What do you do when you need to rebuild your retail stores with a new direction? You call a computer maker, that’s what.

The Disney Store retail locations are in bad shape. By 2004 the chain had expanded to over 600 locations, but was losing around $100 million a year. Disney sold off the chain to Children’s Place Retail Stores that year, but after numerous consumer complaints about the condition of the stores, Disney feared its brand being tarnished and took back a large portion of the chain in March 2008. The remaining 100 stores were closed, and Disney set about trying to figure out how to relaunch the retail brand in a way that would appeal to consumers again.

Someone must have gotten a brain flash and remembered that Steve Jobs of Apple sits on the Board of Directors.  You know, the Steve that turned a nearly bankrupt Apple around and launched the mega-successful Apple Stores retail chain?  Yeah, wonder how they forgot they had access to him.

According to The New York Times, Disney approached Mr. Jobs about getting his help with retooling the retail stores, and he gave them access to the Apple Store designers and blueprints.  The stores may be rebranded as “Imagination Parks”, and will feature a more interactive experience.  Imagine seeing a trailer for the new Disney version of A Christmas Carol and you suddenly start smelling Christmas trees in the store, you walk past a video screen with a princess tiara in your hand and Cinderella will appear and talk to you about it, video conferences with stars of Disney Channel shows and so on.  All told the renovations will cost $1 million per store and will begin with the locations in Southern California, Long Island and Madrid. (editor’s note:At one point the source article implied all the stores had been closed, but then also said stores would be renovated, so who knows which is correct)

As if the $1 million per store wasn’t enough, Steve Jobs insisted that they must build a prototype store to see how everything worked. Disney balked at this expense at first as they were talking about a fully functional store with complete stock, but Jobs insisted it was a necessity, so somewhere in Glendale, CA is a nondescript warehouse with a full Disney store in it.  However, Mr. Jobs was correct, and this prototype store is what finally convinced the board of directors to move ahead with this plan.

The source article is much more in-depth, and a fascinating read actually.  I always have an interest in business stories like this, but rarely write them up simply because they bore most people to tears.  I think this is a fascinating move for Disney, and one I think malls should welcome.  The story says at least one mall manager wasn’t too interested in giving Disney any sort of breaks, but upon seeing the prototype store their attitude seems to have changed.

Malls are dying slow, painful deaths at the moment.  They are in desperate need of “destinations”, stores that cause people to go to the mall as opposed to just browsing them as they walk around.  If Disney can create an atmosphere that makes kids beg their parents to take them to these stores, the entire mall will benefit from it.  If these stores prove to be as successful as I suspect they may be, malls should be begging Disney to open them.

Image of the prototype store from The New York Times, click for a larger view.

Someone seems to be forgetting to tell large corporations that there is a recession going on.

Disney recently bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, Dell is buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, Xerox is purchasing Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion and now there is a rumor that all of these deals will pale in comparison to Comcast purchasing NBC Universal for $35 billion.

While both companies are currently declining to comment on the story, it is looking like the deal is close to being done with Comcast buying an 80% stake in the television network from its current owner, General Electric.  The remaining 20% currently belongs to Vivendi, who has actually been talking about offering their portion as an IPO (initial public offering) of common stock, which Comcast has been rumored to have expressed an interest in purchasing.

If this deal proves to be real, Comcast will be acquiring a truckload of products.  Beyond just the flagship NBC network, the holdings include the cable networks Bravo, MSNBC, Syfy, USA Network, Telemundo and The Weather Channel.  In the realms of the Internet, NBC is the owner of the iVillage website, and is one of the key owners of Hulu.  This isn’t to mention the theme parks and several other smaller holdings.

In short, this is one giant of a purchase … if true.  My thinking is that this is real, and it is happening, if there wasn’t some truth to it, the two companies could have easily denied it, but instead they both just declined to comment.  According to the original source, the deal is almost hammered out, so expect to see this hitting big in the news any day now.

It would seem that the music industry has decided that the public school systems are the perfect methods to distribute their anti-music propaganda.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has had a little known program that is free to schools called “Music Rules!“.  It appears the program has been around since 2006, but it has recently been announced that the program has been updated, and new materials are available for teachers, students and their parents.

