CINCINNATI (AP) — The country’s addictions epidemic has created a generation of children affected by their parents’ problems, a doctor who works with infants born addicted to heroin told a gathering of experts struggling with the issue Tuesday. The effect includes the physical problems of the addicted newborns and the chaos older children experience as […] Reported by Seattle Times 12 minutes ago.

**

*Next-Generation of Monarch Redefines Data Preparation with Advanced Collaboration and Governance, Enabling Better and Faster Analytics*

BEDFORD, Mass., Nov. 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Datawatch Corporation  (NASDAQ-CM: DWCH ) today announced its strategic vision and product roadmap for making "data socialization" a reality for all business users of self-service data preparation. Currently in beta, the next addition to the Monarch family will include all of the self-service data preparation benefits for which the product is highly regarded, and, in a first, add key attributes common to social media platforms. This powerful combination will enable data scientists, business analysts and even novice business users across a company to search for, share and reuse prepared, managed data to achieve true enterprise collaboration and agility, resulting in better and faster business decisions.

Datawatch invented self-service data preparation. Its Monarch product has been used in more than 40,000 organizations to unlock all data, including "dark data" such as PDF reports, web pages, log files, and streaming and multi-structured data. Capitalizing on the largest installed base of data preparation users and unmatched expertise supporting the largest enterprise deployments, Datawatch is applying its unique experience and market position to now deliver a compelling data socialization roadmap starting this quarter.

* *Introducing Data Socialization* * * *
Social media platforms have dramatically increased end user expectations about the availability and timeliness of information. Users increasingly have these same expectations for business information, regardless of where the data resides or how it's formatted. The roadmap for Datawatch Monarch will deliver data throughout the enterprise with many of these same attributes. Key features will include:

· * *Cloud-Based Data Preparation* *  - Deliver data preparation and access to everyone, everywhere.
· * *Collaboration* * * * - Understand the relevancy of data in relation to how it's utilized by different user roles in the organization (e.g., sales operations or internal auditing); follow key users and data sets; and collaborate to better harness the "tribal knowledge" that too often goes unshared.   
· * *Crowdsourcing -* *  Leverage user ratings, comments and popularity to make better decisions about which data to use.
· * *Information Marketplace* * * * - Browse a centralized catalog of all relevant internal and external data.
· * *Intuitive Search* *  - Search cataloged data, metadata and data preparation models indexed by user, type, application and unique data values to quickly find the right information.
· * *Machine Learning* *  - Benefit from machine learning capabilities, which identify patterns of use and success, perform data quality scoring, suggest relevant sources, and automatically recommend likely data preparation actions based on user persona.
· * *Data Quality and Governance* * * * - Provide sanctioned, curated data sets to promote reuse and consistency. Comprehensive governance features, including data masking, data retention, data lineage and role-based permissions, are necessary to uphold corporate and regulatory compliance and enhance trust in data, analytics processes and results.

"This new, major release is specifically designed to meet the needs of three key constituencies: IT, analysts and information workers," said Jon Pilkington, chief product officer at Datawatch. "The IT team will benefit from required data governance and will be able to deliver more value to a wider variety of business users. Analysts will be more productive, with the ability to acquire and prepare data from any source, and they can now remove all of the redundant work across different silos. And information workers who use data daily to make business decisions, but often lack the technical skills to access and prepare data, will no longer be left out of the process. Our strategic roadmap for data socialization will make the next-generation of Monarch an essential part of the decision-making fabric for all analytical and operational processes." 

* *Product Availability* * * *
The product is in beta release with early adopters. General availability is expected in December 2016.

For more information about Datawatch Monarch, please visit:  http://www.datawatch.com/our-platform/monarch/ .

* *About Datawatch Corporation* *
Datawatch Corporation  (NASDAQ-CM: DWCH ) enables ordinary users to achieve extraordinary results with their data. Only Datawatch can unlock data from the widest variety of sources and prepare it for use in visualization and analytics tools, or for other business processes. When real-time visibility into rapidly changing data is critical, Datawatch also enables users to analyze streaming data, even in the most demanding environments, such as capital markets. Organizations of all sizes in more than 100 countries worldwide use Datawatch products, including 93 of the Fortune 100. The company is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, with offices in New York, London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Singapore and Manila. To learn more about Datawatch or download a free version of its enterprise software, please visit:  www.datawatch.com .

* *Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995* *
Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such statements contained herein, including but not limited to those relating to product performance and viability, are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include the following: rapid technological change; Datawatch's dependence on the introduction of new products and product enhancements and possible delays in those introductions; acceptance of new products by the market, competition in the software industry generally, and in the markets for next generation analytics in particular; and Datawatch's dependence on its principal products, proprietary software technology and software licensed from third parties. Further information on factors that could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated is detailed in various publicly-available documents, which include, but are not limited to, filings made by Datawatch from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to, those appearing in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2015. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of those factors.

© 2016 Datawatch Corporation. Datawatch and the Datawatch logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Datawatch Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Source: Datawatch

Media Contact:
Amanda Beaupre
Marketing Communications Manager, Datawatch Corporation
amanda_beaupre@datawatch.com 
978-275-8387
Twitter: @datawatch
--------------------This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Datawatch Corporation via GlobeNewswire

HUG#2053874 Reported by GlobeNewswire 5 hours ago.

Next-Generation of Monarch Redefines Data Preparation with Advanced Collaboration and Governance, Enabling Better and Faster Analytics BEDFORD, Mass., 2016-11-02 21:06 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dataw... Reported by FinanzNachrichten.de 5 hours ago.

*-- Provides Update on Strategic Review of Alternatives Process --*

BEDFORD, Mass., Nov. 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Datawatch Corporation  (NASDAQ-CM: DWCH ), a leading global provider of self-service data preparation and fast data analytics solutions, today announced that total revenue for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 ended September 30, 2016 was $8.60 million, an increase of 17% from the $7.40 million recorded in the third quarter of fiscal 2016, and an increase of 7% from total revenue of $8.02 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015.   License revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 was $4.76 million, a 30% increase from the $3.67 million recorded in the prior quarter this fiscal year, and a 16% increase from the $4.10 million recorded in the same quarter a year ago.  Deferred revenue as of September 30, 2016 was $9.9 million, compared to $8.6 million as of September 30, 2015. 

Net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 was ($1.9) million, or ($0.16) per diluted share, compared to a net loss of ($2.98) million, or ($0.26) per diluted share, for the year ago period.  Excluding the effects of the non-cash amortization associated with the purchase of certain intellectual property and other intangible assets, and non-cash stock compensation costs, the Company's non-GAAP net loss for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 was ($0.75) million, or ($0.06) per diluted share, compared to a non-GAAP net loss of ($1.70) million, or ($0.15) per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. 

Total revenue for fiscal 2016 was $30.46 million, a 1% increase from revenue of $30.22 million for fiscal 2015.  License revenue for fiscal 2016 was $15.22 million, a 1% decrease compared to $15.30 million for fiscal 2015.  Net loss for 2016 was ($14.63) million, or ($1.24) per diluted share, as compared to a net loss of ($49.79) million or ($4.38) per diluted share, for fiscal 2015, a period that included a non-cash charge for impairment of goodwill of approximately $32 million.  The Company's non-GAAP net loss for fiscal year 2016 was ($7.82) million, or ($0.66) per diluted share, as compared to non-GAAP net loss of ($10.46) million, or ($0.92) per diluted share, for fiscal 2015.

