The University of Wisconsin Athletic Departmentâ??s budget proposal unveiled this week brings good news to Badger fans hoping to save some money when buying tickets during the 2008-09 school year.
To listen to sports talk radio or read Internet message boards and newspapers, you would think a deluge of customers has abandoned Charter Communications for satellite to get the Big Ten Network and NFL Network.
Yet the available figures show little, if any, impact on Charter, and the company emphatically says its hard-line stance was the right decision.
“There would be much more negative impact to our customer numbers if we forced the high cost of both Big Ten Network and NFL Network on every customer, as they want us to, than (there has been) from taking the stand we have taken,” said Charter regional spokesman John Miller.
The last time the University of Wisconsin athletic department did not include a ticket price increase in its annual budget, its football team couldn’t fill Camp Randall, its basketball and hockey teams were playing in homey but outdated venues, and its entire spending authority amounted to $16.5 million.
How times have changed.
At a meeting of the UW Athletic Board’s finance committee on Tuesday, associate athletic director for finance John Jentz presented a preliminary 2008-09 budget that tops out at $89.9 million — but includes no ticket price hikes for the first time since 1992, a review of documents by The Capital Times indicates.
Jentz said UW was able to keep ticket prices static thanks to an infusion of $4.1 million from the Big Ten Network — the athletic department’s share of the $6.2 million annual payout from the fledgling network, with the remainder going to campus for scholarships and library use.
A new coffee house will open in UW-Madisonâ??s Memorial Union as early as summer 2008, the university announced Tuesday.
Peetâ??s Coffee and Tea plans to move to the former ground floor location of STA Travel, which re-located to State Street in November 2007.
Memorial Union announced Tuesday it will soon open a Peetâ??s Coffee and Tea in the vacant space formerly occupied by STA Travel.
he termination of New Era Cap Co.â??s licensing contract with UW-Madison Friday means the companyâ??s manufactured apparel with the universityâ??s logo must be disposed of within 60 days.
University of Wisconsin head football coach Bret Bielema received a one-year contract extension Friday, keeping him on the lead of the Badgers until 2013.
New Era Cap Company responded Monday to allegations of human rights abuses at its plant in Mobile, Ala., in the wake of University of Wisconsin severing its licensing contract with the hat manufacturer.
Following the sports merchandise companyâ??s repeated incompliance with workersâ?? rights inspectors, UW-Madison decided Friday to terminate its licensing contract with New Era Cap Company.
UW-Madison computer scientist Paul Barford doesn ‘t want to be alarmist, but he thinks you could be in danger of being attacked — by a botnet.
Botnets (a term combining “robot ” and the “Net “) are the biggest and baddest Internet villains out there these days, he said, combining other threats that have been around for years — worms, viruses, spyware, and so on.
The U.S. economy will be saddled with some burdensome obstacles in 2008, according to economist Michael Knetter, dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Business in Madison. Knetter, a former economic advisor to Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, provides his macroeconomic outlooks annually at the Northern Trust Economic Trends Breakfast. Small Business Times executive editor Steve Jagler recently interviewed Knetter about the economic outlook for 2008. The following are excerpts from that interview.
There are two things the state of Wisconsin is known for: the dairy industry and stem-cell research. Today, the state of California has a higher-producing dairy industry and currently has more money to fund stem- cell research. If Wisconsin wants to keep up, it must pony up.
A new report on a projected state budget deficit indicates officials may have to cut spending by as much as $600 million over the next two years.
A day after Gov. Jim Doyle warned of a “very difficult fiscal situation” in his State of the State address, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau said that the budget is likely to be $300 million to $400 million in the red.
The bureau said Thursday the figures reflect “considerable weakness” in individual and corporate income tax and sales tax collections, which account for nearly all of the state’s $12 billion annual general fund budget. The bureau also cited economic forecasts that projected slower growth this year, reflecting the recent downturn in both U.S. and foreign markets.
In 2000, when John Neis, co-founder of Madison, Wis.-based Venture Investors, tried to convince venture capitalists on the West and East Coasts to fund TomoTherapy, a Wisconsin cancer-radiation company he had seeded, they weren’t interested. “It was not in the comfort zone for them,” he says. So he returned to Wisconsin and pulled together a group of Midwestern investors.
His firm culls eight states for deals; most come from research done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan.
