will also contact you AND the individuals and institutions that I have in order to stop this rude behavior you are inflicting on us.

Yes, It Is A Small World. You missed your own message.

Privacy Win: Cellphone Search Without Warrant Declared Illegal [Privacy]

Privacy Win: Cellphone Search Without Warrant Declared Illegal [Privacy]: "

Score for privacy rights: In a 4-to-3 vote, the Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled that police has no right to search your phone without a search warrant, overruling previous lower court decisions on the matter. This is great news.

In the State of Ohio vs Antwaun Smith, the Supreme Court has declared the search of Smith's cellphone—who was arrested at the time on drug charges—to be unconstitutional, breaking the protection against unreasonable search provided by the Fourth Amendment. The court has decided that cellphones are "capable of storing a wealth of digitized information" and, as such, they should be considered private. Therefore, police should obtain a search warrant before "entering" into the phone to look for evidence against a subject.

It's great to see some reasonable, informed logic in this ocean of stupidness and privacy abuse we live in. [Supreme Court of Ohio's PDF ruling via NYT]

How a Crook Conned The Bush Administration, the CIA, and the Pentagon [Crook]

How a Crook Conned The Bush Administration, the CIA, and the Pentagon [Crook]: "

Playboy has a fascinating article on Dennis Montgomery, the man who conned the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Navy, the Air Force, the Senate Intelligence Committee and even Dick Cheney's office into his phony anti-terrorist decryption technology.

Montgomery—then co-owner and Chief Technology Officer of Vegas-based "eTreppid Technologies" and a notorious gambler with $12 million in debt—staged false demonstrations on his laptop, using his "top secret software" to convince the previous administration about an absolutely stupid idea: Arabic TV station Al Jazeera was transmitting encrypted instructions which included "target coordinates" and flight numbers to sleeping Al Qaeda operatives around the world, using clues in their programming.

How serious was the government about this? On December 21, 2003, Montgomery fake information fired up all alerts, getting the country into a mass panic attack after Department of Homeland Security's secretary Tom Ridge announced a risk of an attack 'that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11' based on 'credible sources.' The credible sources was Montgomery. Nothing ever happened then, but that was the beginning of the scam. Later, Montgomery declared that the Department of Defense paid his company '$30 million in contracts and and appropriated another $100 million in their black budget.'

After reading the article, I still can't understand how the hell a crook like this was able to con an entire administration, the largest intelligence agency in the world—who at the end discredited Montgomery's fake montage—and the most powerful military force, with such a preposterous idea. Was he really that smart? Maybe the key was his relation with Nevada Then-Congressman Jim Gibbons—later accused of using his influence to get this contracts to eTreppid? Was it the incompetence of the people in charge at the time? Was it their desperation to find any threads that could be used on their own benefit?

I'm leaning to a combination of all this possibilities. Go read the reportage. It is great Christmas weekend reading. As a bonus, you would be able to claim that you actually ogled over Playboy for a real article. [Playboy—Some images in this page are NSFW]

The Movie "Prince of Persia; The sands of Time" Looks great also

The Movie"RepoMen" Looks Freaking great

AT&T's Warped View of the Internet [At&t]

AT&T's Warped View of the Internet [At&t]: "

Did you know? Unless you have a 3Mbps internet connection, you can't use Facebook. Without 12Mbps internet, you can't even email files! And just forget streaming video without at least 18Mbps internet. Welcome to the internet, according to AT&T.

This chart for AT&T U-Verse internet makes no sense whatsoever. For one, what's the difference between "watching TV/video clips" and "streaming video" and why does one need just 12 measly megabits, while the other needs 18? Also, the numbers just don't work. Even full HD 1080p streaming video through Zune on Xbox Live just requires 10Mbps-12Mbps of bandwidth.

If anything, it's the internet gaming that needs 12Mbps, as I was sadly reminded while trying to download the entirety Left 4 Dead 2 over the 6Mbps AT&T DSL I've got in GA—the fastest internet AT&T will give me. I'd console myself with Hulu, but you know, it might not work. [AT&T, Thanks Slacker!]