"I am pleased with the improvement in sales execution that we delivered during the fourth fiscal quarter," said Michael A. Morrison, president and chief executive officer of Datawatch.  "We've been laying a foundation for better results through improved execution since we introduced Monarch for self-service data preparation five quarters ago. The organizational changes, new sales processes and heightened forecast discipline introduced by Ken Tacelli, who joined us to become senior vice president of worldwide sales during Q3, combined to produce solid results this past quarter." 

Mr. Morrison continued, "We had a particularly strong quarter with the 'expand' aspect of our 'land and expand' strategy, expanding deployments in 58 'land' customers during the quarter, more than our total expands in the first three quarters of the fiscal year.  We are encouraged by the market reception for our next generation self-service data preparation solution, both from our heritage customers as well as from many new customers.   We are seeing specific interest in Monarch being deployed as the core of analytic solutions that deliver measurable ROI in industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail and the public sector."

Mr. Morrison concluded, "During the fourth fiscal quarter, we announced two major, innovative product releases that allow us to address the evolving Big Data and fast data analytics needs of business analysts, data scientists and IT users.  The latest release of Monarch includes support for additional data sources, including Google Analytics and Salesforce, new export integrations, including Microsoft Power BI, and advanced data preparation features for very large data sets.  The latest release of Panopticon is the most significant since the original launch of the product, and expands upon Datawatch's approach to fast data analytics with a Web client architecture that supports the most challenging real-time visualization requirements for data in motion."   

James L. Eliason, chief financial officer, commented, "We reduced our non-GAAP operating loss in the fiscal fourth quarter to $751,000, the first time our quarterly non-GAAP loss was less than $1 million in the past 12 quarters.  We continue to manage our expenses toward our goal of achieving operating profitability, and we continue to manage our balance sheet in a disciplined manner, with deferred revenue at an all-time high, accounts receivables in good shape, and $28 million in cash and equivalents."

*Transition to Subscription Sales*

In the third quarter of fiscal 2015, Datawatch changed its pricing practice for Monarch, transacting the majority of small volume orders on a subscription basis only, rather than a perpetual license basis.  The total value over the life of the subscription is recorded as bookings, and only the ratable portion of the annual subscription fee earned in the quarter sold is treated as revenue in that quarter.  The balance is deferred and recorded as revenue over the life of the subscription.    This lowers current reported revenue, but builds deferred revenue that will be recorded as revenue over the life of the subscription.  Since subscription sales include maintenance, current maintenance revenue will be reduced somewhat as a result.  

*Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2016 Business Highlights*

· Harley Davidson, one of the most recognized brands for custom, cruiser and touring motorcycles, became one of the first joint customers of Datawatch Monarch and IBM Watson Analytics for self-service data preparation and automated data analysis, automatic visualization and predictive analysis.
· Datawatch increased its presence in state and local governments, with sales of Monarch for self-service data preparation to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Jacksonville Transportation Authority, California Department of Housing, State of Michigan and New York State Office of the Comptroller.
· Datawatch extended its reach in the United States Air Force with expanded sales of Monarch to Hill Air Force Base, Bagram Airfield, Randolph Air Force Base, Minot Air Force Base and Creech Air Force Base.
· HSBC, one of the world's largest banking and financial institutions, extended its commitment to Datawatch by selecting Panopticon for surveillance visual analytics.
· Datawatch expanded self-service data preparation deployments for analytic solutions in healthcare at leading institutions including Memorial Sloan-Kettering, New England Baptist, Cook Children's Hospital, Health First, Baptist Health and Northwell Health.

*Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2016 Financial Highlights*

· Cash and short-term investments were $28.0 million at September 30, 2016, down from $28.8 million at June 30, 2016 and $35.2 million at September 30, 2015.
· Gross margin (excluding IP amortization expense) for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 was 92%, as compared to 90% for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015.
· Days sales outstanding were 68 days at September 30, 2016, compared to 75 days at September 30, 2015.
· There were 8 six-figure deals in the fourth quarter this fiscal year, the same as in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015.
· The average deal size in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 was $36,000, a decrease from $50,000 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015, primarily due to the increase in the number of 'land' deals year over year.
· Deferred revenue reached $9.9 million at September 30, 2016, the highest in the company's history, and a 15% increase from $8.6 million at September 30, 2015.

*Strategic Review of Alternatives Process Update*

Datawatch also announced today that the Special Committee of its Board of Directors recently concluded the previously-announced review of its strategic alternatives with the assistance of its financial advisor, Canaccord Genuity, and its legal counsel, Choate, Hall & Stewart. 

Following a comprehensive review process commenced in July 2016, the Special Committee recommended to the full Board that it was in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders for Datawatch to execute on an updated and enhanced strategic plan for fiscal 2017 as an independent company, and the Board unanimously accepted the Committee's recommendation. 

"We engaged in a thorough process and carefully considered a wide variety of alternatives," said Michael A. Morrison, president and chief executive officer of Datawatch. "At the conclusion of this process, and considering the improved results the company reported in its fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, we believe we can best maximize long-term shareholder value by pursuing a new plan designed to capitalize on the growth opportunity in the market. We intend to build upon the recent successes we have demonstrated within the overall self-service data preparation space, capitalizing on the competitive differentiation of our market-leading technology and the next generation Monarch server for 'data socialization', the vision for which we announced today, while exerting tight control over expenses to achieve our target of reaching operating profitability by the end of fiscal 2017."

Added Richard D. Osborne, chairman of the Board and of the special committee, "The Special Committee and its advisors looked at many strategic options, but in the end, we believe that the company's enhanced business plan offers greater potential for shareholder value creation than any other alternatives. The clear momentum established last quarter continues, and we have renewed confidence in Datawatch's ability to produce improved market performance and execute on a range of initiatives to reduce costs and focus on its areas of greatest opportunity."

*Conference Call*

Datawatch's fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 earnings conference call will take place on Thursday, November 3, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. To access the conference call, the toll-free dial in number is (800) 362-0574. Internationally, the call may be accessed by dialing (785) 424-1226. The conference call will be broadcast live on the Internet at:  http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175366 .  It is recommended that listeners register to participate and download any necessary audio software from the website 15 minutes prior to the scheduled call. An archived replay of the broadcast will be available for 90 days at the same location.

* About Datawatch Corporation
* Datawatch Corporation  (NASDAQ-CM: DWCH ) enables ordinary users to deliver extraordinary results with all their data.  Only Datawatch can unlock data from the widest variety of sources and prepare it for use with visualization tools or other business processes.  When real-time visibility to rapidly changing data is critical, Datawatch enables you to visualize streaming data for the most demanding business environments such as capital markets. Organizations of every size worldwide use Datawatch products including 93 of the Fortune 100. Datawatch is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts with offices in New York, London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Singapore, and Manila, and with partners and customers in more than 100 countries worldwide.  See how Datawatch can help you by downloading a free version at  www.datawatch.com .

*Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995*

Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such statements, including but not limited to those relating to results of operations, contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include the following: risks associated with the continuing weak global economy; risks associated with fluctuations in quarterly operating results due, among other factors, to the long sales cycle with enterprise customers and the size and timing of large customer orders; risks associated with acquisitions; the risk that our goodwill resulting from acquisitions may become impaired and require a write-down; limitations on the effectiveness of internal controls; rapid technological change; Datawatch's dependence on the introduction of new products and product enhancements and possible delays in those introductions; competition in the software industry generally, and in the markets for next generation analytics in particular; Datawatch's dependence on its principal products, proprietary software technology and software licensed from third parties; Datawatch's concentration of customers in the financial sector; risks associated with international sales and operations; risks associated with indirect distribution channels and co-marketing arrangements, many of which were only recently established; the adequacy of Datawatch's sales returns reserve; risks associated with a subscription sales model; Datawatch's dependence on its ability to hire and retain skilled personnel; disruption or failure of Datawatch's technology systems that may result from a natural disaster, cyber-attack, security breach or other catastrophic event; risks related to actions by activist stockholders, including the amount of related costs incurred by Datawatch and the disruption caused to Datawatch's business activities by these actions; and uncertainty and additional costs that may result from evolving regulation of corporate governance and public disclosure. Further information on factors that could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated is detailed in various publicly-available documents, which include, but are not limited to, filings made by Datawatch from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to, those appearing in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2015 and its subsequently filed Form 10-Q reports.  Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of those factors.

* Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information *

We define non-GAAP net loss as U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP") net loss plus goodwill and long-lived assets non-cash impairment charges, non-cash amortization associated with the purchase of certain intellectual property and other intangible assets, non-cash stock compensation costs and Swedish non-cash deferred tax valuation allowance. We discuss non-GAAP net loss in our quarterly earnings releases and certain other communications as we believe non-GAAP net loss is an important measure that is not calculated according to GAAP. We use non-GAAP net loss in internal forecasts and models when establishing internal operating budgets, supplementing the financial results and forecasts reported to our Board of Directors and evaluating short-term and long-term operating trends in our operations. We believe that non-GAAP net loss assists in providing an enhanced understanding of our underlying operational measures to manage the business, to evaluate performance compared to prior periods and the marketplace, and to establish operational goals. We believe that these non-GAAP financial adjustments are useful to investors because they allow investors to evaluate the effectiveness of the methodology and information used by management in our financial and operational decision-making.

Non-GAAP net loss is a non-GAAP financial measure and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information provided in accordance with GAAP. This non-GAAP financial measure may not be computed in the same manner as similarly titled measures used by other companies. We expect to continue to incur expenses similar to the non-GAAP net loss financial adjustments described above, and investors should not infer from our presentation of this non-GAAP financial measure that these costs are unusual, infrequent or non-recurring.

The table below entitled "Non-GAAP Disclosure - Reconciliation of Net Loss to Non-GAAP Net Loss" reconciles the Company's GAAP net loss to the Company's non-GAAP net loss.

© 2016 Datawatch Corporation. Datawatch and the Datawatch logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Datawatch Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

 
DATAWATCH CORPORATION
Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
Amounts in Thousands (except per share data)
(Unaudited)
                     
      Three Month Ended   Twelve Months Ended  
      September 30,   September 30,  
        2016       2015       2016       2015    
                     
REVENUE:                  
  Software licenses   $ 4,758     $ 4,101     $ 15,219     $ 15,304    
  Maintenance     3,498       3,513       13,915       13,529    
  Professional services     351       408       1,328       1,388    
  Total revenue     8,607       8,022       30,462       30,221    
                     
COSTS AND EXPENSES:                  
  Cost of software licenses     761       709       2,828       3,002    
  Cost of maintenance and services     470       603       2,177       3,122    
  Sales and marketing     5,162       5,733       20,783       27,037    
  Engineering and product development     2,078       2,197       8,167       8,894    
  General and administrative     2,183       1,825       9,636       8,599    
  Impairment of goodwill and long lived intangible assets     -       -       -       32,009    
  Total costs and expenses     10,654       11,067       43,591       82,663    
                     
LOSS  FROM OPERATIONS     (2,047 )     (3,045 )     (13,129 )     (52,442 )  
Other income (expense)     (11 )     (31 )     (30 )     (69 )  
                     
LOSS BEFORE INCOME TAXES     (2,058 )     (3,076 )     (13,159 )     (52,511 )  
Income tax (expense) benefit     126       97       (1,473 )     2,724    
                     
NET LOSS   $ (1,932 )   $ (2,979 )   $ (14,632 )   $ (49,787 )  
                     
Net loss per share - Basic   $ (0.16 )   $ (0.26 )   $ (1.24 )   $ (4.38 )  
Net loss per share - Diluted   $ (0.16 )   $ (0.26 )   $ (1.24 )   $ (4.38 )  
Weighted Average Shares Outstanding - Basic     11,835       11,541       11,758       11,368    
Weighted Average Shares Outstanding - Diluted     11,835       11,541       11,758       11,368    
                     
Non-GAAP Disclosure - Reconciliation of Net Loss to Net Loss Excluding the Effects of Certain Items:
                     
GAAP Net Loss   $   (1,932 )   $   (2,979 )   $   (14,632 )   $   (49,787 )  
Add-back Impairment of Goodwill & Long-Lived Assets       -         -         -         32,009    
Add-back Amortization of Intangibles & IP        519         572       2,191       2,586    
Add-back Share-Based Compensation       662         708         2,831         4,733    
Add-back Swedish Deferred Tax Valuation Allowance       -         -         1,794         -    
  Subtotal of additions       1,181         1,280         6,816         39,328    
                     
Net (Loss) Income (non-GAAP)   $   (751 )   $   (1,699 )   $   (7,816 )   $   (10,459 )  
Net (loss) income per share - Basic   $   (0.06 )   $   (0.15 )   $   (0.66 )   $   (0.92 )  
Net (loss) income per share - Diluted   $   (0.06 )   $   (0.15 )   $   (0.66 )   $   (0.92 )  
Weighted Average Shares Outstanding - Basic       11,835         11,541         11,758         11,368    
Weighted Average Shares Outstanding - Diluted       11,835         11,541         11,758         11,368    
                                   

 

DATAWATCH CORPORATION
Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets
Amounts in Thousands
(Unaudited)
         
    September 30,   September 30,
      2016       2015  
         
Cash and cash equivalents   $ 28,034     $ 35,162  
Accounts receivable, net     6,932       7,081  
Prepaid expenses and other current assets     2,265       2,013  
Total current assets     37,231       44,256  
                 
Property and equipment, net     1,210       614  
Intangible and other assets, net     9,990       14,061  
                 
    $ 48,431     $ 58,931  
                 
                 
Accounts payable and accrued expenses   $ 4,077     $ 4,202  
Deferred revenue - current portion     9,630       8,452  
Deferred tax liability- current portion     -       274  
Total current liabilities     13,707       12,928  
                 
Other long-term liabilities     766       461  
Total long-term liabilities     766       461  
                 
Total shareholders' equity     33,958       45,542  
                 
    $ 48,431     $ 58,931  
                 

Source: Datawatch Investor Contact:
Datawatch Investor Relations
investor@datawatch.com
Phone: (978) 441-2200 ext. 8323
Media Contact:
Erin Hoesly
Datawatch Corporation
Erin_Hoesly@datawatch.com
Phone: (978) 441-2200 ext. 8322
Twitter: @datawatch

--------------------This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Datawatch Corporation via GlobeNewswire

HUG#2053746 Reported by GlobeNewswire 5 hours ago.