The potential hand outs are written to educate students all about why “songlifting” (like Ars Technica, this is a new term that we’ve never seen make the rounds before) is wrong, respecting intellectual property, how downloading music is like stealing from everyone in the music industry and a bunch of other one-sided arguments.  Long story short, the RIAA is trying to convince teachers to turn into propaganda streaming machines for them that will teach children how downloading music for free is bad, Bad, BAD!

Did you notice in that last sentence I said “free” instead of “illegal”?  That was done on purpose.  One of the stated points in the documentation from the program says:

taking music without paying for it is illegal and unfair to others

Well, there’s a little problem with this as it is painting a very black-and-white picture of the situation. It is true that the majority of “free” music is illegal, but there have been some very notable exceptions to that idea such as Radiohead’s In Rainbows experiment where people could download the album for free if they chose to do so.  There have also been free music experiments from Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and several others, so it is impossible to say “taking music without paying for it is illegal and unfair to others.”

So, just one little aspect of this whole lesson plan can be picked apart that quickly as being full of holes, do you even really need to question that the rest of this system may be full of holes in logic and bias?

I decided to take this one step further and called my 88-year-old maternal grandmother who is a retired teacher.  Her classes were troubled kids in inner city Phoenix, AZ, so it is doubtful this sort of program would have ever crossed her mind at all, but she could as least give me some perspective on how she would have felt giving these sort of handouts that were so clearly corporate propaganda.  Well, her answer was pretty simple: “I wouldn’t have.”

It seems that her contract (mind you this was the 1970’s and early 1980’s) clearly stated that she could never express an opinion in her class that would take any sort of position on this type of matter.  She said the way she would have handled illegal downloading would have been to wait for a student to mention it in front of her, and then she would have asked them how that made them feel.  Her students were the type that were well known for spray painting graffiti and other annoyances, so this was a type of discussion she had on a daily basis with at least one of them.

All that being said, she said she felt these “worksheets” provided by the RIAA would have been a clear violation of her contract, and even if they hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have had anything to do for them for feeling like a shill for corporations and that it also wasn’t what school is about.

And there my grandmother hit the nail on the head for summing up my feelings.  School is not about teaching you something quite this specific as “what is intellectual property”, and do you “vow” to never violate it.  This is not the sort of thing that students need to be taught in school, on federally funded time.  Recently some schools had issues with President Obama speaking to school children because they felt that his speech was going to be a political one that would try to educate children on the health care debate, and many people spoke out about school time being used in this manner.

Lets say this took off, which I highly doubt it will, where would this slippery slope stop?  What other corporate backed programs would worm their way into the curriculum of our schools?  My feeling is that no program of this type should be allowed in, and I question the teaching credentials of any teacher that would use this program.  Can’t think of a lesson plan and fall back to this thing?  ”Buh-bye, please leave your teaching certificate at the door.”

The RIAA is rotten to the core, and releasing something this slanted and bias (again I would point you to the “free music” bit), it just shows how off the wall they are.  Please, if you hear of any school using this thing, speak out against it because you may agree with this program, but will you with the next one?

Is there any sane person left in the music industry?

According to CNET, both the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) have gone to Apple over being paid performance fees for streaming radio audio, for music played in downloads of films and TV shows, and 30-second song samples.

If you are not familiar with “performance fees”, those are fees collected from any public performance of music.  If you hear music in a dance club, at a stadium, in restaurants and so on, they all have to pay a performance fee for that music being played to enhance a public place, or used as an attraction.  This includes music played over radios as I have discussed before, although the main part of that case was with the PRS in Scotland, but it is the same thing.  It basically boils down to that if anyone else can hear your music, that is considered a “performance”, and you have to pay for it.  (Remember, ASCAP also tried to prove that ringtones constituted a performance you should pay for)

So, Apple has told ASCAP and BMI they aren’t going to pay these fees, and while no specifics were given, I think we can pretty quickly figure out Apple’s thinking in each particular situation.

Fees for music played on the streaming radio stations in iTunes – Um … does ASCAP walk up to Sony and go, “Hey, your Walkman brand products have radio tuners in them, so you need to pay us a performance fee for those devices receiving those songs.”  No … they don’t.  The radio stations are responsible for paying the performance fee in this case, if Apple was forced to pay, then every company that has ever manufactured a radio would have to pay also, and that just makes no sense.  It would also be a case of … anyone? … anyone?  Yes -points to the picture above- double dipping.