"

Verizon Denies It Charges You $2 Each Time You Mistakenly Press A Certain Button On Your Phone

Verizon Denies It Charges You $2 Each Time You Mistakenly Press A Certain Button On Your Phone: "

Last month, David Pogue at the New York Times published a tip from a self-described Verizon employee. The employee accused Verizon of deliberately rigging its system to trap customers whenever they accidentally press the 'Get It Now' or 'Mobile Web' buttons on their phones--even if they cancel the operation immediately, they're charged a fee of $1.99 each time. Both Pogue and the FCC asked Verizon to explain why this happens. Verizon's response: it doesn't, and Pogue and the hundreds of people who wrote in to confirm this practice are all crazy.

Pogue is not impressed:

Sorry, Verizon. That, in the newspaper biz, is what we call bull.

How about the 400 people who chimed in to say, “Me too!” in the comments of my original post? Are they all idiots? How about me? I found several of those $1.99 charges on my own bills. How about the Verizon whistleblower who has begged his managers to change this greedy scheme, and been told to shut up? Is he mistaken?

And if there’s no problem, and everything’s hunky-dory, how come Verizon has quietly been offering refunds of up to $100 to people who’ve been socked by the accidental $2 fees?

Pogue and the FCC also asked Verizon to explain why it recently doubled its Early Termination Fees for smartphone owners. In the real world, everyone knows it's simply a steep penalty meant to keep customers in contract. Verizon is sticking to its nonsensical claim that it's a necessary means to recoup costs of subsidizing and/or marketing, even though they still haven't provided any evidence to back this up.

'Verizon Responds to Consumer Complaints' [New York Times]

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Beeper Code: The Caveman Days of Text Messaging [Y2k10]

Beeper Code: The Caveman Days of Text Messaging [Y2k10]: "
In 1999, 45 million Americans had pagers. They were an equal-opportunity technology, owned by drug dealers, whores, doctors and CEOs—and new college students whose parents couldn't drop the leash. At least there was the code.
Saddled as I was with my beeper, I did what I could to avoid actually picking up the phone. For Christmas my mom gave me a few rolls of quarters: a reminder that when she paged me, I was supposed to call her back. Most of my paging, however, was sending numerical messages to my friend Sarah.
My pager was green! Hers was pink! We were so very cool. This number-to-word conversion we became addicted to will probably go down as only a very minor footnote in turn-of-this-century communication, but, for kids who'd never known from text messaging and hardly used email, the idea that I could send her any kind of message and she'd get it instantly—that was pretty darn huge.
Some of our codes were super private so I can't share them, but others were standard: 411 for information, 911 for emergency, 143 to symbolized the number of letters in each word of the phrase 'I love you.'
There was also an accepted system of sending numbers so that, when written together, looked vaguely like letters. We'd grown up getting adults to spell 'BOOBLESS' on calculators by typing in the elements of a story about Dolly Parton and then holding the calculator upside down. (Her bra size was 69 and that was 2, 2, 2 big. So, she took 51 diet pills and went to see Dr. X eight times. Now she's... 55378008.) From there, it was an easy jump to many other words. Hello was 07734. That was one of the easiest one. We said 'Hello' a lot. Bitch? Why that was 81764, naturally. There were so many, it became necessary to have beeper-code dictionaries, or at least, a basic decoder.
Now, Sarah and I text using actual words written using actual letters. Boring.
Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Bug powder causes male bedbugs to stab each other to death with their penises

Bug powder causes male bedbugs to stab each other to death with their penises: "Male bedbugs will schtup anything, and when they do, their stabby little penises can do great damage to one another. Female bedbugs have some 'down there' armor that absorbs the punishing blows of the bedbug's love-spear, but males lack this protection. A pheromone discovered by a Swedish researcher can cause male bedbugs to kill each other with their penises through uncontrolled shagging:

According to lead researcher Camilla Ryne, bedbugs are notoriously undiscerning about who they mount, and are accustomed to stab their penis straight into another male's abdomen...

