On Univision\'s Nightly News, a Plea for Presidential Debate on Latino Issues

By AMY CHOZICK

Univision will use its nightly news broadcast on Wednesday to plead with both presidential campaigns to accommodate an additional debate, on Univision, directed at the issues of concern to Latino viewers.

The hosts of “Noticiero Univision,” Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas, will directly urge Mitt Romney and President Obama to participate in a debate or forum for its Hispanic viewers, according to the network.

Their efforts come hours after the Commission on Presidential Debates denied Univision's request to host a forum with the candidates that would emphasize issues like immigration and health care that rank high on Hispanic voters' list of concerns.

“We recognize there are many organizations and individuals who wish they had been included in our moderator selection,” Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, told Politico Wednesday afternoon. “Debate arithmetic mean s that it is impossible to accommodate all of them.”

That response came after Univision's chief executive, Randy Falco, issued a letter to the debate commission expressing his “disappointment on behalf of the millions of Hispanics who do not have a voice in the upcoming presidential debates.” He asked Ms. Brown to consider adding a Hispanic-targeted “forum” with bilingual moderators, Mr. Ramos and Ms. Salinas.

“Since you have already made your decision on moderators for the debates and have neglected to have someone speak credibly to the concerns of Hispanics in America, Univision would be willing to create a forum,” Mr. Falco wrote.

Many political experts consider the Hispanic vote to be critical in this election cycle because of its pivotal role in states like Florida, Nevada and Colorado. Mr. Falco said Hispanics nationwide made up 8.7 percent of all voters and 16.5 percent in Florida.

Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have Spanish-langua ge ads on the air in key states and have appeared on Mr. Ramos's Sunday morning current affairs talk show “Al Punto.”

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

Wells Fargo Offers E-Receipts to Branch Customers

By ANN CARRNS

Lots of retailers - the online kind and the brick-and-mortar version - have begun offering electronic receipts for purchases to help cut down on paper clutter in your wallet. So why shouldn't banks get into the act, too?

Wells Fargo & Company, which has been offering e-mail receipts at its A.T.M.'s for two years, is now offering the option to its online customers who visit its bank branches to make deposits or withdrawals with the help of a teller.

Currently, about 12 percent of all A.T.M. transactions generate an e-receipt, a bank spokeswoman, Richele Messick, said. The bank has about 12,000 A.T.M.'s and 6,000 branches. She said she wasn't aware of any other banks that offer the option.

The electronic receipt feature is available to online banking customers, who may have the receipt sent to their online banking inbox or to another personal e-mail account they designate. (The service will probably be made available eventually to all customers, even if they don't use online banking, Ms. Messick said.) When customers log into their inbox, they see an e-mail message from Wells Fargo Online titled, “Your Wells Fargo Receipt.” The message includes an electronic version of the receipt.

The bank says electronic receipts offer an added convenience for customers and helps conserve paper. “People more and more are managing their finances online, and they want to have things in one place,” Ms. Messick said.

Do you use electronic receipts? Do you find them helpful or are they hard to manage, too?

Digital Notes: 50,000 Are Owed Royalties, Agency Says

By BEN SISARIO

SoundExchange, which collects royalties for digital streams and Internet radio, is looking for 50,000 artists and labels that are owed money.

The agency, created in 2000, pays performing artists and record labels when their music is played on services like Sirius XM and Pandora - a royalty that the music industry has long sought, since terrestrial radio pays only songwriters and publishers. But SoundExchange has struggled to make itself known and get artists to fill out the necessary paperwork, and it has been criticized within the industry for being slow to sign musicians up. It currently has 70,000 accounts for performers and another 24,000 for labels and other copyright owners, a spokeswoman said.

On Wednesday, SoundExchange unveiled a database of artists and labels that are owed these royalties, technically known as a performance right for recordings. There are, of course, thousands of little-known acts that might be owed only small amounts. But some are surprisingly renowned: the Broadway star Laura Benanti, the dance producer Skrillex, even Robin Williams - yes, that Robin Williams, as in Mork from Ork. (In addition to music, SoundExchange collects royalties for comedy and spoken word recordings, of which Mr. Williams has at least six.)

Artists and labels must register by Oct. 15 or “risk losing royalties collected three or more years ago,” the agency says, although in past years it has often given amnesty to latecomers. SoundExchange did not say what the uncollected royalties were worth, but in June the agency announced that since its founding it has paid out $1 billion.

Young, Old and YouTube: In music, the generational divide comes down to radio versus YouTube.

