(Updates with picture)

Reuters correspondent Ben Klayman interviewed the commissioners of the top three U.S. sports leagues — the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association at the Reuters Media Summit in New York this week.

On Barry Bonds Legacy

Question: Brett Krasnove says:
If and when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s career home run record of 755, what kind of celebration will MLB do? Are you concerned that celebrating this could potentially be viewed as glorifying steroid use?

Answer: Major League baseball Commissioner Bud Selig says:
“If and when (Bonds) breaks Hank Aaron’s record, we will commemorate in the way we would do any record of that size. Hank understands the position that we find ourselves in and if Barry Bonds breaks the record, it will be so commemorated.”

Do stadiums have a future in the digital age?

Question: Theron Schultz asks:
How does each league plan to attract fans to stadiums in the face of new technology allowing fans more control over how they view games? Specifically, as my control over my “personal” broadcast via Internet increases, what incentive is there to pay to go to the game when anything I want is literally at my fingertips?

Answer: Commissioner Selig responds:
“If you’re a fan, and they have had these (devices) for some years and we keep breaking attendance record every year so I’m confident we’re on the right track. When all is said and done … there is something really unique about being there, whether you’re in Fenway, whether you’re in Wrigley Field, whether you’re in Busch Stadium in St Louis, Dodger Stadium, wherever, baseball really lends itself to that. Our prices are such that it’s really family entertainment. The experience is so unique, I’m really not concerned about that.”

Click the player below to hear Selig’s comments on how baseball will celebrate if Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s home run record.

Walt Disney studios chief Dick Cook, who was speaking at the Reuters Media Summit, had one question for Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who also spoke with Reuters today.

Cook questioned why baseball games take so long. Why can’t the league introduce a basketball-style shot-clock for pitchers?

Selig acknowledged that games take too long to finish and it’s an issue the league is studying. The average Major League Baseball game took 2 hours and 48 minutes last year, he says. As a kid, Selig recalls watching pitcher Bob Buell of the former Milwaukee Braves pitch games that lasted just 1 hour and 45 minutes, start to finish.

But Selig rules out putting pitchers on a shot-clock. “It’s a game without a clock,” Selig emphasizes. “There is something timeless about it.”

“You don’t want to introduce the clock to this game … I believe we all talk to umpires over and over: ‘Tell the guy (the pitcher) to throw the damn ball.’” 

Click player below to hear Selig discuss the issue.

We started by asking him whether the game needed to be speeded up…

Susan Lyne went from greenlighting “Desperate Housewives” to selling them house paint and linens.

But the CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has no hard feelings about her former employer Disney, which she abruptly left in 2004, only to see the shows she picked, which also included “Lost,” become monster TV hits.

Asked at the Reuters Media Summit which media company she would hypothetically invest in (barring her own), Lyne hesitated before naming Disney.

“Of all the media companies out there, they have a brand that actually means something, they have phenomenal content, and a real understanding of the future of media,” she said. “There’s a lot of real talent at the company and on the board. I think having Steve Jobs on that board is hugely valuable to that company.”

But would she have said the same before Robert Iger replaced longtime Disney honcho Michael Eisner?

“No,” she said. She also said she’s recently returned to watching “Desperate Housewives,” though she’s “not religious” about it. Lyne also gave a thumbs-up to Aaron Sorkin’s meta-TV show “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a behind-the-scenes look at a comedy sketch show which happens to feature a charming female network boss, played by Amanda Peet.

“I think that show is just brilliant, it’s uneven but it’s really fun to watch,” she said.

It’s hardly even news anymore when somebody boycotts a business for selling certain things, sponsoring certain TV shows, playing certain music, and so on.

So, maybe we’re ready for the next logical step.  In Italy, two politicians have called for a Christmas boycott of  the furniture giant IKEA, for not selling Nativity Scenes.

That’s right. For not selling Nativity Scenes. The Swedish firm says it has never sold Nativity scenes, which are “not part of the Scandinavian tradition” it promotes, but the two Italian senators are calling for both Christians and atheists to take part in the boycott. 

Oh. Atheists, too? So, we’re all clear on the boycott plan? Even if you don’t recognize the Nativity story, we’d still like you to boycott a store that sells bookcases that are hard to put together because they don’t sell Nativity Scenes that would probably be just as hard to put together? Here’s the story:
 

A fish swims past an underwater Christmas Nativity scene in an ocean aquarium in Berlin in a 2005 photo. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

Has Sirius Satellite Radio’s estimated $100 million annual pay package to top U.S. radio shock jock Howard Stern paid off for Howard? Here’s how Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin puts it:

In his words, at the Reuters Media Summit in New York:

“Howard would say that we had 600,000 subscribers (in December 2005) and we now went to 6.3 million (subscribers). Well, over 5 million people subscribe to Sirius paying $12.95 a month or $130 a year times 5 million (additional new subscribers after Stern joined) … So gee, based on Howard, you (Sirius) brings in $500 million a year and you only pay me (Howard) $100 million. (Howard would say,) ‘I didn’t do so well in getting paid.’”

