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March 18 2001 BUSINESS NEWS

Coke chief's latest Daft idea - a cola tap in every house

by Rupert Steiner

IT may be just a pipe dream, but Douglas Daft, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, is planning to compete with water by channelling Coke through taps in customers' homes.

He has sunk venture-capital funding into an innovations unit based in New York that has created a system to mix carbonated water with Coke's secret syrup and pipe it around houses. It would be mixed inside homes rather than pumped in from an external source.

Daft does not see Pepsi as his main competitor and will be happy only when people are turning on taps in their homes to drink Coke rather than water.

In an exclusive Sunday Times interview he reveals his idea but says it is not yet ready to be launched. "Yes, we have developed a prototype," he said.

"You would have water mixing automatically with the concentrate and then connect it all up so that when you turn on your tap you have Coke at home. There's a lot more to it than that to ensure quality and it has to be a sealed unit so people can't alter the formula to destroy the value of the brand," he said.

Businesses already have closed systems. Pubs and branches of McDonald's, the burger chain, have stored the raw materials in basements and produced Coke on the spot for years.

But Daft is keen to take the product a step further when the time is right. "There's not a market yet," he said. "People still like to physically go and buy things, but one day, yes, this will be a reality."

He has also sunk £500,000 into an innovations unit that is trying to develop something called "Coke space" - an area where teenagers can hang out.

"It is being funded and developed in Europe," he said. "The unit is trying to define what a 'Coke space' means to a teenager, so we can provide something that a teenager would want to come to."

The project began with the idea that teenagers like to hang out by standing beside telephone boxes because there is nowhere else for them to go where they feel comfortable.

Daft says: "Teenagers do like to sit down and chat about intelligent things and they need to have somewhere to do that, so it came from that idea.

"We believe it will make a material difference to our revenues at least indirectly because it will make us a better brand. There is a chance that it may even add a revenue stream."

I can't believe this:
http://www.iconocast.com/crusade/index.html
What a bunch of bozos!!!

And then check out:
http://www.ringosoft.com/news/

Gee, look what I missed out on...
THIRD ROUND OF CUTS AT CREATIVE PLANET SLICES 70, LEAVING 150
Tuesday, March 27 07:55 p.m.

For the third time in seven months, entertainment industry production software provider Creative Planet has laid off a sizeable chunk of staff in an effort to streamline spending and reach profitability. A total of 70 employees were let go today, leaving just more than 150 on board. Company CEO Allen DeBevoise said in a statement that the "need to preserve a strong capital position is paramount" in light of financial hard times and an impending strike in Hollywood. The statement indicates that terminated employees get pay through the week and four weeks of severance and health benefits. In August, just after closing a $38 million round from Times Mirror Chandler Trusts, Creative Planet laid off 30, and in December, after closing a $30 million round from United News & Media, 72 people were cut. DeBevoise said at the time of the December cut that it was the last for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to Richard J.:

A major network is planning the show "Survivor 2"
this winter. In response, Texas is planning "Survivor, Texas Style."
The contestants will start in Dallas, travel through Waco, Austin, San
Antonio, over to Houston, and down to Brownsville. They will proceed up to Del
Rio,on to El Paso, then to Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo. From there,
they proceed to Abilene, and on to Ft. Worth and back to Dallas. Each
will be driving a pink Volvo with a bumper sticker that reads, "I'm a
cross-dresser, I voted for Al Gore, and I'm here to confiscate your guns."
The first one to make it back to Dallas wins.

Via Don Barrett's LARADIO.COM from Monday's issue:

Tom Leykis Shocks His Fans and Friends
With Announcement of Split with His Wife

(March 26, 2001) Tom Leykis, with no fanfare or tease, told his loyal KLSX and syndicated afternoon drive audience on Friday that he and his wife Susan have separated. The surprise announcement even caught his colleagues off guard. "I didn't know about it until Tom told me at lunch on Friday," said KLSX pd Jack Silver. Not that one thing has anything to do with the other, KLSX morning driver Howard Stern separated from his wife recently.

This is the full text of Tom's statement Friday afternoon:

"Now before we do anything else, I want to say something here and you will note that I did not promote this in advance. I have not teased it, and I have tried not to exploit this in any way because some things are, I think above that.

You may wonder, do I have a line? Where do I draw it? Well, now you are seeing where at least the line might be drawn. What I am about to say, not only did I not promote it to you, it is something personal and a number of my friends don't know anything about it and they are about to find it out the first time as well, about me.

You will find out as I tell it to you over the next few minutes why my friends don't know about it. Why nobody knows about it. And, why I haven't made a big deal about it. And as a matter of fact, the reason I am doing this on a Friday is because I had no intention of turning it into a topic. I have no intention of going on the air and many times things have happened to me and I have made lemons into lemonade.

