Technology: At CES, Wired Cars Reach Out

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Sony and Viacom Reach Tentative Deal to Stream Cable Channels

The agreement is believed to be the first of its kind between a major programmer and any of the technology giants that are trying to disrupt traditional modes of TV delivery. If other programmers follow suit, Sony’s as-yet-unnamed service would let paying subscribers receive live cable channels the same way they use on-demand libraries like Netflix or Hulu. Intel and Google are working on similar services, but try to make it more user-friendly, perhaps the way Netflix does with personalization features and a fancy interface.

Most households today have only a few choices for television service: whatever cable company serves their local area, be it Comcast, Time Warner Cable or others, and two satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network. In some parts of the country, television through Verizon or AT&T is also available. Analysts say cable delivered through the Internet could give households many more choices — if the new services give customers more for their money and if cable incumbents don’t smother the services.

To even have a chance, companies like Sony and Intel need the permission of programmers, and that’s why the Viacom deal is considered a breakthrough. Although Viacom and Sony declined to comment on Thursday, a person directly involved in the negotiations confirmed a Wall Street Journal report about the agreement. The person insisted on anonymity because the companies were not prepared to comment on the record.

Having the news spread was advantageous for Sony, though, because having Viacom on board — even just on a preliminary basis — will most likely help the company complete other carriage deals. The company has also contacted other top programmers, like the Walt Disney Company and Time Warner.

That Viacom — which has more than 20 channels, including big ones like Comedy Central and small ones like Centric — was the first to agree to support Sony’s fledgling service is not necessarily surprising, since the company has a reputation for contentious relationships with cable and satellite companies. Last year, Viacom channels were blacked out in DirecTV households for nine days. Sumner Redstone controls both Viacom and the CBS Corporation, which is blacked out in three million Time Warner Cable households because of a contract dispute.

Time Warner Cable, and to a lesser extent other TV providers, has thrown up roadblocks for new entrants by inserting language into some carriage contracts that discourages programmers from selling its channels to Internet TV services. The existing providers say they just want to ensure that the upstarts don’t get better terms, like broader video-on-demand rights or cheaper rates for channels.

Most likely, Sony will pay higher rates — one of the downsides of being new and untested. Any deals between programmers and the Sonys of the world will keep the TV bundle intact, despite occasional public agitation for an “a la carte” option.

“I don’t think the classic pay TV subscription bundle model of television is going away anytime soon — it’s a pretty compelling and cost-efficient smorgasbord,” particularly for older Americans, said Tim Hanlon, a former media agency executive who now runs the Vertere Group. “But all bets are off with the under-40 set — the growing group of folks who just want their video content when and where they want it, preferably without the messy commitment part,” he added.

Sony is well-positioned to reach younger Americans because its PlayStation video game console is already hooked up to TV sets in tens of millions of homes. The company has said almost nothing about its intentions, but it has been interested in selling a bundle of channels at least since 2011. Its TV service could also be made available in the future via smartphones, tablet computers and other devices.

Sony hopes to start selling the service in the fourth quarter of 2013 or the first quarter of 2014, said a media company executive briefed on the plans for it.

If Sony’s service (or another one like it) gets off the ground, incumbents like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are also likely to sell their own versions, furthering this new type of competition. What no one knows — but everyone in the industry wonders — is whether these Internet cable services will steal market share; entice people who do not currently pay for any channel bundle to sign up; or fail to sign up customers at all.

The overall number of American households paying for television has remained remarkably steady in recent years, though there are some slight signs of fraying around the edges. Mr. Hanlon said he sensed that as younger viewers were getting better at “cobbling together their own workarounds to all-or-nothing content packages,” the “smart programmers are starting to carefully position themselves to take advantage, just in case the classic carriage model starts to break.”

Of course, all of the alternatives being dreamed up in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are B.Y.O.B. — Bring Your Own Broadband. Video is data-intensive, and data caps or stiffer monthly charges for broadband imposed by companies like Comcast could inhibit the establishment of virtual cable services. In a recent interview, the departing Time Warner Cable chief Glenn Britt acknowledged as much when he was asked about Intel’s interest in TV.