You're the Boston Red Sox, one of the most revered brands in sports
You just got bounced out of the playoffs.
Yet the biggest challenge - or as Red Sox President Sam Kennedy views it, the biggest opportunity - lies not on the field but in the stands.
The Sox' early playoff exit notwithstanding, the question remains:
How do you get 21st century kids to look up from their mobile devices, focus on a 19th century sport that literally bears the distinction as America's favorite "PAST-TIME," and become the next generation of Fenway faithful?
The question is bigger than baseball. The real question is how any aging brand attracts and retains younger customers.
As a boy, Red Sox co-owner John Henry, fell asleep to St. Louis Cardinals broadcasts on his transistor radio.
A second co-owner, Tom Werner, fell in love with Fenway when he was a Harvard undergrad.
Your team President grew up a mile away from the ballpark attending countless games at Fenway with his father, a minister with a clergy pass.
So for Red Sox leadership, this isn't just a business problem - it's personal.
"We've seen statistics," said Adam Grossman, the Red Sox' Chief Marketing Officer, "telling us that a child under the age of nine who attends a Red Sox game will atend 57 percent more Sox games over the course of his lifetime than kids who experiences his or her first big-league game at 14."
So what lessons can be learned from the master marketers of the Red Sox about cultivating the next generation of customers?
The Sox' strategy has three main components: provide greater access to Red Sox games; enhance the family experience at Fenway, and celebrate and strengthen the game of baseball in the community.
They make your pitch to kids in a variety of ways, starting with access to affordable tickets. The Red Sox transformed their children's membership club, "Red Sox Kids Nation,'' from a retail merchandising program with a $25 entry-level tier, to a youth engagement platform that now comes with a free ticket to a Red Sox game. Since the program launched in 2015, close to 70,000 kids in all 50 states signed up.
"Red Sox Kid Nation has always been a great value - you always got really good swag," Grossman says. "Backpacks and lunch boxes, for example, discounts on tickets, and experiential opportunities like getting to run the bases. But we wanted to make it easier for kids to connect with the club and experience Fenway Park so we created the free tier of Kid Nation. The program is now much more of a youth engagement platform than a merchandising relationship."
Greater access for kids? Check. But what about harder to reach teens and college students?
The Red Sox created a student ticket price of $9, which gets young fans - college and high school students - into any game all season long.
"I believe students ought to be able to attend a baseball game for less than the cost of a movie ticket," says Kennedy. "And sometimes admission means standing room, sometimes great seats. But if you're a student, you pay $9 and you're in."
And while baseball will always be the primary draw at Fenway, under Henry and Werner's ownership the club has worked to host other marquee events that draw new audiences to Fenway.
You might see a high school or college football game in the fall, ski jumping in the winter, summer concerts or minor league ball.
Futures At Fenway Minor League doubleheader offered ticket prices starting at $5, or a field box ticket or Green Monster seat for just $30. The series ran for 9 straight years, providing a showcase for Red Sox minor league talent and reaching attendance of 30,000 - and the Red Sox figure plenty of those new Fenway fans will come back for major league action.
Of course, if you want to reach kids, you've got to go through the moms.
In 2012, as part of a broader research study, Grossman organized two focus groups - which ultimately led to the launch of the "Red Sox Moms Club," a brand ambassador program with "mom bloggers"-- influential New England-based moms with large online and social media followings.
"They all described themselves as die-hard fans," Grossman recalls. "And they showed up head-to-toe in Red Sox gear. But half of the moms had never been to a game in the previous year, and only a few had been to one or two games.
"We knew we had some serious work to do."
The Fenway brass learned that moms had to divert their attention from game time to nap time -- specifically the naps of the youngest fans the Sox wanted to entice to the park.
"A major league baseball game can be an assault on the senses, for younger kids," Grossman says, "and the families are obviously paying a lot of money to come to Fenway.
"So if they get there and little Johnny melts down in the second inning and they don't have a place to go, they're in trouble."
This bit of marketing guidance led to the creation of Wally's Clubhouse, an "escape route," in the words of one of the mom bloggers, for parents with young children.
Open from the third through seventh innings, kids can do face painting, line up for a balloon animal, pose in a replica Clubhouse locker, or otherwise chill out from the overwhelming experience of being among 38,000 strangers.
The Clubhouse experience gives little ones a chance to reset, so families have a better chance of seeing a walk-off win vs. having to walk out of the park early.
This means that Mom, bespangled in the latest fashions from the souvenir store, has a shot at watching another couple of innings before her little one tells her, "Game over."
"We heard a really interesting thing from one of the moms," Grossman says. "They wanted Wally's Clubhouse to be good, but not too good, because otherwise the kids would not want to go back out to the game."
Any parent who's taken young children to Disneyworld can relate to the shock of watching their little ones scared out of their Crocs by a Disney cast member wearing a character costume.
Oddly, the same thing was happening at Fenway, where Wally, the Green Monster, about as benign as mascots go, was inadvertently terrifying three-year-olds, including Grossman's own daughter.
Enter Tessie.
Tessie, the brainchild of Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of Sox co-owner John Henry, is much more relatable for little girls.
And despite the challenges of playing in America's oldest operating ballpark, the club even made major capital improvements to Fenway.
One of those changes was to transform the right field entrance into Gate K (for kids), a special entrance dedicated to children and families, that serves as a gateway to the new Kid Nation Concourse.
The team also made the behind-the-bleachers concourse more kid-friendly, with Fenway team members watching out for little ones and their families.
For parents blanching at the cost of ballpark snacks, there are $5 kids meals consisting of a mini hotdog, cotton candy, and a small juice.
Older kids at Fenway take advantage of Virtual Reality dugouts, where they get to experience standing in against a David Price 95-mile-an-hour fastball.
"Boston Mayor Marty Walsh tried on the virtual reality goggles," Grossman laughs. "We had a hard time getting them off him."
The Sox' reach extends far beyond Gate K. Every Massachusetts Little League team that reaches out to the Red Sox gets a sponsorship, whether it's a banner, a uniform patch, or some other connection to the big league team.
"We're also heavily involved in RBI," Grossman says, referring to Reviving Baseball in the Inner City, a Major League Baseball program meant to grow interest in baseball in urban neighborhoods.
The Red Sox realized that making Fenway Park more accessible for kids was a great start, but bringing Fenway Park to kids throughout the region would broaden their reach even further.
Enter the Red Sox Mobile Showcase, a 15-foot truck with panels that transform into the Green Monster wall and interactive baseball activities.
The truck has made more than 60 stops across New England this summer and fall, reaching thousands of kids in the process.
"When I was a kid," Sox President Kennedy recalls, "I used to stand outside the Sheraton, where visiting teams stayed back then, and get autographs.
"I was totally hooked on baseball from an early age.
"Today, there are so many activities and interests, starting with digital devices, to keep kids from developing a relationship with baseball.
"If we can only get them here once, we believe they'll be fans for life."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — New England Christmas tree growers say the region’s drought is having only minor effects on their crop. New Hampshire-Vermont Christmas Tree Association Executive Director Jim Horst says some seedlings planted in the spring didn’t survive because they didn’t have deep, established roots. Jamie Jones, a sixth-generation farmer in Shelton, Connecticut, says […] Reported by Seattle Times 5 hours ago.

In July of 1997, I attended the first ever White House Internet Summit. Vice President Al Gore talked up a new content labeling system that would help parents block inappropriate content from reaching their children. Browser-based filters were touted as the means to keep America's kids from accessing pornography and violent images.

Fast forward ten years and Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, heralding the dawn of the smart phone era. Combined with social media sites like MySpace, kids were now creating the content we used to try and keep them away from and they were doing so on mobile devices.

And today, nearly ten years on from iPhone's launch, we confront a myriad of new safety issues, concerns, risks and harms, while also benefiting from the wonders that technology can and does bring into our and our children's lives. Our original worries focused on content, but now the online safety community as well as parents, teachers and care givers are just as concerned about behavioral, emotional and developmental side effects of our hearty embrace of all things digital.

