Mediaboss Marketing

Gilad Neumann wants to be clear: He does not want to turn your dog into a couch potato. But if you're going out for a few hours, he hopes that soon you'll leave your television on and tuned to his new cable channel, Dog TV, the first channel directly targeting canine viewers.

"Veterinary associations like the Humane Society and the ASPCA have been recommending for dog owners to leave the TV or radio on when they leave their dog home alone for many hours," said Neumann, Dog TV's founder and chief executive officer. However, he said, "not every video that you leave your dog with is appropriate." Anything that contains fireworks or gunfire could scare your dog and "create more stress than no TV."

Dog TV's programming, on the other hand, is meant to soothe your dog's abandonment anxiety - and spare your furniture - while he or she is alone.

Dog TV went live Feb. 12 after four years of dog-market research and several hundred thousand dollars of pre-seed money (Neumann won't give a specific amount). For now, it's available only to Time Warner Cable and Cox Media customers in the dog-loving city of San Diego, a test market of about 1 million cable subscribers.

Jasmine Group, the Israeli production company behind Dog TV, hopes to expand across the United States by the end of the year, and start charging a premium of $4.99 per month. The company believes this is a small price for absentee dog owners to pay to assuage their guilt - especially compared with doggy day care rates, which can range from $40 to $50.

Watch a few minutes of Dog TV - a beagle and a Pekingese cavorting in a field set to cheery Muzak, say - and you'd be forgiven for confusing it with the Puppy Channel, the terminally cute, all-puppies-all-the-time experiment that hit its peak in the late '90s before becoming a casualty of the dot-com bust and setting a daunting precedent for other dog-centric programming.

But a lot has changed in the last decade, both in entertainment and in man-pet relations: There are an increasing number of pampering products and services that extend human comforts to dogs, from gourmet food to therapy. And Dog TV, after all, isn't for humans. For one thing, the colors will seem off, because they've been calibrated to suit dogs' limited vision. (Essentially color-blind, dogs can only see shades of blue and yellow.)

"We're constantly doing ... you can call them focus groups for groups for dogs," said Neumann. "We've noticed, for example, that dogs are not thrilled about barking on the channel, so we've removed almost all barking."

The content is relatively cheap to produce: Videos are shot largely in San Diego and Israel, canine actors don't need to be paid, there are no elaborate sets, and the veterinarian-approved music is written and performed in-house. Short segments play throughout the day and are designed to alternately soothe and stimulate the viewer.

There are, as yet, no plans to air dog sitcoms, dog procedurals, or any form of narrative content.

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Dog TV plans to expand and charge $4.99 a month

03-03-2012 05:19 UK web surfers have caught a grim glimpse of the future with Internet users being threatened with 10 years in jail for "illegal downloading" after a prominent music file-sharing site was shut down shortly after Britain signed the notorious ACTA bill. It is the first time such a move has been made against Internet users in the UK. The British government introduced regulations in 2009 enabling Internet providers to track users who downloaded illegal content from the web and disable their connection if warning letters had no effect. But signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has brought the conflict to a whole new level. In Europe, people are taking to the streets in protest at the contradictory Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, with some countries refusing to sign it. After hackers from the activist group Anonymous attacked practically all US government websites in retaliation, the authorities are now considering adopting their own home-grown anti-counterfeiting laws like PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) / SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). RT on Twitter twitter.com RT on Facebook http://www.facebook.com

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ACTA in UK: 10 years in jail for a download? - Video

PORT ST. LUCIE The New York Mets host the Washington Nationals Monday night in their Grapefruit League opener, and fans will see the new upgrades to Digital Domain Park.

The main piece of the renovation is the bleachers in right field, where 502 box seats and 16,000 square feet of open deck have been added. Also, there is a new, enlarged video screen on the scoreboard, and a new addition now connects the right field seats and berm area to the rest of the stadium.

St. Lucie County commissioner Chris Dzadovsky said the upgrades were, in part, done at the request of the New York Mets and also to help the facility attract a second major league team for spring training.

"It's a great look," New York Mets spokesman Jay Horwitz said. "It's almost like a new ball park. We're really proud of what has happened over the last few months."

The $2.5 million construction project started in November and is being finished just in time for the Mets' run of home spring games.

"This was done to upgrade the facility," Mets director of Florida operations Paul Taglieri said. "We signed an extension (with the New York Mets) above our prior facility use agreement, which was going to expire in 2018. So this money that was bonded out by the county extended our agreement until 2023."