Wisconsin is poised to weather the cooling U.S. economic climate better than other parts of the nation, panelists at an economic forum in Milwaukee said today.
“We are facing a period of great uncertainty,” stated Michael Knetter, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.
Gov. Jim Doyle warned Wisconsin residents that â??challenging days are aheadâ? in his annual State of the State address held at the State Capitol Wednesday. These challenging days are in reference to the national state of economic crisis.
After a leading UW-Madison stem-cell researcher said Wisconsin needs to take serious steps to maintain leadership in the stem-cell field, many state dignitaries said the state funding is likely not feasible.
Gov. Jim Doyle faced a tremendous challenge as he prepared this year’s State of the State address. The stock market is on a roller-coaster ride that just about everyone thinks will end in some sort of crash. Each day brings new evidence that suggests the Bush-Cheney recession will be painful.
The key to the next big computer chip breakthrough could be tiny algae that encase themselves in intricately patterned, glass-like shells.
The unicellular algae, called diatoms, exist in oceans, lakes and even wet soil and build their hard cell walls by laying down microscopic lines of silica, a compound related to the key material of the semiconductor-industry silicon.
“If we can genetically control that process, we would have a whole new way of performing the nanofabrication used to make computer chips,” Michael Sussman, a UW-Madison biochemistry professor and director of the UW-Madison’s Biotechnology Center, said in a UW press release.
UW-Madison stem cell research leader James Thomson said Tuesday that Wisconsin would have to invest $50 million a year in stem cell research to compete with California’s $3 billion investment.
The result would be high-paying jobs for the state and continued recruitment of top scientific minds to the University of Wisconsin, he predicted.
When Gov. Jim Doyle delivers his annual State of the State speech tonight, he’ll receive the requisite applause and standing ovations from lawmakers as he lays out his vision for the coming year.
But once the applause dies down and the chambers empty, Doyle may face some tough sledding in the remaining few months before lawmakers adjourn for the year and head for the campaign trail.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation entered a licensing agreement in early January with a biotech company to commercialize stem cell technology created at the University of Wisconsin.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — University of Wisconsin-Madison leaders are urging students to make sure their smoke detectors are working after two recent off-campus fires.
The university is handing out nearly 2,000 9-volt batteries at the student union Tuesday to students who live in houses and apartments.
Four companies raised nearly three-quarters of the state’s venture capital in 2007 – Virent Energy Systems Inc., NimbleGen Systems Inc., Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals Inc. and OpGen Inc. All are based on technologies developed at UW-Madison.
UW-Madison may be able to get the new dorm it wants without waiting for Legislative approval to get the process rolling.
As the university looks for ways to revive its bid for additional on-campus student housing, one possible option is a lease/purchase plan, according to UW System assistant vice president David Miller.
You have to look past all the cement and glass, the red seats, the wide concourses and the funky artwork on the walls to learn why the Kohl Center has been such a great home for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.
From child care to health care, this year’s ATHENA Award nominees represent a variety of careers and interests. Clinical social workers are included in the mix, along with lawyers, educators and businesswomen.
(Among the nominees: Sue Morschhauser, program manager, Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
Older livestock farmers remember the days when most rural towns had a veterinarian.
….Old “Doc” has long ago retired from the rural scene, but animal care is still number one in most dairy farmers’ minds. There are concerns that food animal veterinarians will be in short supply in coming years — currently 30 percent of the graduating class at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine has expressed interest in food animal-large animal practice.
What started as a T-shirt slogan has become a lifestyle brand touting all things Wisconsin.
Sconnie Nation recently opened a retail location in conjunction with custom printer Underground Printing. In addition, it licensed its trademark Sconnie brand to a separate company offering road trip packages.
What has resulted is a network of enterprises created by students, primarily for students.
NEW YORK (AP) — Privacy concerns stemming from online shopping rose in 2007, a new study finds, as the loss or theft of credit card information and other personal data soared to unprecedented levels.
….The study, to be released Thursday, comes as privacy and security groups report that an increasing number of personal records are being compromised because of data breaches at online retailers, banks, government agencies and corporations.
People are finding more reasons to dance.
After watching athletes and entertainers learn steps on television, more adults have taken up ballroom dancing.
….Ballroom dance has been a mainstay at Wisconsin Union Mini Courses for 30 years, according to program director Jay Ekleberry.
