Commercials

Peco Energy Co.'s commercial customers who have not shopped for an alternative electric supplier might want to reconsider that strategy. The Philadelphia utility announced Tuesday that its electricity prices for commercial customers would increase between 9.4 percent and 12.6 percent on July 1. Peco's commodity charge, which accounts for about two-thirds of a typical customer's bill, will increase sharply to reflect the higher price of...

ATLANTIC CITY - While national lawmakers continue a four-decade-old debate on whether seat belts are a good idea on buses, Joe Spinelli's commercial bus inspection unit from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission is taking steps to keep passengers and motorists safe - through surprise checks. "It's one of those jobs where you never really know how many accidents you've prevented, or how many people you've actually saved," Spinelli said. Last month, though, there was no doubt when a Virginia-registered tour bus that apparently had been driven across four states to Atlantic City was taken out of service after a random inspection.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - An armed group trying to install Ivory Coast's internationally recognized president has surrounded a bunker the country's strongman refuses to leave, saying they will wait for him to come out. Entrenched incumbent Laurent Gbagbo remained defiant Thursday, even after air strikes hammered his military bases and his residence, where he is holed up with his wife inside a subterranean tunnel. Via a spokesman in Europe, the ruler continued to insist he had won November's election and stressed he would never leave the country he has ruled for the last 10 years.

Larry Alten, 76, who headed a Philadelphia advertising agency in the 1980s, died of melanoma on Sunday, Feb. 13, at Boca Raton (Fla.) Medical Center. Mr. Alten lived in Northeast Philadelphia and spent winters in Boca Raton. A 1984 Inquirer Magazine profile of the Philadelphia clothes designers Pearl and Albert Nipon reported that Mr. Alten's agency "helps to determine how the Nipons will look in, say, the New York Times Sunday Magazine's biannual fashion issue. " A daughter, Abby Schwartz, recalled in biographical notes that "some of his most successful print campaigns for the Nipons involved placing the designers and models in unusual settings.

This whole product placement thing has gotten way out of hand. Jimmy Kimmel opens every show with a pitch for some product - from beer to toilet paper to identity-theft protection. Yes, it's couched in humor, but that's just applesauce to cover the taste of the aspirin. The brand is always prominently displayed. Then he goes to a full slate of traditional commercials. When he comes back, now he's added a segment devoted to the Ford Focus Rally, a cross-country race. Jimmy always takes a sly approach to covering it, but it's still a lightly camouflaged car commercial.

First it was Helen Thomas. Then it was Rick Sanchez. And now it's Juan Williams. All were fired or pressured to resign because of controversial comments they made away from their places of employment. Williams' case illustrates the difficulty of trying to blend fact-based analysis with what's been called opinion-tainment. It was wrong for National Public Radio to allow Williams to appear on Fox News as a commentator and then cancel his contract because it disagreed with his opinion. NPR decided to fire Williams after he said in a discussion with Bill O'Reilly, "I mean, look, Bill.

The governor's race entered an aggressive new phase Wednesday afternoon about the time Pennsylvanians came home from work or school and turned on their local TV news. Out came a pair of campaign commercials by Democrat Dan Onorato assailing his GOP rival, Tom Corbett, as a budget-buster, a property-tax-raiser, and a fleet-car abuser, not to mention a candidate who had insulted laid-off workers. For the record, the first negative ads of the 2010 gubernatorial race came 34 days - just under five weeks - before the Nov. 2 election.

What will it take to get big private construction projects started again around Philadelphia? Last week's sale of the 53-story former Bell Atlantic headquarters tower at 1717 Arch St., to Brandywine Realty Trust , for just $129 million, or $125 per square foot, could prove a good deal for Brandywine when the office market revives years from now. But it wasn't priced to inspire confidence for anyone hoping to build soon. The last high steel hung in that neighborhood, Liberty Property Trust's Comcast Center , cost $500 million, or $400 a square foot, in the mid-2000s.

THE SHOWS on television are asinine. So are the commercials. There, I've said it. I feel better about myself now. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that stupidity rules the airwaves. Most television fare is so repetitive, so sex-driven, so lowbrow, that you can close your eyes and narrate the show even before it comes on. There will be booties, there will be breasts, and the breast and booty-bearers will eventually pick a fight over something that a 5-year-old could successfully mediate.