YEAR IN REVIEW 1997: SPORTS-AND-GAMES: WRESTLING

WRESTLING: Sumo. Yokozuna (grand champion) Takanohana dominated sumo wrestling in 1996, winning four of the six annual tournaments and finishing as runner-up in a fifth, but he was sidelined in the final tourney in November by an intestinal infection and a torn muscle. The Hatsu basho (New Year's tournament) in Tokyo was won by ozeki Takanonami in a play-off with his stablemate Takanohana after both finished with 14-1 records. Takanohana won the Haru basho (spring tournament) in Osaka with a 14-1 mark and then triumphed with a 14-1 performance in the Natsu basho (summer tournament). Then in the Nagoya basho in July, Takanohana emerged victorious again with a 13-2 record for his third straight victory. In September at the Aki basho (autumn tournament) in Tokyo, the 24-year-old yokozuna had a perfect 15-0 triumph--his fourth consecutive championship and his 14th overall yusho (title). With Takanohana sidelined in the year's final basho in November at Fukuoka, a play-off developed between five contenders with 11-4 records. Ozeki Musashimaru eventually won the yusho, his second championship. (ANDY ADAMS) Media and Publishing TELEVISION The television industry focused its plans for expansion on digital pay television in 1996. Old players and relative newcomers formed partnerships that were ostensibly aimed at sharing digital-TV development costs. In the U.S., cable TV stocks foundered despite a marked increase in subscribers to basic cable. Organization. Europe's biggest pay-TV operators--France's Canal Plus SA, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) Group PLC, and Germany's Bertelsmann AG--aligned forces. BSkyB later withdrew and joined Germany's Kirch Group. Canal Plus acquired Nethold NV, a pay-TV venture in The Netherlands, to create one of the largest television companies, serving 8.5 million subscribers in France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, and Germany. Nethold's parent companies, Richemont SA of Switzerland and MIH Holdings Ltd. of South Africa, acquired 6.1 million shares of Canal Plus and $45 million. MIH retained former Nethold operations in South Africa, the Middle East, Greece, and Cyprus. Canal Plus and Nethold signed an agreement with DirecTV, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp.'s Hughes Electronics Group, and with Grupo Prisa (Spain) and Cisneros Group (Venezuela) to offer digital TV to Spain and Venezuela. Galaxy Latin America was launched in both Brazil and Mexico. Nethold NV's Benelux unit merged with TeleSelect, a joint pay-TV venture of two leading operators of cable television networks, Philips Electronics NV and Royal PTT Nederland NV. Together the alliance claimed a near monopoly of pay-TV in The Netherlands. PTT Nederland, the parent company of Casema BV, was the largest cable-TV operator, with access to 60% of Dutch households. Philips Electronics, together with United International Holdings Inc. of Denver, Colo., owned UPC, the Amsterdam-based cable operator in The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Israel. Bertelsmann and Deutsche Telekom AG pulled out of Multimedia Betriebs GmbH digital pay-TV consortium. Other members were Canal Plus, German commercial broadcaster RTL, and public broadcasters ARD and ZDF. The rival Kirch Group began broadcasting digital pay-TV by satellite in July. Deutsche Telekom, a state-run telephone utility with a monopoly of the cable TV infrastructure, emerged as Europe's single largest broadcaster by becoming an independent distributor of digital-TV programs. Bertelsmann remained Europe's largest free-TV broadcaster by merging with Compagnie Luxembourgeoise pour la Tldiffusion SA (CLT). The German Federal Cartel Office referred the Bertelsmann-CLT pact to the European Commission, which had blocked other mergers--among them, the CLT, Endemol Entertainment BV, and VNU NV (a Dutch publisher) merger; the merger between Deutsche Telekom AG, Kirch Group, and Bertelsmann to provide cable TV in Germany; and the Nordic Satellite Distribution alliance. CLT later pulled out of its plans with Bertelsmann to develop the German Club RTL channel into a digital pay-TV channel, deciding to focus instead on Premiere, another pay-TV venture. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was tried for corruption on January 17 in Milan. The owner of Fininvest (which included three TV networks and several publications), Berlusconi was accused of having bribed members of the Italian financial police in order to avoid tax inspection. Hungary's media law, passed in December 1995 after four years of political dispute, paved the way for the privatization of two national TV stations. According to the regulatory body, Orszagos Radio es Televizio Testulet (ORTT), only consortia were to bid, no single company would be allowed more than a 49% stake, and Hungarians would hold a minimum of 26%. Luxembourg's CLT expressed interest in the prospective acquisition, having already started TV stations in Poland and Finland. Malaysia's Measat Broadcast Network Systems began operating 22 TV channels and 8 radio channels that could be received via a 60-cm (2-ft)-diameter satellite dish. The Broadcasting Act of 1988 needed an amendment to exempt the Measat satellite dishes from the general ban on such dishes. On July 26 three-year-old Indovision pay-TV began operating under StarTV management following an agreement between Rupert Murdoch and Indovision-owner Peter Gontha in 1995 to launch 15 channels, including several in the Bahasa Indonesian language. Early in 1996 Sir Run Run Shaw, China's most famous filmmaker, sold 6.9% of Hong Kong Television Broadcasts (TVB) Ltd. to British Pearson PLC for $1,290,000,000. On February 8 U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton signed into law the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The first major rewrite