Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2007 LANGUAGE
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LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photo: Ross J. Buchmueller at the office building in Plantation, Fla., that houses his insurance company, Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange. (Photo by Marc Serota for The New York Times) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1060 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Former Senator, a Poker Aficionado, Lobbies for Online Gambling BYLINE: By GARY RIVLIN and MATT RICHTEL SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; D'Amato Never Folds; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1527 words For years, Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, was the host at a Thursday evening poker game at his Capitol Hill office, playing with other lawmakers, staff members and lobbyists late into the night over pots that ranged from a few dollars to a few hundred. Once New Yorkers collectively informed Mr. D'Amato that it was time to find a new line of work, he graduated to a higher-stakes game, playing with Howard Stern, among others. He is now a stalwart of a weekly game on Long Island where a bad night might mean that a player drops $5,000 or more. As Mr. D'Amato tells it, and as his card-playing cronies confirm, he rarely leaves a game a loser. Yet it is a safe bet that his love of poker never proved so lucrative as it did last week, when he signed a lobbying deal with the Poker Players Alliance, a nascent group that hopes that Mr. D'Amato will help them become players in Washington politics, too. Most immediately, the group is hoping that Mr. D'Amato, long known for his connections to Washington insiders and his ability to deliver perks to his constituents and interest groups, can help them overturn a new federal ban on Internet gambling -- or at least exempt poker from its provisions. ''John Smith, maybe he doesn't have the financial means or the ability'' to travel to a casino, Mr. D'Amato said, gesturing with his hands and speaking volubly in his trademark accent. ''The poor guy at home can't bet $50 because we pass this law.'' The first big assault on poker players came in October when President Bush signed a bill aimed at online gambling by making it a crime to use credit cards or online payment systems for poker and other online casino games and sports betting conducted over the Internet. The law did not make it impossible or illegal for Americans to bet online, but it did make it trickier for players to get their cash to the offshore casinos that run the Internet sites. ''I think it's fair to say that most poker players see themselves as nonpolitical,'' said Walt Thiessen, 49, an entrepreneur from Warrenton, Va., who recently joined the alliance. ''But the more that the government does to impede poker players, the more angry and frustrated they're going to become.'' The booming popularity of poker has spawned any number of cable television shows and made media figures of professionals like Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu. Tens of millions of Americans play, primarily in home games but also at casinos, legal and illegal card rooms, and at scores of Web sites. So perhaps it was inevitable that poker enthusiasts would assert themselves as another special interest demanding to be heard in Washington. The Poker Players Alliance, which says it has more than 160,000 members, most paying at least $20 to join the group, will open an office in Washington in the next two months ''to oversee our political efforts there,'' the group's president, Michael Bolcerek, said. It hopes to build a grassroots organization whose political presence is felt in all 50 states, he said. But even though Mr. D'Amato's involvement in the lobbying effort is bound to generate plenty of talk, it is not expected to lead to overturning the new law anytime soon. Moreover, Mr. D'Amato, for all his ability to attract attention and parlay his reputation into big money, may not have much sway in a Democratic-controlled Congress preoccupied with war, budget deficits and presidential politics. There is little interest there at the moment in turning back to a subject decided a year ago, when Republicans ruled. Mr. D'Amato and his backers, said I. Nelson Rose, law professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., and an expert on gambling law, ''think they have a pair of queens. But what have they really got? They don't even have a pair.'' Still, former Representative Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican and one of the authors of the Internet gambling ban, said that Mr. D'Amato certainly added heft to the effort. ''Don't ever underestimate Al,'' he said on hearing of Mr. D'Amato's role. Certainly, Mr. D'Amato's poker buddies have learned that lesson. ''He's tenacious, he's fearless and he's aggressive,'' said Gary Melius, the host of the Monday game where Mr. D'Amato is now a regular. ''He's also really good at reading people.'' Subtlety has never been Mr. D'Amato's long suit, and he has already embraced his new role with characteristic fervor. During an interview in his offices in a high-rise on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Mr. D'Amato did not answer questions about online poker as much as filibuster on the issue. To him the implications of prohibiting online poker are profound, touching on matters as wide ranging as the war on terrorism, national security, the rights of the elderly and the handicapped and equal protection under the law. At times, he pounded his desk to make his point. The money being spent to outlaw poker and enforce the ban, Mr. D'Amato said, could be better spent ''in the battle against money laundering, trafficking in drugs, or trafficking in terrorism.'' He