“The reality is, if everybody watched TV over the Internet, and we were out of the TV business, then we would have to recover more money from the Internet service,” Mr. Britt said.

Advertising: Nonprofit Group to Help For-Profit Marketers Reach Youth

In keeping with an approach at Do Something to not take itself so seriously, the unit is being named TMI, as in “Too Much Information.” A presentation that Do Something has prepared about the new unit offers this comment under the TMI logo, “Just kidding, there’s never too much info!”

TMI will offer marketers and organizations services like those already used by Do Something in creating cause campaigns, which it promotes each year to its 1.7 million members and other Americans ages 13 to 25.

According to Do Something, more than 2.4 million people took action through the organization in response to 25 cause campaigns in 2012. Those services include research, strategy related to mobile devices and text messaging, social media and Web site production.

TMI will also offer marketers a chance to use its services to reach consumers who are older and outside the Do Something demographic sweet spot.

TMI is being led by Aria Finger, as president. She is also chief operating officer at Do Something in New York. Similarly, staff members of Do Something will also work on TMI assignments. Mobile Commons, a mobile technology and strategy company in Brooklyn that works with Do Something on its cause campaigns, will also work with TMI.

The formation of TMI is indicative of how much time and attention Madison Avenue continues to devote to figuring out the best methods of wooing the youth market, particularly the so-called millennials, who are teenagers through about age 30.

Another example occurred in February, when MRY — an agency in New York, formerly known as Mr. Youth, that specializes in youth marketing and social media — absorbed the North American operations of the giant digital agency LBi in a reorganization by the new LBi parent, the Publicis Groupe.

“The demand is there,” Ms. Finger, 30, said in a telephone interview. “Over the years, our corporate and nonprofit partners have said, ‘Can you come in and consult with us? Teach us about social? Teach us about mobile?’ But we didn’t have the bandwidth.”

TMI will follow Do Something’s lead in the types of clients it will accept. For instance, Ms. Finger said, “neither Do Something nor TMI would partner with a liquor company or a tobacco company.”

Asked about other sorts of marketers that may be under scrutiny for the kinds of products they sell, she replied: “We’d have to weigh the pluses and minuses. You need to be pragmatic.”

What about, for instance, a soft-drink maker? “I drink a Diet Coke every once in a while,” Ms. Finger said, laughing.

She expressed a similar attitude when discussing what TMI means, describing it as “sort of tongue in cheek, ‘We have too much information and we want to share it.’ ”

TMI’s initial clients include Pearson, the education and media company, which will work with it on products that teach English as a second language and are sold in countries like Brazil, China, India and Indonesia.

“Do Something has done an amazing job communicating with an audience that is the most hard to keep engaged,” said Bhav Singh, president for Pearson English and informal learning in London, particularly through its use of S.M.S., or text messages, to reach its young members.

“And the fact it’s a not-for-profit organization, and do this with a shoestring budget, means they know how to do more with less, or very little,” he added. “TMI will guide us on both parameters, helping us interact with youth in a manner that’s cost effective as we build our mobile learning solutions, and that’s a win-win.”

Aéropostale, the retailer, is considering working with TMI after six years of collaborating with Do Something on a program, Teens for Jeans, that has donated 3.5 million pairs of jeans to homeless teenagers, said Scott Birnbaum, senior vice president for marketing and e-commerce at Aéropostale in New York.

“Do Something is so knowledgeable about teenagers and their desire for change, and this move to share that wealth of knowledge with more people is, I think, terrific,” he added. “I can’t imagine we’re not going to be involved with TMI.”

TMI, as a unit of Do Something, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, will also operate as a nonprofit group. Asked if that was an unfair advantage over profit-making agencies and companies that specialize in youth marketing, Ms. Finger replied, “Our true ‘unfair advantage’ comes from our access to young people.”

