\GoBillsInDallas/

http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2013/01/cleveland_browns_new_uniforms.html

People actually get paid to come up with stuff like this: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/browns-reveal-new-logo-old-logo-article-1.2127288

It is unintentionally funny that, in deciding to drop the AP, the Buffalo News states that "the newspaper of the 21st century must have more perspective, more behind-the-scenes reports, more stories that knit a dozen disparate elements into a bigger picture." The reason that it is unintentionally funny is that, for the first edition that they publish after dropping the AP, that fully half the front page of the paper is covered by a wire service photo of the Academy Awards: http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/get_image.aspx?pbid=d7fed0ff-b69c-4f68-bdc0-722adb334473&h=380&date=2015-02-23_08-39

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e46dc7a4-b843-11e4-86bb-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Sa9POMQL Broadcasters fear falling revenues as viewers switch to on-demand TV Shannon Bond in New York and Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles Financial Times Last updated: February 22, 2015 8:02 pm With YouTube to watch, Instagram pictures to take and Facebook, Snapchat and other social media platforms to explore, a generation of young Americans that used to turn to television for entertainment is finding its fix elsewhere. They are watching on-demand services, such as Netflix and Hulu and the BBC iPlayer but turning off “linear” TV, or tuning in at a set time on a set channel. This migration has been gradual but is starting to show up in the quarterly results of some of the world’s biggest media companies — and investors are beginning to notice. Television executives started sounding the alarm last autumn when Viacom, 21st Century Fox, Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, and Walt Disney began reporting lower advertising revenues for some or all of their networks. Todd Juenger, senior analyst with Bernstein Research, called the ratings declines “alarming” and “unprecedented”. The trend has continued into the most recent round of financial results, with Viacom among the worst hit. The company, controlled by 91-year-old billionaire Sumner Redstone, has suffered some of the sharpest ratings declines, with viewership down 18 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to a MoffettNathanson analysis of Nielsen data. BET, which is aimed at African-American audiences, fell 22 per cent, the children’s network Nickelodeon was down 17 per cent while MTV declined 14 per cent. Viacom’s profits have held steady but on the company’s recent investor call, Philippe Dauman, chief executive, alluded to significant changes in audience habits. “It is no secret that there are far-reaching shifts taking place in our industry,” he said. His peers agree. In a nod to the popularity of subscription services such as Netflix, Jeff Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, owner of networks such as CNN and HBO, recently said television was “in the midst of a secular shift to on-demand consumption”. That has pushed networks including HBO and CBS to launch their own online offerings. At Viacom, the ratings decline is not only putting pressure on ad sales, but reducing the company’s leverage in negotiating with pay-TV providers that carry its channels. Some small operators, including St Louis-based Suddenlink Communications, which counts about 1m video subscribers, have dropped Viacom altogether. Suddenlink said Viacom’s pricing demands were too high. Viacom maintains its programming is still being viewed by young people and says they are just watching it in different ways. It has turned its fire on Nielsen, the consumer research company, whose ratings are the currency on which the $70bn television ad market depends. The broadcaster believes Nielsen’s measurements have not kept up with how people consume content. Such changes, it argues, are especially pronounced among younger audiences that watch its channels on smartphones and gaming consoles, which Nielsen does not measure. Mr Dauman said such “inadequate measurement” undermined “innovation” and disproportionately hit programmers such as Viacom. He has pledged to move away from relying on Nielsen ratings by boosting Viacom’s digital advertising inventory and selling more sponsorships and targeted ads that are inserted when shows are watched on demand. Viacom wants to increase the proportion of ad sales from those sources to 50 per cent in the next three years, from 30 per cent last year. Viacom is also loading more advertising into some programmes to generate more revenue, boosting commercial time by more than 4.5 per cent in the fourth quarter, according to Mr Juenger at Bernstein Research. Channels aimed at young viewers are not the only ones being hit. Viewership among 18-to-49 year olds of primetime broadcast and cable shows — some of the most valuable television advertising available — dropped 7 per cent in the final three months of 2014, the third consecutive quarter that audiences shrank, according to MoffettNathanson, the analysts. “This is just about the worst decline we have seen,” it said. David Zaslav, chief executive of cable programmer Discovery Communications, added to the criticism of Nielsen, saying last week “there’s