Maria Bartiromo launches Fox Sunday show

NEW YORK — Political junkies have plenty of choices on Sunday-morning television. That's not the case for those who follow business, a niche that Maria Bartiromo hopes to fill starting this weekend on Fox News Channel.

The former CNBC personality debuts her one-hour program, "Sunday Morning Futures," at 10 a.m. EDT. It will feature interviews with business leaders and round-table discussions, with an emphasis on anticipating the financial stories of the upcoming week.

"You turn on the television Sunday morning and you see all of these politicos talking their talking points, but very rarely do you ever see anybody connecting the dots — it's about the economy, it's about job creation, it's about business," she said. "What I hope to do is get business people into the conversation on Sunday morning."

Original business programming is scarce on Sundays, even on networks that cater to that audience. CNBC and Fox Business Network both air infomercials for most of the daytime hours.

The Sunday Fox News slot was an important enticement for Bartiromo to make the jump to Fox, where she also hosts a two-hour weekday morning show on the business network. For two decades, Bartiromo was one of the main attractions at CNBC, the "Money Honey" whose breathless reporting from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange defined a go-go era.

On its face, the move to Fox Business lowers her visibility since FBN has struggled to establish itself as a competitor. Bartiromo's "Opening Bell" has averaged 54,000 viewers a day since she joined last month, compared with the 191,000 viewers that CNBC gets in the same time slot, the Nielsen company said.

A Sunday show on the Fox News Channel, meanwhile, offers a chance to reach a much larger audience. Fox is averaging 1.1 million viewers each week for the news and medical shows that "Sunday Morning Futures" will be displacing, more than the combined viewership for a CNN show with Fareed Zakaria and an MSNBC program with Melissa Harris-Perry in the same time slot.

Bartiromo said she had considered another deal at CNBC when her contract came due but decided to look around, too. She concluded her job at CNBC wouldn't change much, and she was looking to do some things differently. She was ready for a move.

"They have gotten so chatty, with so much personality, that they left some of the content on the cutting room floor — business information," she said.

Bartiromo said she believes CNBC's fast pace is no longer in tune with the times.

"I just felt this pressure to do five-minute interviews and this pressure to have five people on at once and I just got tired of it," she said. "I felt like I needed something with a little more substance and perspective and felt it was going to be hard to do that where I was because the structure is the structure and the machine keeps on going."

CNBC spokesman Brian Steel declined to comment.

Bartiromo said it's telling that many Wall Street firms are concentrating more on long-term wealth management strategies. "People don't care about buying XYZ (stock) at 10 o'clock and selling it at 10:01," she said. "It's not what they're looking to do."

Instead, she's looking to do longer interviews with, she hopes, a longer-term perspective. Among her interview subjects since she's joined Fox Business have been Blackstone Group Chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, AIG CEO Bob Benmosche, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and eBay CEO John Donahoe.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier and Cleveland Clinic chief executive Dr. Toby Cosgrove are scheduled to be on Bartiromo's first show.

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David Bauder can be reached at dbauder@ap.org or on Twitter@dbauder. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/david-bauder

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Online:

http://www.foxnews.com/

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H&M withdraws vest over anti-Semitism controversy

PARIS — Fashion retailer H&M has pulled a vest from its shelves worldwide after accusations its design, which featured a menacing skull in the center of a Star of David, was anti-Semitic.

The menswear item, which was withdrawn this week following complaints, was also destined for sale in Israel, where the retailer has 14 stores.

H&M, a Swedish company, said in a statement Friday: "We are sincerely sorry if the T-shirt print has offended anyone, it was not our intention to provoke such a reaction."

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor welcomed the garment's withdrawal, calling it a "thoughtless and insensitive design."

Kantor said he hoped "that the symbols of the Jewish People will be given the same care as those of other minority groups."

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Stocks gain as Americans open their wallets

NEW YORK — After two days of declines, stocks were moving higher in midday trading Friday following news that U.S. consumer spending rose the most in three months in February. Tech stocks were recovering after a week of losses with help from Microsoft.

