The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, December 01, 1999, Page 6, Image 6
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.”
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