Much has been made, for instance, of the prevalence of cyberbullying among teens and younger children. Both Presidential campaigns have made commitments to tackle the issue. Hillary Clinton has proposed a $500M "Better Than Bullying" initiative to help states create anti-bullying plans. Her announcement states,

"The ease with which demeaning and damaging content can be posted on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter make it difficult for our kids to ever really escape bullying."

And recently, Melania Trump announced that as First Lady, she would work on the issue of kids and social media. In an interview she said,

"I will focus on helping children and women, and also about social media. In this 21st century, what's going on, it's very hurtful to children. To some adults as well, but we need to take care of children."

Online harassment is, in some sense, a more adult form of cyberbullying. This can take the form of hurtful or vicious comments on news sites or Facebook and Twitter posts. It can jump from the virtual to the real world through swatting or doxxing and well known celebrities, journalists and ordinary citizens have simply shut down their online accounts in the face of this kind of overwhelming cyber abuse.

And as if all of this were not enough, we find ourselves at the dawn of a host of new technologies and applications. Many of us have become accustomed to the artificial intelligence (AI) within our devices. This can take the form of our increasingly accurate GPS systems, the voice recognition ability and immediate response of personal assistants such as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Echo. Now children's toys are being shipped in time for the holiday season with AI built in. From Hello Barbie to Dino the dinosaur, who happens to be connected to IBM's Watson, the world of kid's playthings is being radically reshaped.

Add AI to the Internet of Things and you have devices from refrigerators to thermostats to cars that are smarter, always-connected and sharing information with each other without human intervention. Then, the worlds of virtual and augmented reality have brought with them all kinds of new challenges as well as opportunities for play, exploration and communication.

Pokémon Go is just the beginning. Our real, virtual and augmented lives are about to come together in new and unexpected ways. We will need to navigate the regulatory, industry best practices and new parenting landscape with great care and attention.

How will governments around the world react to this tsunami of change and new devices? Can industry provide the tools and policies to keep us safe, private and secure? And are parents equipped with the basic understanding of these new technologies in order to protect, guide and launch the next generation of digital citizens?

It may well take a decade or two to figure out. In the meantime, there's a new U.S. Administration about to be formed and the tech policies that emerge from the White House and Congress will be of great interest to us all.

To hear from leading experts in government, industry and the NGO sectors, join us for FOSI's 10th Annual Conference, "Online Safety in Transition" on December 1st at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

NASA previewed the James Webb Space Telescope in Maryland on Wednesday. The agency says its the world's largest and most complex space telescope that will help scientist investigate the universe in ways they never could before. (Nov. 2)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Reported by USATODAY.com 4 hours ago.

The next generation of iPhones may be designed with wireless charging, so that you never have to plug your phone into an outlet again. CNET editor Dan Ackerman joins CBSN with the details. Reported by CBS News 4 hours ago.

For the second straight year, Ceradyne Inc., a subsidiary of 3M Co.(NYSE: MMM), has won contracts to supply the U.S. Army with next-generation helmets and body armor, the company announced Tuesday. The U.S. Army has ordered 30,000 pieces of light-weight body armor inserts worth $36 million for its Soldier Protection Systems Vital Torso Protection program. The Army also ordered more than 5,300 helmet systems worth $7 million for its Integrated Head Protection System program. The Army's head protection… Reported by bizjournals 3 hours ago.

Mercury NZ, the electricity generator and distributor formerly known as MightyRiverPower, raised its 2017 earnings guidance to reflect additional hydro generation expected from dams in the Waikato catchment.The Auckland-based generator,... Reported by New Zealand Herald 4 hours ago.

Word on the street is that Microsoft Teams, the Redmond giant's new work chat app, can trace its origins back to Bill Gates.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Gates urged company leadership not to bid $8 billion for mega-hot Silicon Valley startup Slack, but rather reinvest in building out the business appeal of Skype, which it bought for $8.5 billion in 2011.

It seems that Microsoft took Gates' advice: According to a leak in September 2016, Microsoft experimented with calling the new product "Skype Teams," before settling on the apparently final name of just "Teams."

Really, though, even without that indicator, Microsoft Teams is so much like Bill Gates, he may as well have signed it. In fact, Microsoft Teams is itself the most Gates-esque move yet undertaken by Microsoft under Nadella's reign, aimed entirely at using Microsoft's sheer size and scale to edge out the competition.

*Gates of Borg*

Back in the '90s, before memes were really a thing, it was kind of a meme to pass around pictures of then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates as a Borg — the cyborg baddies of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame.

If you're not a "Star Trek" fan, trust me, it's a sick own. Before the Borg attacked, they would issue their famous warning: "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."

It was a warning that resonated with the tech industry of the day.

Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft became known as a company that would win at any cost. From productivity apps to web browsers, any competitor it couldn't simply buy Microsoft would crush by making a new, competing product and win by selling to its huge existing customer base.

This is exactly what Microsoft is doing with Teams. Rather than pay $8 billion for Slack, which is more than twice its last private valuation of $3.8 billion, Microsoft has opted to take a bunch of technology and talent it already has and build a juggernaut that can't be stopped.

*Everywhere already*

Microsoft's Office 365 subscription suite has 85 million monthly active users, all paying workplace customers, and all of whom will get access to Microsoft Teams when it leaves preview and officially launches next year.

That's a tremendous advantage for Teams, giving it a reach that other companies will have trouble matching. Plus, Microsoft already has important stuff like security and regulatory compliance at huge scales all sorted out, solving what's historically a huge headache for startups as they learn to sell to Fortune 500 companies. 

Just as importantly, Teams boasts tight integrations with the whole Microsoft Office suite, which is already the standard for getting work done.

In the days of Gates, Microsoft's killer edge was what's called the "platform advantage." Microsoft's ownership of Windows and Office, the two main ways that people got anything done on a PC in those days, made it really easy to integrate any new product in a deeper and easier-to-use way than any competitor possibly could.

While Slack has accrued a vital ecosystem of developers around itself, supporting software and chatbots that integrate with the app, it's hard to compete with a product that's built around Office and the whole Microsoft product lineup.

In other words, Microsoft has weaponized Office into something that no startup can compete with head-on. The whole point of work chat apps is to collaborate on documents and projects, and Microsoft owns a huge chunk of that market.

And much like Microsoft in the nineties, Microsoft Teams takes that platform advantage and turns it into an offer that its considerable base of existing customers can't refuse. 

*On the other hand*

In other, important ways, Microsoft Teams couldn't exist without current CEO Satya Nadella and his kinder, gentler philosophy for the company. 

Nadella has envisioned a world where the device you use matters less than the services connected to it: The whole idea behind Office 365 is that your apps and documents follow you across Windows PCs, Macs, Apple iPhones, Android tablets, and whatever else you connect it to. It's a stark contrast with Microsoft's imperialist, Windows-first reputation.

Chat is a natural fit for that. In our connected world, it's a huge boon to be able to start a conversation on one device and finish it on another. Combine that with the workplace nature of Microsoft Teams, where you can see the conversation going on around documents and data, and it plays right into that larger strategy.

Unfortunately, though, Microsoft Teams seems to suffer from one of the worst hallmarks of Microsoft's earliest software efforts: Early hands-on experiences from the likes of PC World say that while it's cool and potentially very useful, Microsoft Teams is also a little complex and sports a learning curve.