Males with blocked glands were mounted as often as other males, but for longer and suffered more wounds.


'This is the first time I've seen an alarm pheromone used as a sexual one,' New Scientist quoted Ryne as saying.

New discovery may help deal with bedbug infestation

(Thanks, Steve)

(Image: 98221_hires.jpg, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from liz.novack's photostream)

Senate Concerned About Buy.com's Aggressive Webloyalty Checkout Hardsell

Senate Concerned About Buy.com's Aggressive Webloyalty Checkout Hardsell: "

Before you can finish your purchase at Buy.com, you have to go through an entire page trying to upsell you to the much-maligned Webloyalty program and click the tiny 'no thanks' button at the bottom. You can find it located under the large YES! button.

Some users will scroll through the page and just see the part asking them to enter in their last 4 digits of their credit card and email address to finish the purchase. The explanatory text above only mentions the 'reward' program.

It seems designed to draw the skim reader into signing up for the useless program. Here is what the page looks like on Buy.com:

A Senate commitee investigating unfair online practices says this one raises 'serious concerns' for them.

Web scam or aggressive marketing at Buy.com? You decide [Consumer Reports]

"

Walmart Overcharges Soldiers Stationed Abroad For Shipping

Walmart Overcharges Soldiers Stationed Abroad For Shipping: "

The idea behind military mail is to allow people in a given country to send mail to their loved ones stationed anywhere in the world, for the same price as mailing a letter or package to any other destination in the United States. However, the military paper Stars and Stripes reports that some retailers are increasing prices for customers with APO/FPO addresses, claiming 'higher transportation costs.' The biggest offender? Walmart. Surprise!

On a $120 purchase, Walmart.com charged $10.35 to ship to an APO address, compared with $2.10 to a stateside address. For most items, Amazon.com charged the same to ship to an APO address as a stateside address. And Target offered shipping on a $120 purchase to an APO address for less than to a stateside address.

...

On Walmart.com, the company says shipping costs will be higher to APO addresses due to higher transportation costs.

“There is no higher transportation costs,” [Wiesbaden Army Airfield Postmaster Earl] Small said. “Companies are abusing the system and making a killing.”

Some retailers inflate costs to ship to APO addresses [Stars and Stripes] (Thanks, Shannon!)

"

Reader Angered By QVC $150 Markup Wii

Reader Angered By QVC $150 Markup Wii: "

A reader saw the $150 marked-up Wii on QVC and became so incensed that he immediately left an impassioned voicemail on our voicemail tipline (347-422-6695). I love this thing:

TRANSCRIPT: 'It just blows my mind. I'm sitting here watching QVC of all things. They're trying to sell this terrible Wii package. They're clearly ripping people off for it, yet thousands are buying it. It's basically the package of stuff that comes with the box normally, a bunch of useless attachments, a bargain bin game, and yet it's $150 more than the normal package together. I've seen other places that give you actually really good packages for so much less than this, and I cannot stand idly by and watch something like this happen while people are getting ripped off left and right.

At a certain point, I actually put it together that they had sold 1,500 of them, at $350 with shipping, they're getting a half a million dollars in revenue on this alone. And by the time I've called you guys, they've probably sold almost close to a thousand more. It's rediculous. It's mind-numbing, it's infuriating.

I know that the people that read this would never fall for something like this, the sheer audacity of a place like this, I can't stand it. It's junk they're peddling to people, they're preying on the stupid. I know this sounded like a rant, I wanted to get this off my chest and out to people that understand this, so you guys put this on the site, go ahead, I'd like to hear some of the feedback from other people who've seen this, and hopefully we can warn other people not to be swayed by this. Thank you for your time.' :: END TRANSCRIPT

PREVIOUSLY: QVC Tricks Thousands Into Overpaying For Wii and Accessories

"

Apple And Audible Refuse To Sell Author's Audiobooks Without DRM Or Abusive Licensing Agreement

Apple And Audible Refuse To Sell Author's Audiobooks Without DRM Or Abusive Licensing Agreement: "
Cory Doctorow is self-publishing a book and documenting the process for Publishers Weekly. His latest column is about selling audiobook versions of his past works, and how both Apple and Audible have refused to budge on their anti-consumer policies when it comes to digital rights management (DRM) and end user license agreements (EULAs). Even though both companies get paid the same either way, and even though both Doctorow and his publisher, Random House, want to sell the content without these restrictions, Apple and Audible have said no.

