NLRB orders CNN to rehire 100 employees, compensate 200

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered CNN to rehire 100 workers and compensate 200 others for a labor dispute that originated in 2003.

The 11-year dispute stems from CNN's decision to replace a unionized subcontractor called Team Video Services, which provided the network with audio and video technicians, with an in-house nonunion work force in its Washington and New York bureaus.

The NLRB found "overwhelming" evidence of anti-union animus in CNN's failure to bargain with the union about the decision to terminate the subcontracts. The board also found CNN had implemented a hiring plan designed to limit the number of discharged TVS employees to avoid a successorship bargaining obligation.

A CNN spokesperson said, "CNN disagrees with the NLRB decision and we are evaluating our options."

The Communication Workers of America said that CNN's 2003 decision had amounted to a "phony reorganization scheme to get rid of unionized workers."

The union also said the compensation for the 200 employees, who continued to work at the company without the benefits of a union contract, would be "on the order of tens of millions of dollars."

The union also said CNN is required to restore any bargaining unit work that was outsourced since the end of the contracts. The company also must recognize the employees' union and resume bargaining with NABET-CWA Local 11 and NABET-CWA Local 31.

"These workers have waited far too long for this measure of justice to finally be delivered and have suffered far too much as the result of these unlawful activities," said NABET-CWA president Jim Joyce. "CNN should finally do the right thing now and immediately comply with the orders of the National Labor Relations Board issued today."

The union noted that it had immediately filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB after CNN terminated the subcontracts. The case did not go to trial before an Administrative Law Judge at the NLRB for almost five years.

After 72 days of trial, the ALJ ruled in 2008 against CNN and found the network had engaged in "widespread and egregious misconduct" and had demonstrated "a flagrant and general disregard for the employees' fundamental rights." The ruling was appealed, leading to several more legal actions by the union.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Machinima names Daniel Tibbets chief content officer

Daniel Tibbits, who once ran Bunim/Murray Prods digital media division, has joined Machinima as chief content officer, a newly created position at the online entertainment network that targets younger males.

In the role, Tibbets will oversee all of Machinima's programming efforts, content strategy and talent development operations, program planning and scheduling, production, acquisitions, and business affairs, reporting to Chad Gutstein, Machinima's CEO.

He also will manage Machinima's talent development team as it tries to grow audience, gain access to production resources and funding, execute collaborations, and work with advertisers.

Machinima currently has over 24,700 channels in its network, which itself has 385 million subscribers.

Some of its more popular series include "Inside Gaming," "ETC," "AFK," "Chasing the Cup," "Battlefield Friends" and "Sanity Not Included."

The company has recently expressed more of an interest in developing scripted series, after building a following around live action hits "Mortal Kombat: Legacy," "Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist," "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn" and "Battlestar Galactica Blood & Chrome."

Gutstein has been building out his executive ranks since becoming CEO in March.

Recent hires also include Tricia White as chief people officer, and Chris Riley as general counsel.

"Daniel's content and leadership sensibilities plus his creative acumen will serve him well as we seek to build upon Machinima's historical online video programming success," Gutstein said. "As a M2M, we seek to align our original, talent commissioned and network programming against our fanboy and gamer focused programming strategy. Daniel's unique combination of experiences will enable him to execute against that goal with excellence."

While leading the digital media division at Bunim/Murray, Tibbets focused on creating original web series, branded entertainment and sales for online, web and mobile platforms.

He also has worked in the digital departments at CBS Enterprises, Papazian-Hirsch/Rysher Entertainment, Foxlab Inc., and Twentieth Television.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Digital studio Jibjab acquires startup behind 'Hello Santa' video service

JibJab Bros. Studios, the company best known for its political satires whose backers include Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced that it has acquired Make Believe Studios, creators of the "Hello Santa" subscription service that lets kids have live video chats with Kris Kringle.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Deal marks the first major acquisition for JibJab, founded in 1999 by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis.

"Hello Santa" garners more than 50 million unique monthly visitors over the holidays. JibJab said the deal represents a significant new revenue opportunity for the studio. Under the deal, Make Believe Studios and "Hello Santa" will continue to be led by co-founders Dorian Collier, Jordan Lyall and Sam Dassanayake, and will operate out of JibJab's headquarters in Venice, Calif.

"Building a distributed network of Santas to deliver one-on-one performances to families globally fits perfectly with our mission," JibJab CEO and co-founder Gregg Spiridellis said in a statement.

The "Hello Santa" service in 2013 was priced at $14.99 per call. The service promises to bring "the real live Santa Claus directly into the living rooms of families everywhere, via the magic of video-chat technology." Parents can optionally share facts about their kids, schedule a call and at the appointed time, "Santa" appears to deliver a personalized meeting. Alternatively, users can opt to receive a personalized prerecorded video message from Santa.