On that note, Microsoft's selling strategy may be smart, but it's far from bulletproof. Products like Slack and Atlassian HipChat got to their current lofty positions in the chat market because they made signing up free and easy, and because people actually really liked using them.

Unlike in the Gates era, it's never been easier for people to circumvent the IT department and use whatever tool they want. While Microsoft is confident that they've built a better mousetrap, the burden of proof is definitely on them when it comes to building something people actually want.

*SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg is officially the new Bill Gates — that should make startups nervous*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, on two beliefs that have brought him the greatest success in life Reported by Business Insider 3 hours ago.

The North American asset management industry is on the brink of a "once-in-a-generation" shift.

That's according to a new report out by McKinsey on Wednesday, November 2, entitled "Thriving in the New Abnormal."

The 42-page report is full of superlatives. The generational shift is the result of five converging trends that "will fundamentally rewrite the rules for success," according to the report.

Certain segments of active management are "facing an existential crisis after a sustained period of underperformance that has eroded clients’ confidence," the report said. And new regulations will cause "one of largest shocks to the wealth management industry in over 40 years."

*Here's how it plays out*

The McKinsey report identifies five trends that will shake up the asset management industry, but we're going to focus on three: the end of thirty years of exceptional investment returns, the shake-up in active management that that leads to, and heightened regulation.

Business Insider has written before about the fact that investment returns are probably going to be lousy for the next couple of decades, and the challenge that presents for fund managers and their investors. According to the McKinsey report, average asset managers will underperform against the backdrop of this new era of low returns, and that will cause a "shake-out," setting "trillions of dollars in motion."

How much money? As much as $8 trillion, or 25% of the US asset management market, to be exact.

And where will this enormous sum of money go? Some of it will go to passive funds, but not all of it.

"Put simply, managers that meet client objectives—whether to minimize costs or achieve more predictable outcomes—will capture share of the money in motion," the report said. 

Assets are also increasingly moving into the alternatives sector, which is likely to be one of the "richest asset management growth opportunities in the years to come", McKinsey said. In particular, McKinsey expects money to flow into the illiquid private market segment and private credit, as traditional managers move to fill the gap created by a decline in bank lending. McKinsey also expects growth in assets that offer "predictability and stability of returns," such as physical assets like infrastructure. 

Then there is regulation. The DOL Fiduciary Rule taking effect April 2017, will be "one of largest shocks to the wealth management industry in over 40 years," according to McKinsey. 

The report said: 

"While it applies more directly to wealth managers, the rule will accelerate several current trends in asset management, including the demand for passive strategies and ETFs, the shift from brokerage to advisory programs, the growth of digital advice, and a culling of asset management partners by wealth managers.

"Taken together, these trends represent a once-in-a generation shift in industry dynamics and a rewriting of the industry playbook," says McKinsey. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: FEMA is tracking Hurricane Matthew using the 'Waffle House Index' Reported by Business Insider 3 hours ago.

Memo to the next President of the United States.

On behalf of a few hundred million folks I thought I would share with you the following. On the almost eve of the election it seems to this futurist quite shocking that we have missed out on the you candidates talking about a central factor that has made America great: We are an Innovation Nation. Yet to follow the conflicts and insulting rhetoric from the candidates you would think this is a secret. After all, no candidate has presented his or her Innovation Nation Plan. I must have missed it. So lets review.

Innovation, from the cotton gin, to horse-less carriages, to air conditioning, big steel factories, computers, networks, mobile and on to the next robots, artificial intelligence, search engines... all of these innovations have created jobs, wealth, power and prosperity. America has led the world innovators--from mapping DNA to mobile smart phones to the Web. The US has spawned inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs and the startup universe that now extends around the world. There are now many innovation nations. America may have been the first Innovation Nation but now innovation is a productivity, GDP and jobs creation engine around the world owned by the world.

So it is baffling to me that the candidates for the US Presidency have failed to impress us with their Innovation Plan. What are the next fantastic innovations that they propose? How will America lead innovation on the planet? How will we create new innovation economy jobs and invent the new? If there was any fundamental part of the political DNA of America it would be our innovation expertise. Innovation is what we do great.

How about it? Where are the big bold ideas to colonize Mars? End global hunger? Provide distributed health care for 7 billion? Education for all. Time Travel anyone? Now I am not kidding here. As our candidates are busy throttling each other, who said politics is not a contact sport--we need to inspire them.

Here is my take. America does innovation great. We understand job creation. Disrupting industries. We owe ourselves and the world to look to the future. To solve the big grand challenges of the future like climate change, clean energy and you name it. In order to this, spur on innovation, we need to embrace the principles of the Innovation Nation.

We want our next President to understand innovation and inspire, invest and invent even ways to encourage more youth, more educators and more leaders to invent the future. What is the way forward on clean water? How might we use mobile health tech to reach millions? How can we create one million connected entrepreneurs?

The next President needs to support the innovations that will create future jobs, prosperity and invention. They should pay attention to quantum computing, synthetic biology, disease prevention, next generation robotics, the Internet of Things, big data, predictive analytics, mobile apps and artificial intelligence. We need to invest more in the innovations that will lead the world and the US.

The US has always been an Innovation Nation leader. But its time for you candidates to understand that while your battling each other the citizens of the nation want to know if you have a future vision for the nation. How about that?

The whole world is watching. Let's get the Innovation Nation vision right.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

WELLESLEY, MA--(Marketwired - November 02, 2016) - The rising global demand for organ transplantation is driving technological innovation. BCC Research reveals in its new report that next-generation sequencing (NGS) is the latest technology trend dominating the competitive landscape of the global transplant diagnostics market. Reported by Marketwired 2 hours ago.

It appears that the first day of November 2016 was fruitful for the open source ecosystem, as many major software releases and GNU/Linux distributions have landed, including the GStreamer 1.10 multimedia framework. GStreamer is used by default in numerous Linux-based operating system to link together a wide range of media processing solutions. Basically, it's a set of libraries and plugins that are used by certain multimedia apps for playing music or video streams on a GNU/Linux distro. GStreamer 1.10 is now the latest stable and most advanced version. Prominent new features include implementation of Vulkan API support on the next-generation Wayland display server, OpenGL and OpenGL ES improvements, an experimental new Meson-based build system, as well as the addition of brand new gst-docs and gst-examples modules. "A new gst-docs module has been created, and we are in the process of moving our documentation to a Markdown-based format for easier maintenance and up... Reported by Softpedia 2 hours ago.

LOS ANGELES — Vimeo, which has long been known for offering a premium subscription for video creators, announced its plans Wednesday to launch a consumer-facing subscription business.

"Vimeo has the once-in-a-generation opportunity to, following in Netflix’s footsteps, deliver compelling subscription viewing experiences for consumers in the market for pay TV," IAC CEO and interim Vimeo CEO Joey Levin wrote in a letter to investors. "I believe we can do so at a fraction of the cost of other major competitors by virtue of the audience and content benefits conferred upon Vimeo through our existing marketplace." Read more...

More about Influencers, Digital Creators, Vimeo, Streaming Services, and Online Video Reported by Mashable 2 hours ago.

There’s no shortage of demographic splits between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s supporters, whether it’s gender, race or age.

But if you ask Americans which groups they have the most in common with during this election, they’re more likely to name their political parties than any of a slew of other demographic groupings.

In a new HuffPost/YouGov survey, 30 percent of Americans picked “people in the same political party as you” as being one of the two groups with whom they shared the most common interests and concerns, followed by “people in the same age group” at 24 percent and “people of the same religion” at 19 percent.

