Average A.T.M. Surcharge Reaches New High

September 25, 2012, 2:21 pm

By ANN CARRNS

It's getting more important to consider the size and scope of your bank's network of A.T.M.'s if you use them frequently.

An annual analysis of checking accounts from Bankrate.com finds that the average A.T.M. surcharge - the fee charged by the machine's operator to a noncustomer - rose 4 percent to a new record of $2.50.

This is the eighth consecutive year that the average surcharge has increased. And, for the first time, all of the banks surveyed by Bankrate.com for the report charge noncustomers to use their A.T.M.'s.

The increases are part of an overall attempt by banks to replace fee revenue lost because of new caps on the amount they can charge retailers for debit-card transactions.

The surcharge gets even more expensive when your own bank gets into the act, charging you - its customer - for using a competitor's machine. This fee rose 11 percent, to $1.57.

For a customer encountering both fees, the average total of $4.07 is also a new record. It is up almost 7 percent from last year.

What steps do you take to avoid A.T.M. surcharges? And what's the biggest one you've ever paid?

TCM to Screen \'Forbidden Planet\' on Land and on the Space Station

September 25, 2012, 1:43 pm

By STUART ELLIOTT

The Turner Classic Movies cable channel is joining with NASA to give an out-of-this-world opening to a series of film screenings.

“Forbidden Planet,” the 1956 science fiction film that introduced Robby the Robot, will be the first movie in the next Road to Hollywood screening series sponsored by TCM, part of the Turner Broadcasting System unit of Time Warner.

The film is scheduled to be shown Oct. 13 at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and also transmitted to the International Space Station for viewing by the astronauts on board; movies are part of what NASA calls psych support, or psychological support, for astronauts aboard the space station.

One of those astronaut s, the American Sunita Williams, is to introduce “Forbidden Planet” from space to the attendees at the Kennedy Space Center screening. (Free tickets to the “Forbidden Planet” screening may be obtained on a section of tcm.com.)

Bert Ulrich, the multimedia liaison for film and television collaboration at NASA in Washington, said, “We were approached by TCM to see whether we'd be interested in showing a classic movie on the International Space Station.”

“We said, sure,” he added, because the agency is always looking for methods “to engage people with space exploration.”

The movies that are part of the psych support program are intended as “a way to keep our astronauts happy,” Mr. Ulrich said.

Other films that have been provided to the space station include “Star Trek” and “The Avengers,” Mr. Ulrich said, adding that there is no requirement the films be about space or superheroes.

The TCM screenings - there will be 10 altogether, two this year and eight early next year - are meant to serve as a curtain-raiser for the fourth annual TCM Classic Film Festival, to be held in Hollywood, April 25 to 28, 2013.

The reason that “Forbidden Planet” is being screened in Florida and in space is that its subject matter fits with the theme that TCM has chosen for the screenings and the film festival, which is “Cinematic Journeys: Travel in the Movies.”

“We consider space to be TCM's ‘final frontier,'” said Jeff Gregor, general manager at TCM as well as chief marketing officer at two sister cable channels, TBS and TNT. (Yes, he was quoting the famed “Star Trek” phrase.)

Movies on TCM are uncut and uninterrupted by commercials, which has daunted some marketers that eagerly sign sponsorship deals with cable channels that run spots before, after or even during films. There have, however, been agreements between TCM and brands, including Arch itectural Digest magazine and Bloomingdale's.

Another reason Turner Classic Movies may not attract sponsors is a perception that its viewers are older than those who watch other movie or entertainment channels. “TCM is for all ages,” Mr. Gregor said, citing “extensive research” conducted in the last 18 months “to understand our fans.”

The research shows that the channel appeals to viewers ages 18 to 49 who are “cultural engagers” and “relevancy seekers,” he added, meaning they are interested in classic films because those films influence the movies that are made today.

“We don't have to work too hard to make TCM contemporary,” Mr. Gregor said, adding that there are plans to update the channel that include “refreshing our graphics.”

TCM said last week that it would increase the hosting duties on the channel for Ben Mankiewicz, who is 45, as Robert Osborne, 80, devotes more time to events like the film festival and the screen ings.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

First Night of the New Season Has NBC and CBS Swapping Places

By BILL CARTER

The first night of the official network television season turned the competition almost on its head as NBC dominated in the advertiser-preferred ratings, ABC dominated with older viewers, CBS saw its Monday lineup take a dive and Fox took a general battering.

The biggest headlines: “The Voice” continues to be a force for NBC, and a new 10 p.m. drama “Revolution” remained a winner, though viewer falloff at its half-hour point may signal some weakening appeal.

The former foundation stone of ABC's schedule, “Dancing with the Stars,” opened with its worst rating ever for a premiere in the 18-49-year-old audience that ABC sells to advertisers.

CBS expected to be down from a huge premiere Monday last year (fueled by the funeral for Charlie Sheen's character on “Two and Half Men”), and it was, maybe more than expected. Its new comedy entry at 8:30 “Partners” stunted the comedy block, and the 10 p.m. dr ama “Hawaii Five-0” had a disastrous premiere, its lowest rating for any episode ever.