no question that it’s under-measuring . . . I think they will fix it over time, but it’s a problem”. He contrasted the US to Norway, where “anybody that watches anything, whether you watch it in a bar, you watch it at your vacation house, whether you watch it on your iPad, it counts”. Since Norway moved to a new measurement system last year, he said, TV viewership has swung from double-digit declines to a 15 per cent increase. Nielsen plans this year to introduce new tools to measure watching on digital devices which it says will provide a more comprehensive portrait of evolving viewership habits. It also acknowledges that viewing a programme after its original transmission has taken a toll on audience ratings: the traditional metric, known as “C3”, captures only the live viewing and what is viewed within three days of the show being aired. “What it looks like is a decline in ratings when in fact there is shifting viewing that is not captured,” said Megan Clarken, Nielsen’s executive vice-president of global digital products. But she also noted that consumers have more choices in what they watch. “There’s a competing landscape on the digital side with digital pure plays producing content.” That includes Netflix and Amazon, which are both spending more on hit shows such as House of Cards and Transparent , and Google’s YouTube, whose online video stars are particularly popular with young viewers. Mr Juenger at Bernstein Research argues that television is undergoing a “structural” migration from ad-supported networks to streaming video services. “We don’t think those viewers are coming back,” he warns. Nielsen wants the television industry to adopt a new standard of ratings that captures viewing no matter the screen or source, and has been developing its own “total audience” metric to measure digital content. “We think it’s important that the ratings we provide are reflective of what’s going on in the environment,” Ms Clarken said. But, she added, redefining the industry’s currency is ultimately up to the media owners and the agencies that buy commercial time. “It will be the marketplace who decides the numbers on which they trade.” While the TV industry struggles to hammer out new models for revenue and measurement, advertising executives say they are following consumers in expanding the definition of television itself to encompass on-demand viewing, streaming and digital video. “I believe you have to redefine what television is. It’s more about moving content,” said Amir Kassaei, chief creative officer for Omnicom’s DDB Worldwide, an advertising agency. “There is still the old media platform called TV, which is strong and you should use it if you need to build awareness and build a bigger audience. But the way people are interacting with moving content more broadly is changing, especially with young people. We have to be selective if we are trying to reach people in the right way.” Shrinking live TV viewing threatens broadcasters’ bottom lines This week, 3m more viewers than usual tuned into watched EastEnders, the long-running BBC soap opera, as it broadcast live, writes Henry Mance. But that one-off success is unlikely to break a trend of falling live television viewing in the UK, as viewers switch to Netflix, DVDs and catch-up services. Now the question is whether advertising revenues — which have been increasing at broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4 — will start to drop. The amount of time that British children spend watching TV has fallen by 22 per cent since 2010, according to industry data from Barb. Many industry figures have argued that the shift away from live TV is a kids’ phenomenon, which will disappear as audience grow older. In fact, says Toby Syfret, an analyst at Enders Analysis, “the habits of the parents are changing too”. Live television viewing has fallen 11 per cent among adults aged 35 to 54 since 2010. For those audiences, the transition to on-demand viewing is often an easier behavioural shift than, say, the move from print books to ebooks. Only among the oldest demographic — aged 55 and above — has live television viewing remained relatively unaffected, falling 2 per cent in the past four years. Broadcasters are, however, riding a recovery in advertising sales. ITV’s shares are at their highest since the dotcom boom, with ad revenues rising 6 per cent year-on-year in the nine months to September 2014. In the short term, the fall in television audiences may actually increase the price of TV advertising. Brands want their ads to be seen a certain number of times on television; as it becomes more difficult to reach audiences, the cost of doing so rises. Brands cannot switch their spending to Netflix, which does not show ads. The obvious option is to advertise more on online platforms — including ITV’s on-demand player and YouTube. For the moment, “advertisers and media buyers just do not see [YouTube] as a substitute for mass market reach”, says Ian Whittaker, an analyst at Liberum. “The big thing that prevents disruption is the content most people want to watch is produced by the big broadcasters,” says Mr Syfret. Broadcasters are therefore investing in making their own programmes. Some are also exploring revenue streams that would hedge against a decline in revenues. ITV launched its first pay channel in more than a decade last year, and offers ad-free digital subscriptions.

