Tuning out cable? HBO Internet-only plan changes picture

"It's not TV, it's HBO."

HBO's longtime marketing slogan aside, soon there might not be any TV at all, at least in the traditional sense.

The premium cable channel's announcement earlier this week that it will offer an Internet-only streaming service sometime next year sent shock waves through the cable industry, cheered cord-cutters and sent rival Netflix's stock plummeting by 25 percent.

"It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO," said CEO Richard Plepler, taking aim at the 10 million households with broadband but no cable subscriptions.

CBS, home to "NCIS," "Big Bang Theory" and "Criminal Minds," yesterday jumped on the streaming service bandwagon, launching "CBS All Access." It offers current shows, past seasons, and such classic series as the original "Star Trek" and "Cheers" for $5.99 a month on the device of your choice, commercials included.

Many industry watchers expect rival premium network, —CBS' premium stationShowtime, to announce its own streaming service any day.

These moves could sound the death knell for the traditional cable companies that have made billions by bundling channels together — and forcing millions of subscribers to suffer through channels they don't want.

But these seismic shifts could ultimately shake down a higher price tag for access to the shows you love.

HBO has revealed precious little about the fine print of its new service, such as cost or what series will be offered and when they'll be available. (Live? A day after broadcast? A week?)

The network's HBO GO, its streaming service available to its cable TV subscribers, has a less-than-stellar record. It crashed during the premiere of "Game of Thrones" last April, and the network took to Twitter to apologize for the spotty service.

It's premature to write the obit on the traditional bundling model just yet. HBO probably won't want to burn its relationships with cable providers on an untried product, so it seems likely that the new streaming service will probably cost a little bit more than its cable subscription — or offer something less than you can find in its current library.

And you might be willing to pay for HBO, but how much would you pony up for TLC or E! or Animal Planet? This brave new world could lead to a catastrophic culling of content providers. Viewers, ironically, could end up with fewer choices.

And if every channel goes a la carte, we all might look back at our cable bills and think: "What a pittance we paid. That truly was the Golden Age of Television."

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Experts: Odds long for Revere suit vs. gaming panel

A lawsuit filed yesterday against the Massachusetts Gaming Commission by the city of Revere and a union for Suffolk Downs workers, accusing the panel of violating state casino law provisions by "unfairly" awarding the Boston area license to Wynn Resorts, creates a slim but viable chance to overturn the decision in court, gaming experts say.

"Typically, you have to find very substantial abuse of discretion, and that's a high hurdle to overcome," said Cezar M. Froelich, a Chicago attorney who specializes in gaming laws and represented Springfield in its casino process. "It's a chance well worth taking. A lot of time and money has been invested in this. But from purely a legal standpoint, it's a long shot."

Boston College economist Richard McGowan, an expert on gaming issues, said the suit makes the awarding of the license last month to Wynn "murky. No doubt about it ...The way the law is written, the commission has the final say. That does not mean the court can't say 'You are being unfair, and you can't do that.'"

The lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court charges the commission with conducting a "flawed" process that violated the state Gaming Act and potentially benefitted criminal interests.

Recent indictments of three men — Dustin DeNunzio and Anthony Gattineri, owners of the Everett land where Wynn plans to build his $1.6 billion gaming palace, and felon Charles Lightbody — charged them with trying to conceal Lightbody's one-time ownership stake in the riverfront parcel that Wynn has a $35 million option to buy.

Wynn and the commission maintain Wynn knew nothing about Lightbody's ownership stake, which could have killed the casino bid. Wynn declined to comment yesterday.

In a statement, the commission said, "We are confident that this complex licensing process has been executed in a manner that is comprehensive, thoughtful and fair, albeit unsatisfactory and disappointing to those who had hoped for a different outcome."

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Southie truck bypass goes out to bid

Massport has put out to bid a $22.5 million construction contract for the new Thomas J. Butler freight corridor that would take Conley Container Terminal truck traffic off of South Boston's residential East First Street.

The project, which has a total cost of $70 million including land acquisitions, will create a 3,100-foot bypass road for the 900 daily truck trips in and out of the waterfront cargo terminal.

"This is a longtime project that we've been working with the community on," said Sam Sleiman, Massport director of capital programs and environmental affairs. "This is for the bulk of the construction work."