takes issue with Congress's decision to lump in poker, a game of skill as well as luck, with games of pure chance like roulette and craps. ''It's really a great sport,'' Mr. D'Amato said, perhaps the country's favorite sport. ''You don't have 70 million people participating in baseball.'' It is not clear that poker has 70 million players, either. (Mr. D'Amato's source is a study commissioned by the poker association.) But one of his trademark tactics is throwing around numbers that might or might not be considered, well, a bluff. He talks of the million players who have already joined the poker association -- a misstatement that prompted his handler, presidential style, to clarify that what the former senator meant is that the group hoped one day soon to have that many names on its rolls. After New York voters replaced Mr. D'Amato with Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, in 1998, the former senator opened Park Strategies, a lobbying and corporate strategy firm whose client list includes banks, telecommunications companies and a few racetrack owners. He acknowledged that he did not understand the impulse that prompted a person to place a wager on a horse. But he spoke rhapsodically about the sense of community that poker has fostered in his life, and the banter, camaraderie and friendly competition that can make the game so engaging. The intimacy of the game, in fact, produced some political headaches for Mr. D'Amato while he was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee after an article in The New York Times disclosed that he had invited lobbyists to play in his office. That gave extraordinary access, some charged, to those representing banks, securities firms and other financial institutions. Mr. D'Amato has a different view, defending his activity as an innocent pastime that followed in the footsteps of President Harry S. Truman's poker games with cronies. ''It was a great way to while the time away -- to have fun and talk politics,'' he said. Plenty of Americans are still playing poker online, if no longer at sites run by publicly traded companies, which fear reprisals from Washington despite being based overseas. Instead, online players have shifted to smaller, privately owned sites. They are forced to find other means for transferring money in and out of their accounts, given that the new law more closely monitors financial institutions processing wagers. ''I play as much now as I did before the ban,'' said Ethan Ruby, a member of the poker alliance who lives and works in Manhattan. Mr. Ruby said he simply took the money he had on account at PartyPoker, his old site, and transferred it to Full Tilt. He then linked his poker account to his checking account instead of a credit card. ''It's a much more tedious process now,'' Mr. Ruby said. Still, it only took a few days. ''You can't cork this,'' Mr. D'Amato said. ''You can't stop this through some silly bill.'' Online poker will only go further underground, he continued, providing an opening for unscrupulous foreign operators seeking to take advantage of the hunger of Americans to play poker. ''When you have regulation, where you have openness, you can ensure you have a game that won't be unfairly cut or disadvantaged or manipulated,'' Mr. D'Amato said. You can also tax the winnings of players whose ups and downs are tracked online, a figure the poker alliance puts potentially in the billions. Mr. Rose, the law professor, while doubtful of the chances for the lobbying effort in the short run, said Mr. D'Amato and his backers would be well served in keeping the issue alive until there is more interest in the matter. ''If they stay active the next two years,'' he said, ''then there could be a serious bill'' to carve out an exception for poker. Certainly, Mr. D'Amato has staying power. ''The later the game goes, the more Al is going to win,'' said Larry Elovich, a Long Island lawyer who said he has been playing poker on and off with Mr. D'Amato for 50 years. ''He has the ability to stay awake when the rest of the players are all tired.''
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1061 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final TODAY IN BUSINESS SECTION: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 2 LENGTH: 635 words EASY COME, UNTIL RECENTLY -- Just as the technology boom of the late 1990s turned twenty-something programmers into dot-com billionaires, the explosive growth in subprime lending in recent years turned mortgage bankers and brokers across the country into multimillionaires seemingly overnight. [Page C1.]A RUSH TO SPRING AHEAD -- Daylight saving time begins Sunday, three weeks earlier than usual, and many companies are scrambling to reset BlackBerry e-mail devices, desktop PCs and big data-center computers. [C1.]LOBBYING FOR HIGH STAKES -- Alfonse M. D'Amato, the former Republican senator from New York, is a longtime poker fan who plays regularly in high-stakes game. But the stakes got even higher last week when he signed a lobbying deal with the Poker Players Alliance, which hopes that he can help them overturn a federal ban on Internet gambling -- or at least exempt poker from its provisions. [C1.]THREE DAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD -- More than 1,000 people -- including Nobel laureates, entrepreneurs and entertainers -- will gather in Monterey, Calif., this week for the annual TED conference, named for the convergence of technology, entertainment and design. [C1.]THE MANY FATHERS OF MP3 -- Microsoft paid a German rights holder $16 million to license the MP3 audio format, the foundation of the digital music boom. But an American jury decided that Microsoft had failed to pay another MP3 patent holder, and issued a $1.52 billion judgment. And the MP3 toll gates do not end there. [C3.]ONLINE SEARCH FOR