Ford adds iTunes tagging option to some models

DETROIT — Starting next year, drivers of some new Ford models who hear a song they like on their high definition radio receiver will be able to tag it by pressing a button and download it later onto their iPhone or iPod.
While the iTunes tagging technology is available on some aftermarket HD Radio receivers, Ford will become the first automaker to offer it as a factory-installed option, said Jeff Jury, chief operating officer for Columbia, Md.-based iBiquity Digital Corp., which is the developer and licenser of HD Radio technology

"It is a great complement to the broader application of Sync," said Jury, whose company also develops the tagging technology.

For Ford, the announcement is the latest in a string of recent advances related to Sync, the voice-controlled telecommunications and entertainment system Ford launched in 2007.

And last week, Ford said the next generation of Sync will allow anyone who plugs an air card into the Sync USB port to turn the car into a mobile, Wi-Fi hotspot.

Ford said iTunes tagging on its next generation of Sync will be able to hold up to 100 songs.

Then, when an iPod is connected to iTunes, the customer can approve the purchase and download the songs.

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Netflix courts studios, tries to cut digital deals

Netflix Inc. Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos bypassed Hollywood to jump-start the company's online film-rental business last year. Now he has to convince the studios the company is a friend and not a foe.
Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings is counting on Sarandos to cut deals with studios giving Netflix rights to show more films over the Web.

Sarandos, 45, says he is willing to write big checks and negotiate directly with studios after Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix earlier went around Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. to gain access to their titles from the Starz cable channel.

"We have to fight against their fear that we'll destroy the ecosystem," said Sarandos, a former video-store clerk. "We're not destroying anything. We're creating a new opportunity."

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Sarandos' success is critical to Netflix as viewers move to the Web, endangering the mail-order DVD rental business that helped the company upend brick-and-mortar stores such as Blockbuster. His challenge is to persuade studios to provide content as they explore their own digital options, including offering movies online themselves.

"The challenge for Netflix is what to do when the world migrates to digital distribution and whether it can obtain product from all the studios as that's happening," said Warren Lieberfarb, the former head of Warner Bros.' DVD operations.

Netflix, the largest mail-order film-rental service, offers Web-based movie viewing that's used by 42 percent of its 11.1 million subscribers, the company says. It has an online library of 17,000 films and TV shows.

DVD sales are declining

The studios, coping with a decline in DVD sales, are trying to avoid the fate of music labels, which lost sales when their content went digital and online. Hollywood executives view digital distribution as a threat to the traditional way money is made from movies.

"Everybody views it as a terminal career decision if you get it wrong," said Frank Biondi, who has led Universal Studios, Time Warner Inc.'s HBO cable network and Viacom Inc., owner of Paramount Pictures.

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Kira Florita resigns from Leadership Music post

Kira Florita has submitted her resignation as executive director of Leadership Music, effective Jan. 18.
However, Florita, a 30-year music industry veteran, will act as a consultant for a while to help during the transition to a new management team for the industry program.

Florita has been with the group five years and has overseen such major events as the Leadership Music Digital Summit and the Leadership Music Dale Franklin Award. She was the organization's third executive director.

"My front-row seat has allowed me to see how the relationships and understanding created by the Leadership Music Program facilitate a deeper commitment and passion for music," said Florita, adding that she had been exploring "new opportunities for quite a while."

Pat Collins, president of Leadership Music's board, said the group plans to conduct a national search for a new executive director. "Kira's dedication to Leadership Music will be hard to replicate," Collins said.

She is the chair of the Partnership Council for Arts, Media and Communication for Metro schools High School Small Learning Communities, and she sits on the mayor's Nashville Music Council.

Volunteer activities have included serving on the boards of the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, the Audio Publisher's Association, the Downtown YMCA and the National Folk Music Alliance.

— RANDY MCCLAIN

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Experts fear that U.S. is entering decade of job doldrums

WASHINGTON — Call it the Terrible Teens.
The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America's unemployed — and for employed people hoping for pay raises.

At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 percent or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later — perhaps not until the next decade.

The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America's work force.

The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade.

Most economists say it could take at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop to a historically more normal rate. With the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation.

Even though the economy probably will keep growing, the pace is expected to be plodding. That will make employers reluctant to hire. Further contributing to high unemployment is the likelihood of more people competing for jobs, baby boomers delaying retirement and interest rates edging higher.

All of this would come after a decade that created relatively few jobs: a net total of just 464,000. By contrast, 21.7 million jobs were generated in 1989-99.