of communications law since 1934, the law would permit, among other things, cable TV companies and local telephone companies to compete with one another in offering services. The president and the congressional authors of the measure promised that such competition would yield lower prices, innovative services, and thousands of new high-paying jobs. At the year's end, the promises accompanying the act had not been fulfilled. Telephone and cable companies, which had claimed to be eager to explore new frontiers, discovered significant technological, regulatory, and financial obstacles. Rather than explore possibilities in the telecommunications industry, cable companies spent much of the year looking over their shoulders at direct broadcast satellite (DBS) companies. In May Denver-based EchoStar Communications Corp. joined DirecTV and United States Satellite Broadcasting in offering satellite-to-home TV, an alternative to cable that required a 46-cm (18-in) "dish" antenna and satellite receiver. EchoStar entered the market as a low-cost option, offering dishes for $199 (plus installation) and $19.95 a month for the basic programming package. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and long-distance giant MCI forged yet another DBS venture. ASkyB, as they dubbed their service, would be available in the late 1990s. To make the service more attractive, ASkyB planned to offer not only the usual lineup of cable programming but also local broadcast signals. Partly because of the DBS competition, cable had a miserable year on the stock market. A $100 investment in leading cable stocks on January 1 was worth just $100.89 on November 1, according to the Bloomberg Cable Index. To resuscitate the stocks, cable executives gave assurances that they would follow through with promises to introduce digital-TV technology and high-speed data modems with many of their systems. Digital TV would close the gap with DBS by making room for additional channels and improving the quality of their pictures. With computer owners demanding faster access to the Internet, the modems had the potential to be the lucrative new business cable companies had long sought. There were also during the year an increase in the number of basic cable subscribers, a loosening of federal rate regulations, and increased advertising revenue in the cable industry. According to the Nielsen ratings, cable subscribership rose 2.7% between January and November, topping off at 67 million homes--69% of all TV homes. The growth occurred despite an estimated 7% increase in cable rates. The additional subscribers and higher rates combined to drive up cable subscription revenue nearly 9% to $23.7 billion. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau gave cable investors hope by projecting that cable advertising sales would top $6 billion for 1996, up 13% from the previous year's $5.3 billion. Broadcast TV had a solid year as revenue totaled nearly $35 billion, up 8% over 1995. Taking advantage of relaxed ownership limits in the Telecommunications Act, Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting cut the year's biggest station deal when it purchased the New World Communications Group, Inc., for $2.5 billion. With New World's 10 stations, Fox's portfolio increased to 20 stations and its reach to more than 40% of all homes with TVs, an industry high. Reaching 32% of all TV homes, Westinghouse/CBS was the second largest station group. Complaints about TV programming prompted the federal government to regulate on-screen violence and to mandate educational programs for children. Congressional Democrats inserted a provision in the 1996 Telecommunications Act that required inclusion of so-called V-chip technology in all TV sets within three years. The V-chip would enable parents to adjust their TV sets to black out particular programming. In December the networks announced a rating system--similar to the one used for movies--that they planned to start using early in 1997. The ratings were: TV-Y, suitable for all children; TV-Y7, designed for children 7 and above; TV-G, for general audience; TV-PG, parental guidance suggested; TV-14, parents strongly cautioned; and TV-M, mature audience only. The Clinton administration played a key role in ensuring adoption of Federal Communications Commission rules requiring that TV stations each air at least three hours of educational programming for children every week. Reed Hundt, the Clinton-appointed chairman of the FCC, pressed hard for the rules but was blocked by other commissioners sympathetic to broadcasters' complaints that the rules violated their First Amendment rights. Clinton, who favoured the rules, called for a second summit on children's TV in late July. By the time the second conference was set to begin, however, broadcasters had withdrawn their opposition, and the FCC adopted the proposal within a month. Transportation In the wake of the continued but slow recovery in world trade, governments were cautious in committing themselves to increased investments in the improvement of transportation facilities. Faced with serious budget difficulties, governments were regarding privatization augmented by deregulation and/ or contracting out as important ways of providing both infrastructure and services. Against this background, technical innovations were seen as the best avenues for offering improved service without reducing safety standards. Automakers were looking to technology to develop automated vehicles or "smart" buses that could use "intelligent" highways, while expressway administrators continued to search for ways of introducing and extending politically acceptable mechanisms for collecting tolls. One common theme for those planning transportation facilities was the need to improve the quality of life in urban areas by adopting and conforming to better environmental standards. (JOHN H. EARP)