Fees for music included in downloads of films and TV shows – The studios are responsible for paying these fees, that is why a show like WKRP in Cincinnati was released without the bulk of its original music due to licensing fees.  To expect Apple to pay this sort of fee would be like ASCAP walking in to Best Buy and going, “Yeah, you need to pay us a performance fee on the music contained in every DVD you sell.”  They’ve already received a fee from the studio, now they want one from the retailer to boot?  This would be yet another case of … double dipping.

Fees for 30-second song samples – Yes, according to ASCAP and BMI, that 30-second song sample you listen to before purchasing a song on iTunes constitutes a public performance.  Yeah, feel free to scratch your head like I did.  First off, it is being used as a promotional tool to help sell more of those songs, something the music industry benefits from.  Secondly, 30-seconds falls under “fair use”.  Either way you look at it, the music industry wants Apple to pay them for the right to help them, the music industry, sell more songs.  Yep … you guessed it … more double dipping.

Apple has said no to every aspect of this request, and now ASCAP and BMI are saying they will take it to congress.  Here’s hoping someone in congress has the guts to ask these two idiotic bodies, “what exactly are you smoking, and where can we get some?”

There is no portion of this “request” that makes even an inkling of sense.  Every aspect of it deals with something the music industry already receives money for, or there is at least a precedent of “Why Apple, and why not any other way this same activity is conducted somewhere else?”  The answer is simple really: Everyone thinks Steve Jobs swims in a solid gold pool.

There is no denying that Apple has made a lot of money from music, and they deserve it for being innovators in content delivery, but that doesn’t mean the music industry is more deserving of more money from Apple than say a traditional retailer pays.

Someone just needs to smack these people up side their collective heads.

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to purchase Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock.

Wow… just… wow.  This is huge news in the entertainment industry, and just business in general.  Here is the official announcement:

August 31, 2009
DISNEY TO ACQUIRE MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT

Burbank, CA and New York, NY, August 31, 2009 —Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:MVL) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.

Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. At closing, the amount of cash and stock will be adjusted if necessary so that the total value of the Disney stock issued as merger consideration based on its trading value at that time is not less than 40% of the total merger consideration.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Iger said.

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

The Boards of Directors of Disney and Marvel have each approved the transaction, which is subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, certain non-United States merger control regulations, effectiveness of a registration statement with respect to Disney shares issued in the transaction and other customary closing conditions. The agreement will require the approval of Marvel shareholders. Marvel was advised on the transaction by BofA Merrill Lynch.

This just blows me away as someone who has been in and around the comic book industry for decades now. I remember when Marvel was trading below a dollar a share and it looked like the company was going to completely collapse. If anyone had ever told me this was coming, I would have laughed my behind off.  (If I also had bought shares like I considered at one point, I would be dancing a jig right now…)

Marvel was truly on its last legs there for a while, and then thanks to some new owners coming in, the company turned around and started to grow like crazy.  The core business is no longer the comic books, but that is still the base upon how all of the other properties grow.  It is no exageration that Marvel has a stable of 5,000 characters, and what Disney can do with them could be massive.  You thought the Marvel movies were doing well before?  Just wait until you see what happens with them now that the Disney marketing machine will be behind them.

After the initial dust settles here, it will be interesting to see how things shake out.

• Will we see Marvel properties on TV?  Disney owns a slew of television property, they could fill time slots until our eyes bleed.
• How will the theme parks settle out?  Universal Studios currently features Marvel characters, so will they have to relinquish those licensing agreements, or will they now be paying a license fee to Disney?  (something I am sure they will hate doing)
• Will all current movie plans stand as-is for now?  I.E. will we still see the mondo Avengers movie that is being planned?

This is absolutely huge, and honestly somewhat difficult to wrap your brain around.  The deal prett much came out of nowhere, and everyone seems to be going “wha…?”  The concept of Disney owning characters like Wolverine and the Punisher IS highly amusing though…

I am sure this won’t be the last post you see on this.

As if it wasn’t difficult enough already making sure you get to the post office now, imagine what it’ll be like with 1,000 less of them.

There is no doubt that the United States Postal Service is having financial problems, and recently they announced that they are removing over 100,000 drop
off boxess from the streets of the United States. They have also been looking at reducing the number of hours at some offices and placing a freeze on new hires and any raises for existing employees. Unfortunately it looks like those measures still aren’t enough to bring down the organizations expenses as much as they want, and now come the drastic measures.