For my next book, Makers, we tried again. This time Audible agreed to carry the title without DRM. Hooray! Except now there was a new problem: Apple refused to allow DRM-free audiobooks in the Apple Store—yes, the same Apple that claims to hate DRM. Okay, we thought, we'll just sell direct through Audible, at least it's a relatively painless download process, right? Not quite. It turns out that buying an audiobook from Audible requires a long end-user license agreement (EULA) that bars users from moving their Audible books to any unauthorized device or converting them to other formats. Instead of DRM, they accomplish the lock-in with a contract.


I came up with what I thought was an elegant solution: a benediction to the audio file: “Random House Audio and Cory Doctorow, the copyright holders to this recording, grant you permission to use this book in any way consistent with your nation's copyright laws.” This is a good EULA, I thought, as it stands up for every word of copyright law. Random House was game, too. Audible wasn't.

The next time a retailer blames artists or their publishers for taking away consumer rights, you may want to ask for some proof. With Apple and Audible, at least, it's not the author taking an anti-consumer stance this time.


'With a Little Help: Can You Hear Me Now?' [Publishers Weekly via BoingBoing]
"

Man Pays Best Buy For Washer/Dryer, It Doesn't Appear, Takes Laundry To Store, Shames Store Into Delivering

Man Pays Best Buy For Washer/Dryer, It Doesn't Appear, Takes Laundry To Store, Shames Store Into Delivering: "

After Best Buy blew two delivery dates on the washer/dryer he paid $1,600 for at Best Buy on Black Friday to arrive, a man decided to take his dirty laundry to the store. He had unhooked his washer/dryer at home in anticipation of the new appliances and wanted to know which washer of theirs they wanted him to wash his clothes in while he waited for his. His buddies videotaped the adventure. This plan didn't go ever so hot with Best Buy management. Let's roll the clip:

The manager appears at about the 3:20 mark. She calls the cops, accuses them of being drunk, and kicks them out. She doesn't even seem to be interested in finding out why they're there. The man had paid $1600 for his washer/dryer and Best Buy was more concerned that he was bothering their associates by asking for them to fulfill their legal obligation to deliver the goods. They certainly had no problem, however, with advertising these washer and dryers for Black Friday, selling more of them then they had in stock, and promising a delivery date they couldn't live up to.

His video getting popular on Reddit seemed to help, though, as yesterday he uploaded this clip, of his new washer and dryer getting delivered, with free delivery:

'Best Buy really came through and made up on this one. I appreciate this customer support I received after a bit of turmoil,' he says.

So, in the end, maybe he was a bit of a dick, but it's what got the job done.

(Thanks to Josh!)

"

Is the 'Bandwidth Hog' a Myth? [Net Neutrality]