Ice storm here in Dallas. People dropping dead in the streets, massive looting, roving gangs of gun-toting criminals, massive car wrecks - total anarchy.

Here's the stadium location: https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B050'53.8%22N+118%C2%B016'37.2%22W/@33.848263,-118.2770015,1129m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0 The site includes the triangular parcel (brown) surrounded by 405/Del Amo/Main, as well as the rectangular parcel (gray) to left surrounded by Figueroa/Francisco/Main/Del Amo.

Why do you think those black helicopters were flying over your house yesterday?

http://www.huntrealestate.com/Real_Estate/NY/Amherst/790_Lebrun_Rd/551-1-B468770/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/sexiest-bulgarian-alive-busted-alleged-fla-dui-article-1.2122551

It's always amazing to read these stories about people who "lived to tell the tale" - and they never thought that is was that big of a deal: http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-leon-kent-20150219-story.html

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2015/02/woman_who_fatally_shot_herself.html

She just can't get enough: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/n-teacher-sex-6-students-ages-14-15-prosecutor-article-1.2119846

http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/cowboys-corner-blog/article10536176.html

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/orchard-park/attempt-to-thaw-pipes-may-have-caused-1-million-fire-20150217

Privately funded: http://transportationblog.dallasnews.com/2015/02/bullet-train-developer-identifies-preferred-dallas-houston-route.html/ http://www.chron.com/news/transportation/article/High-speed-rail-route-would-affect-Houston-6085167.php https://dallashoustonhsr.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/tcr-board-recommended-alternatives-october-19-2014.jpg

http://www.realtyusa.com/property/186-Middlesex-Rd-Buffalo-NY-14216/BuffaloNY/B468542/

http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/176227-big-wiener-out-of-control/

http://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2015/02/14/obama-depicted-as-rape-suspect-in-fox-5-friday-the-13th-error/

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/sarah-palin-snl-outfit-sparks-criticism-twitter-article-1.2116618

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/oscar-mayer-wienermobile-crashes-pennsylvania-article-1.2116668

See Maybin, Aaron.

Summary: Former Port Authority Chairman oversees negotiations with airlines, including United Airlines, for landing fees at New York airports. United Airlines creates non-stop service between Newark and Columbia, SC that has only two weekly flights: Newark to Columbia on Thursdays and Columbia to Newark on Mondays. By a magical coincidence, the Chairman works in New Jersey from Monday to Wednesday and flies back home to Columbia on Thursdays and flies to Newark on Monday mornings. By another magical coincidence, the Chairman changes the date of the weekly meetings in New Jersey from Thursdays to Wednesdays. By a third magical coincidence, United Airlines cancels service to Columbia three days after the chairman resigns. http://www.northjersey.com/news/federal-subpoena-seeks-travel-records-of-former-port-authority-chairman-david-samson-1.1265692 http://www.northjersey.com/news/feds-contact-south-carolina-airport-officials-in-probe-tied-to-ex-port-authority-chairman-david-samson-1.1269309 Also: Port Authority board members also get to bypass airline check-ins, TSA and customs when they fly: http://www.northjersey.com/news/documents-four-port-authority-commissioners-flying-from-area-airports-given-special-treatment-1.1270440