Terminal-bound trucks now travel down Summer Street in South Boston and take a left onto East First Street. When the new road is completed, trucks will instead take a left directly off Summer Street — about 275 feet south of the Summer Street bridge near the Exelon power plant — onto a new 475-foot bridge over the Boston Harbor Reserved Channel.

The contract also will cover work on a new 4.4-acre public green space designed as a buffer between the terminal and East First Street. The park also will bear the name of Butler, the late former Massport director of government and community affairs and South Boston native.

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Twitter introduces new audio card feature with SoundCloud, iTunes

Much like how Twitter users are able to embed photos, videos and gifs directly into tweets, the social media platform is making it possible to embed audio as well in a new partnership with Soundcloud and Apple.

Twitter announced in a blog post on Thursday that users will be able to place a Soundcloud link in a tweet. Those viewing the link on iOS and Android devices can tap on the link and the audio will play, without leaving the original screen.

Chance the Rapper introduced a new song on Twitter via the feature on Thursday, and David Guetta released a remix.

Twitter is also partnering with iTunes for the feature -- however, only select artists will work as of now. As of today, only one track is available with a Twitter Audio Card: Foo Fighters' much-hyped new single, "Something from Nothing."

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

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The Ticker

Sager wins bid for Minot's lighthouse

Boston philanthropist and Polaroid chairman Bobby Sager was the winning bidder for Minot's Ledge Light, a historic lighthouse off the shores of Scituate and Cohasset. Sager bid $222,000 for the 1860 lighthouse, whose beacon is called the "I Love You Light" for its distinctive 1-4-3 flashing.

The U.S. General Services Administration put the federally owned surplus lighthouse up for auction earlier this year. It previously had unsuccessfully solicited local governments, nonprofits, historic preservation groups and community development organizations to become stewards of the lighthouse at no charge, as required by the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.

Sager was out of the country yesterday and unavailable to comment on his plans for the lighthouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lawrence man gets 2 years for theft of $230G in fed tax refunds

A Lawrence man has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison for illegally collecting about $230,000 in tax refunds from the federal government.

In addition to a year and nine months behind bars, 41-year-old Wilson Santana was sentenced in federal court this week to three years of probation and ordered to pay full restitution. Santana pleaded guilty in May to 34 counts of theft of public money.

Bishops back sick-time ballot question

Four Roman Catholic bishops in Massachusetts said yesterday that their support of a ballot question that, if approved, would require companies to provide paid sick time for employees was driven by a desire to maintain the "dignity" of every worker.

The bishops, in an open letter, urged Massachusetts citizens to vote "yes" on Ballot Question 4 on Nov. 4.

If approved by voters, the proposal would allow workers to accrue up to 40 hours of paid sick time in a given year, earning one hour for every 30 hours worked. Companies with 10 or fewer employees would be exempt.

Today

• Commerce Department releases housing starts for September.
• Vantage Builders Inc., a general contracting and construction firm based in Waltham, has hired construction industry veteran Justin Brown, left, as the firm's new senior project manager. He will plan, coordinate, oversee and provide safety management for the firm's commercial, educational, medical, retail and life sciences construction projects. Prior to joining the firm, Brown was a senior project manager for Charles River Laboratories.

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Apple juices up line of gadgets

Apple Inc. unveiled its latest gadget updates yesterday, rolling out new iPads with fingerprint recognition and a new version of its iMac desktop computer.

At its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., chief executive Tim Cook announced the iPad Air 2, a full-sized tablet that is a quarter-of-an-inch thick, and a new iPad Mini.

Last month, Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as its first wearable gadget, the Apple Watch. Yesterday, Cook said all of the new products are designed to complement each other.

"They're designed to be incredible products individually, but they're also designed to work together seamlessly," he said.

Apple is hoping the updates will be a shot in the arm for its tablet industry, which has only grown 11 percent this year, far behind last year's 55 percent growth.

Roger Kay, a technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies, said the updates are not massive, but are still impressive.

"They're still the same products, they're just thinner, faster, brighter," he said. "It was a tour de force of technological prowess."

Among the announcements was an ultra-high resolution iMac, which sports a 5k resolution screen.

"If they're going to charge a premium price, they have to justify it," Kay said.