This year the Hello Santa app will be live in Apple's App Store and at HelloSanta.com on Nov. 1, 2014. Video calls with Santa will start on Nov. 28 (Black Friday) and will continue through Dec. 24.

Investors in JibJab, which has 75 employees, include Polaris Venture Partners, Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2012, JibJab launched StoryBots, a line of learning and entertainment apps for kids aged 3-6.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Building a better lightbulb

Philips Hue Lux Lightbulb ($29.95 and up each or $100 for a two-bulb starter kit with the Philips Bridge, various retailers)

The rumors are true: Lightbulbs are now smart. And the Philips Hue Lux line of smart home lighting aims to be the smartest of them all, with an app that helps you control the brightness of your home from the comfort of your mobile device. Would Thomas Edison be proud? Let's see.

The good: These app-enabled LED bulbs connect with the Hue Bridge, a central hub that plugs into your wireless network. You can dim or brighten the lights or schedule them to automatically turn on or off at a certain time via an easy-to-use app for iOS and Android. Each Hue bulb uses 80 percent less power than a traditional bulb.

The bad: They could be brighter, and they don't emit any colors; only white light.

The bottom line: For the price and the convenience, the Philips Hue Lux line is certainly worth your consideration.

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Booting Up: GM rolling out Wi-Fi across product line

The nightmare of a long drive jammed in a car with all your nearest and dearest could soon be over. In just a few years, family road trips may seem vastly different: Passengers will be able to have their own devices to play a game, stream a movie, or get work done on a computer.

That's because General Motors is working to turn cars into roving Wi-Fi hotspots for up to seven devices, introducing high-speed connectivity into more than 30 of its 2015 models. I had a chance to drive a 2015 Buick Regal with 4G LTE from Boston to New York last week, and it was superconvenient to use my favorite navigation app, Waze, while hooked up to the in-car Wi-Fi. The in-car mobile plans also come with enhanced OnStar, a service that offers emergency response, connectivity to real people, diagnostics and turn-by-turn navigation.

Pretty soon, every car buyer is going to demand this feature, and every manufacturer is going to supply it.

And that means wireless carriers are going to have yet another way to profit from our increased connectivity. Expect more carriers to get into the game, and hopefully pricing to go down as a result — because this could get expensive fast.

GM's plan offers customers either three months or 3 gigabytes of data in a free trial with the option to continue with plans that range between $5 and $50 per month. AT&T customers can add a car plan to their mobile share plan for as little as $10 per month for 200 MB of data.

That's enough to stream more than 6.5 hours of music, surf the Web for 13 hours, or send more than 10,000 emails, according to GM. But think about that for a second: If you have a car full of seven people plugging away on smartphones and tablets, that data gets eaten up pretty fast.

Securing this deal with GM was a major coup for AT&T as competition among potential in-car entertainment providers heats up. Apple and Google are already in the mix, with software that allows an increasing number of apps on your iPhone or Android to be accessed via your car computer. But with the merger of DirecTV and AT&T purportedly close to being finalized, it seems like that's the company with the clear mechanism and pipeline of multimedia content for vehicles.

Then again, there is another way to get Wi-Fi in your car: It's called a portable mobile hotspot, and the beauty of this is that you can take it in your car for family trips. The 4G LTE Verizon Jetpack is available for $129.98 with a two-year agreement on top of a monthly fee. You won't get the enhanced OnStar service, but you will be able to grab it from the car and bring it to your hotel to avoid those awful Wi-Fi fees everyone seems to be charging these days.

So the traditional American hell of forced family interaction, ad nauseam, in close quarters en route to a summer vacation destination is about to be replaced by the serenity of detachment, with each passenger happily distracted. Whether that's a good thing or not is for each family to decide.

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New study on 'income inequality' looks at Mass.

BOSTON — Advocates for changing Massachusetts' personal income tax may have new fuel for their campaign, as a new national study suggests a more progressive income tax that requires wealthier individuals to pay higher tax rates could help states deal with revenue problems.

Standard & Poor's, in a study released Monday, found that the improving fortunes of the nation's top earners corresponds with a decades-long slowdown in tax revenue growth among states. The rating agency says states adopting more progressive, or graduated, income tax rates could be more insulated from the problem, though it stops short of endorsing outright such policy changes.

"In the setting of rising income inequality, the move toward more progressive tax rates may help states generate faster tax revenue growth than would flatter tax regimes," the report concludes.

State Rep. Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat that chairs the legislature's Revenue Committee, says he's not surprised by the findings. He hopes the report helps bolster efforts to address Bay State taxes.

"It's a conversation whose time has come," he said. "The problems that we've got — both with wealth inequality and our regressive tax system — are worth addressing. Our failure to address them would continue the unfairness of the system and the challenges that we have with revenue."