The federal government wants more specifics built into a proposed settlement between the Sierra Club and the state intended to clean up emissions from a coal-burning power plant on the UW-Madison campus.
When Plymouth schools Superintendent Paul Brandl was retiring, he looked into warm Florida or Arizona like his friends had, but he decided on Madison instead. His major objective was to live within walking distance of the Kohl Center.
Dear Editor: It is time to speak up and support Charter Communications in its dispute with the Big Ten Network. It must be very disappointing for Bo Ryan to recruit a team and field it, to be viewed by only about 10 percent of the TV viewers.
Harvey Pekar, Paul Buhle and Tom Pomplun know the score: Traditional print media are losing readers. Maybe their graphic novels — essentially bulked-up versions of “comic books” — are the answer.
The three are producing books that might make a difference by not just racking up sheer sales numbers but by communicating graphically in funny, stylish and meaningful ways.
….”Madison Strike Riot” dramatizes the protests SDS joined in 1967 at a University of Wisconsin building where Dow Chemical was recruiting potential employees. Dow produced napalm for Air Force use in Vietnam, and the book vividly depicts administrators and police smashing a peaceful sit-in. The notorious 1970 bombing of the UW’s Sterling Hall involved no members of SDS, which had disbanded a year earlier.
Three educational institutions will make more than $100 million in the next 30 years by selling frequencies that can be converted to wireless broadband.
UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee Area Technical College will lease a dozen channels of educational broadband Clearwire. Each will get $4.2 million initially and monthly payments of $55,000 that increase annually.
Dear Editor: Please don’t let this Big Ten Network fiasco be swept under some rug.
I have no problem with the NFL Network. That’s professional sports and, of course, all about money.
But Chancellor John Wiley and his highness Barry Alvarez really sold out to the greed of the athletic department with its luxury boxes and ridiculous ticket pricing, with a pittance going to UW-Madison programs.
The results are not surprising, said Morris Davis, assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at the UW-Madison School of Business.
“There’s no reason to expect that what’s going on in Madison would be any different from what’s going on around the country,” Davis said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a host of other colleges are considering saving money by switching student e-mail service to free, professional services like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo.
More than 1,000 colleges have already signed up with such companies, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
But UW-Madison and UW System officials are carefully reviewing the pros and cons of outsourcing e-mail, according to Brian Rust, communications manager for the Division of Information Technology at the UW, and David Giroux, a spokesman for the UW System.
A California company hopes to use stem cell technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make new medical and research products.
BioTime, Inc. has signed a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to use 173 patents and patent applications covering human embryonic stem cell technology.
The patents cover some of the work of UW-Madison scientist James Thomson.
Monona businessman and campus landlord Richard Fritz is proposing a six-story, 36-unit student apartment building at 125 N. Randall Ave.
Located across from the Camp Randall greenspace, the site currently has four rental homes owned by Fritz. Plans call for razing those buildings and replacing them with new construction.
The project is before the City Urban Design Commission tonight for its first public review but developers acknowledge there are issues yet to be resolved. The major hangup is whether the project would conform to the city’s new Regent Street/South Campus Master Plan. That plan, awaiting final approval of the City Council, calls for stepping back the upper floors of new buildings to make them appear less dense.
Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration said today the state is still negotiating to bring a new film starring actor Johnny Depp to Wisconsin.
Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton had planned to announce this morning that NBC Universal had committed to Wisconsin as the scene for parts of “Public Enemies,” with Depp playing Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger. Earlier news accounts today said parts of the film would definitely be shot here, but the announcement was canceled at the last minute.
Doyle’s spokesman Matt Canter said the state Department of Commerce was still working out final details of an incentive package with the company.
(The film will be directed by UW-Madison alumnus Michael Mann, who also wrote the screenplay.)
Trophic Solutions, a Madison company whose product extends the storage life of organs slated for transplant, has signed a licensing deal with CryoLife, a Georgia company that processes human tissue for transplants.
“We believe that they are the perfect partner for developing products based on our patent, and we are very excited to announce this relationship,” said UW-Madison professor of veterinary medicine Jonathan McAnulty. He invented the preservation fluid along with UW-Madison vet school professor Christopher Murphy and Texas Tech University chemistry professor Ted Reid.
Actor Johnny Depp, the biggest moneymaker for theaters the past two years, will soon be in Wisconsin portraying Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger, Gov. Jim Doyle said today, confirming a new film will have major parts shot in the state.