St. Lucie County commissioner Chris Dzadovsky said the county was able to restructure a bond at a lower interest rate, which will save the county "quite a lot of money" in the long run.

"We were able to do this without expanding the budget," Dzadovsky said. "We were able to put in 12 to 15,000 square feet of administrative space that could be used for another team. It also provides for a better fan experience.

"This makes it better for all of us."

The scoreboard in left field is the same size, but ads have been removed to make room for a state-of-the-art, high definition video board, which is four times larger than the previous one. Dzadovsky said the Mets requested the larger video board to better accommodate sponsorship and advertising.

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Digital Domain Park ready to show off its upgrades

I cannot help but have a soft spot in my heart for Portland, if only for the fact that on the week my wife and I visited, the Give A Shit Club was holding its "mostly monthly" forum. In it, participants were encouraged to do "a little bit of drinking and a whole lot of talking about local and national issues."

Of Portland's nature, it's all there in the club's title:

The wry but earnest call to activism; the fine line trod between seriousness and self-satire; the slacker dynamic fuelled by local microbreweries and artisanal distilleries. It's at once twee yet not, fun but adult. Of the three Cascadia sisters - the other siblings being us and Seattle - Portland is the most amiable and adventurous. She'd be the older sister willing to try anything, the first one in the water skinny-dipping.

Consider for example, our hotel: We stayed downtown at the Ace, a restored - but not overly restored - hotel originally built in 1912. There is nothing like it in Vancouver, which is a pity. There easily could be.

It's Flophouse Chic, with claw-foot tubs in the bathrooms, double-height ceilings, original tiled lobby (complete with coin-operated photo booth), and turn-of-the-century oak flooring in the hallways and rooms. The old is set off by the hipsterish new: large-screen TVs, high-end toiletries and bedding, sleek minimalist furnishings, original wall murals in each room (above our bed was an American eagle with the inscription Love Thy Neighbor), and - in a nod to the vibrant local music scene - turntables that came with an eclectic supply of LPs. (Ours ranged from the newest Fleet Foxes LP to The Best of Caruso.) Even the room's mini-bars spoke Portlandese: It came stocked with Glee gum, Boy-lan lemon seltzer and banana bread powerbars. Sometimes I suspect Portland is in on its own joke.

Why would a Vancouverite go to Portland?

It does serendipity so much better than us. Some of this is due to a more relaxed licensing environment - getting a liquor or business licence is vastly easier than in B.C. But more than that, Portland is a showcase of the American genius for experimentation. The city's unofficial motto, and favoured bumper sticker, is Keep Portland Weird. It's that self-satire again, but a call to arms, too.

Case in point:

While we were there, the big indie rock band The Shins, who call Portland home, gave a 1 p.m. children's concert at the Kennedy School. The show was part of the charming You Who! concert series, co-founded by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Portland's other big indie band.

The shows are split up into a half-hour of variety entertainment - sin-galongs, cartoons, puppetry, "inter-active dance get-downs," to quote the program - followed by a half-hour rock show.

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Pete McMartin: Portland, Vancouver's bolder sister

More than 500 people have joined the search for a British man who has gone missing in the Cayman Islands.

Nathan Clarke, originally from Cheltenham, was last seen a week ago on Grand Cayman.

His phone was later found in the sea.

The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) said it was being kept "fully updated and informed" about the investigation.

Chief Inspector Richard Barrow of RCIPS told the BBC his officers were working "tirelessly" to find Mr Clarke. "Our search co-ordinators have been overwhelmed by the determination of those involved not to give up," he added.

A water search along the Seven Mile Beach area began on Saturday with 527 volunteers and 39 police officers joining the hunt.

Mr Clarke works as a teaching assistant on Grand Cayman and has lived there for about four years. The 30-year-old was last seen near Calico Jack's beach bar on West Bay Road on the Caribbean island on February 25.

His parents Lizzie and Randell Clarke, sister Sam and Brother Daniel are understood to have arrived on the island on Saturday. They said they had been overwhelmed by the support they have received - with hundreds of well-wishers posting messages and making donations via a Facebook group.

Sam told local news website This Is Gloucestershire: "We are staying positive that he will be found despite searches predominantly taking place in the ocean at this time. Nathan is much loved by friends on the island and back in the UK and we are still confidant and praying that he will be found safe and well.

"We have been overwhelmed by the generosity from the public, donations have continued to provide essential funding for the helicopter to be chartered and divers to be supplied with equipment."

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Briton missing on holiday island