Apple also said yesterday that Apple Pay, its mobile wallet announced last month, will debut on Monday.

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Job prospects looking up

The Bay State job market stood at a standstill in September, but more people began looking for work again, a sign the long-term unemployed are beginning to gain confidence in their job prospects.

Officially, employers added 9,400 jobs last month, but those gains were a result of the final ripple effect from the Market Basket saga.

"The gains reflect the return of employees from last month's temporary disruption," state Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Rachel Kaprielian said. Because of state policy, she could not name a specific company responsible for the disruption.

In August, the state's loss of 5,300 jobs was attributed to Market Basket employees who were not paid that month and were officially considered to have lost their jobs. In September, those employees were back stocking shelves and working in warehouses, so the job numbers spiked.

The retail trade sector, which includes grocery stores, added 9,500 jobs. Experts say most — if not all — of those 9,500 were tied to Market Basket's return.

"All the jobs really can be accounted for by the return of workers to Market Basket," said Robert Nakosteen, an economist at the UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management. "Without Market Basket employees coming back, there would have been no job growth or a job decline."

Still, Nakosteen said the state's labor market is headed in the right direction, adding that September could have just been a blip or temporary pause in job growth.

"The employment prospects in the state are good," he said.

Yesterday, Federal Reseve Chair Janet Yellen toured Connect, a Chelsea center that offers job training and job search support for the unemployed, asking participants about the challenges they face and their experiences with finding a job. Today, she will give the keynote address at the Inequality of Economic Opportunity in the United States conference, organized by the Boston Federal Reserve.

In September, the labor force increased for a third straight month, as people began to become more confident in the chances of finding a job.

"Labor force growth has been very strong over the last few months," said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist at Northeastern University.

That increased labor force pushed the unemployment rate up 0.2 percent, to 6.0. This is the first time since January the state unemployment rate has been higher than the national rate, which was 5.9 in September.

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Ted Turner lists private South Carolina island for $23.777 million

Media magnate Ted Turner, now in his mid-70s and one of American's largest private landowners, has put a scenic private island in Beaufort County, South Carolina up for sale for $23.777 million. The 4,680-acre barrier island, dubbed St. Phillips island and accessible only by boat, was acquired by the mustachioed billionaire in 1979 for an unknown amount and used as a retreat for friends and family.

The self-sufficient island has its own water and power supplies, a private dock, thousands of acres of unspoiled marshes and woods and more than a mile of white sand beaches on the ocean. There are just two residences on the island, a caretakers cottage and an approx. 3,800-square-foot main house built by Mister Turner that has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and a deep screen porch with a hammock and a long row of rocking chairs. A conservation easement restricts development to an additional ten houses.

• SELLER: Ted Turner
• LOCATION: Beaufort County, SC
• PRICE: $23.777 million
• SIZE: 4,680 acres

Through a spokesperson Mister Turner told the property gossips at The Wall Street Journal that he's decided to sell because neither he nor his family use the property often enough.

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

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Will Apple Pay be the next iRevolution?

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple's skinnier iPads and flashy big-screen iMac are sleek and stunning. But the tech giant is making a bigger strategic bet with next week's launch of Apple Pay — the mobile pay service aimed at turning your iPhone into your wallet.

The service, which goes live Monday and has hundreds of banks on board, is "hugely important" says Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett. It puts Apple in the middle of a wide range of consumer transactions, underscoring Apple's value as a brand and giving people a powerful new reason to buy iPhones, iPads and other gadgets.

Apple Pay is designed to work on the company's newest iPhones, which contain a chip that allows payments at a special terminal in retail outlets. It also will be available on the new iPad Air 2 for online purchases only.

"It's a strategic advance not just because it may be a new revenue source, but because it injects Apple into a whole different value stream" for customers and the company's business partners, Gillett says.

Mobile pay isn't new; rival tech companies and the banking industry have worked on such systems for years. But Apple is launching its new service at an ideal time, says Gartner tech analyst Van Baker. Consumers are increasingly worried about the security of traditional credit and debit cards and U.S. merchants are facing new mandates to switch to safer chip-based cards or other payment systems.

"Consumers are going to have to learn a new way to pay," Baker said. "That levels the playing field for new technology."

