Daily Record from Morristown, New Jersey • Page 22

B6 Daily Record, Morris County, N.J. Tuesday, March 12, 1996 Markets yesterday NYSE Diary 11 0.55 CLOSE 5,581 NYSE A4 Advances: 1,588 Declines: 907 Unchanged: 636 Total issues: 3,131 Total volume: 537,884,760 CLOSE 343 NASDAQ 16.77 AMEX 3.22 CLOSE 561 CLOSE 1,081 CM SO MUSS $800M TKR transfer brewing By Ron Day Daily Record Cable company deal would give Tele-Communications full control panies and that Knight-Ridder is not, leaving because of losses. Executives and industry experts acknowledge the marriage of a cable and newspaper company can often be rocky. Although a cable company's success is measured by cash flow, newspaper corporations are judged on earnings per share. Analysts and shareholders "may have found it difficult to accurately judge Knight-Ridder's value, and' its stock may be undervalued, they say.

Both Knight Ridder and TCI are publicly traded. TKR is not. "That equation is difficult to explain to a board of directors," Miller said. In another example of a newspaper selling its cable holdings, the Times Mirror New York, last year sold its cable division to Cox Cable San Diego. Knight-Ridder and TKR say the proposed terms of payment to TCI have not been established.

Acquiring TKR Cable would be the latest in a series of big purchases by TCI. Knight-Ridder, which plans to aban don the cable television business, could also seek better terms from other buyers interested in acquiring cable properties, one source said. Knight-Ridder Inc. is negotiating the sale of its $800 million stake in TKR Cable Co. to industry leader Tele-Communications its partner in the venture, officials said.

TKR, the primary cable operator in Morris County following its March 1 purchase of Sammons Communications, would not change its operations significantly if TCI buys Knight-Ridder's 50 percent stake in the company, one executive said. The deal would make TCI sole owner of TKR. TCI is actively involved in strategic planning of our operations," TKR Vice President of Finance Bill Mitchell said yesterday in a telephone interview from the company's Warren headquarters. "There is very little we've done that hasn't been approved by TCI." Knight-Ridder, Miami which owns 31 daily newspapers including the Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer follows other midsize cable operators beating an exit from the field, a company spokesman said. As cable and telephone companies begin to compete in the wake of sweeping regulatory reforms, big companies with the financial power to build advanced systems have bought out the smaller companies unable to compete, experts said.

"We are not a large player in the industry, and this is becoming an industry of large players," said Knight-Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon in Miami. The $800 million figure is based on recent industry sales, where subscribers were valued at $2,000 each. TKR paid about $235 million for the Morris County system based on the same formula. TCI, Denver, is the nation's largest cable operator, with 14 million customers. Although TKR's customer base is minuscule by comparison it has 745,000 customers in New Jersey, New York and Kentucky, including 108,000 in Morris County it is striving to remain a strong competitor by investing in new, advanced equipment and services.

"You need to be in a position to compete strongly in certain markets said Rich D'Amato, spokesman for the National Cable Television Association, a Washington D.C. -based industry association with 80,000 members. TKR has built an interactive cable system to serve its central New Jersey customers and has taken the first steps to build a similar two-way system in Morris County. Company executives claim the two-way system which enables communication between company and customer will allow it to offer Internet access and, eventually, telephone service. They have said the new system should be completed in Morris County in late 1997 at a cost of $75 million.

TKR executives said the joint venture undertaken in 1982 with the purchase of Cross County Cable in Warren has been profitable to the parent com CoreStates merger OK'd by Justice Department The Justice Department approved the merger of CoreStates Financial which has a branch in Whippany, and Meridian Bancorp. The deal still requires approval from the Federal Reserve. Bayer's Parsippany-based Consumer Care Division sold to products with combined sales of about $30 million Stri-Dex, an acne ment, and Dairy Ease, a food supplement for the lactose intolerant to Blistex in Oak Brook, 111., in order to focus on its core businesses. The North Jersey Blood Center, which has a regional donor center in Parsippany, will change its name to The Blood Center of New Jersey. Parsippany-based Days Inns of America has signed a master license agreement with Compa-nia Topasio to develop its first hotels in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Boston Market, which has three Morris County outlets in Chatham, Rockaway and Succasunna, is opening a fourth on Route 10 in East Hanover on Friday. Bell Atlantic said it would use Sprint's network to provide its own long distance service in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas if regulators in those states approve its filing to provide that service. First Union received the Corporate Award for the Advancement of Women from the National Council of Women for policies that support women or men with family responsibilities. DKB Partners is the new name of the or-ristown advertising and public relations company formerly known as McQueeny Davis Kohm Partners. Morristown-based New Jersey Monthly magazine reported a 15 percent increase in advertising sales last year and a 15 percent rise in circulation to 94,452 over the past two years.