IN-STORE ITEMS -- Technology companies are poised to solve the problem of finding items at the mall, via cellphone or personal digital assistant. One company is NearbyNow, whose chief executive, Scott Dunlap, above, says more than 2,000 shoppers used its service at a California mall on the first day of a trial. E-Commerce Report: Bob Tedeschi. [C8.]A FICTION AT WIKIPEDIA -- Contributors to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, have turned against one of their own who was found to have created an elaborate false identity. [C5.]MEDIA DISPUTE CUTS TV SERIES -- A dispute between British Sky Broadcasting and Virgin Media has left 3.3 million cable television viewers without ''Lost,'' ''The Simpsons'' and other popular American series. [C5 .]COKE V. COKE, IN COMMERCIALS -- The Coca-Cola Company is updating the make-fun-of-lawyers shtick for new generations in a nontraditional campaign for Coke Zero. Advertising: Stuart Elliott. [C7.]HEALTH SERVICES BY CELLPHONE -- Rwanda is using a system built by a United States company to track H.I.V. and AIDS patients, manage drug supplies and monitor health programs by cellphone in a country where travel is difficult. [C8.]KIDZ BOP 11 RISES IN CHARTS -- Kidz Bop 11, released by Razor & Tie on Feb. 20, became a best seller in the children's music category in its first week and has captured the No. 4 spot among top music albums. Most Wanted. [C9.]BITE-SIZE NEWS -- The Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister paper, The Daily News, are offering digests that look like Web sites, with quick summaries of news articles as well as sports scores, lottery numbers and the weather -- pretty much all one needs to read. [C5.]NBC ANCHOR IN BAGHDAD -- Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor, is in Baghdad, the first network news anchor to travel there since Bob Woodruff, then the co-anchor of ABC News, was severely injured by a roadside bomb in January 2006. [C5.]LURING GAME DEVELOPERS -- Microsoft plans to announce a contest that will award $10,000 to the developer of the next great digital diversion for the company's Xbox 360. [C5.]BUYOUT FIRMS WORK ON IMAGE -- Under attack by politicians who call them ''locusts'' and union leaders who accuse them of cutting jobs, European private equity firms are trying to salvage their reputations. [C2.] URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: INTERNET AUDIO (90%); LOBBYING (90%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); PATENTS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); SUBPRIME LENDING (77%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (77%); SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY (76%); PERSONAL COMPUTERS (71%); GAMING (75%); US REPUBLICAN PARTY (75%); LEGISLATORS (75%); MORTGAGE BANKING (72%); MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE (72%); MEDIA CONVERGENCE (71%); DESKTOP COMPUTERS (71%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (70%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (70%); CABLE & OTHER DISTRIBUTION (70%); ELECTRONIC COMMERCE (68%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (65%); VERDICTS (64%); AIDS & HIV (61%); MORTGAGE BROKERS (57%); NOBEL PRIZES (52%); HANDHELD COMPUTERS (71%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (66%); JURY TRIALS (64%) Terms not available from NYTimes COMPANY: COCA-COLA CO (61%); MICROSOFT CORP (55%); BRITISH SKY BROADCASTING GROUP PLC (54%); E-COMMERCE& (52%); VIRGIN MEDIA INC (83%); IN-STORE GAGE MARKETING LLC (53%) TICKER: KO (NYSE) (61%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (55%); BSY (NYSE) (54%); BSY (LSE) (54%); VMED (NASDAQ) (83%) INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (61%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (61%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (55%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (55%); NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (54%); SIC4841 CABLE & OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (54%); NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (54%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (83%) GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (92%); NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (92%); RWANDA (75%) LOAD-DATE: March 5, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photos DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1062 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final A Scuffle Over Pay Television in Britain Spills Into the Living Room BYLINE: By ERIC PFANNER SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; MEDIA; Pg. 5 LENGTH: 925 words DATELINE: LONDON, March 3 For 3.3 million cable television viewers in Britain, ''Lost'' has disappeared. So have several other popular American series, including ''24'' and ''The Simpsons.'' The shows vanished from cable last week when British Sky Broadcasting, the satellite television company, withdrew several of its channels, including those that broadcast the United States series, from Virgin Media, the main cable provider in Britain. The companies ostensibly ended their relationship because of a disagreement over the cost of carrying the channels on cable. But analysts say that the companies are fighting a broader battle over the British pay-TV market. This has turned Homer Simpson and the castaways of ''Lost'' into pawns for some far more powerful media figures: on one side, Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur behind the Virgin brand; on the other, the Murdoch family. Rupert Murdoch's company, the News Corporation, is the largest shareholder in BSkyB, and one of his sons, James, is its chief executive. BSkyB, with more than eight million subscribers, has long dominated pay TV in Britain, relegating cable to also-ran status. Suddenly, however, BSkyB faces