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Big real estate deal: Well, big in the world of commercial real estate anyway. L.A.-based CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the world's largest commercial real estate broker, is buying Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. for $1.8 billion in cash. CB is apparently looking to bolster its property management business, which is much of what Trammell Crow does. And with office occupancy and rents reaching five-year highs, there's a lot of managing to do. Deal was announced this morning.
About circulation: Buried amid all the terrible declines at most all the nation's major newspapers are the 57 million people who visited a newspaper Web site in the third quarter, a 24 percent increase over the like period a year earlier. At the NYT, the number of people who read the newspaper online now surpasses the number who buy the print edition. What we're seeing play out are the consequences of making all your content available online for free - a regrettable decision that, it should be noted, goes back many years and was based on the perception of the Internet being a free resource.
“The fundamentals say to me that there is a future for a well-run newspaper,” said Conrad C. Fink, who teaches newspaper management at the University of Georgia. “But short range, it looks dismal and nobody knows exactly what to do about it.”
LANG-speak: The press release that posed as a news story in this morning's Daily News about the dismissal of Publisher Tracy Rafter is a reminder of how well the LAT has been covering its own financial travails. In announcing the appointment of John C. McKeon to take over as publisher, one of the MediaNews honchos called it "part of an overall plan to better adapt our business cost structure to the fundamental changes that are under way in the publishing industry." (Actually, it wasn't a MediaNews executive, but one of the suits running Dean Singleton's California newspaper operations.) The honcho adds this: ""I believe we are geared up to grow our business and improve our service to the public both in our printed and online products." No comments from anyone outside the company. Ugh.
Covering the world: KCRW's success at attracting global listenership - and the fundraising problems inherent in a Web and podcasting audience - get a going over in the WSJ. Turns out that the while No. 1 source of online listeners comes from Socal, it's no longer the majority. In second position is NY, followed by San Francisco and then Tokyo. Station manager Ruth Seymour says that when it comes to podcasts, "they don't even know they're listening to a radio station. How in the hell are you going to get someone like that to subscribe?"
Where was Katie?: Somewhere downtown, where she anchored the CBS Evening News last night. The backdrop of the L.A. skyline was a lot more compelling than having the network anchor stuck in one of the L.A. bureaus, with a palm tree set in the background. Be curious to know where the broadcast was done. She's back in NY tonight.
Gas going up?: L.A.-area prices kept falling in the last week, but the trendline is pointing up. The Energy Department's weekly survey shows that the U.S. average increased a penny, to $2.218 for a gallon of self-serve regular. Wholesale gasoline and oil futures rose last week (though they fell on Monday). In any event, don't expect a big runup as long as oil stays under $60 a barrel.
Still more Carly: Why on earth would the LAT devote so much of its business page to what was essentially a non-news book-tour interview with ex-H-P head Carly Fiorina? I mean, didn't everybody else do that a couple of weeks ago? The piece by James Bates is tagged "news essay," whatever that means. By the way, the best Carly piece I've come across was Joe Nocera's NYT column in which he challenges Fiorina's claim that her firing in 2005 was not about performance. It ran Oct. 14. The piece is only available to NYT Select subscribers, but here's a taste:
Ms. Fiorina, universally known as Carly, wasn't just any chief executive, either; she was the highest-profile female executive in the country, the perennial top choice for Fortune magazine's ''50 Most Powerful Women,'' and a celebrity C.E.O. who was to the business media what Paris Hilton is to the tabloids. Her firing was a very big story at the time… So I come here this Saturday morning to offer a simple corrective. Carly, it was about performance. And if you didn't realize that then -- and can't admit it now -- you should never have been Hewlett-Packard's chief executive in the first place.
Airport silliness: So exactly what kind of clear plastic bag are you allowed to take onto a plane these days? Turns out that a quart-size zip-top plastic bag is the only vessel that will do. As the WSJ's Scott McCartney stresses, that doesn't mean gallon bags or fold-over sandwich bags. Too bad the Transportation Security Administration has done such a poor job letting people know.
TSA says the rules are the result of specific core security issues -- three-ounce bottles make it extremely difficult to handle and mix liquid explosives, and the one quart-size bag limits the total volume of liquids anyone can bring aboard a plane without too much slowdown at security lanes. But the agency is reviewing how it has communicated rules to the public and to its own screeners, because of confusion on both sides of the X-ray machine. And five weeks into the new rules, the agency is now in a position to "give our [screeners] some discretion," said TSA chief Kip Hawley.
Dance fever: The Daily News reports on the cheerleading that's broken out along the 13800 block of Ventura Boulevard for two of the four finalists in the TV hit "Dancing With the Stars." Donna Lawrence, who designs gowns for the Pretty boutique, is the mother of Joey Lawrence and she's done up the storefront with a splashy tribute to her son. Emmitt Smith, another finalist and a former NFL running back, gets his own display at a Pilates studio across the street.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.