Three out of five companies were sued by an employee last year, according to a survey by the law firm of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler Krupman which has an office in Morristown. to offer discounts with new WorldNet js mi Twenty-six New Jersey companies includ I 1 '111 MARTY LEDERHANDLERAssociated Press Traders work feverishly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Small investors' optimism helped push the Dow up more than 110 points. Small investors help keep Dow from falling further The day after Since 1988, the Dow Jones industrial average has shown that what goes down will come back up quickly. How Wall Street has rebounded from some of its major point drops: ing Lifelines Technology in Morris Plains and Sonic Environmental Systems in Parsippany received a total of more than $116.6 million in venture capital funds in the fourth quarter of 1995, according to Price Waterhouse.

Beneficial with administrative offices in Peapack-Gladstone, is teaming with Kmart to test a Kmart credit card in 11 cities later this month and expand it nationally in August. Caldor plans to open six new stores including one in Edgewater, Bergen County and to close 12 underperforming stores in New York and Massachusetts, if the bankruptcy court approves. Sales of new homes unexpectedly jumped 4.2 percent in January despite the blizzard and bitter cold in parts of the country and consumer concerns over the economy. Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, which last month stopped making Acthar-brand ACTH gel the primary antiseizure medicine for sick infants said it would begin to make the drug again in the wake of a critical shortage. Doctors can get emergency ACTH by calling (800) 798-7425.

The SBA will hold a free Community Assistance Seminar on SBA loan programs and business counseling services on March 26 from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Picatinny Arsenal, Rockaway Township. Call (908) 689-9620 if you plan to attend. Pfizer hosted tours of its manufacturing and research and development facilities in Parsippany for more than 400 local sixth-grade students to help them understand what it takes to pursue careers in science and mathematics. Hot Country WHCY-FM in Blairstown, which can be heard in parts of Morris County, has been purchased by Nassau Broadcasting Partners in Princeton from Clearview Broadcasting in New York.

How to reach us: Ron Stepneski, Business Editor, (201) 428-6650, Daily Record, 629 Parsippany Road, Parsippany, N.J. 07054. Our e-mail address is 75141 By Rob Wells Associated Press will offer discounted rates for America Online, the nation's largest online service, to people who sign up for WorldNet the new Internet access service being launched this week, officials said. "This is the first integrated consumer offer between a leading online service and a major telecommunications provider offering Internet access," said chairman Robert E. Allen.

plans to launch WorldNet Thursday offering five free hours of service a month to customers although the AOL access will not be available until early summer, a spokesman said. Officials declined to announce how much the AOL service would be discounted yesterday. It normally costs $9.95 for the first five hours and $2.95 for each additional hour. "With we will be able to leverage the most trusted brand in communicaitions with the fastest growing brand in cyberspace, resulting in tremendous growth of this new medium," said Steve Case, chairman of Virginia-based America Online. Like WorldNet, America Online offers access to the Internet but it also offers 14 original information channels, ranging from personal finance to news and travel, said America Online spokeswoman Cindy Harvey.

Case said the venture will help his company, with 5 million subscribers, to reach the 89 percent of U.S. households who don't currently subscribe to an online service. AOL's software will be distributed with the WorldNet software, officials said. Another bonus: America Online can attract, more users through WorldNet, which features high speed 28.8 modems, without spending the millions to expand its own network, said Wester. About 165,000 people have requested computer software for WorldNet, which will provide computer access to the Internet over any telephone line, said spokesman Mike Miller.

1 It can be ordered by dialing 1-800-WorldNet although the crush of initial orders has produced a backlog that will take several weeks to fill, said spokesman Ritch Blasi. America Online's offer on WorldNet will promote its brand name to a broader audience, a key factor in attracting advertising dollars, said Greg Wester, research director for the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm. "You want as many people as you can to get to your content," Wester said, referring to the electronic magazines, discussion groups and games on AOL. Building the brand name is critical, he said, because it gives the company a ready audience regardless of changes technology. i i Intel, Microsoft to improve voice, video on Internet NEW YORK (AP) Intel Corp.

and Microsoft Corp. announced a plan yesterday to simplify how a EC handles voice and video communication on the Internet, hoping to provide some common ground for a series pf competing technologies in the market. Separately, Microsoft and Hughes Electronics Corp. said they were working on a way for PCs to receive TV and audio programs along with data from Hughe's' DirecTV service. It would use the same pizza pie-shaped satellite dishes that went on sale for TV reception in 1994.