Assuming there are no system breakdowns or security flaws, Apple will get the benefit of pioneering a mobile payment system that has widespread brand recognition and acceptance from consumers, retailers and banks. That's crucial to its success, said MasterCard Inc. executive James Anderson, but he doesn't expect Apple will hold the market by itself. The payment processor plans to work with other digital systems as well.

"We've done a lot of work with Google over the years and I expect we'll continue to work with them," Anderson said.

As for the new iPad Air 2 announced at a company event Thursday, analysts praised its technical features, including faster processors, better cameras and Touch ID, which lets users unlock the device with a fingerprint.

"I've heard people say it's evolutionary, rather than revolutionary," tech expert Carolina Milanesi of the research firm Kantar Worldpanel said after Apple's announcement. But she added, "why do you need to revolutionize something that's already the best in its class?"

The new super-thin iPads should sell well during the upcoming holiday shopping season, even as the worldwide tablet market is showing signs of slowing growth, analysts said. But they're not the kind of game-changing new product that has made Apple a darling of Silicon Valley and the tech industry's most valuable company.

The new 27-inch iMac desktop computer with a high-resolution Retina screen struck Bob O'Donnell of TECHnalysis Research as the most cutting-edge hardware product announced Thursday.

"It's stunning. It shows Apple is doing cool new stuff," he said. "Unfortunately it's not going to sell to a lot of people. Not many people are willing to pay $2,499 for a new desktop computer anymore."

The next major hardware release is likely to be Apple's smart watch, due out next year. Cook and other executives teased the device several times Thursday, even getting comedian Stephen Colbert in on the act. Reached via Mac call, "Chief of Secrecy" Colbert told head software engineer Craig Federighi to "get back to work" because he was "jonesing for some jewelry."

TECHnalysis' O'Donnell thinks the watch is "an interesting product," but notes that it will compete against fitness trackers and other devices that are primarily niche products. And many of its functions can already be performed on smartphones.

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Custom homes go on the block

Build a custom mansion if you have the means, but you may end up auctioning it off because you can't find a buyer.

That's what's happening to two high-end Bay State properties, one in Andover and another in Osterville on Cape Cod.

"Some homes that are custom-­crafted by their owners­ don't fit into the mold of the area they're in," said Trayor Lesnock, founder­ and president of Platinum Luxury Auctions, which is auctioning a 10,000-square-foot Osterville mansion owned by retired EMC executive Edward Breslow that had long been on the market for $13.9 million.

Lesnock said the architect-­designed waterfront home, which has almost $3 million in interior finishes and technology, sits on a relatively small 1.32 acre site, amid grand houses with larger lots.

"While the lot is small, the architecture of the home, with its circles and curving lines, is very impressive," Lesnock said. "It's very sunny and has great harbor views from many rooms. There's an outdoor swimming pool and a dock out to the ocean."

The interior has custom millwork, stained-glass window panels and large living spaces built for entertainment, including three full wet bars. The technology includes more than a dozen mounted Apple devices, smart-home technology that controls lighting, temperature and music and a secure private network powerful enough to host a company.

A custom home in Andover that's also going to auction is double the size, with 20,000 square feet of living­ space. When the Herald profiled the Haggetts Pond Road mansion in March 2013, the 2003-built nine-bedroom home on 4 acres was on the market for $5.5 million. Almost 9,000 square feet is taken up by a regulation-size basketball court with water slides down to an indoor swimming pool. There's a bowling alley, locker room and a large family game room.

"It has fairly traditional high-end living spaces outside of having the gym attached," said Jeff Hubbard, president of Madison Hawk Partners, which is auctioning the Andover home, with sealed bids due by Nov. 4. "It could be a sportsman's home or even a corporate retreat."

Lesnock expects three to six live bidders at tomorrow's auction for the Osterville home, and perhaps a few by phone.

"Although I've never been involved in a real estate auction before, it seemed to me the best way to get the most exposure for the property in the shortest amount of time," said Breslow, who added he and his wife are looking to downsize and spend more time traveling and in their Florida home.

Hubbard says auctioning a super high-end custom home like the Andover property is akin to selling fine art — it involves identifying those with the means and ability to close quickly.

"The auction route offers sellers the certainty of a sale so they can move on with their lives," he said.

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