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 14 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,863 as of 12:26 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 120 points, or 0.7 percent, to 16,383 and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 49 points, or 1.2 percent, to 4,200.

START ME UP: The biggest gainer in the Dow was Microsoft, which rose 98 cents, or 3 percent, to $40.34. The company announced Thursday that it was bringing Microsoft Office to the iPad and would shift its focus away from Windows, a move that analysts cheered.

"We continue to view (this) as a massive revenue and operating profit opportunity for Microsoft," analysts at Credit Suisse said in a report Thursday. Other tech stocks also rose after a week of losses. Google, Intel and IBM each rose about 1 percent.

SPENDING UNFROZEN: Investors were encouraged by news that Americans picked up their spending last month, a hopeful sign for an economy that has been slowed by months of severe winter weather. The Commerce Department said consumer spending inched up 0.3 percent, a hair short of economists' forecasts. Incomes rose at the same pace.

CBS SPLITS: CBS Outdoor, a major outdoor advertising company, rose $1.93, or 7 percent, to $29.93 on its first day of trading. CBS decided to spin off CBS Outdoor into a separate publicly traded company because executives believed billboard advertising did not fit well with CBS's primary business of broadcasting.

OTHER MARKETS: The yield on the 10-year Treasury note hovered around 2.72 percent, up from 2.69 percent Thursday. The price of crude oil edged up 31 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $101.60 a barrel. Gold was little changed at $1,292.40 an ounce.

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GM tells dealers to stop selling some Chevy Cruzes

DETROIT — General Motors has told dealers to stop selling some 2013 and 2014 Chevrolet Cruze compact cars.

But the company won't say why.

Dealers say stop-sale orders are routine and almost always made to fix a safety problem. They received the order in an e-mail Thursday, but no reason was given.

The move comes as GM deals with fallout from a delayed recall of 1.6 million older small cars to fix an ignition switch problem. The company says the switches can slip out of the run position and shut down the engine. That causes loss of power steering and brakes and disables air bags.

GM says the problem has been linked to 31 crashes and at least a dozen deaths.

Spokesman Greg Martin says he has no details on the Cruze.

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BlackBerry revenue falls below a $1 billion

TORONTO — BlackBerry reported a steep drop in profit and revenue Friday as it transitions from a smartphone company to a software business under its new chief executive. Shares rose five percent in morning trading as CEO John Chen cut expenses quicker than expected.

The Canadian company lost $423 million, or 80 cents per share. Adjusted for one-time items, however, the company lost 8 cents per share, much better that the losses of 56 cents per share that Wall Street had expected, according to a poll by FactSet.

Revenue fell to $976 million, the first time the company has seen revenue fall below $1 billion since late 2007, and short of the $1.1 billion analysts had projected. Blackberry reported revenue of $2.7 billion in the same quarter last year.

It is the second quarterly results under Chen, who is deemphasizing the hardware business after last year's launch of the BlackBerry 10 failed to spark a turnaround. The BlackBerry has been hammered by competition from the iPhone as well as Android-based rivals.

"The guy is on the move fast," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. "He can control expenses but you can't magically make revenue happen."

Chen, who is credited with turning around Sybase, a data company that was sold to SAP in 2010, is putting more emphasis on BlackBerry's mobile device management business, a collection of software that allows IT departments to manage different devices connected to their corporate networks. He is also emphasizing BlackBerry's popular BlackBerry Messenger application that is now also available on Apple and Android devices. And he is trying to highlight Blackberry's embedded QNX software systems, which are used in-vehicle infotainment systems and industrial machines.

"I see this as a good turnaround plan," Chen said on a conference call with analysts. "Knock on wood I'm hoping that it will also slow down the erosion."

BlackBerry announced last December that it's entering into a five-year partnership with Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles products in vast factories in China. Foxconn, known for its manufacturing contract work on Apple's iPhones and iPads, will jointly design and manufacture most BlackBerry devices and manage inventory of the devices in an agreement that will offload much of BlackBerry's manufacturing costs. Chen has said he'll be happy to break even or make a small profit on the device business.