I have come on the air and used things that have happened. Arguments I have had with people. Arguments I have had with ex-wives or girl friends or whatever. I have used that stuff as show material and I must tell you that this time around I am not doing that.

Because it is personal and it is serious and I am going to say this one time and I am not going to repeat it....again....at all. So, if you are listening now, you are hearing this and if you are not listening now fine, so be it.

So, it is something personal that I have been... I'll be honest with you...I've been dreading talking about it, but I am going to talk about it now.

And here it is.... My wife Susan and I have separated. We have actually been separated for several months now. It happened back before the holidays. And I have not talked about it on the air, number one because Susan is a private person and I did not want to go on the air to use this as an opportunity to hype or to play with it.

She is a private person and this was very hard on both of us and especially on her because I am a public person. I have been divorced 3 times. I know how hard that is and it must be hard, probably much harder for her in that she has never been through this before and she is married to a public figure.

I know you'll have a lot of questions about this. So I am going to try to head some of them off at the pass by saying the following: Yes, I know I am the professor. Yes, I know I teach Leykis 101, I have always been very careful to tell you I don't teach a course on how to stay married.

I teach a course on how to get laid, so those of you who are going to call and go “who do you think you are”, well guess what dear, this has nothing to do with it. That is number one. OK?

Number two, I mean, have we worked on this? For the longest time, oh yes, Yes, but I want you to know, as much as we talk to guys and tell them to dump that bitch and all that stuff, I want to make something really clear here, OK?

My wife Susan is no bitch. She is the smartest person I have even known. She is the wittiest person I know. She and I have a lot in common and we have known each other for 10 years. We have a lot of history, and this has nothing to do with the show.

It has nothing to do with rack signing. It has nothing to do with her being quote unquote a bitch. It ain’t true, she is anything but. And I want you to know that. I am going a step further here. The reasons for it I am not going onto on the air. Why? Because I am a public person. Susan is a private person. And I am under no legal obligation to not talk about this. No one has told me.

Susan and I are completely friendly and amicable. Susan and I have seen each other many times. I have been to her place. She has her own place. She has moved into a place in Los Angeles. There is no anger, no animosity, no bitterness. And the result of that is there will be no nasty comments by me or by you about her on the air.

Because I have nothing bad to say about her at all. We have a prenuptial agreement. But as I have always said, I have been good to my word. I have been helping Susan in every possible way....financially, emotionally and I will continue to do that....and we continue to be very close friends.

And we continue to spend time talking and we see each other and we have worked on this a lot. So I just want you to know that. I have generally been honest about my life. And, I generally talk about stuff as it happens. But in this particular case, being that we broke up around the holidays...it is very emotional and I am trying to be sensitive to the fact that Susan is a private person.

And, where it is very easy for me to come on the air and talk about myself, it isn't necessarily easy for her to hear about herself on the radio. She knows I am talking about it today. She told me this week she is ready for this. I am doing it with her approval and I am only doing it now because she is ready to hear it.

She is ready for me to do it now. We have talked about this for a long time. What will it be like? What will people say? What will people think? And the last thing I want anybody to think is that there is anything negative about Susan because there is nothing. This is no dirt here. There is nothing nasty to say.

This is the only time I am going to make a statement about it. It won't be repeated, unless KLSX runs this tape, and I don't know about it, which happens from time to time. I am not going to say it again, but I wanted you to know about it and I wanted you to be prepared, because I know we will get calls.

I've told all the guys here we will get calls about this. One thing that will be off limits is attacking Susan. You want to attack me, fine, that is OK. but Susan, I am not going to attack...at all, period, because she is a good person.

And she has been a big part of my life. And frankly, she has helped me an awful lot over the years with giving me feedback about my work. And she has tolerated my work. She has tolerated the rack signing and she has been just as good as gold with all that. So, understand where I am coming from.

There is nothing nasty to be said and its already been almost four months since we split. But I was not going to do this until she was ready. She is ready now, and I think that is good and to all my friends who did not know that this happened, I apologize to all of you. But understand that this is very trying. because we are in public and people see us.

And I did not want people gossiping about it. I wanted to talk about it when we were ready, both Susan and myself. So I have very close friends who did not know this and that is the reason I didn't talk about it.

Because I wanted Susan to get to her new place...to get set up...to get over some of the emotion and some of the difficulty of a split. And I did not want her to have to deal with my talking about it on the air while it was all going on.

So we are not divorced. We are separated. That is the deal. And now there it is, I've said it. OK? So, I've gotten it out. It is four month old news. But a lot of people didn't know it and now you know it all right. Now, we have a show. We are going to do it. And that is that and that is all I have to say about that. It is wide open telephones. And here we go babe." Bumper Music into break #1 Time: 9:20
(Bart Reed has contributed to this article. He is a Sylmar based media and marketing specialist. He is currently executive director of The Transit Coalition.)