“There is a possibility,” she added, that TMI could be “spun out as a for-profit, as we grow.”

Special Report: Technology & Innovation: Robotic Gadgets Are Becoming Within Reach of Average Consumer

His creation, the Hexy, is a six-legged, crablike creature that can navigate its own environment and respond to humans with a hand wave or other programmable gesture. Mr. Schlesinger said he had been able to lower production costs by using free software and by molding a lot of the plastic parts locally in Massachusetts, not in China.

Since setting up his company, ArcBotics, in suburban Somerville, Massachusetts, Mr. Schlesinger has built a backlog of more than 1,000 orders. His goal, he said, was to become “the Ikea of robotics.”

“I think the market for consumer robotics is poised to explode,” said Mr. Schlesinger, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. “We are only at the beginning.”

Since the 1960s, robots have assumed major roles in industrial manufacturing and assembly, the remote detonation of explosives, search and rescue, and academic research. But the devices have remained out of reach, in affordability and practicality, to most consumers.

That, according to Professor Andrew Ng, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University in California, is about to change. One big reason, Mr. Ng said, is the mass production of smartphones and game consoles, which has driven down the size and price of robotic building blocks like accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors.

On the edges of consumer consciousness, the first generation of devices with rudimentary artificial intelligence are beginning to appear: entertainment and educational robots like the Hexy, and a line of tireless household drones that can mow lawns, sweep floors, clean swimming pools and even enhance golf games.

“I’m seeing a huge explosion of robotic toys and believe that there will be one soon in industry,” said Mr. Ng, an associated professor of computer science at Stanford.

The most advanced robots remain exotic workhorses like NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, which cost $2.5 billion, and the LS3, a doglike robot being developed for the U.S. military that can carry a 400-pound, or 180-kilogram load more than 20 miles, or about 30 kilometers. The mechanical beast of burden, whose price is not public, is being made by a consortium led by Boston Dynamics. In Menlo Park, California, engineers at Willow Garage, a robotics firm, are selling the two-armed, 5-foot-4 inch (1.63-meter) rolling robot called the PR2 for $400,000.

A video on Willow Garage’s Web site shows the PR2 fetching beer from a refrigerator, which while an engineering and programming feat, is an expensive way to get beer.

“I think we’re still some years away from useful personal robots making pervasive appearances in our homes,” Mr. Ng said.

Right now, for the masses, there is the CaddyTrek, a robotic golf club carrier that follows a player from tee to fairway to green through tall grass, up 30-degree slopes and in snow, for as many as 27 holes on a single charge. Players wear a remote control on their belts, which acts as a homing beacon for the self-propelled cart, which trails six paces behind the player.

Golfers can also navigate the robotic cart, which is made by FTR Systems, to the next tee while they finish putting.

“Someone ran up to me last week and said that my golf cart had broken free and was rolling through the parking lot,” said Richard Nagle, the sales manager for CaddyTrek in North America and Europe. “Most people just stop and stare. They’re not used to this.”

FTR Systems does not disclose the proprietary technology it uses to power the CaddyTrek, which sells for $1,595, but Mr. Nagle said sales of the robot carriers had been strong, and the company had been rushing to meet orders in the United States and Europe.

Samsung Expected to Reach End of Record Run

SEOUL — Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly profit of 8.1 trillion South Korean won, nearly double the figure of last year, as strong sales of high-end televisions and Galaxy smartphones more than offset reduced orders for chips and screens from Apple, its main rival and leading customer.

Most analysts, however, expect a run of four record quarters — the most recent worth $7.3 billion — to end in December, as the South Korean group, one of the world’s leading makers of smartphones, televisions and memory chips, increases its marketing, countering the new Apple iPhone 5 and other products in a crowded smartphone market, valued at $200 billion globally.

Credit Suisse Group, an international financial services company, estimated that Samsung might have spent about $2.7 billion on marketing in July to September alone during the Olympic Games in London and on Galaxy promotions.