The revenue breakdown for the quarter included about 37 percent from hardware, 56 percent for services and seven percent for software and other revenue.

In another sign of just how unpopular BlackBerry's new phones are Chen said he'll restart production its older model 7 models, which are more popular than the new phones. The company said it sold 3.4 smartphones in the quarter — 2.3 million of which were the older 7 models. He said customers are asking for old BlackBerrys.

BlackBerry had $2.7 billion in cash and investments — down from $3.2 billion in the last quarter.

Shares rose 31 cents to $9.36 in morning trading.

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, changed the culture by allowing on-the-go business people to access wireless email. The company formerly known as RIM was once Canada's most valuable company with a market value of $83 billion in June 2008, but the stock has plummeted since, from over $140 share. The company now has a market value of about $4.9 billion.

Its decline is evoking memories of Nortel, another Canadian tech giant, which ended up declaring bankruptcy in 2009.

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Indiana's Paul George joins Gatorade team

INDIANAPOLIS — Paul George is joining a new All-Star team.

On Friday, Gatorade will introduce the Pacers' budding star as its newest NBA spokesman in a lineup that already features prominent athletes such as Heat guard Dwyane Wade, Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, tennis star Serena Williams and Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.

In a video for the ad titled "Slam," George spins away from an opponent, takes off from the free throw line and dunks the ball — with the sports drink streaming off him the whole way.

For George, it's a major breakthrough on the business side because he plays in one of the NBA's smallest television markets.

But the 23-year-old shooting guard began the transition last year after being selected to play in his first All-Star Game. He helped the Pacers push Miami to seven games in the Eastern Conference finals and was later named the league's Most Improved Player. In September, Indiana rewarded George with a five-year max contract that could pay him as much as $90 million.

Since then, George has continued to excel.

He was elected as an All-Star starter last month and entered Wednesday night's game against Miami ranked 11th in the league in scoring.

The ad's debut comes two days after George scored 23 points and had two monster dunks to help rally the Pacers (52-20) from a seven-point, fourth-quarter deficit to beat the two-time defending champion Heat 84-83. The win gave Indiana a three-game lead over Miami in the chase for the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

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On the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3vh3ILt6s&feature=youtu.be

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McDonald's offers free coffee for breakfasters

NEW YORK — McDonald's is offering free coffee to its customers for a limited time as competition for the breakfast crowd intensifies.

The world's biggest hamburger chain announced Friday that participating U.S. locations will offer small cups of McCafe coffee at no charge during breakfast hours from March 31 through April 13.

McDonald's said that this is the first time it's ever had a free coffee event nationwide. Its McCafe product line, which also includes iced coffees and other drinks, debuted in the U.S. in 2009.

The Oak Brook, Ill., company is hoping that the coffee giveaway will bring in new customers. It's also a way to get existing customers to come in more frequently. And it's likely that those stopping by for a free coffee will be tempted to pick up a breakfast sandwich or other items while there.

Breakfast is an important component of McDonald's business, comprising about 20 percent of its U.S. sales.

The announcement comes as Taco Bell rolls out ads to promote its new breakfast menu, which includes a waffle taco. The ads star everyday men that happen to be named Ronald McDonald, the same name as McDonald's mascot.

Chains like McDonald's Corp., Taco Bell and Starbucks Corp. — which recently revamped its sandwiches — are all fighting for a piece of the breakfast market because people are increasingly buying breakfast on the go.

McDonald's coffee giveaway comes shortly after it reported that an important sales figure declined 1.4 percent at established U.S. locations in February. The chain blamed bad winter weather but also said that "challenging industry dynamics" played a role. The company has worked on adapting by making menu changes such as giving an option for egg whites in breakfast sandwiches and adding chicken McWraps to help appeal to those looking for fresher, healthier food.

For a long time McDonald's, which started offering breakfast nationally in 1975 with the roll out of the Egg McMuffin, has dominated the morning category. Rival Burger King came out with their breakfast menu in 1979 and others have followed. The latest is Taco Bell, which launched its new breakfast menu on Thursday.

But McDonald's is still a force - it's 31 percent of the category makes it the No. 1 player in breakfast, according to market researcher Technomic.