The 'New Abnormal'

Economist David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, says the U.S. faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade.

The "New Abnormal," he calls it.

Levy thinks the New Abnormal also means average pay will dwindle, along with consumer prices. That would make it harder for households to pay down debt, he warns.

By the Federal Reserve's reckoning, the jobless rate could remain as high as 7.6 percent in 2012. And it would take two or three years after that for the job market to return to normal, the Fed says.

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Hollywood puts big money behind productions for the Web

LOS ANGELES — Web sites that buy original video clips often pay so little that a title like The Bannen Way , a flashy crime thriller debuting online, might be expected to be made poorly if it could be made at all.
Yet budding filmmakers Jesse Warren, 31, and Mark Gantt, 40, managed to hire 40-odd staff, including a boom operator, camerapeople — yes, more than one — and even production assistants to offer sunscreen and sandwiches. And the production had actors familiar to some TV and movie audiences, including Michael Ironside, Robert Forster and Vanessa Marcil.

The secret to their success? Treat the Internet run like a TV or movie release, which often loses money on its on-screen debut but can make healthy profits when issued on DVD or Blu-ray and later sold for reruns on cable or overseas.

With that in mind, major movie studios are now getting behind such productions, giving them a lift in budgets and quality — a far cry from the shaky camerawork and dubious special effects prevalent when Web video became a new phenomenon a few years ago.

For Warren and Gantt, who wrapped up shooting in October, a snazzy trailer they produced helped snag Sony Pictures Television as a partner.

"We came up with this idea," Warren said. "There's no limit to how many episodes there can be in a Web series. So why don't we design it as a (feature-length movie) so we can sell it as a DVD feature at the end?"

Sony executives, it turns out, had the same idea.

The studio picked up the project in April and gave it a budget of around $1 million, nowhere near the $30 million-plus budgets of many Hollywood movies, but more than the producers were told they could sell it for. Web sites typically pay up to $5,000 for a short clip of original video; with 16 episodes, other Web sites might have paid around $100,000 for The Bannen Way .

First episodes to be free

One quirk of the Web is that each episode must have a cliffhanger to keep online viewers coming back. In one scene, the audience learns for the first time that Neal Bannen, the title character, had been working for his mob boss uncle. Bannen's father is the chief of police, and viewers realize the son is about to be entangled in a struggle between father and uncle.

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Holiday shoppers spent a little more this season

According to data released Monday, merchants saw a spending bounce for Christmas.
That means retailers managed to avoid a repeat of last year's disastrous holiday shopping results even amid tight credit and double-digit unemployment. Profits should be healthier, too, because stores had a year to plan their inventories to match consumer demand and never needed to resort to fire-sale clearances to clear shelves.

Retail sales rose 3.6 percent from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, compared with a 2.3 percent drop in the year-ago period, according to figures from MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse, which track all forms of payment, including cash.

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Home stagers hasten sales

It sounds like the dream job of the year: house-sit in a luxurious home you couldn't possibly afford, and pay a fraction of the market rent.
Slightly more than a dozen people in the Nashville area have been hired to do just that by Showhomes, a company based here that puts housesitters with nice furniture in vacant homes that are being sold across the country.

"We looked at an apartment, but we would be paying the same for an apartment as this nice big house,'' said Lisa Briley, who moved into a new four-bedroom home in Hendersonville in October that's listed for $437,900.

Briley, her husband and three children pay roughly $1,500 per month for the house.

Showhomes is finding that its unique business model is making money in one of the worst real estate markets in decades. While other real estate-related businesses have watched revenues struggle for more than a year, Nashville-based Showhomes Franchise Corp. has watched royalty revenues more than double in the past three years.

This year, it expects to take in more than $1 million in royalties alone after signing up new franchisees around the nation. Franchise-wide sales probably will amount to more than $7 million this year, according to Thomas Scott, vice president of operations.

The company has 57 franchisees in 22 states, including California, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee. Twenty-seven of those franchisees have been added this year.

"Your house has to win a beauty contest in today's market,'' Scott said. "There's too much inventory. It's a nice solution to a really messy problem."

Here's how it works.

Showhomes works with the owners of vacant residential properties and their real estate agents, providing live-in managers who make the homes more appealing to potential buyers.

The temporary tenants typically bring their own furniture and agree to have the homes ready for showing on 30 minutes' notice. In exchange, they get reduced housing costs — typically one third or more off normal rentals.

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