The expected record profit of 28 trillion won would mean higher payouts for performance to many of Samsung’s 206,000 staff members early next year. And Samsung may have to set money aside this quarter if it fails to overturn an appeal of a U.S. court verdict that awarded more than $1 billion in damages to Apple on Aug. 24 for patent infringements by Samsung.

“Fourth-quarter profit will be pressured by one-off expenses: performance payouts and some $1 billion in legal provisioning relating to the Apple litigation,” said Lee Sun-tae, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities.

“Excluding those, core earnings will remain solid, and a swing factor is how much Samsung spends on marketing.”

Analysts expect earnings to decline until the second quarter of next year as a slump in computer sales and a weak global economy sap demand for chips and electronics products.

“The biggest risk for Samsung is competitive product lineups from its rivals, such as the iPhone 5,” said Byun Han-joon, an analyst at KB Investment & Securities.

“Because handsets drive most of its profits, one misstep in handsets could result in losses for the whole Samsung group,” Mr. Byun said.

Profit at Samsung’s mobile division is likely to have more than doubled in the July-to-September period to about 5 trillion won as smartphone shipments topped 58 million, including as many as 20 million of the Galaxy S III.

Ahead of full quarterly results due Oct. 26, Samsung estimated that its July to September operating profit jumped to 8.1 trillion won from a year ago, beating an average forecast of 7.6 trillion won in a survey of analysts.

Strong handset sales made up for reduced profits from its chip business. Prices of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips — used in computers and mobile phones — dropped 14 percent in the September quarter. Such chips now trade below what it costs most contract manufacturers to make them and will squeeze near-term earnings, analysts say. Tablets and smartphones, the real growth areas, use far smaller memory storage.

Samsung is expected to invest less in chips next year because of the drop in demand, which could be bad news for equipment manufacturers. Kwon Oh-hyun, who became chief executive of Samsung in June, said late last month that the group had yet to complete its 2013 investment plans.

Samsung is strengthening its product lineup, with its latest phone-tablet, the Galaxy Note, expected to go on sale in the United States this month; its ATIV smartphones, which run on Microsoft’s new Windows system, will compete with Nokia’s Lumia series.

AT&T and Union Reach Tentative Pacts for 2 Units

AT&T announced this weekend that it had reached tentative three-year contracts with a union representing more than 13,000 workers in its Midwest division and an additional 5,700 workers at a unit specializing in major corporate accounts.

The union, the Communications Workers of America, applauded the agreements, saying they did not contain the deep concessions many American companies are demanding.

In a statement about the tentative settlements, AT&T said: “The three-year agreements include wage increases in each year and a modest pension increase. Health care benefits remain among the best in the country.”

The union released a statement that said the tentative contract for workers in the Midwest “provides for wage increases, improvements in employment security and improvements in work and job issues, limits on forced overtime and changes to unfair attendance policies.”

The union said it would not disclose the percentage of the raises because it had not yet explained details to its members. Candice Johnson, a union spokeswoman, said ratification of the contract was expected in a few weeks.

The union’s Midwest division issued a statement that praised the tentative deal and said its negotiating team had made “some real improvements for our members and held back most of the company’s plans to take away hard-fought gains we had won over the years.”

In recent months, the union held several protests over what it called AT&T’s push to shift more health insurance costs to union members.

AT&T and the communications workers said they were still seeking to reach new contracts for three other divisions, including AT&T West, the former Pacific Bell, which has 18,000 union members in California and Nevada. The union is also seeking to reach a new deal with AT&T East in Connecticut, with 4,000 members.

Contracts for those two units expired on April 7, as was the case at AT&T Midwest and at AT&T Corp., the division handling big corporate accounts, like Internet services.

The company and union are also seeking to negotiate a contract for 24,000 AT&T workers in the Southeast — their contract expires on Aug. 4. Because the old Baby Bells had separate union agreements, the various regional union contracts often have different expiration dates.

In contrast to the talks involving AT&T, Verizon’s negotiations with its two main unions — the communications workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — have dragged on more than a year.