Fox got a respectable performance â€" considering the competition-from “Bones” at 8, but its new drama, “The Mob Doctor,” cemented its status (and its shoes probably) as the likely first cancellation this season.

On NBC, “The Voice” was the night's biggest show in the 18-49 category, averaging a 4.3 and seeing growth every half hour. It had about 12 million total viewers. “Revolution” dominated the 10 p.m. hour with a 3.5 rating, but it fell from a 3.8 in first half hour to a 3.2 in the second. It had 9.2 million viewers.

CBS could never match last season's opening Monday, especially because it rebuilt the night and moved “Two and a Half Men” to Thursday. So the 3.4 rating for “How I Met Your Mother” at 8 p.m. ( 8.6 million viewers) was fine. But the 2.4 (with 6.5 million) at 8:30 for the new comedy “Partners” knocked CBS's night backwards. It recovered at 9 with a 3.7 and 10 million viewers for “Two Broke Girls” and evened out with a 3.0 and 9.3 million for “Mike and Molly.” But “Hawaii Five-0 collapsed at 10 with just a 1.9 rating and 7.9 million viewers.

ABC may have reason for most concern because it put so much into promoting an “all-star” edition of “Dancing.” The results pointed even more to a shift in that show's appeal to a heavy portion of older women. “Dancing” attracted the biggest overall audience of the night, 14.5 million, but its 18-49 rating was its worst ever for a premiere, a 2.7. The 10 p.m. drama “Castle” at least grabbed second place in the hour over “Five-0” averaging a 2.4 rating and 11.4 million viewers.

“Bones” on Fox hung in with a 2.3 rating and 7.3 million viewers, but “The Mob Doctor” went south for a second week, with a 1.3 rating and just 3.9 million viewers.

Bill Carter writes about the television ind ustry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Barnes & Noble to Introduce New Video Service for Nook Devices

September 25, 2012, 12:39 pm

By JULIE BOSMAN and AMY CHOZICK

Barnes & Noble said on Tuesday it would introduce a new video store for its Nook products this fall, the latest expansion of the bookseller's digital content.

The service will allow customers to stream and download movies and television shows for a fee onto TV's and mobile devices, while storing the content in the Nook cloud. The video catalog includes HBO shows, like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood,” and movies including “The Artist” and “Toy Story 3.”

Barnes & Noble has focused heavily on its digital offerings to compete with retailers like Amazon and Apple. In April, it received a boost when Microsoft said it would invest hundreds of millions of do llars in the bookseller's digital division.

Barnes & Noble's Nook enters a crowded market of digital rental services that let viewers download movies and television shows to mobile devices. The video streaming service would be similar to Apple's iTunes in that viewers could rent single episodes, movies or whole TV seasons. Wal-Mart entered the streaming business in 2010 with its $100 million acquisition of Vudu, which allows viewers to rent high-definition movies on Internet-enabled televisions. Many new television sets now come with the Vudu and Netfix apps built in. Verizon and Redbox recently partnered to introduce their own streaming service.

Major studies have taken a blow in home video revenue in recent years as DVD sales and traditional rentals decline. Deals like the one with Barnes & Noble help bring in additional rental revenue and offer viewers another outlet on which to find content. That's in combination with home-grown streaming services like HBO Go, which requires users to authenticate that they pay for Time Warner's HBO before accessing hundreds of episodes of past and current shows on tablets and mobile devices.

William J. Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in a statement, “As one of the world's largest retailers of physical video discs and digital copyrighted content, our new Nook Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection, as part of our expansive Nook store.”

Barnes & Noble currently has about 25 percent of the e-book market. In August, the company reported a loss of $41 million, or 78 cents a share, in the quarter ending July 28. Nook sales were flat over the previous year, at $192 million.

On Tuesday, Barnes & Noble also signaled its intentions to build a bigger presence in Britain. It said the company Dixons Retail, which owns the electronics retailers PC World and Curry s, would sell Nook products in 600 stores. Barnes & Noble also named Patrick Nourvillois as a managing director responsible for building the Nook brand “outside the U.S. across the globe.”

How Many Government Programs Have You Benefited From?

September 25, 2012, 11:16 am

By ANN CARRNS

Mitt Romney stirred up a hornet's nest with his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who he thinks are dependent on the government.

It turns out, according to 2008 data from the Cornell Survey Research Institute reported Monday in a Times opinion piece, that 96 percent of Americans have taken part in government benefit programs in one form or another.

Listed below are 21 programs referenced by the researchers. Numbers 1 through 13 are “direct,” meaning that the aid comes directly from the government; the remainder are considered “submerged,” in that they come indirectly, through government tax policies. (For instance, the money you put in your workplace 401(k) plan grows tax-deferred).

