Birds And Cup Holders -- Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- January 4, 2018

Birds: The WSJ has a story on supermarket rotisserie chicken, but it really turned out to be a story about Costco.

With labor costs and competition rising, more stores are relying on rotisserie chickens to draw customers. To continue selling them for $5 to $7 each, executives are working to trim supply-chain costs, cook chickens more efficiently and throw fewer of them away unsold.
While Kroger and Mariano’s display their chickens near the front of the store, Costco puts them at the back, hoping people will end up buying more than a chicken. Costco has sold rotisserie chickens for $4.99 since 2009. When a bird flu outbreak prompted culling that created a chicken shortage in 2015, Costco took a $30 million to $40 million profit hit to keep rotisserie prices steady.
The chain also has bought bigger, more-efficient ovens and saved millions of dollars by packing the chickens in containers that use less plastic. Now Costco is building its own roughly $300 million chicken-processing plant in Nebraska, which should be cheaper than buying ready-to-cook chickens from suppliers.
Costco’s chickens weigh at least 3 pounds cooked, while rivals’ usually weigh one-and-a-half to 2 pounds. Costco worked with chicken farmers to develop a feeding plan that consistently produced larger birds.

Amazing: Costco's birds weigh in at over 3 pounds cooked and cost $4.99, a price not raised since 2009, while rivals birds typically weight 1.5 - 2 pounds and cost as much as $7/bird.

Cup holders: years ago -- back in 1996, I think, I laughed when I heard Chrysler's minivan was a success because of its 9 or so cup holders, a major marketing item that occupied a lot of Chrysler's design time. Now, this from The WSJ: Subaru’s Plan to Woo Americans: A Roomy SUV With 19 Cup Holders.

Japanese car maker to launch Ascent eight-seater as U.S. market increasingly shifts toward pickups and sport-utility vehicles.

Subaru Corp. has become one of the world’s most profitable car companies by selling Japanese-inspired wagons to American buyers with unconventional tastes.

Now, with its dependence on the U.S. market increasing, the Tokyo-based auto maker is launching the Ascent, an eight-seater sport-utility vehicle that it hopes will appeal to middle America’s infatuation with larger and heavier cars. Subaru’s Ascent, with an all-wheel drive and a prominent trucklike front grille, is designed to meet the preferences of American drivers.

The model has 19 cup holders and boasts nearly twice as much towing capacity as the company’s popular Outback model, a crossover wagon.

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Ball holders 

I took the Drudge links and the Breitbart reports with a grain of salt regarding NFL viewership -- both sources have agendas. However, today The WSJ is reporting: NFL Ratings Fall at Faster Pace. Average audience for a game fell 9.7% to 14.9 million, but league says NFL programming still accounted for 33 of top 50 programs on TV in 2017.

The decline in TV ratings for National Football League games accelerated in the recently completed 2017 regular season, though NFL games remain among the most-watched programming on television.

The average audience for a game was 14.9 million this season, down 9.7% compared with 16.5 million viewers for the 2016 regular season, according to Nielsen. That is a steeper decline than the 8% viewership erosion last year.

A variety of potential explanations have been cited for the ratings woes. Some viewers have said they were turned off after some players knelt during the national anthem to protest against social injustice. President Donald Trump has also criticized the protests.

Television executives acknowledge that the protests had a part in the ratings decline, but they say overexposure of NFL programming is the primary cause. The NFL has increased the number of Thursday night games in recent years and added early morning Sunday games played in London.

Whatever. All I know is that I have a lot more personal time now that I have NFL-free Sundays and Mondays.