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Nation & World Coke calls it quits with WWF by Justin Bachman Associated Press Atlanta—The World Wrestling Feder ation has decided to lone down the con tent on its popular telecasts in the wake of Coca-Cola’s decision to end a two-year advertising deal. “As good business people, we are will ing to initiate change,” said Jim Byme, senior vice president of marketing for the WWF. He said future shows will contain “less use of colorful language and less sex uality.” The pledge, made late Monday, is to take effect on Thursday’s edition of “Smackdown!” — no stranger to fake blood, vulgarities and bikini-clad women yanking each other’s hair. Such antics have made the WWF a winner among teen-age boys, who have helped WWF’s ratings grow in recent years, . Coke stopped advertising on WWF shows last month, citing objectionable language and content on broadcasts like the Monday night cable program “RAW is WAR,” which draws about 6 million viewers weekly. However, the world’s biggest soft drink company continues to advertise with WWF’s main rival, World Champi onship Wrestling, a subsidiary of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System. Although the WCW has recently been accused of making its programs more racy to compete with the WWF, Atlanta-based Coke says the WWF went too far. Stone Cold Steve Austin swills beers, spouts profanity and salutes oilier wrestlers with obscene gestures. The Godfather en ters the ring dressed like a pimp and ac- ' companied by scantily clad women. “It crossed the line in terms of con tent, particularly in temis of language and story lines,” Coke spokesman Bob Berti ni said Monday, before the WWF’s de cision. “It’s not about one episode or one particular character. It’s what we observed over a period of time.” Coke’s decision comes as the Parents Television Council, a Los Angeles-based conservative group, pressures advertis- • * ers to drop “WWF Smackdown!” The show is the top-rated program on the t fledgling UPN network. . L. Brent Bozell III, the group’s founder, said the council has sent letters about the program to 100 companies since , it began its campaign six weeks ago. He . said the group hopes the WWF will “shape up” the show’s content On Monday, the WWF said it was changing the rating 0/ “Smackdown!” « from TV-14 to TV-PG, although such rat- ' ings are voluntary andgenerally don’t af- t feet content much. WWF officials said < that change was unrelated to the coun- • ' crl’s campaign. Coke’s decision won’t reduce WWF 1 income. Advertising money from Coke « made up 3 percent of WWF revenue, but 4 its ad slots were “immediately snapped up by the movie studios and video game ; manufacturers at a premium,” Byrne said. < c i \ Internet from page 5 would have thought a little cursor could track your Web movements? It’s going back to [Comet’s] home base and saying this person with this serial number is now at this Web site.” Consumers'are prompted to install Comet’s cursor software, which takes only a few seconds, when they visit any of the 60,000 Web sites that support its technology, including those for the Dil bert and Peanuts characters of United Feature Syndicate Inc., the Ty Inc. Web site for Beanie Babies, the Garfield com ic strip page and sites for children’s movies like “The Iron Giant” from Warner Bros. The campaign Web site for Vice Pres ident A1 Gore removed support for the technology Monday, citing privacy con cerns. “To the best of the Gore cam paign’s knowledge, no personally iden tifiable information was divulged,” spokesman Chris Lehane said. “But even this very benign data collection doesn’t meet the Gore campaign privacy stan dards.” “What I find most disturbing is that most of these Web sites are for kids,” Smith said. “You’re asking a kid if it’s OK to install this software. [Comet Sys tems] is in such a position to go back and find what sites did this user ID visit. There are so many ways to tie tlrat to an offline identity.” Austin, the company spokesman, in sists that Comet has no such plans. “When companies have gotten in trouble in the past, it’s typically because they relate user IDs to some list of real names of actual people,” Austin said. “We intentionally keep our users anonymous by not collecting names or e-mail ad dresses, and it’s something we’ve stated we will not do.” The company’s technology officer, Tom Schmitter, acknowledged that part of the identifier harvested by Comet includes the serial number for each com puter’s network connection hardware. That means a customer’s Web browsing history could be linked back to a spe cific machine by examining the compa ny’s tracking logs and his personal computer. Schmitter said Comet was unaware it had been collecting those numbers and promised to delete those records, but die company will continue to randomly as sign serial numbers to its customers be cause it needs to count them accurately to make money. Privacy experts said it was unclear whether Comet was violating any law, although Jason Catlett^of Junkbusters Corp., a New Jersey-based privacy ad vocate, wrote to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer asking him to in vestigate. Catlett called Comet’s actions a “wholesale violation of its users’ pri vacy.” .i FREE GIFTS TO 50 \ OF THE LAST PEOPLE 1 IN ATTENDANCE! < r~ \ [Mark your calendars now - it's BACK! Semi-Annual USC STRESS BLOWOUT j "LATE NIGHT AT THE BLATT" j r Friday, December 3, 1999 • 6 pm -12 midnight ? p Blatt P.E. Center ? 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