Respondents who wanted Hillary Clinton to win the election cited party as the group they had the most affinity with. The same was true of respondents who favored Donald Trump. For people backing Clinton, age and race or ethnicity were the second and third most relevant demographics, respectively, while those backing Trump picked religion and age.

For the most part, people are also planning to vote along party lines. According to HuffPost Pollster’s current national average, 89 percent of Democrats support Hillary Clinton, and 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump.

Of course, people don’t always have a good sense of how the complicated mix of upbringing, circumstances, biases, beliefs and opinions translates into a decision on whom to vote for. And some people might feel there’s a certain stigma against saying their politics are determined by personal identity, whereas identifying as a staunch partisan might be seen as less objectionable. Divides along racial and generational lines, among others, also play a key role in how Americans decide which party to support in the first place.

Some voters may also hold biases they don’t realize they harbor, or simply don’t wish to acknowledge. Research this year, for instance, has found Trump supporters are more likely to hold sexist attitudes or to express racial resentment.

Still, the results offer a look at how Americans believe their own demographic details influence their politics. The HuffPost/YouGov poll also asked respondents whether they see themselves as having a lot of common interests and concerns with other people with whom they share various characteristics, or whether they don’t consider those attributes relevant to this election.

Among the results:

*57 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE IN THEIR PARTY*

Fifty-two percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have a lot of common interests and concerns based on party, as do 62 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Unlike the remaining questions, which were asked of all Americans, this one excluded those independents who don’t express an affinity for either of the two main parties.

*24 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE THE SAME GENDER*

Female Clinton backers are by far the most likely to feel united by gender. Forty-three percent say they share a lot of concerns with other women, compared to just 12 percent of the women who’d rather see Trump win. Only 27 percent of men who want Trump to win, and 19 percent of men who’d prefer Clinton, say they feel particular kinship to other men in this election.

*25 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE OF THEIR RACE AND ETHNICITY*

White supporters of both candidates are about equally unlikely to say they have a lot of common concerns with others who share their heritage ― we heard this view from only 22 percent of white people who’d rather see Trump win, and 21 percent of whites who’d rather see Clinton win. By contrast, 45 percent of non-whites who want to see Clinton win say they have a lot of shared interests based on race. (The share of non-whites who would rather see Trump win was too small to examine as a subgroup.)

*33 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE SIMILAR AMOUNTS OF MONEY*

Thirty-two percent of those who want Trump to win, and 41 percent of those who prefer Clinton, see economic standing as particularly relevant. Forty-five percent of Clinton backers in households making less than $50,000 a year, and 37 percent of Trump backers with similar finances, say they see others who have similar amounts of money as sharing their interests, compared to 37 percent of Clinton supporters and 32 percent of Trump supporters who make $50,000 or more.

*29 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE ABOUT THE SAME AGE*

Hillary Clinton’s millennial supporters feel an especially strong kinship with others in their generation. Fifty-two percent of Americans under age 30 who want to see Clinton win say that they share common interests and concerns based on age. So do around 40 percent of her backers who are age 65 or older, although the sample size of that subgroup is also small. A third or fewer of either Clinton’s supporters between ages 30 and 65, or Trump backers regardless of age, consider age a uniting factor. Overall, 25 percent of Americans who’d rather see Trump win, and 37 percent who’d rather see Clinton win, see age as relevant.

*30 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE OF THE SAME RELIGION*

There’s an especially wide divide between the candidates on this metric. Forty-five percent of those who want Trump to win say they have a lot of common interests and concerns based on religion, but the same is true for only 20 percent of those who want Clinton to win. Much of that difference has to do with evangelical or born-again Christians, who favor the GOP nominee. Sixty-three percent of self-described born-again Christians who favor Trump say they share a lot of interests with others in their religion, as do 41 percent of evangelicals who favor Clinton. Just 31 percent of non-evangelicals favoring Trump, and 13 percent of those favoring Clinton, say the same.

*27 PERCENT SAY THEY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON WITH OTHER PEOPLE WHO LIVE NEAR THEM*

Twenty-eight percent of those who want to see Clinton win, and 34 percent who want to see Trump win, think of location as being relevant. While the sample size is small, Trump’s rural supporters seem to be among the most likely to feel a bond with people in their geographical proximity.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Oct. 29-31 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 hours ago.

Donald Trump has been bashing Obamacare a lot lately. This week, he did so in a state that’s become a major focus of his presidential campaign ― Michigan.

“It’s just been announced that Michigan residents are going to experience a massive double-digit premium hike,” Trump said Monday during a speech in Warren, a working-class suburb north of Detroit. “It’s been a disaster.”

The crowd roared with approval ― partly because you can’t really go wrong denouncing Obamacare at a Trump rally, and partly, one assumes, because some Michiganders are genuinely angry about how the Affordable Care Act is playing out in their state.

Overall, premiums for people buying coverage on their own, rather than through employers, are rising by 17 percent in Michigan ― a double-digit increase, just as Trump said. Although the majority of consumers are eligible for tax credits that would offset the higher prices, others make too much money to qualify for financial assistance. If they can’t switch plans, they’ll pay more for their insurance next year.

But Michigan’s market isn’t melting down. Far from it. With open enrollment for 2017 underway, consumers shopping for coverage on healthcare.gov will find an array of plans, many of them relatively cheap even before subsidies kick in. Meanwhile, the number of Michiganders without coverage has plummeted to a historic low.

This says something important about the debate over health care, which has taken on a more prominent role as the presidential campaign nears its end. We tend to talk about Obamacare like it’s one program, but it’s really more like 51 different programs ― one for each state, plus one for the District of Columbia. In some states, like Arizona, the insurance marketplaces for individual consumers look like actuarial train wrecks, and some residents are going to struggle as a result. In other states, like California, the marketplaces are functioning more or less as intended ― and the law is achieving most of its primary goals.

Michigan is a lot more like California than Arizona. In fact, it’s a case study in how the law works when favorable conditions exist. And better still, it offers hints as to what those conditions are.

Obamacare in Michigan, by the numbers

It’s easy enough to assess the Affordable Care Act’s impact in Michigan. The law took full effect in early 2014, and over the next two years, the share of Michigan’s population without health insurance fell from 11 percent to 6.5 percent. That’s based on 2015 census data, so the percentage is probably even lower now. Whatever the case, that’s a lot of people who now have access to health care and protection from sometimes crippling medical bills.

That development is hardly unique to Michigan. The ranks of the uninsured have fallen everywhere, particularly in states, like Michigan, that participated in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But in Michigan, like every other state, there have also been trade-offs.

The new requirements on insurers ― to ignore pre-existing conditions, and to sell policies with a full spread of “essential benefits” like mental health and maternity care ― caused insurers to raise underlying premiums, or in some cases eliminate policies altogether. Subsidies offset the higher premiums, but not for everybody. In all likelihood, some of the Michiganders cheering on Trump this week were a few of the lucky people who had those old policies ― and who remember, bitterly, President Barack Obama’s promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”

This “rate shock” has been a source of anger since the law took full effect in 2014. The new wrinkle ― which has given Trump an opening to focus on Obamacare these past two weeks ― is this year’s increases. Obamacare has basically been hit with a perfect storm. Insurers everywhere expected healthy people to sign up in greater numbers than they did. And a key program designed to protect insurers from losses in the program’s early stages expires this year.