Doyle said NBC Universal committed to Wisconsin as the scene for parts of “Public Enemies,” with Depp playing the robber whose Midwest crime spree ended when FBI agents shot him to death in Chicago in July 1934.
It’s the first major production to come to Wisconsin since new tax incentives for the film industry took effect Jan. 1.
(UW alumnus Michael Mann wrote the screenplay and will direct the film.)
Cellectar, a UW-Madison spinoff company developing products that light up cancerous tumors and shrink them, is getting a big financial boost.
When he was a high-ranking executive at GE Healthcare, Dr. Bill Clarke heard a lot of pitches from aspiring entrepreneurs.
It became fairly routine, and he wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary when he came to hear UW-Madison Prof. Jamey Weichert detail Cellectar, a local firm he founded to develop his cancer fighting compounds.
“I was going to give Jamey an hour and four hours later I walked out and I thought, ‘This is really good,’ ” Clarke said in a phone interview.
Morris Davis, economist in the department of real estate and urban-land economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and until 2006 a staff economist at the Fed, is one of the authors of a study that finds homes overvalued compared to rents. He addressed questions about the study in this article.
Let me start by providing some other background information on why the rent-price ratio for housing â?? which is like the dividend yield for housing as an asset â?? is a useful metric. (Subscription required.)
In a world without uncertainty and with constant growth, the dividend yield of an asset has the simple expression of r-g, where r is the discount rate on future dividends and g is the growth rate of dividends. Thus, if the dividend yield falls, either the discount rate r has fallen or the expected growth rate of dividends g has increased or both.
Quoted: UW-Madison School of Business professor Jim Seward.
U.S. house prices “likely would have to fall considerably” to return to a normal relationship with rents, says a study by one former and two current Federal Reserve economists.
The U.S. study is by Morris Davis, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and until 2006 a staff economist at the Fed; and Andreas Lehnert and Robert F. Martin, staff economists at the Fed.
MILWAUKEE — Diane Grezenski grew up a city girl but is now one of a growing number of women playing significant roles in agriculture.
She and her husband of 21 years operate a dairy farm outside of Stevens Point, and she has taken on more and more of the farm work over the years.
Journal Sentinel story on the biggest business stories of the year mentions the stem cell breakthrough, the Morgridges’ $175 million gift for college scholarships and the $85 million gift to the Wisconsin School of Business.
Close collaboration between business, labor, education and government is a must to ensure that the public’s money is spent prudently.
For the early morning regulars at Rennebohm ‘s on University Avenue, the smell of coffee, eggs and sausage has been just a pleasant memory since 1981, when UW-Madison bought the building and turned it into offices.
Now it ‘s time for the building itself to go.
How many times have you had to wait 45 minutes at the doctor’s office because he or she was called to the hospital for an emergency?
And have you been awakened early in the morning at a hospital because a doctor is making rounds before heading off to the clinic for appointments?
Both of those possibilities have lessened because of a new physician type — the “hospitalist.”
Wisconsin policymakers ought to confront the following question with a new sense of urgency:
How will the state ‘s economy generate the high-paying jobs to keep the next generation prosperous?
Gov. Jim Doyle’s signing of the state cable franchising bill isn’t likely to mean AT&T — a leading backer of the bill — will bring its U-verse TV service to the Madison area anytime soon, one prominent observer said.
“I don’t see it in Madison in any widespread way in 2008,” said Barry Orton, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who has advised many communities in their dealings with cable companies.
Orton noted that AT&T has been reducing its rollout projections for U-verse in recent announcements.
UW-Madison telecommunications professor Barry Orton says the changes will help a little, but basically take a very bad bill and improve it a little.
All of you frustrated sports fans out there have friends at the Capitol. More than a dozen lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that tries to end the stalemate between large cable companies and the Big Ten and NFL networks. Similar bills have been introduced in about a half dozen other states.
Interests on both sides of the debate on why the Big Ten and NFL networks aren’t on several cable TV networks comes to the Capitol. Representative from networks, the NFL, UW-Madison, and the cable industry were on hand for a legislative hearing at the Capitol Thursday, on a bill that would create an arbitration process for disputes between video providers and networks.
Some have questioned how the Big Ten Network is able to pay millions of dollars to all of the universities without support from major cable companies.