a revitalized competitor in Virgin Media, the result of a recent merger between the two main cable providers, NTL and Telewest. Mr. Branson entered the picture when the combined company bought the British operations of Virgin Mobile, giving him a stake in the cable operator, which licensed the Virgin brand name from him. Mr. Branson, who has climbed aboard airplanes, hot-air balloons and elephants for marketing stunts that helped build Virgin Atlantic Airways into a competitor to British Airways, wasted little time in trying to raise Virgin Media's profile. Last autumn, he prodded Virgin Media to explore a bid for ITV, the largest commercial broadcaster in Britain. That effort failed when BSkyB swooped in to buy a 17.9 percent stake in ITV -- enough to foil Virgin Media's efforts. Virgin Media cried foul, protesting that BSkyB's move went against the spirit of British rules on concentration of media ownership, given that the News Corporation's British assets also include several newspapers -- The Sun, The Times of London and The News of the World. Under British media law, BSkyB can own up to 20 percent of ITV as long as it does not exert undue influence, but the government announced last week that it had asked the media regulator, Ofcom, to examine the deal. Neither Rupert nor James Murdoch has commented publicly on the dispute with Virgin Media. The Branson-Murdoch rivalry has now moved out of deal makers' suites and regulatory offices and into viewers' living rooms with BSkyB's decision to withhold its channels from Virgin Media. Several weeks ago, BSkyB had already antagonized Virgin Media by running advertisements warning cable viewers that they might lose access to channels like Sky One, which shows ''Lost,'' and BSkyB's 24-hour news channel. Virgin said it objected to BSkyB's attempt to raise the fees for the channels even though viewership had fallen. BSkyB maintained that the price increases were justified because it was adding new channels to the package for Virgin Media, and because of new investments in the existing ones. The claims and counterclaims, detailed in a flurry of newspaper advertisements and news releases last week, grew more strident as the deadline for the negotiations approached last Wednesday, with each side accusing the other of acting in bad faith. Behind the seemingly petty aspects of the dispute are big changes in the competitive relationship between the two companies, Virgin Media said. ''This is not just about the carriage agreement,'' said Neil Berkett, chief operating officer of Virgin Media. ''We now have a very viable proposition under the U.K.'s most loved and best-known brand.'' Cable television has suffered from a reputation for bad customer service in Britain, analysts say. Mr. Burkett said Virgin Media was taking steps to improve that, along with making investments in video-on-demand and improved content offerings. The company is also trying to appeal to customers by marketing a ''quad play'' of telecommunications and media services, by offering television, fixed-line and mobile phone calls and broadband in one package. BSkyB has responded to that challenge by introducing its own broadband offering. Both sides, facing a threat from free digital television beamed over the airwaves, have also announced plans to add so-called digital terrestrial services. Virgin Media initially tried to make light of losing the BSkyB channels. On its on-screen program guide, it briefly replaced the slot for Sky News with a listing reading, ''Sky Snooze, try BBC.'' But Virgin Media later bowed to pressure from a consumer group and said it would allow customers to cancel their subscriptions with no penalty because of the loss of the BSkyB channels. For its part, BSkyB has said that it stands to forfeit about $:60 million, or $117 million, a year from the loss of channel carriage fees from Virgin Media, as well as from reduced advertising rates, because the channels will now reach 3.3 million fewer viewers. BSkyB appeared to be gambling that it would make up some of that lost revenue by appealing to Virgin Media subscribers who cannot live without ''Lost.'' ''There's only a certain amount of premium content,'' said James Healey, a media analyst at Ernst & Young in London. ''And if you've got that, you may not be willing to play nicely with the other children in the group.'' URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: CABLE & OTHER DISTRIBUTION (92%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (91%); CABLE TELEVISION (90%); SUBSCRIPTION TELEVISION (90%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (90%); CABLE INDUSTRY (90%); BROADCASTING REGULATION (89%); SATELLITE TELEVISION (78%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (78%); BRANDING (73%); SHAREHOLDERS (67%); DIVESTITURES (72%); MERGERS (72%) Television; Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures; Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates); Television COMPANY: NEWS CORP (70%); BRITISH SKY BROADCASTING GROUP PLC (92%); BRITISH AIRWAYS PLC (53%); VIRGIN GROUP LTD (92%); VIRGIN MEDIA INC (94%); ITV PLC (85%); VIRGIN ATLANTIC AIRWAYS LTD (82%) ORGANIZATION: British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc; Virgin Media; Ntl Inc ; Telewest Global; News Corp TICKER: NWS (NYSE) (85%); NCRA (LSE) (85%); BSY (NYSE) (92%); BSY (LSE) (92%); BAY (LSE) (53%); NWS (ASX) (70%); VMED (NASDAQ) (94%); ITV (LSE) (85%); NWS (NASDAQ) (70%) INDUSTRY: NAICS515210 CABLE AND OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (73%); SIC4841 CABLE & OTHER PAY TELEVISION SERVICES (92%); NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (92%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (94%) Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length Download 4.36 Mb. 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