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Digest

Talk of the bay

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 30, 2007

NIELSEN GOES TO SCHOOL TO HONE RATING ACCURACY

Whoever said college students don't count won't be able to blame Nielsen Media Research. The market research giant, which compiles the nation's TV ratings at its operations center in Oldsmar, this week is beginning to monitor the viewing habits of college students who live away from home. It's Nielsen's attempt to silence longtime critics - mostly TV executives who base their ad rates on audience size - by expanding its monitoring beyond the home to places such as bars, gyms, stores and restaurants. Shows that claim a big audience of college students, such as Adult Swim and Family Guy expect their ratings to fatten. Ad agencies, which pay for ads, will question the results. They note college-age viewers are more likely to have the TV on while doing other things at the same time like browsing the Internet, text messaging on cell phones and playing video games. Or, ah, studying.

Print is evidence of James' uniqueness

No, Raymond James Financial is not producing CSI: St. Petersburg. The silver fingerprint featured on the black cover of the company's 2006 annual report is a statement that the St. Petersburg company is unique. In case you are wondering, the fingerprint does not belong to chairman Tom James. The company says that for security reasons, it picked out a fingerprint graphic that had no identifying information attached to it.

Drug merger battle taken to the people

The public battle over Caremark Rx Inc., the nation's largest pharmacy benefit manager, is heating up as a Feb. 20 vote by shareholders nears. Both drug retailer CVS Corp. and competitor Express Scripts have made bids for Caremark. In a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, CVS made its pitch. A merger of Caremark and Express Scripts would result in lost contracts and deep debt, CVS claimed. And the Express Scripts' deal could even fall through, leaving Caremark "left alone at the altar as a damaged company," the ad warned. Investors can expect a rebuttal any day now.

Clarification

Gary Taylor, who co-owns the Pit Boss Bar-B-Q restaurant in the same shopping center as a recently closed Hooters at 36091 U.S. 19 N, said the restaurant left shortly after owners of the strip mall announced it would raise the rent several hundred dollars per month. The last two lines of the story didn't appear in Monday editions.

Industry in crisis

Learn about the problems facing insurance companies in Florida at tampabay.com/insurance.

[Last modified January 29, 2007, 23:32:42]