On Thursday, the unions asked the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to provide a mediator to help the stalled negotiations. The two unions represent roughly 45,000 Verizon workers from New England to Virginia.

Last August, those employees went on strike for two weeks, before returning to work under the terms of their old contract, which expired on Aug. 6.

Union officials said at the time that they had called the strike because they felt Verizon was not taking them seriously and because the company was seeking large concessions, including a pension freeze for current workers, fewer sick days and far larger employee contributions toward health coverage.

Separately, the Communications Workers of America announced on Saturday that Seth Rosen, the vice president in charge of the union’s District 4, covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, drowned in an accident on Friday in North Carolina. They said Mr. Rosen, 55, who also oversaw the union’s organizing efforts, died when he was swept away by the undertow at Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks.

Calling the death a “tragic loss,” Larry Cohen, the union’s president, said, “His commitment to every aspect of our union life cannot be matched.”

Ms. Johnson, the spokeswoman, said, “Seth Rosen laid out the goal that every worker would be better off financially at the end of this contract than they’d be at the beginning.”

AT&T and Union Reach Tentative Pacts for 2 Units

AT&T announced this weekend that it had reached tentative three-year contracts with a union representing more than 13,000 workers in its Midwest division and an additional 5,700 workers at a unit specializing in major corporate accounts.

The union, the Communications Workers of America, applauded the agreements, saying they did not contain the deep concessions many American companies are demanding.

In a statement about the tentative settlements, AT&T said: “The three-year agreements include wage increases in each year and a modest pension increase. Health care benefits remain among the best in the country.”

The union released a statement that said the tentative contract for workers in the Midwest “provides for wage increases, improvements in employment security and improvements in work and job issues, limits on forced overtime and changes to unfair attendance policies.”

The union said it would not disclose the percentage of the raises because it had not yet explained details to its members. Candice Johnson, a union spokeswoman, said ratification of the contract was expected in a few weeks.

The union’s Midwest division issued a statement that praised the tentative deal and said its negotiating team had made “some real improvements for our members and held back most of the company’s plans to take away hard-fought gains we had won over the years.”

In recent months, the union held several protests over what it called AT&T’s push to shift more health insurance costs to union members.

AT&T and the communications workers said they were still seeking to reach new contracts for three other divisions, including AT&T West, the former Pacific Bell, which has 18,000 union members in California and Nevada. The union is also seeking to reach a new deal with AT&T East in Connecticut, with 4,000 members.

Contracts for those two units expired on April 7, as was the case at AT&T Midwest and at AT&T Corp., the division handling big corporate accounts, like Internet services.

The company and union are also seeking to negotiate a contract for 24,000 AT&T workers in the Southeast — their contract expires on Aug. 4. Because the old Baby Bells had separate union agreements, the various regional union contracts often have different expiration dates.

In contrast to the talks involving AT&T, Verizon’s negotiations with its two main unions — the communications workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — have dragged on more than a year.

On Thursday, the unions asked the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to provide a mediator to help the stalled negotiations. The two unions represent roughly 45,000 Verizon workers from New England to Virginia.

Last August, those employees went on strike for two weeks, before returning to work under the terms of their old contract, which expired on Aug. 6.

Union officials said at the time that they had called the strike because they felt Verizon was not taking them seriously and because the company was seeking large concessions, including a pension freeze for current workers, fewer sick days and far larger employee contributions toward health coverage.

Separately, the Communications Workers of America announced on Saturday that Seth Rosen, the vice president in charge of the union’s District 4, covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, drowned in an accident on Friday in North Carolina. They said Mr. Rosen, 55, who also oversaw the union’s organizing efforts, died when he was swept away by the undertow at Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks.

Calling the death a “tragic loss,” Larry Cohen, the union’s president, said, “His commitment to every aspect of our union life cannot be matched.”

Ms. Johnson, the spokeswoman, said, “Seth Rosen laid out the goal that every worker would be better off financially at the end of this contract than they’d be at the beginning.”