The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 129

INSIDE SECTION Orlando Sentinel I Buyer beware: Online auction fraud just a click away, H2 Market Week H2 Your Job H4 Innp SECTION SUNDAY DECEMBER 3, 2000 BRYANT QUINN ,1 STAYING AHEAD 1 n2 I Companies do good for what price? Which comes first equipment or programming? By CHRISTOPHER BOYD OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Drop by Best Buy or Circuit City on a Saturday afternoon and you probably will see a clutch of mesmerized technophiles in the television department, looking longingly into the screen of a high-definition television set. For most people, the price tag is sufficiently off-putting. Other hurdles face those willing to pay the price of admission: Few stations are broadcasting digital signals, and only a handful of shows are available in the new high-definition format. Despite the obstacles, the question isn't whether digital Suddenly, the "social-conscience" market is hot. You see more and more businesses linking themselves to a do-good cause.

As a form of advertising, helping a charity isn't expensive. The companies hope that their contributions will burnish their image, raising sales and improving customer loyalty. Social activists have already shown that they'll carry their values into the marketplace. The socially conscious mutual funds that invest in "clean and responsible" companies now control $12.8 billion in assets, according to Morningstar. Presumably, these same activists might go out of their way to buy boots, jackets and cosmetics from companies that identify with an appealing cause.

The Internet is becoming an especially fertile field for what's being called "cause marketing." Around 50 million social activists are on the Web, according to Cone the Boston-based consulting firm. They're using it to pool information about their concerns, which might link them to shop with sympathetic companies. Cause marketing marks a change in corporate attitudes. In the 1980s, many business people felt that corporations shouldn't give to charity. Corporate money was shareholder money.

It should be used only to pay dividends or reinvest in the business. In the 1990s, however, some companies started to view social activism as a form of corporate investment. If looks good to do good, and may give a company a m(M Cl i television will supplant today's analog but when. Getting there will be amazingly costly. Consumers will spend billions of dollars replacing their current TV sets with new ones.

Television networks and their affiliates will make huge investments in new equipment to complete the switch. There is very little product available in the high-definition format, and practically no one owns the fancy digital sets." JIM HEDLUND, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LOCAL TELEVISION STATIONS If: competitive edge. In a recent report, Cone cited several examples: -ri i .1 1 ...1 Only about 160 of the nation's 1,600 commercial television stations are broadcasting digital signals; the remainder have until May 2002 to join the fold. Stations will continue broadcasting in both analog and digital until at least 2006, when analog broadcasts are scheduled to end. In Central Florida, Fox's WOFL Channel 35 added a digital signal earlier this year.

WESH Channel 2 and WKMG Channel 6 are building an antenna that will bring NBC and CBS to the digital mix early next year. ABC affiliate WFTV Channel 9 also is building a digital tower, which should be operating by year's end. Warner WKCF Channel 18 will switch to digital early next year, PLEASE SEE DIGITAL, H6 JOHN RAOUXORLANDO SENTINEL Going up. Workers assemble a digital TV tower in east Orange County near Christmas. WESH Channel 2 and WKMG Channel 6 are building the antenna so they can transmit digital-quality shows from their networks early next year.

Going digital A The digital TV era has dawned, but the cqnversion from ubiquitous analog will take years. Here how the two systems differ. 4 1 FOX Satellite service Digital television Broadcast 0f5 network affiliates in Orlando area, only 1 (WOFL Sends digital-only signal. Analog TVs Channel 35-Fox) is transmitting require a I 1 Analog television The current standard, with sets costing from less than $100 to more than $1 ,000 Screen width-to-height ratio: 12:9. Whether through able or antenna, reception can be distorted, (s, Digital signal can be received for clearer reception, but ft must be converted.into analog (through a converter box).

Cable service Sends analog and digital signals. Analog TVs require a converter box for digital reception. Premium charges for digital service. More than 400 channels available in digital; fewer than 100 in analog. converter box.

About 500,000 sets sold in the United States, with costs ranging from about $2,500 to nearly $10,000 HDTV screen width-to-heignt ratio: all sets now sold are designed for high-definition programming. Digital signal produces perfect image, eliminating "ghosts" and static, and higher-quality that rival movie theaters. DANA A. FASANOORLANDO SENTINEL Hundreds of channels available. a digital signal.

The others expect to convert late this year or early 2001. To get digital signal without cable or satellite service, a rooftop antenna is required. me i miuei umu sells rustic clothes and leather goods, supports City Year, an organization that encourages local community service. Avon promotes a Worldwide Fund for Women's Health, and gives special emphasis to fighting breast cancer. And Hewlett Packard recently began World e-Inclusion, for bringing technology to rural villages.

A second way businesses seek customers is by making charitable donations in order to get you to read their ads. Takewww.greatergood.com. It operates several free-donation sites to fight hunger, rain forest destruction, breast cancer, AIDS in children and vitamin-deficiency diseases. If you click on, say, www.thehunger site.com, one cup of staple food should be sent to an organization that distributes food to the hungry. The donations are made by advertisers, whose banners come up for you to read.

As usual online, you're in a trust-me game. Greatergood does no audits to see if the donations actually went through. A third way that businesses use charity today is through for-profit Web sites for people who want to donate money online. You charge the charitable donation to your credit card and get an e-mailed receipt. These donations are deductible on your tax return, if you itemize deductions.

At one such site, www.give-nation.com, you can donate to one of 140 listed charities. The charities have been paying between $2.50 and $5 per contribution, depending on how much you give. Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see why donors need commercially related sites. There's pressure for profits, with no accountability. And it's not clear what happens to donations in transit, if the site fails.

Jane Bryant Quinn's column syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Write to her care of the Orlando Sentinel, P.O. Box 211, Orlando, FL 32802. SOURCE: Sentinel research Rising bankruptcy pace is worrisome to analysts King's online horror tale fails to scare up readers By Y0CHI J. DREAZEN WALL STREET JOURNAL When the nation's bankruptcy rate started to drop last year, John Garza felt the effect almost immediately.

Business at his bankruptcy law firm in suburban Maryland slowed so much that he was forced to let half of his 15 attorneys go, and several of the survivors quit in frustration over their reduced earnings. Garza, for his part, had time for other pursuits. "I played a ton of golf," he said. These days, tee times are down and court time is up. The caseload of Garza's firm rose more than 15 percent last month alone, leading him to hire a new attorney.

"We're like vultures perched on the telephone pole, waiting for the disaster so that we can eat," he said of his firm, which handles both personal and business bankruptcies. "Well, the vultures are about to spread their wings." With interest rates up and the economy slowing, many households are discovering that their bills for years of torrid spending are coming due just as they are ill prepared to pay them. As a result, growing numbers of Americans are seeking court protection from their creditors. Personal bankruptcies, as measured by a 12-week moving average of filings, have increased nearly 10 percent since January. The moving please see BANKRUPTCY, HS By DAVID D.KIRKPATRICK NEW YORK TIMES Publishers 1, authors 0.

Five months ago, horror writer Stephen King struck a blow for authors' independence, electing to forgo the help of a publisher and sell a new serial novel directly to his readers in digital form over the Internet. Titled The Plant, the novel tells the story of a predatory vine that terrorizes a small paperback publishing house and, as publishers strain to discern the future of digital books, it spooked them in more ways than one. PLEASE see KING, H5 STEPHENKING.COM i Coming Monday: 6-year-old game maker Tiburon scores again in era.