Jan 16 2013
Wednesday News: CBS interferes with the CES best of show; Apple’s price maintenance; Harlequin’s Bachelor covers
CBS says it won’t interfere in CNET’s ‘actual news,’ just reviews – At the end of CES, the Hopper DVR by DISH was voted best of the conference until CBS forced its subsidiary CNET employees to overturn their votes. CBS is in litigation with DISH and didn’t want DISH to be receiving any award.
While CBS maintains that CNET’s news is independent, there is no word on how CBS influences the reviews and whether positive reviews or negative reviews are changed based upon corporate interests of CBS.
The next time you read a CNET review, you may want to look to see if the product is being sued by CBS!The Verge
How Apple sets its prices – Wonder why Apple products are rarely discounted? Apple uses the carrot and stick approach. The carrot is that resellers who advertise the products at or above a certain price receive monetary incentives. The stick is that the margin on apple products, if used as a loss leader, would be so low as to abrogate profit. Additionally, most price maintenance agreements will result in termination if the retailer violates the suggested retail price too often.
Would publishers be able to implement this? One of the suggestions on the DOJ suit ruling by Judge Cote was that if the retail brick and mortar stores were so important to publishers then maybe they should invest it those stores. Penguin has done that by inserting Penguin kiosks into stores and Pearson, its parent, has bought into the digital arm of Barnes & Noble.
But could publishers offer a monetary incentive to retailers to not discount? Probably not. Amazon wouldn’t eschew that and continue to discount and its not likely that the other retailers would see the loss of traffic made up by monetary incentives from the publishers. Macworld
‘The Bachelor’: See Kristy’s winning Harlequin cover, and the three runners-up – Kristy is the winner of the Harlequin + Bachelor cover shoot (and while I DVR’ed it, I haven’t watched the episode yet). None of the covers shot during the Bachelor will ever make it onto a cover but Kristy will be on three covers to be determined in the future. I did think that the cowboy cover was far too racy for any of the Harlequin books I’ve seen. EW.com
This man helped save six children, is now getting harassed for it – Gene Rosen gave a lot of interviews following the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. The topic was about the six little schoolchildren that he found at the end of his driveway who had escaped the school. He gave them juice and a snack and called their parents.
Now he’s being accused of being part of a conspiracy, that the Sandy Hook events never actually occurred. Someone posted a photo of his house online and there are defamatory and hyberbolic messages being spread about him on the internet. Salon.com
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Jan 16, 2013 @ 10:25:28
The placement of the scroll after the “d” in the Harlequin cover is…unfortunate. Why would anyone place a big circle over a woman’s stomach, no matter how flat it is?
Jan 16, 2013 @ 10:48:09
Well, I guess I won’t be spending any time reading reviews on CNET.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 10:59:49
@Little Red: Agreed
Jan 16, 2013 @ 11:24:09
A circle hovering around a woman’s tummy … a visual clue that it’s a secret baby book?
Jan 16, 2013 @ 12:40:11
Not to minimize what Rosen’s dealing with, because it’s awful, but this has been happening to the visible women of the internet for eons now.
Can we get better enforcement of harassment and stalking laws yet? No one should have to put up with getting trolled IRL.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 12:41:07
The Sandy Hook shooting didn’t actually *occur*? How fucking sad does your life have to be that you need to invest time and energy creating a conspiracy theory about an elementary school massacre to distract yourself from it? Extra fucking bonus points for ignoring and belittling the pain of the survivors. Extra extra bonus points for harassing the survivors. FFS.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 13:14:40
@Wahoo Suze: “Invest time and energy creating a conspiracy theory about an elementary school massacre to distract people from it” is the mission statement of NRA leadership.
Everybody direct your attention to the side show and avert your eyes from all that unpleasant blood.
The sad thing is, it works.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 15:12:50
Apple’s price setting policy is not as unusual as you may think. There are other well-known, high-end consumer electronics manufacturers who force their re-sellers into the exact same thing — if a re-seller dares to discount any of this company’s products they will never sell to them again. No exceptions.
You will never see Apple (or these other company’s products) on sale but you will see what are called “bundles” where they offer a “deal” that includes purchasing complimentary products along with Apple’s product, all packaged together.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 16:35:29
It seems that there are two camps of idiots that continue to grow: the group that thinks everything they see on the news/internet is true, and the group that thinks nothing they see on the news/internet is true–or is a conspiracy. Not sure which is scarier.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 16:44:47
I teared up when I read “He gave them juice and a snack and called their parents.” Then I got just plain furious when I read the next paragraph. Wahoo Suze put it best, I can’t put it any better. FFS, indeed.
Jan 16, 2013 @ 16:54:05
If nothing else, I hope the CNET debacle makes people start asking questions about which media company own others- and start getting alarmed.
Jan 17, 2013 @ 09:11:06
Saying it never happened is a tried and true paleoconservative tactic. Sandy Hook didn’t happen, so no need to re-think laws that make it too easy for murderous lunatics to get their hands on a lot of guns and ammo. Women don’t get pregnant from rape so no need to make an exemption in the abortion laws. Obama was born in Kenya, so he obviously can’t be president despite winning a free and fair election. Let’s avoid losing a debate on the issue by changing the facts.