According to a new study by Nielsen, teenagers prefer listening to music on YouTube over any other format: 64 percent of consumers aged 13 to 17 listen through the video site, which is owned by Google, while 56 percent listen to the radio and 50 percent to CDs. For those 18 and over, the priorities are reversed: 67 percent listen on the radio, 61 percent to CDs and 41 percent to YouTube.

Radio remains by far the most popular way for listeners over all to find out about new music: 48 percent “discover music most often” on the radio, compared to only 7 percent through YouTube, according to the study, which was based on a survey of 3,000 people online.

“While younger listeners opt for technologically advanced methods, traditional methods of discovery like radio and word-of-mouth continue to be strong drivers,” David Bakula, a senior analyst at Nielsen, said in a statement.

Liberty Buys More Sirius: In the latest step of its slow takeover of Sirius XM Radio, Liberty Media has increased its stake to 48 percent, from 46 percent, according to a regulatory filing late Tuesday.

Global Digital: For the last year, digital music services have been racing to establish themselves in markets around the world. Here are the latest moves:

• Vevo, the music video site owned by Universal Music and Sony, is expanding to Brazil, its sixth country. The site has a syndication deal through YouTube, although over the last year it has been in negotiations over a possible move to another platform, including Facebook.
• Deezer, a French subscription streaming service, has been looking to open everywhere around the world except for the United States, which it considers a saturated market dominated by Spotify and Rhapsody. Techcrunch reports that Deezer is expanding to Asia, with its service opening in Thailand this week, and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines coming soon.
• Simfy, popular in Germany and available in a few countries in Europe, is opening in South Africa.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Checking Account Fees Rising, Analysis Finds

August 15, 2012, 10:54 am

By ANN CARRNS

Feel as if you're paying more for your checking account? You probably are.

A semiannual study by MoneyRates.com found that checking account fees of all sorts climbed in the first half of the year.

Previous studies have shown varied results, with some fees rising and others falling. But the latest review shows a “comprehensive trend toward checking accounts becoming more expensive,” MoneyRates found.

The analysis is based on banks that are included in the MoneyRates Index, which includes the 50 largest banks by deposits and an equal number of midsize institutions.

In part, banks are raising other fees to make up for lower revenue from debit-card swipe fees, which are now limited, said Richard Barrington, senior financial analyst for MoneyRates.com. More regulation and a slower lending environment are also helping to crimp bank revenue, he said, so banks are trying to make it up in other ways.

Among banks that charge a monthly fee, the average crept up to $12.08 from $11.28. That totals roughly $145 a year, unless you can avoid the fee by keeping a minimum required balance.

Overdraft fees climbed, too, to an average of nearly $30 from about $29.

The study found that online banks and smaller banks are offering lower fees than their larger counterparts. So if you are unhappy with your bank's fees, you may find a better deal by shopping around. Checking accounts with no monthly fee were offered by more than two-thirds of the online banks in the survey, compared with roughly a third of traditional banks.

Among traditional banks, nearly half of smaller banks (those with less than $5 billion in deposits) offere d checking accounts with no monthly fee, while only 21 percent of the accounts offered at larger banks (those with more than $25 billion in deposits) offered them.

The average monthly maintenance fee was just under $14 at large banks, while it was less than $10 at small banks.

Have you noticed fees creeping up at your bank? Are you considering switching to a smaller bank, or an online-only bank? Or are you trying to maintain the minimum required balance in your account?

The Breakfast Meeting: A New Chief at the Times Company and Farewells to H.G.B.

By THE EDITORS

Reaching well outside the newspaper business, The New York Times Company announced that it had hired Mark Thompson, the departing director general of the BBC, as its next president and chief executive. Mr. Thompson has worked almost his entire career at the public broadcaster, making him an unusual choice. Robert Andrews of paidContent gives a British perspective on the hire, and Ken Doctor, the newspaper analyst, offers his take.

Still wearing its Olympic halo, NBC returned to its regular programming Monday night and quickly fell off the beam. But on TNT, “Major Crimes,” the sequel to “The Closer,” enjoyed that show's halo a little longer, with 7.2 million viewers on Monday night.

DealBook reports that the auction for the huge photo agency and distributor Getty Images was won by the Carlyle Group, which paid $3.3 billion. Many of the company's top executives, including the co-founder, Mark Getty, an heir to the Getty oil fortune, will stay with the company.

Finally, several editors shared their memories of Helen Gurley Brown, the editor, author and Queen of the Pussycats who died Monday at the age of 90. “Helen Gurley Brown told me that she was so freaked out after her first day as the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, that she literally crawled under her desk to hide,” writes Bonnie Fuller. “That's where her husband, David, found her when he came to pick her up at the end of the day.” More remembrances can be found here.

Wednesday Reading: Strategies for Hot-Weather Exercise

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.