As it currently stands, the postal service is looking at a $7 billion loss for the fiscal year closing on September 30th, and this is even with a postal rate increase that happened in May. So, the only solution at this point is to look at closing and consolidating some of the existing offices. There are currently 32,741 post offices, and after putting together a list of 3,243 potential closure sites, they are now looking at a list of around 677. You can see the post office closings list (PDF link) for yourself, and it looks to me to be mostly urban areas that are are serviced by numerous offices to begin with.

In case you’re wondering what is going to so wrong with the postal service… do you really need to think about it very hard? Yes, email is one of the biggest culprits, but you also have to keep in mind that companies are cutting out printed catalogs left and right. (Although today I got four copies of the same catalog from Paper Direct…) Mail volume fallen from an all time high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to a projected 170 billion in 2010, and it’s probably going to fall even further as companies look to cut their costs for printing and mailing. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

My one thought on this whole thing from a business perspective is if you make a service less convenient to use, won’t that cut people’s willingness to use the service? “Well, I could drive that extra mile to the post office I have to go to now… or I can scan the document and email it… let me fire up that scanner.” If you make something harder for people to use, they’ll just stop using it.

It seems there is a movement out there to cut the standard work week from the familiar five days of 8-hours each to four days of 10-hours each.

According to a recent article from Scientific American, numerous studies have been conducted about the economic and environmental benefits of eliminating one day from the standard five-day work week.  Instead of working a 40-hour schedule over five days of eight hours each, you would instead do it over four days of ten hours each.  This would give everyone a three day weekend each weekend.

Before you start whooping it up about how wonderful that is, remember this means you would be in your office ten hours a day for four days a week.  Imagine an 8 AM – 6 PM or 9 AM – 7 PM schedule.  Imagine trying to still cook at home… going to the gym… running errands… anything else you might try to do on a work day.  Still excited about the concept?

Before you start making up your minds, there are some actual benefits from the scheme.  In August 2008, Utah impletmented the plan with 17,000 of its state employees.  Here are the pros according to the state:

Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. For those workplaces, there’s no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays—nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday’s midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million.

There is no arguing that not only is the state saving money, but all of those things they listed should have a definite impact on the environment, and it also impacts your wallet as you are spending one day less a week on the road commuting to work, no money spent on an expensive lunch out and so on.

While everything everyone is listing sounds like it lands on the size of positive, I have to be my usual nay saying self and bring up the fact that unless you get the rest of the world on board, this will be a disaster if it should ever get wide spread in the USA only.  We already lag behind the majority of the world in many ways, and if we give them a leg up of working five calendar days a week as opposed to four, and mind you this has nothing to do with hours, they will have a distinct tactical advantage in reaction time to market movements, world developments and more.  Again I stress that this is only if by some wild-eyed chance this schedule would gain wide spread acceptance in this country.

If it remains in the realm of some state employees and a company here or there, more power to them, but as a national plan, I would have a problem with it.

I must request that no one calls my cell phone any more.

Hear me out folks! When certain people call my phone, this causes my phone to ring (I know, what a revelation), and since I have attached a ringtone to their number, that means that music plays to let me know who it is. Folks, every time you call me, did you know we’re holding a performance? It’s true! People jump up on tables and start dancing… spotlights suddenly appear as if from nowhere and shine down on the make-shift dance floor… it’s sort of like High School Musical, or, at least what I imagine High School Musical is like since I have never watched even a second of any of those movies, but you get the idea.

This is what the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) would have you believe.  According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASCAP filed a brief (PDF link) against AT&T saying that even though consumers have paid a download royalty, the musicians are owed a second royalty for public performance when the phone ring in public places such as a restaurant.  They are going after AT&T because they make the phones be able to play the ringtones.

As the EFF points out, this is pretty much doomed to failure.  There is a specific section of the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 110(4)) that says performance without any fee or compensation is ok.