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Unemployment rates fall in 29 US states last month

WASHINGTON — Unemployment rates fell in most states in February and two-thirds of the states reported job gains, evidence that most of the country is benefiting from slow but steady improvement in the job market.

Unemployment rates dropped in 29 states, rose in 10 and were unchanged in the remaining 11, the Labor Department said Friday. Meanwhile, hiring rose in 33 states and fell in 17.

The rate declines occurred even though unemployment rose nationwide last month, to 6.7 percent from 6.6 percent in January. That increase occurred partly for a good reason: more Americans began looking for work, though most weren't immediately hired. But the fact that they started looking suggests they were optimistic about their prospects.

Employers added 175,000 jobs nationwide in February, close to the average monthly gains of the past two years. Those gains followed two meager months of hiring. Employers added only 129,000 jobs in January and just 84,000 in December. Harsh winter weather likely dragged on job gains in those months.

The biggest drop in unemployment occurred in South Carolina, where the rate fell to 5.7 percent from 6.4 percent. Ohio reported the next biggest decline, to 6.5 percent from 6.9 percent.

South Carolina actually lost jobs last month, so the big drop in its unemployment rate partly occurred because many of the unemployed stopped looking for work. The number of unemployed people in the state fell sharply. The government doesn't count those out of work as unemployed unless they are actively searching.

Another factor: The unemployment rate and job counts come from different surveys that can produce disparate results. The number of jobs in each state is calculated from a survey of employers, while the unemployment rate stems from a separate survey of households. The number of people in South Carolina who said they had jobs rose, even though the survey of employers found fewer overall positions.

Rhode Island reported the highest unemployment rate, at 9 percent, followed by Illinois at 8.7 percent and California with 8 percent.

North Dakota had the lowest rate, 2.6 percent, followed by South Dakota and Nebraska at 3.6 percent each.

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Poll: Obama health law fails to gain support

WASHINGTON — Despite a late surge in sign-ups, support for President Barack Obama's health care law is languishing at its lowest level since passage of the landmark legislation four years ago, according to a new poll.

The Associated Press-GfK survey finds that 26 percent of Americans support the Affordable Care Act. Yet even fewer — 13 percent — think it will be completely repealed. A narrow majority expects the law to be further implemented with minor changes, or as passed.

"To get something repealed that has been passed is pretty impossible," said Gwen Sliger of Dallas. "At this point, I don't see that happening."

Sliger illustrates the prevailing national mood. Although a Democrat, she's strongly opposed to Obama's signature legislation. Yet she thinks "Obamacare" is here to stay.

"I like the idea that if you have a pre-existing condition you can't be turned down, but I don't like the idea that if you don't have health insurance you'll be fined," said Sliger.

That central requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage or face fines remains highly unpopular. Forty-one percent said it should be completely repealed, about double the 19 percent who said it should remain in the law as passed. Obama, insurers, and most policy experts consider the so-called individual mandate essential to creating a big insurance pool that keeps premiums affordable.

The poll was taken before Thursday's announcement by the White House that new health insurance markets have surpassed the goal of 6 million sign-ups, so it did not register the potential impact of that news on public opinion. Open enrollment season began with a dysfunctional HealthCare.gov website last Oct. 1. It will end Monday at midnight, Eastern time, on what looks to be a more positive note.

Impressions of the coverage rollout while low, have improved slightly.

Only 5 percent of Americans say the launch of the insurance exchanges has gone very or extremely well. But the number who think it has gone at least somewhat well improved from 12 percent in December to 26 percent now. The exchanges are marketplaces that offer subsidized private coverage to people without a plan on the job.

Of those who said they or someone in their household tried signing up for coverage, 59 percent said there were problems.

Repealing the health care law is the rallying cry of Republicans running to capture control of the Senate in the fall elections. The Republican-led House has already voted more than 50 times to repeal, defund or scale back "Obamacare," but has been stymied in its crusade by Democrats running the Senate. Playing defense, Democrats are campaigning with a message of fixing the law to make it work better.