1. Head Start
2. Social Security Disability
3. Social Security Retirement and Survivors Benefits
4. Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
5. Medicaid
6. Medicare
7. Welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or T.A.N.F.)
8. G.I. Bill
9. Veterans' benefits
10. Pell Grants
11. Unemployment Insurance
12. Food Stamps
13. Government Subsidized Housing
14. Home Mortgage Interest Deduction
15. Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits
16. Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
17. 529 accounts (qualified tuition programs) or Coverdell education savings account (Education I.R.A.'s)
18. Earned-income tax credit
19. Employer subsidized health insurance
20. Employer subsidized retirement benefits
21. Federal student loans

In an e-mail, Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell, explained a bit more about the two forms of employer benefits (Numbers 19 and 20), saying th ey “are even more submerged than the other policies in that group, because unlike with the others, people take no actual steps to claim the government benefit. As long as one is acquiring those employer-provided benefits, one simply gets the tax benefit - if the employer put the same money in people's paychecks, they would have to owe taxes on it.”

I personally have benefited from student loans, the home mortgage deduction and employer health and retirement benefits, and my children have 529 education savings plans. My dad went to college (proudly) on the G.I. Bill. My upbringing was middle class.

Take a look at the list and let us know: How many of these have you received or relied on? Are you poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or part of the 1 percent?

Short Film by Target Draws Big-Name Talent

By TANZINA VEGA

Target on Tuesday will announce its most ambitious foray into so-called “branded entertainment,” a 12-minute-long film, “Falling for You,” that will showcase more than 100 home, beauty and fashion items the company is promoting for the fall season.

The film will be doled out to viewers in three episodes, with the first making its debut on Oct. 2 online. Subsequent episodes will debut on Oct. 4 and Oct. 9.

“For us it was innovation, taking it to that next level,” said Shawn Gensch, the senior vice president of marketing at Target. “We have a great story that we want to share.”

The film stars the actors Kristen Bell, Nia Long and Zachary Abel, and was directed by Phil Abraham, who was nominated for an Emmy this year for his work on “Mad Men.”

The film tells of two Target employees, Ms. Bell and Mr. Abel, who flirt and compete with each other. In the first episode, Ms. Long, the couple's bo ss, gives them an assignment to create a campaign for the Target fall collection. The winning idea will debut on Oct. 10 at a live event in New York City.

Items featured in the video will appear on a sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Users can click on a “heart” icon to purchase the item and on a “share” button to post to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Billy Jurewicz, the chief executive of Space150, the Minneapolis-based agency that worked on the video, said that while the video was meant to encourage shopping and sharing content, the sharing and shopping tools were purposely left to the side of the main screen so they would not interfere with the video.

“We want to keep it a little bit more authentic and a bit in the background,” Mr. Jurewicz said.

Ms. Bell described the rise of branded-content projects as “a necessary investment” needed to get the financing for creative projec ts. “You can't really just sell entertainment any more because no one will pay for it,” Ms. Bell said.

A branded film like “Falling for You” is different than other forms of advertising because it is “less pushy” than product placement or traditional television spots, Ms. Bell said. “I do think that as actors we have to understand the fact that no one watches commercials any more,” she said.

Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.

The Breakfast Meeting: It\'s Showtime\'s Time, and N.F.L.\'s Monday Night Hangover

September 25, 2012, 9:28 am

By NOAM COHEN

The Emmy awards won by the tense, terrorism-centric Showtime series “Homeland” could not have come at a better time for the network, or the series, Brian Stelter writes. The awards - including best drama, best actress (Claire Danes), best actor (Damian Lewis) - represent a coming of age for the network, which had never received a series prize for comedy or drama and has long been in the shadow of the Emmy-award-laden HBO. With the second season of “Homeland” beginning on Sunday, the subscription network was immediately setting out to capitalize on the wins. “I think there might be some extra activity at the call centers this week,” said David Nevins, president for entertainment at Showtime.

New s of worker unrest at a large factory of Foxconn, which supplies electronics giants including Apple, was able to spread quickly from Taiyuan, China, across the globe with the aid of social-media tools. The incident was said to have involved 2,000 workers and was quelled with 5,000 police officers, offering a glimpse at the tensions in China, where workers are more aware of their rights yet have few outlets to challenge their working conditions and wages, David Barboza and Keith Bradsher reported. They quote a man who posted images of the protests online and said he was a Foxconn employee: “At first it was a conflict between the security guards and some workers. But I think the real reason is they were frustrated with life.”

The home-team Seattle Seahawks defeated the Green Bay Packers on a controversial final play of “Monday Night Football,” in what commentators say could be the final straw for the league's lockout of its referees. The replacement referees by a ll accounts had a bad weekend, but the final play on Monday was particularly mocked â€" not only did it hand victory to the Seahawks, but there arguably were multiple missed calls and bad judgments. (The Fifth Down blog has the details.) Social media was abuzz with anger, including a star from a different sport, LeBron James, who chimed in on Twitter:

These replacement refs gotta go man!! Packers just got game took from them. I LOVE NFL football to much to see this type of work.

- LeBron James (@KingJames) September 25, 2012

The leading bidder for Variety is Penske Media Group, the owner of Deadline, the online rival for Hollywood news led by Nikki Finke, The Los Angeles Times reported. The deal, which would include Penske Media and the private equity fund Shamrock Capital Advisors, could close in the next three weeks at around $30 million, the newspaper reported, with the plan to keep the Variety and Deadline brands separate.

Tuesday Reading: When Surgeons Leave Objects in Your Body

September 25, 2012, 8:33 am

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.