Is the 'Bandwidth Hog' a Myth? [Net Neutrality]: "
Every ISP's discussions of pricing plans, net neutrality or piracy invoke the same faceless villains: the bandwidth hogs. Benoît Felten, analyst and blogger, has been working in telecom for over a decade, and he wants proof these monsters even exist.
With the debate on net neutrality in full swing in the US, we've been hearing about Bandwidth Hogs again. 'Bandwidth Hog' is a sound bite that conveys a strong emotion: you can virtually see the fat pig chomping on the bandwidth, pushing back all the other animals in the barnyard with his fat pig shoulders all the while scrutinizing with his shiny piggy eyes to see if the farmer isn't around...
The image is so powerful that everyone thinks they understand what the term means , no one questions if the analogy is correct. In discussing this issue, Herman and I realised we had serious doubts about the existence of that potentially mythical beast. In fact, we are not sure even the telcos know what a bandwidth hog is and does.
But it makes great headlines: 'Net Neutrality will force the telco's to give The Internet away to Bandwidth Hogs'. They claim that bandwidth hogs steal all the bandwidth and cause network congestion, and therefore their behaviour harms all the other regular and peaceful law-abiding users. And to add insult to injury they pay the same price as the others! No, policing and rationing must be applied by the benevolent telco to protect the innocent.
Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the way that telcos identify the Bandwidth Hogs is not by monitoring if they cause unfair traffic congestion for other users. No, they just measure the total data downloaded per user, list the top 5% and call them hogs.
For those service providers with data caps, these are usually set around 50 Gbyte and go up to 150 Gbyte a month. This is therefore a good indication of the level of bandwidth at which you start being considered a 'hog'. But wait: 50 Gbyte a month is… 150 kbps average (0,15 Mbps), 150 Gbyte a month is 450 kbps on average. If you have a 10 Mbps link, that's only 1,5 % or 4,5 % of its maximum advertised speed!
And that would be 'hogging'?
The fact is that what most telcos call hogs are simply people who overall and on average download more than others. Blaming them for network congestion is actually an admission that telcos are uncomfortable with the 'all you can eat' broadband schemes that they themselves introduced on the market to get people to subscribe. In other words, the marketing push to get people to subscribe to broadband worked, but now the telcos see a missed opportunity at price discrimination...
As Herman explains in his post, TCP/IP is by definition an egalitarian protocol. Implemented well, it should result in an equal distribution of available bandwidth in the operator's network between end-users; so the concept of a bandwidth hog is by definition an impossibility. An end-user can download all his access line will sustain when the network is comparatively empty, but as soon as it fills up from other users' traffic, his own download (or upload) rate will diminish until it's no bigger than what anyone else gets.
Now I'm pretty sure that many telcos will disagree with our assessment of this. So here's a challenge for them: in the next few days, I will specify on this blog a standard dataset that would enable me to do an in-depth data analysis into network usage by individual users. Any telco willing to actually understand what's happening there and to answer the question on the existence of hogs once and for all can extract that data and send it over to me, I will analyse it for free, on my spare time. All I ask is that they let me publish the results of said research (even though their names need not be mentioned if they don't wish it to be). Of course, if I find myself to be wrong and if indeed I manage to identify users that systematically degrade the experience for other users, I will say so publicly. If, as I suspect, there are no such users, I will also say so publicly. The data will back either of these assertions.
Please email me if you're interested. And please publicise this offer if you're not in a position to extract such a dataset but are still interested in the answer. This is a much more important question than knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!

Reprinted with permission from Fiberevolution; written in collaboration with Dadamotive. Megahog source image from the AP via TheAge

"

Senator Introduces Bill to Smack Down Early Termination Fees [Politics]

Senator Introduces Bill to Smack Down Early Termination Fees [Politics]: "
Amy Klobuchar, True America Hero and Senator of Minnesota, introduced a bill in Congress today in response to Verizon's doubled early termination fees, aiming to limit them.
Verizon's response:

A broad array of Americans who might not otherwise be able to afford broadband connections to the Internet with a home PC, or by paying full price for a smartphone, have an affordable way of participating in the online world when they choose a subsidized option.

Also noted is the fact that smartphones are available at full, unsubsidized price, although it's not mentioned that the monthly fee doesn't change with an unsubsidized phone and that said unsubsidized phones are incredibly expensive. Hey Verizon, haven't you heard that this is a recession? Have some consideration. [The Hill]

"

Why A Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News

Why A Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News: "
As the Comcast/NBC mergepocalypse draws near, we wanted to remind readers of the ways that this is going to harm consumers (beyond the obvious things like 30 Rock being promised to come on between 6 and 10 pm and actually airing at 11:30). Join us for a sad look into the future.


Let's Just Look At What Comcast/NBC Would Own

TV Stations: NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Chiller, CNBC World, mun2, Oxygen, Sleuth, Syfy, Universal HD, USA Network, The Weather Channel, E! Entertainment Channel, G4, Golf Channel, PBS Kids Sprout, Style, TV one, Versus, CN8, Exercise TV, FEARnet, AZN Television, a portion of MLB Network,


NBC owned and operated stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Bay Area, Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington, Miami, San Diego, Connecticut.