The poll found that 7 in 10 Americans believe the law will be implemented with changes.

Forty-two percent think those changes will be minor, and 30 percent say they think major changes are in store.

Combining the 42 percent who see minor changes coming and 12 percent who say they think the law will be implemented as passed, a narrow majority of 54 percent see either tweaks in store, or no changes at all.

The only part of the law that seems immune to changes is an early provision allowing young adults to stay on their parents' plan until they turn 26. Fifty-one percent said it should remain as passed.

The poll suggests that even the popular ban on insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions could be tweaked. While 39 percent said it should remain as passed, 43 percent wanted to keep it with changes.

Larry Carroll, 64, a church deacon from Cameron, W.Va., says he's strongly opposed to the health care law, but doesn't have high hopes for repeal.

"The federal bureaucracy simply seems to be too strong," he said. "The federal bureaucracy is like an anaconda."

Teresa Stevens, a factory supervisor from Jacksonville, Fla., said her two adult sons shopped for coverage on the health insurance exchanges and found it too expensive.

"There are so many different things they say about (the law) that are not true," she said. "It's not affordable."

A supporter of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Stevens said the economy has soured for working people under Obama. "Everything is so expensive, not just health care," she said.

The poll found that much of the slippage for the health care law over the last four years has come from a drop in support, not an increase in opposition.

In April of 2010, soon after the law passed, 50 percent of Americans said they were opposed to it, while 39 percent were in favor.

Now, just 26 percent say they are in favor, a drop of 13 percentage points. Forty-three percent say they are opposed, a drop of 7 percentage points since four years ago.

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted March 20-24 using KnowledgePanel, GfK's probability-based online panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It involved online interviews with 1,012 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for all respondents.

Respondents were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods and were later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost to them.

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To tout Stanley Cup Playoffs, NBCU teams Nick Kroll with news staffers

Talk about team coverage: To get the word out about NBCUniversal's coming Stanley Cup Playoffs broadcasts, the company enlisted a bevy of its TV journalists to take part in a fictional newscast about tracking a missing version of the popular sports trophy.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a spot featuring comedian Nick Kroll and a gang of "Cupnappers" stealing the prize. The spot is slated to debut on April Fool's Day, unsurprisingly, across NBC, NBCSN, NHL Network and other NBCUniversal cable channels. The news team, which consists of David Gregory from "Meet the Press as well as " Jim Cramer, Carl Quintanilla, and Kayla Tausche from CNBC in a 90- second trailer slated to run on more than 19,000 screens in 48 states - enough so that more than 60% of all moviegoers should get a glimpse if they aren't lined up at the concession stand.

The playoffs start April 16 and will be seen on NBCSN, CNBC and NBC.

Why so much hoopla for the series? NBCU is in some sense married to the National Hockey League, striking a $2 billion deal in 2011 for exclusive national rights to air pro hockey games for a decade. "This is one of our anchor properties," said Jon Miller, who is president of programming for NBC Sports Group. "We have a long-term deal with them."

And yet, NBCUniversal only has so much promotional budget for each of its properties. The company must be clever to get attention, said Bill Bergofin, vice president of marketing for NBC Sports Group, and "try to create these cultural tipping points around our events."

The campaign's producers took pains to make certain the newscasters were taking part in a fictional event. "We always are hypersensitive to making it clear it's something of a farce and not real," he said.

NBCU has reason to try to stoke interest early for the series: It needs to surpass robust audience growth notched in the recent past. Last year's Stanley Cup Playoffs averaged 1.467 million viewers on NBC, NBCSN and CNBC, making it the most-watched post-season since 1997, when an average of 1.52 million viewers watched games spread across ESPN. ESPN2 and Fox. Audience for the playoffs grew 18% compared with the 1.241 milion who watched in 2012.

The overall idea, said Brian Jennings, the NHL's chief marketing officer, is to mix a traditional TV-based tune-in campaign featuring Kroll with a non-traditional effort that offers "a light-hearted and playful perspective on our holy grail, the Stanley Cup with the intention to create buzz for the Playoffs."

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

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