As a result, insurers across the country are raising prices and, in some highly publicized cases, pulling out of markets altogether. In Phoenix, premiums are rising by 145 percent. A 40-year-old non-smoker ineligible for subsidies there will pay $507 a month, one of the highest rates in the country.

Michigan’s insurers have seen some of these problems, too.

“We expected the market to be bigger, with more people and more younger people than we enrolled,” Rick Notter, director of the exchange business for Michigan Blue Cross Blue Shield, told me recently.

The state’s insurers say they are particularly worried about “persistency” ― the extent to which people may be buying coverage during open enrollment or because of a qualifying life event like divorce, and then dropping it after getting a few expensive medical services.

“One of the biggest challenges in this market is that individuals aren’t staying enrolled for 12 months,” said Marti Lolli, senior vice president for commercial markets at Priority Health. ”A lot of people are staying enrolled just for three or four months.”

But while Michigan’s insurers are raising rates this year, they aren’t freaking out.

“We’re scheduled to break even in 2017, and 2016 was close to that,” Lolli said. “We did not experience the kinds of losses they had elsewhere, not even close. We’re on a good path and we think we can be in this for the long haul.”

The offerings on the marketplace reflect this confidence. Nine different insurers plan to sell coverage in Michigan next year, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And in most parts of the state, inexpensive policies remain easy to find.

In and around Detroit, for example, a 40-year-old non-smoker can buy the second-cheapest “silver” policy, which the law treats as its benchmark, for just $237 a month. (Silver policies cover 70 percent of a typical person’s medical expenses.) That’s almost exactly what it cost to get the second-cheapest silver plan in Detroit last year ― and that’s without the tax credits, available to people with low to medium incomes, that can make coverage much cheaper or nearly free.

This year’s benchmark plan comes from Molina, a national insurer that has traditionally focused on low-income populations. Like most of the company’s plans around the country, the benchmark Molina plan offers a “narrow network” of doctors and providers. It also has a high deductible. But lower-income people get extra financial assistance to reduce the deductible, and the network includes well-regarded teaching hospitals like Harper University Hospital and Detroit Children’s. Doctor supply doesn’t seem to be a problem, either. The Huffington Post reached out to several physician practices on the official provider list, and each one confirmed that it was taking new Molina patients.

As for people who want smaller deductibles or more provider choices, they can choose policies that come with moderately higher premiums. Priority offers a silver-level HMO with a $2,500 deductible for $312 a month ― and again, that’s before subsidies on premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The plan’s network includes every major teaching hospital in the area and, according to Lolli, the vast majority of physicians as well. Overall, Detroit-area residents can choose from 83 different plans, with roughly half the plans in the silver category that the majority of consumers use.

As in the rest of the country, Michigan has rural patches with fewer, largely more expensive options. People who don’t get subsidies and stay with their current plans will pay more. But it’s also not hard to find residents like Amy Lynn Smith, a Detroit-area freelance writer with diabetes who said the law is saving her hundreds of dollars a month in premiums.

“It’s a huge step forward,” Smith told HuffPost. “Even though rates are going up in 2017 I’m still paying far less than I was before for the same comprehensive coverage.”

What Michigan got right ― and other states didn’t

Why is Michigan one of the states where Obamacare is having an easier time? In places like California, where Obamacare is working best, support from state officials has been a huge factor.

That appears to be the case in Michigan as well. Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in some ways a throwback to a previous generation of Republicans ― business-oriented pragmatists who reliably fell on the conservative side of economic policy, but who didn’t hate the welfare state and who would work with Democrats to expand social programs if they saw it as a chance to help citizens at a reasonable cost.

That’s exactly what Snyder did. When Obamacare became law, he reasoned that the state would benefit by making Medicaid available to all low-income residents, as the law envisioned, because the federal government would be picking up most of the cost. It would mean more people with insurance, yes, but it would also mean more money for the state and its businesses. Snyder wanted Michigan to run its own version of the law’s marketplaces, because he figured state officials knew the local insurance markets well ― and would be in a position to smooth the transition to a new health insurance system, with more widely available coverage.

Snyder ran into resistance from conservative Republicans in the state legislature, and it took years of negotiation ― and lobbying from consumer and corporate interests ―  to win approval for the Medicaid expansion. He never did win the marketplace fight. But the Medicaid expansion has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to gain coverage. And Snyder and his allies probably helped stabilize the marketplaces by having Medicaid pick up some patients with expensive medical needs who would have otherwise driven up premiums if they were buying private coverage.

Another big factor in Michigan ― again, common to the states where Obamacare is working best ― seems to be the health care landscape that existed even before the law took effect. As Marianne Udow-Phillips, director of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation, explained to me recently, local and predominantly nonprofit insurers like Blue Cross, HAP and Priority dominate the state. The only national insurers that have thrived in Michigan are companies like Molina that specialize in insuring Medicaid patients and have done so for years.

What the Michigan-based and Medicaid insurers have in common, Udow-Phillips said, is that both have a lot of experience constructing networks of physicians and hospitals that will keep costs down. She noted that Michigan generally hasn’t had the sort of network problems seen in other states ― where patients sometimes get hospital care and discover they have surprise bills because out-of-network doctors were part of their medical teams.

A hidden factor in all of this, Udow-Phillips said, has been the influence of organized labor and its ability to demand good insurance for members.

“We’ve always had health plans that had better networks than in most places,” she said. “When labor unions were really strong here, they insisted on good networks of providers. And they [insisted] upon reasonable prices too.”

It also helps, Udow-Phillips says, that so many of Michigan’s insurers are nonprofits with histories of citing the public good as part of their missions.

Yet another element of Michigan’s success may be the way doctors and hospitals have responded to these demands ― and the way they’ve adapted in a market where the people paying for care (not just insurers, but employers and unions as well) have for years pushed for more efficient ways of delivering medical care.

“Michigan has been an innovative state for a long time,” J. Mario Molina, physician and CEO of the eponymous insurance company, told HuffPost. “In some states, it’s just ... let’s churn through patients, see how much money we can make. This state, it’s more sophisticated ― for example, when it comes to working on quality. Doctors understand that part of their compensation will depend on whether they provide quality of care, not just lots of care.”

Reforming Obamacare, in Michigan and beyond

Of course, a functioning market in Michigan doesn’t mean much for consumers in places like Arizona, North Carolina or Tennessee, where the problems are far more severe and may yet get worse ― resulting in higher prices for some people, and fewer choices for nearly everyone. On Wednesday, yet another national insurer, Anthem, warned that it will start scaling back its presence ― just as Aetna and UnitedHealth have ― if it doesn’t see better returns from its exchange products.

And even in Michigan, insurers say, Obamacare needs work. The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced changes to the law’s “special enrollment periods,” which were designed to make sure people could still get coverage after a major life event but which people may be exploiting in order to buy insurance only after they get sick. Michigan’s insurers cited these changes as an improvement, but they say the program needs further revisions ― particularly when it comes to a formula under which the plans that have relatively healthy customers subsidize the plans that don’t.

In theory, these sorts of reforms should not be difficult to enact. But some of the most important ones require legislative action, and Republicans in Congress have refused to discuss changes short of outright repeal.

They say that’s because the program is fundamentally broken. It’s the same argument Trump makes. But Michigan is one of the states that prove otherwise ― that Obamacare can work, especially if public officials will support it.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly
incites
political violence and is a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326"> style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar, href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b"> style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe,
racist, style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57e31b1be4b0e80b1ba04348?7i5ir4bn4b1emi">>birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.

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