(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters, or organizers, if —

(A) there is no direct or indirect admission charge; or

(B) the proceeds, after deducting the reasonable costs of producing the performance, are used exclusively for educational, religious, or charitable purposes and not for private financial gain, except where the copyright owner has served notice of objection to the performance under the following conditions:

(i) the notice shall be in writing and signed by the copyright owner or such owner’s duly authorized agent; and

(ii) the notice shall be served on the person responsible for the performance at least seven days before the date of the performance, and shall state the reasons for the objection; and

(iii) the notice shall comply, in form, content, and manner of service, with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation;

So, okay, the consumer is protected because they have legally purchased the ringtones, so ASCAP turns to AT&T  because they are selling the ringtones for a profit, so they are ‘charging an admission’ for the ringtone being played.  So basically they are going after the company that sells you the equipment to enjoy this loophole in the copyright law.  The problem with this portion is that it was ruled on years ago in the infamous Sony Betamax ruling that ruled that companies were not liable for how their technologies were used. If they were to be held responsible for those uses, they would have to ask media companies for permission before building new tech, and this would stifle creativity.

Now that it is clear that ASCAP has no legal leg to stand on… does the greed of the music industry know no bounds?  Is there any possible way that they won’t continue to try to bleed money out of the consumer?  If by some miracle they win this case, you know the royalty fee will be passed down to the consumer, so, yes, this does impact you.  Yet again it is just another example of how the music industry treats all of its customers as criminals from day one, and you basically owe them money for even thinking about music.

This story is a couple of days old now, and I actually was going to give it a pass, but as I continued to think about it, the angrier I got.  Just who does ASCAP think they are?  I know of a retailer friend of mine who got visited by ASCAP at least twice over his personal radio he kept behind his counter.  He played music for his own entertainment as he would sort freight, but ASCAP said he owed them a yearly licensing fee because he played the radio at a certain decibel level that qualified it as a public performance.  He offered to turn it down, but he was informed it was too late and he owed them the fees.  Last I heard he had never paid it and continued to refuse to pay them, but they kept trying to get him for it.

Decibel levels?  Really?  Well, here’s a money spinner idea for ASCAP!  Go park an agent outside any given high school when it lets out for the day, and ticket everyone with a car stereo system over a certain level because they are obviously doing a public performance!  Heck, from my days in high school they would have made a fortune!

The music industry continues to wonders why they continue to have such a lousy relationship with consumers.  Well, I’ve got a couple of ideas of how that might have happened, could it possibly be the fact you come after us for every conceivable cent?  Just a thought.

Hopefully this will get tossed quickly, but you never know.

Well, that was unexpected but welcome.

The other day I wrote an article about the Six Flags bankruptcy filing and thought that would just be the end of it.  Well, Six Flags reached out to me on Saturday evening and invited me to partake of a conference call on Monday afternoon with company CEO Mark Shapiro.  Who am I to say no?  First off I have to say it was one of the best conference calls I’ve ever been on because Mr. Shapiro attempted to keep the call moving and was far more blunt about the state of the company than I would have expected him to be.

In short he spelled out for us that, yes, the company is $2.4 billion in debt, but the restructuring plan the company came up with was unanimously agreed to by all the parties involved such as the lenders, debt holders and so on.  The banks, which alone are owed $1 billion, have agreed to convert that to a $500 million line of equity until the company emerges from the Chapter 11 protection in exchange for a large portion of shares in the newly reorganized company.

About half way through the call I was lucky enough to get called upon to ask a question as I wanted some definite clarification on a point Mr. Shapiro had made.  Earlier in the call he had informed all the participants that all of the parks were profitable in 2008, but that makes you have to ask how exactly they got to this level of crushing debt.  He informed me that the majority of it started with the purchase of the brand by Premier Parks in 1998 and that they potentially over paid for the company. This was followed up by a period of rapid expansion where the company purchased more parks to be added to the Six Flags brand and it was simply too rapid.

The final straw was some pretty reckless spending on new attractions for the parks where Premier Parks would spend up to $50 million on a new coaster.  Mr. Shapiro said that under the current arrangement of the company they have a budget of $100 million to cover all of the parks and they simply can’t allow themselves to spend more than $7 to $10 million for a new attraction because all of the remaining parks must operate out of the left over budget for the year.  This has led to the thing you could tell bothered Mr. Shapiro the most, and that is the deferred maintenance of the parks.  He is greatly bothered by the fading paint in the parks, cracked sidewalks, leaking roofs and many more things.  That is one of the first things he wants to attend to with the $500 million that is coming from the banks.  This was something that just wasn’t possible under the debt load as the company was paying $200 million a year just in interest.

Overall it was a very informative call, and just from Mr. Shapiro’s enthusiasm for his brand you can tell he wants to make this company work again.  At this time there are no plans to close any parks, and all operations are going to continue as they would any other day with all of this going on out of sight of the guests.