The Tax Fairness Commission, a legislative panel Kaufman co-chaired earlier this year, found that Massachusetts' overall tax system, including state income and sales taxes and local property taxes, places a greater burden on middle and low-income taxpayers than those with higher income. Among that bipartisan commission's recommendations: discarding Massachusetts' flat income tax rate in favor of a graduated tax rate.

Of the 43 states that have a personal income tax, Massachusetts is one of just seven that still imposes a flat rate, which is currently 5.2 percent. Changing the tax's structure, which would require voter approval of a constitutional amendment, has faced stiff opposition over the years.

Michael Widmer, a member of the Tax Fairness Commission who opposed the recommendation, says such an overhaul would only compound income inequality by discouraging business investment.

The president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed research group, he suggested more "modest" changes to the tax code, such as raising the value of certain tax exemptions for individuals and married couples. "That goes directly to the spending power of that person on the lower end that's living in a high cost state and trying to make ends meet," Widmer said.

But Noah Berger, president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a left-leaning budget research group, argues that the state has enacted a series of tax changes over the last 15 years or so that have primarily benefited the wealthy, including reductions in the overall income tax rate and the tax rate on investment income.

The result, he says, is that the lowest income households — those on living less than $21,000 a year — are paying 9.5 percent of their income toward state and local taxes while those in the top 1 percent — those earning about $700,000 or more — are paying just 6 percent.

"Our state tax system has become more conducive to supporting inequality," Berger said. "It taxes higher income people at lower rates than lower income people. That exacerbates the problem."

S&P's report cautioned that a greater dependence on top earners for income tax revenue makes it harder for state policymakers to predict what they'll find in their coffers, since much of their income comes from investments in the sometimes volatile stock market. The agency report closes with this caveat: "tax revenue growth slows as income inequality rises, regardless of a states' tax structure ... changes to state fiscal policy alone won't likely fix what's wrong."

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MassChallenge’s global scale

MassChallenge, already the world's largest startup accelerator and competition — with programs in Boston, Israel and, in the coming months, the U.K. — continues to push the envelope of international expansion, exploring the possibility of similar programs in Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, Mexico and Colombia.

"Part of the vision is that we can demonstrate Boston is the global leader in innovation and entrepreneurship," John Harthorne, MassChallenge's founder and CEO, told the Herald from Berlin, one of his stops on a three-week business trip to Russia and Europe. "In most places around the world, resources like mentors, lawyers and investors for startups are missing or poorly coordinated. We have a good system in the U.S. I think we can help create huge growth, as well as open up new avenues for investment and trade between Massachusetts and these countries."

MassChallenge announced earlier this year that it had secured initial funding to launch its first London program. Harthorne said he hopes to announce new partnerships and sponsorships Wednesday for the program, which could begin accepting applications next spring or early summer. Within 18 months to two years, MassChallenge also may open an office in Russia, where Harthorne and MassChallenge mentors were on hand to offer training to 12 IT startups that recently won a competition in Skolkovo, home to Russia's largest accelerator. That training will continue for five weeks via Skype before the entrepreneurs pitch their ideas in late October in Boston, he said.

In Berlin, Harthorne met with partners who are trying to market the program, with a tentative launch in 2016. He also has planned stops in Switzerland and France.

"Right now, we're focused mostly on Europe, but there's also interest in Mexico and Colombia, both of which have been paying us for mentorship and training," Harthorne said. "When we started MassChallenge, we did plan for expansion. But we didn't expect this much excitement and interest. The challenge is keeping up with the demand."

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Sun-exposure tracking device to help users see the light

A MassChallenge finalist says it's developed the first solar-powered, wearable sun-exposure tracker to improve energy, mood and focus, regulate sleep cycle, and monitor ultraviolet light exposure.

Founded by two Harvard Medical School psychiatry professors, GoodLux Technology developed SunSprite, a thumb-sized device with 10 LEDs that light up, based on a person's percentage of light exposure.

On a sunny day, most people need about 30 minutes of bright light within two hours of waking up to improve energy, mood and focus, said CEO Edward Likovich.

On an overcast day, people may need 45 minutes to an hour. And at night, they should avoid the kind of bright light that comes from a computer to fall asleep because it interferes with their circadian rhythms, Likovich said.

"It's exactly the right time for this as the days are getting shorter," he said. "It really makes an impact on people's lives."

Research dating back to 1984 found that bright light could be helpful in treating people with seasonal affective disorder. But it wasn't until 2005 that the American Psychiatric Association recommended that bright light be used before medication to treat the disorder.

"We had written about social isolation and were interested in how you could gratify someone's natural needs before you started tweaking their brain chemistry," said Jacqueline Olds, who founded GoodLux in 2012 with her husband, Richard Schwartz. "Research also shows that bright light in the morning boosts cognitive functioning in older people."

