THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 10, 1995 TAG: 9504080171
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: TALK OF THE TOWN
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Gasoline usually costs more as spring turns into summer. Tourist travel boosts prices. Summer '95 gasoline consumption will outpace summer '94 only by about 1.6 percent, analysts say, but fuel prices might rise faster.
Energy analysts predict spot market gasoline could rise 8 percent by Labor Day to 56 cents a gallon (not counting taxes). Prices later could spike higher.
E. Al Breitenbach of Denver, immediate past president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, said the growing Pacific Rim nations need more oil, and two-thirds of the proved oil reserves are Middle Eastern.
Moreover, recessions eased and oil demand rose in Japan and Europe. Europe will ship less fuel across the Atlantic.
Given those factors, Breitenbach said experts predict a significant world oil price increase by late '95 or early '96.
Iraq clouds the forecast. If the United States ends the embargo, Iraqi oil exports could lower world prices.
Cable subscribers would be able to buy the converter boxes that sit on top of their TV sets if a bill co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Richmond, becomes law. Currently, consumers pay a monthly fee to use the boxes, which are owned by cable companies.
In a story in the trade magazine Multichannel News, Bliley argued that letting consumers choose which box to buy would remove a ``straitjacket on technological development . . . There's no incentive for improvement, because there's no competition - and prices are kept artificially high.''
The article didn't mention that Circuit City Stores Inc., the nation's largest specialty consumer-electronics retailer, also happens to be based in Richmond, Bliley's home district. Circuit City would likely be a major seller of the boxes.
Bliley chairs a House telecommunications subcommittee. His sponsorship of the bill, along with the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, makes it likely the bill will pass the House. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain.
Speaking of tourism, the Virginia Waterfront campaign airs next week. Thirty-second TV ads will appear on cable and network affiliates in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington.
Jonathan Nelson, chairman of Narragansett Capital Inc., has made a bundle of money buying and selling companies. He's even made money in the rough-and-tumble world of broadcasting, where station prices often gyrate wildly.
But he's unlikely to crow about his last big investment in TV: the purchase in 1989 of WTKR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Hampton Roads, and WPRI-TV, the ABC station in Providence, R.I., where Nelson's broad-based investment empire is headquartered.
Narragansett paid Knight-Ridder Inc. $150 million for the two stations. Six years later, it's parting with them for $159 million - WTKR to the New York Times Co. for $76 million, WPRI to CBS Inc. for $83 million. ``Talk about the skin of your teeth,'' said one Hampton Roads broadcasting veteran.
Nelson is paying the price for buying at a peak. He hoped that the next time station prices shot up, as they did in the last year, they'd shoot much higher. by CNB