All this being said, I still don’t really care for the parks, and have no plans to visit one ever again, but I can’t wish Mr. Shapiro anything but the best of luck as you can tell he cares deeply for this company.

It has been rumored for ages, but it has finally happened and Six Flags has filed for bankruptcy protection.

It has been 3 & 1/2 years since Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, became the majority owner of the 20 Six Flags theme parks in a bid to turn the company around to profitability. According to the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, DE, as of Dec. 31 the company had assets of $3 billion, but a debt load of $2.4 billion. The documents also revealed that the 48-year-old company has not had an annual profit since 1998, and has mounted loses of $558.8 million since Snyder won his three seats on the board.

In the past 12 months shares of the company have fallen 86 percent, but it is hoped that the Chapter 11 filing will allow the company to refinance $287.5 million in preferred stocks that mature in August along with $131 million in senior notes that come due next year. The company also stated that it hopes it will be able to cut its debt by $1.8 billion and eliminate $300 million in preferred stock obligations. According to a first-quarter financial statement, the company had $79.4 million in cash and $2.31 billion in long-term debt.

During the Chapter 11 reorganization all of the Six Flags properties will remain operational, and they are continuing development of Six Flags Dubailand in Dubai.

This has been one of the companies many financial experts expected to see go in to Chapter 11 before the end of this year.  Some of the others on the list of 15 companies that might not make it to 2010 included Blockbuster Video, Krispy Kreme, Sbarro, Rite Aid and several others.  I have actually been watching this list since it was published, and I’m not the least bit surprised Six Flags was the first that I know of to fall.  Over 10 years without posting a profit?  This economic climate was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, the company has been teetering on the edge for a while now, it was just a matter of time.

Honestly, I’ve only been to Six Flags St Louis once many, many years ago… that was enough.  Perhaps I had been ruined by being to Disneyland and Disney World, but even as a child I found the staff rude, inconsiderate, the park dirty and just a generally miserable experience.  I have never once felt an urge to go back, and I have honestly been surprised they’ve survived this long.  Now to learn the corporation has been doing nothing but building debt for 10 years, I’m not the least bit surprised.

Luxury and overpriced chains are having the most trouble, so don’t be surprised if we hear more and more stories like this in the coming days.

Check out the follow up post to this article where I got to speak to the CEO of Six Flags on a conference call.

Apparently no one at KFC, or even Oprah’s Harpo Productions, quite understands the power of Oprah.

If you were unaware, KFC has canceled the grilled chicken coupon promotion from earlier this week.  Apparently you can take the unused coupons into restaurants and be issued a new one for a later date that will also include a free drink, but you won’t be getting any free chicken for right now.  Demand has simply outstripped supply, and there is no way for the chain 

As I said in the second post on the the promotion, why this whole thing was done prior to Mother’s Day makes no sense.  It is one of the biggest days of the year for the chain, and to put extra strain on their supply chain at such a critical time of the year for them just made no sense.  And to top all of this off, there are rumors circulating that the franchise locations were not warned of the pending promotion, and they are also supposedly not being reimbursed for the redeemed coupons.

Say what?

While this has not been made 100% official, apparently the deal is that Oprah is paying the corporations costs for the promotion, but somewhere along the line the franchisees got left out of this whole process are expected to just give the food away with no repayment.  How can this even be feasible?  This would also explain why so many locations were not accepting the coupons.

How can two companies of this size and reach have gotten this whole thing so horribly wrong?  Was no one aware that Oprah’s legions of fans will do anything this woman says?  

“Go print a coupon.” 

-millions of women in unison- “Yes… we shall go print the coupon, my liege.”

How could they have not had any clue how successful this was going to be?  With a snap of her fingers Oprah can sell millions of copies of a book, then add her viewers telling non-viewers about the promotion, and… reciepe for a complete disaster if it isn’t planned out correctly.

As for KFC’s part in this mess, this isn’t the first they’ve run a promotion, did they do no advance planning?  Did they not think it might be a good idea to coordinate with their franchise locations?  Did they not think that perhaps they should launch it after Mother’s Day?  No, apparently they just totally did this thing by the seat of their pants and now they have egg all over their face.