Telemundo owned and operated stations in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, Las Vegas, San Francisco/San Jose, Phoenix, Fresno, Denver, Boston, Tucson, Puerto Rico.


Film: Universal Pictures, Focus Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Internet: Hulu (more on that below), iVillage, NBC.com, CNBC.com, Weather.com


That's a lot of channels, and they're ones that Comcast/NBC will be able to use as bargaining chips against other cable and internet providers who want to carry them. Comcast/NBC will have the incentive and means to discriminate against other channels that compete with NBC content, in favor of the NBC alternative.


For example, a recent story about the merger suggests that Comcast/NBC would challenge ESPN for sports content. Comcast's own sports channel, Versus, would benefit from NBC's pool of talent and production resources, but Comcast/NBC could prop Versus up in more ways. The most obvious thing Comcast could do to hurt ESPN, though unlikely, is refuse to carry the channel, thus depriving ESPN of all of Comcast's cable subscribers. Another scenario is that whatever sports content that Comcast/NBC acquired and offered, like the Olympics, could be entirely exclusive to Comcast/NBC. That is, ESPN wouldn't be able to run footage from Comcast/NBC events on SportsCenter. As a content and service provider, Comcast/NBC could even firewall its content, allowing only Comcast cable subscribers to see certain games or events. If Comcast/NBC decides not to block content entirely, they can still ransom it to other cable providers, charging higher prices for NBC content than NBC currently does. These expenses would of course be passed onto the subscribers.


More Mergers Will Happen, and Cable Rates Will Rise

If the Comcast/NBC merger goes through, it will lead to more media consolidation. Other service and content providers will merge in order to keep pace with Comcast/NBC, further limiting competition and increasing the possibility of collusion and price fixing, including rate increases. This was repeatedly seen in the late 1990s: after media ownership rules were relaxed, companies scrambled to buy up as many stations as they could to remain in equilibrium with each other (as a refresher, here's a sickening breakdown of who owns what).


Say Goodbye to Free Streaming Video

Although Hulu has already announced that it will begin charging for content, Comcast's acquisition of NBC, which, along with ABC and Fox, owns a substantial share of Hulu, would further harm the developing streaming video market. A merged Comcast/NBC would control both content—NBC programming—and distribution, and would have strong incentive to move its content behind its own pay wall. One hypothetical scenario would see Comcast/NBC pulling NBC content from Hulu, and making streaming NBC content available only to cable subscribers. Even worse, Comcast/NBC could further restrict streaming content to customers who subscribe to cable and internet, forcing customers who enjoy watching streamed content to sign up for unnecessary bundles. And by withholding content from any other streaming video service, whether free or subscription based, Comcast/NBC would harm their chances at viability.


Blocked content, rising rates, forced bundling, and more. Despite claims from NBC and Comcast that this merger would be 'pro consumer,' the end result will be more restrictions on what content consumers can access and how they can view it. And it will inevitably be more expensive. Consumer and media rights groups are urging the FCC and/or Department of Justice to either block the merger outright or impose very strict conditions to prevent the problems listed above. To read more about the proposed rules, visit FreePress's release on the merger.
"

AMC Theater Chain Bans All Outside Snacks

AMC Theater Chain Bans All Outside Snacks: "

After reporting a loss in the 2nd quarter of this year, AMC is doing what it can to increase revenue. Since the business model of movie theaters is to give all the ticket sales to the studios and scrape out a living on concessions, that means forcing more patrons to buy snacks--so it's officially banning any outside food and drink.

Aside from the most common reason for bringing in food, which is that movie concessions are too expensive, there's also the problem of limited and unhealthy options. To address this, AMC told SmartSpending that "it’s going to offer greater variety. Some of its theaters have French toast and Thai coconut chicken tenders on the menu."

'AMC theaters ban outside snacks' [SmartSpending] (Thanks to HogwartsAlum!)

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"