The two teamed up with Harvard engineers Tom Hayes and Kasey Russell, who developed the first prototype for SunSprite in 2012 and the second early this year.

In March, they raised money for the project on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, where 700 people signed up to buy the device for $99. After tomorrow, the price will be $149.

The device also syncs with your iPhone, allowing you to track your progress in real time and get personalized goals and tips. GoodLux plans to have an Android app available in the coming months.

"My husband and I sit at a computer during the day, so this is a good reminder to get outside," said Jana Eggers, 45, a customer who lived in Boston for 17 years before moving to Charleston, S.C. "They made the device very simple. You can just wear it and see whether you've gotten enough light for the day. And it's solar-powered, so I don't have to worry about batteries."

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Bottle bill foes pour cash into campaign

Well-funded opponents of a ballot question to expand Massachusetts' bottle bill to include 5-cent deposits on bottled water, juice and sports drinks will begin a TV advertising campaign tomorrow to push their cause before the November election.

But Janet Domenitz, executive director of MassPIRG — part of a coalition of environmental groups supporting the bottle bill expansion — hopes that after an unsuccessful 10-year legislative push, voters will see through the "misleading TV ads" and pass the binding measure.

"You can certainly buy a lot of television with that kind of money, but this is a law that's been widely and broadly supported for years, so we're hoping the corrupting influence of big special interest money doesn't change the support for this bill," Domenitz said. "If the vote was taken before a bunch of misleading TV ads, we would win hands-down."

The American Beverage Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for the non-alcoholic beverage industry, already has contributed $5 million to the "No on Question 2: Stop Forced Deposits" campaign, which has raised $5.4 million in total, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. Supermarkets including Stop & Shop, Big Y and Donelan's also have made large contributions.

The proposed law, which would take effect in April, also would require the state to adjust the deposit every five years to reflect consumer price index changes. And it would increase minimum handling fees paid by beverage distributors and bottlers.

"Question 2 costs a lot and doesn't do much of anything for recycling," said Nicole Giambusso, spokeswoman for the No on Question 2 group.

Passage would increase costs to grocers required to redeem the containers in their stores, according to Giambusso. "Those costs will trickle down to consumers and add nearly $60 million in grocery costs," she said. "And ... we'd only be getting an eighth of a percent of a recycling increase. The other alternative would be to expand curbside recycling, which a lot of communities have. (It) is three times cheaper."

Supporters of the bottle bill expansion have raised just $292,988, according to campaign finance reports. But Domenitz said the grass-roots coalition — which includes the League of Women Voters, Sierra Club, Massachusetts Audubon Society and Emerald Necklace Conservancy — is setting up a "town captain" structure where volunteers will work locally to get out the message in their own communities.

There's one data point that voters need to understand, she said: Carbonated beverage containers with the 5-cent deposit get recycled 80 percent of the time, while only 23 percent of non-deposit beverages are recycled.

"Curbside (recycling) is great, but it's not capturing these beverages," she said.

And anybody who leaves the house "doesn't need a study to back that up," according to Domenitz. "If your kid plays ball at a park or you walk your dog, or you go to the beach, or you live in the city, or you hike a trail, you've had the experience of seeing littered bottle water containers, sports drinks — the things that don't have a deposit."

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Feds award $20M grant to upgrade Ruggles T station

Local and federal officials gathered in front of the Ruggles MBTA station yesterday to announce a $20 million federal grant that will help fund the construction of a new 800-foot commuter rail platform and a host of other improvements at the 27-year-old Roxbury transit facility.

"The vision set forth by President Obama for the TIGER grant program called for smart investment in transportation that will lead to expanded growth and opportunity," Gov. Deval Patrick said. "The improvements that will be made to Ruggles encapsulate that vision — shortening commutes, increasing transit access and catalyzing growth for this neighborhood and the city."

In addition to the new 9,600-square-foot rail platform, the project calls for replacing existing elevators, making the station fully accessible to riders with disabilities and restoring rail tracks at the station, which is served by 14 MBTA bus routes, seven private bus shuttles and Orange Line and commuter rail trains.

After completing the project's design work next spring, the MBTA will solicit bids from contractors and the two-year construction period is expected to begin in the fall of 2015, MBTA officials said.

"Transportation infrastructure is what gives us the opportunity for people to get to their jobs, for people to get to an education, for people to live in one place and get to another and keep a strong, vital city operating," U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

After the construction of the new platform more commuter rail trains will be able to stop at Ruggles, making the station a more convenient alternative for thousands of people traveling to and from the Columbus Avenue/Lower Roxbury corridor, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx said.

Patrick said the project is a critical element in MassDOT's statewide goal of tripling the share of non-auto-based travel in Massachusetts by 2030.

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