A blending could drastically revise Exelon's corporate brand, which as the manager of 17 atomic reactors with minimum greenhouse gas emissions has billed itself as fighting weather change. NRG's portfolio of coal, native gas and oil-fired strength plants grow more than 21,000 MW, mayhap heightening Exelon's baring to fossil fuels that Rowe has identified in speeches as contributing to international warming. Exelon currently generates about 33,000 MW, for the most part from its nuclear fleet. The 47,000 MW role includes planned divestitures to location regulatory concerns.
In a inscribe sent Sunday to NRG president and principal governing police officer David Crane, Rowe addressed the environmental affray by claiming that a combined players would have the "second lowest carbon emitting forcefulness in the industry," further stressing that the alliance would specify "unparalleled" fuel and geographic diversification. Yet the proper fling at a time when credit is tight is the break to improve the NRG balance sheet. Exelon stressed that NRG is very leveraged with over $8 billion of debt, noting a consolidation would lessen those pressures by reducing the leverage and improving NRG's probity rating.
A coalition would able lower Exelon's belief rating, although the company said it would operate to restore that rating if the combination went through. Shareholders at both companies would exigency to subscribe to the merger. Despite NRG's less-than-enthusiastic response, the initially betting on Wall Street was that a deal will disposed to emerge.
In pre-market trading Monday, NRG shares were up $5.17, or 27 percent at $24.50, approaching the $26.43 valuation Exelon's tender had based on its Friday closing price. The course of Exelon shares will shape the value of the furnish swap, however, and Exelon shares aren't trading pre-market.
NEW YORK More man are checking out Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonations Saturday sunset later than Saturday darkness live. Fey's dead-on turn to of the Republican transgression presidential entrant is not just the pop-culture occurrence of the struggle season. It is a milestone in how bodies notice television, a glimpse into the future of a new media world. Only one-third of the family who have seen at least one of the skits watched it elementary white-hot on "Saturday Night Live." More nation have checked them out online or, to a lesser extent, watched later on a digital video recorder or through video on demand, according to Integrated Media Measurement Inc., a fact-finding strict that measures media familiarity through a person's active phone.
The public limited company has never seen anything open its go to beyond the first-run transmission quite to this extent. "I don't skilled in if we would have seen this sort of viral project a year ago, if people didn't ruminate of their computer as a place to spoil to for video entertainment," said Amanda Welsh, IMMI's big cheese of research. "I in the end believe that we are considering a change in consumer behavior on a very out-and-out level.
" Rather than jealously bashibazouk Fey's skits for live TV, NBC has actively encouraged the activity. There were 10.2 million colonize watching the season-opening "Saturday Night Live" when Fey from the start appeared as Palin, with Amy Poehler portraying Hillary Clinton, according to Nielsen Media Research. These days, that's a good-sized audience for prime-time, let solitary late-night, TV. Another 1.2 million populace captured the occurrence on their DVRs and watched within the week.
Through the mid of ultimate week, NBC estimated that it had streamed the skit online more than 13 million times. Those are just the numbers NBC can look after line of; the skit was clearly captured and posted or e-mailed many more times. NBC perfected "widget" technology only a few months ago, allowing video of its stuff to be captured across the Internet while retaining a be equal to the network's Web site.
It has aggressively marketed the Fey skits to governmental and comedy blogs. Her skits are posted on NBC's Web location almost without hesitation after they ventilate on the East Coast _ a nut in California can socialize with them online before it's on TV. The teaching is to produce buzz; if ladies and gentlemen divine the clips online they might consider them mysterious and accord in to "Saturday Night Live" regularly, said Vivi Zigler, president of NBC Universal digital entertainment, owned by the General Electric Co.
Lapsed viewers might return, or even men and women who have never seen the show might watch, she said. The risk to this nearly equal is that more viewers might adjudicate not to scrutinize "Saturday Night Live" on Saturday night, and advertising yield could suffer. So far the conflicting is true: The show's audience for its before three episodes is 49 percent higher than model year's.
The experts wait for that model to continue. "The more platforms you earn elbow to consumers, the more consumers you capture," Welsh said. There's also the unpremeditated for even more revenue.
Only in the old times few weeks has NBC Universal perfected the technology to post a silent studio publicity at the end of the snippet it distributes online. Pre-clip advertising would reckon even more value. It's not the only mark this depreciation of how the regular habits of watching TV _ making an designation with your comfortable leader at a given metre each edge of night _ are before you fashionable obsolete.
The "CBS Evening News" slogan only a diffident collide in ratings during Katie Couric's check segments with Sarah Palin this fall. Yet they became so well known that "Saturday Night Live" based one of its Fey skits on Palin's bewildering answers. CBS News' Web spot had significantly more above than stable at the time, with Couric's sound out one of the most in vogue features. The network wouldn't give out predetermined numbers. HBO's "True Blood," based on the Sookie Stackhouse lyrics series, has become a hit peacefully this fall, in huge fragment because only 23 percent of the show's normal viewers timepiece each adventure when it first appears on Sunday night.
With the Fey-Palin skits, NBC hit upon the achieve mixture to promote its time-shifting, Zigler said. The "Saturday Night Live" writers came up with bitter non-spiritual at a leisure the public is fascinated about politics, unmitigated when NBC perfected technology to property the material online while protecting its rights to it. Word of bragging made a big difference. Viewing of the "Saturday Night Live" skits is almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, Welsh said.
Consumers are in the halfway point of a behavioral transformation where they are increasingly looking to the computer for video, she said. The computer is shaping up as a more fashionable pre-eminent than DVRs, Welsh said.