A Hughes executive said the companies aim to make the new data reception available by the end of the year. 5 By contrast, the work being done by Intel arid Microsoft is for two-way communication. agreed on a common technical specification for placing voice calls or transferring video through the Internet or a similarly designed data network without regarti for the kind of computer or software used. Several small companies now have various incompatible technologies on the market. For instance, 'a person who uses software by VocalTec Inc.

for Internet voice communication cannot talk to a person with a PC that uses software by Quarterdeck Inc. Day Day of Day before crash after 110.55 Day of crash I Mar. 8, 5650 1996 5,470.45 jj 5450 Dec. 18, 5200 1995 5,075.21 5050 Nov. 15, 3100 1991 2,943.20 2900 Oct.

13, 2800 1989 2,569.29 2550 Apr. 14, 2150 1988 2,005.64 2000 Jan. 8, -050 1988 1,911.39 1900 Johnson didn't buy, but he didn't sell either. The day's improvement gave him the confidence to leave his money invested in mutual funds and bonds, though he kept a close watch on his portfolio. The ability of individual investors to made such prescient investment decisions at first blush seems unusual.

After all, Wall Street's pros have at their disposal mountains of data, an army of researchers and the best technology money can buy. It has, however, become something of an embarrassing fact. "The pros are taking courage from the really smart guys the small investors," said Peter J. Canelo, chief investment strategist at Nat West Securities, a brokerage firm. "Ever since '87, the small investors have been right about the market," he continued.

"The pros have sold at the bottom and the individuals have been strong buyers in most major market sell-offs." The stock market's plunge Friday was not altogether surprising. The Dow average alone surged more than 33 percent last year and was up 10 percent this year before the violent sell-off. Predictions of a pullback have been rampant. Many Wall Street analysts worked over the weekend to discern whether the pullback was a one-time blip or the begirining of a "correction," a loosely defined term meaning a retreat in prices that allows an overall advance to continue. Wall Street generally defines a correction as a decline in stock prices of 10 percent or so.

The Dow's drop Friday to 5,470.45, it's third-worst point decline in history, was nowhere near such a plunge. By Farrell Kramer Associated Press NEW YORK While Wall Street's professional traders were behind the stock market's furious sell-off Friday, individuals like Martha Paluga helped jolt it back to life. Paluga, a bakery owner from Chicago, stopped by a Fidelity Investments office in Manhattan during a business trip yesterday as the Dow Jones industrial average was on its way to a powerful 110.55 point advance, the third-biggest point gain in its history. The business owner had heard over the weekend about the Dow's week-ending 171.24 point plunge and decided to put some money into the market. "I want to take advantage of the fact that the market was down," Paluga, 34, said as she waited to buy a few mutual funds.

"Wall Street is always going up and down." While individuals alone can't move the market, they can give it a good nudge. Their optimism yesterday led the Dow average, the stock market's most widely followed index, 2 percent higher to close at 5,581.00, an impressive rebound after falling 3 percent Friday. Treasury bond prices, which posted their worst performance in almost 20 years Friday, also bounced back as the new week began. Kicking off all the trouble last week was a government report showing the nation created 705,000 jobs in February, the biggest monthly gain since 1983. Traders worried the news would prompt the Federal Reserve to put off cutting interest rates in the near future.

Lower rates help boost corporate Money rates Prime lending 8 25 Money market funds Fed discount 5.00 Money mutual funds 4.79 Federal funds 5.3125 Banks, 2.75 Associated Press profits and make stocks and bonds more attractive than other interest-bearing investments, like savings accounts. While the pros on Wall Street sold on the news Friday, individuals like Russell Johnson, a 72-year-old concert hall and opera house designer, didn't get the details until they read the next morning's newspaper. "Saturday morning, I felt pretty sure today would be a good day," said Johnson, also at the Fidelity Investments office in Manhattan. Treasury security rates 3-month T-bill discount 4 95 6-month T-bill discount 5.00 30-year bond 6.63 Dollar, gold prices Dollar in yerk $105.41 Gold (ounce) $395.70 Sources: HSH Associates. Tel-erate Systems.

IBCDonoghue's Money Fund Report. Bank Rate Monitor. Associated Press Mortgages 30-year fixed (N.J.) 7.05 15-year fixed (N 7 57 1-year adjustable (N.J.) .5.37 1 -year Tres. ARM index .5.15 1 1th district ARM index 5.033 Auto loans (N.J.) 3- year new car 8.3 1 4- year new car 8.51 3- year used car 9.83 4- year used car 9 91.