For those of you who want to get the new coupons, make sure to visit a participating location (whichever ones those may be…) to get a rain check certificate.  You will then need to mail that, along with your original coupon, in to the stated address and you will then receive a new one back in the mail that will also include a free drink.  And, here’s a wacky idea, apparently the new coupons will have staggered redemption periods.  Genius, guys… really… genius.

To add to the fun, enjoy this really overly euthasastic message from the president of KFC.

It would seem Marvel Comics really doesn’t like you to talk about them… unless they tell you what to say.

The Inquisitr and Newsarama are both talking about Marvel Comics seeming hatred of the comic industry press and Twitter.  While using Twitter comments (also known as “Tweets”) in reporting is considered lazy by some, I don’t see it as any different than quoting something printed elsewhere such as in a magazine or newspaper.  I honestly think it is a littler stronger than that because you are 100% sure the person (or their paid representative in the case of some celebrities) actually said it.  However, some of the exectutives at Marvel are taking offense at their Tweets being reprinted elsewhere and are launching a war of words with bloggers, and even going so far as to suggest they are owed payment for their use.

Are they out of their freaking minds?

Oh wait, this is the comic book industry… they ARE out of their freaking minds.

From August 1986 to December 2001 I ran a comic book store.  During that time I worked for a comic book company on the side, consulted with companies, and even worked inside the comic book & toy press industries.  As much as I love comic books as an art medium, it was sort of like the old saying about loving sausage doesn’t mean you want to see how it is made.  I have only recently returned to reading comics, something I used to have a die hard passion for, because it took me over seven years to try to forget just how messed up of an industry it is.

I have still been involved with it slightly over the past few years, and I have grown amazed by seeing an average comic book rise in price to $2.99 a month, with others hitting the $3.99 and $4.99 mark; the days of the entry level pricing are gone.  I have also seen the number of venues where comics are sold dwindle to near non-existence, all but assuring that the industry is surviving only on those that have been it for years already, and no new blood is coming into it.

With all of this in mind, don’t you think they may want to have the word spread as far and wide as they can about what is going on in the business?  Don’t you think that they should welcome every mention of their names and brands in the hopes it might bring in more readers?

Apparently if your name is “Marvel”, you don’t.

Tom Brevoort, Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, all employed by Marvel, and they decided to launch arguments with the comic press about their, publicly available mind you, Tweets being used as quotes in articles.  This has begun happening in the mainstream press on a regular basis, and even Ashton Kutcher said in the Oprah episode about Twitter that he likes the fact that he can diffuse some stories about himself in the press because he can refute them quickly on the site.  Here is someone who is virtually a household name, and he encourages people to use his Twitter stream as a source of information about him.

Not in the comic book industry though.  Oh no, we can’t have you using something they made public themselves without first asking their permission to do it.  Apparently they have missed the fact that you can lock a Twitter stream which means that no one is allowed to republish your Tweets.  No, they’ll just go on saying things that anyone can see and then get angry when people actually quote them on it.

In Lucas Siegel’s rebuttal piece to all this (Newsarama link above), he points out that due to the walled garden type situation in the comics industry, the comic book companies enjoy an unprecedented control over their industry press.  If you print something before THEY say you can, they can simply cut you off from any future information.  So, in general, the comics press does nothing that could potentially anger the comic book companies.  This has left them with a feeling of omnipotence that they can somehow control everything that happens, but they have forgotten that once something is on the Internet, you generally lost all control of it.  It takes on a life of its own, and the possibility of controlling the ways it is consumed are completely lost. As someone who has also worked inside the comic book press, I can tell you that Mr. Siegel is 100% accurate in his portrayal of how things work. No matter when or how you learn about an upcoming project, you could not run the news until the company said you could for fear of having all of your in roads to that company quickly severed.

I can almost understand their anger over the Tweets because they simply aren’t used to not having complete control over a press situation.  However, to suggest that they should get paid for their Tweets, let alone the asking for permission to reprint something that was made available to the public, is just disgusting at its core.  If you don’t want it done, don’t Tweet or lock the stream.  Two very easy solutions, but solutions they are choosing not to take.  It is far easier, it would seem, to whine and cry about it and make the press look the proverbial comic book bad guys, and the bad PR they garner over this be damned.

… have I mentioned how glad I am to be away from this industry?

Be sure to listen to this week’s Scattercast, which comes out tomorrow, where I will continue stories of my life in the comic industry, and how one big name creator once called and cursed me out for 90 minutes for daring to express my opinion about his work ethic on a CLOSED forum.