Stern Effect’s impact for Sirius:
“Some of the geniuses on the sell-side (analysts on Wall Street) said the Stern Effect would be in December (2005). And then when we had a great January, they said it kicked over to January. Then they said, when we came out with our first quarter 2006 (financial report) … the Stern Effect is for ’06. Then when we said what about the second quarter? Well that’s the Stern Effect still. Then when I mentioned to you the third quarter retail net adds (net additional subscriber additions) were, that’s the Stern Effect. Well, I believe the Stern Effect, like any other content, is going to be there whenever the consumer is going into the store to make a decision on which product to buy.”

There you have it. The Stern Effect is like The Force of radio.

Click player below to hear his comments.

Pirates, at least the Caribbean kind, have been good to Walt Disney Chairman Dick Cook.

Those ones on the Internet? Not so much, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about their opinion.

“I hope we make the kind of movies that people want to steal — not that we want them to steal them,” he said at the Reuters Media Summit on Thursday.

“You’re not going to upload, download, sideload or however way you want to load, a turkey. You’re going to do that with movies you want to see.”

Apparel retailers blamed warm November weather for lackluster sales, saying it kept customers from buying sweaters and scarves, but they won’t have that excuse in December.

In fact, the weather is expected to be just cold enough to prompt sweater purchases, but not so frigid that shoppers will avoid their holiday shopping.

According to Weather Trends International, which forecasts temperatures and conditions for U.S. retailers, December is expected to bring average temperatures of about 35 degrees, cold enough to prompt those sweater sales, and mostly free of blizzards — which keep shoppers home.

“It’s going to be a milder December,” said Weather Trends Chief Executive Bill Kirk. “Not too hot, not too cold. Last year we had really cold weather and blizzards that killed store traffic. It’s all about store traffic.”

But beware of a Christmas weekend storm which will snarl traffic and keep consumers by their fireplaces, he said.

“Later December, around the 24th, the bottom may fall out,” Kirk said. “We’re advising clients to not expect that last week of December to be great (for sales).”

He said the last month of 2005 was notable for clear skies, allowing shoppers to run out to exchange items and use their gift cards. This year, it’s likely to be a different.

“We have the whole country pretty much in a deep freeze by late December through mid-January,” he said.

So, hang in there. This is coming. 

Apparently there was a small mix-up as Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook made his way to the Reuters Media Summit in New York on Thursday.

“I thought I was going to be attending this summit,” he joked, pulling out a copy of Wednesday’s New York Post.

In addition to its coverage of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — a trio it dubbed “The 3 Bimbos of the Apocalypse” — the Post has also been covering news out of the Media Summit, including Richard Parsons’ political ambitions and Barry Diller’s response to a critical news column.

Media business types love nothing more than working on merger jigsaw puzzles of the companies they watch every day. Google and Time Warner? Time Warner and Cablevision? DirecTV and DISH? The pieces may not always fit so well, but the fun is in the game.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio chief Mel Karmazin thinks there are two pieces that never got together and should have: CBS and CNN.

“I thought CBS News and CNN, to this day should be combined,” Karmazin said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. “I was hoping that Dick (Parsons, CEO of Time Warner) would buy Cablevision and need the cash, because Cablevision was much more strategic (to Time Warner), and then sell me CNN.”

He added, “I would be candid and say when I was CEO (of CBS), would I have liked to have owned CNN? Yeah.

“You’ve got a reporter sitting there from CBS News. You’ve got a reporter sitting all over the world from CNN. Maybe one reporter, one sound guy, one driver of the van, and that’s just the cost side.

“The value you create from putting these reporters that you’re not putting redundantly, putting these reporters in other parts of the world where you don’t have news bureaus or doing things you don’t have. I think M&A is fun.”

Click play below to hear his comments

Warm and wet weather dampened November same-store sales at many U.S. chains in a key period that includes the start of the holiday shopping season.

Following is a table of sales resuls reported by a number of retailers, along with analysts expectations:

TABLE-U.S. retailers’ same-store sales in November

Nov 30 (Reuters) - The following table lists select U.S. retail companies that have reported November sales at stores open at least a year, a key retail measure also known as same-store sales.

The table includes the range of mean estimates* given by analysts polled by Reuters, the average of those means#, and the actual change in same-store sales reported by the companies^.

All figures expressed in percentage change over the same period last year except number of estimates.

			Nov-06		Nov-06
		Analysts’	same-store	No. of	same-store
Company	Symbol	estimates*	sales(est)#	Estimates	sales (act)^
Wal-Mart##		–	–	-	0.1
Target		5 to 7	5.8	10	5.9
Costco		5 to 8	6.0	9	5
BJ’s Wholesale		1 to 3	1.6	7	0.6
TJX Cos.		2.5 to 6	4.1	7	3
Dollar General**		2 to 4	3.0	5	2.2
Family Dollar		2 to 3	2.6	5	2.5
Ross Stores		0 to 4	1.8	6	0
Kohl’s		3 to 9	5.1	11	3.7
JC Penney		2 to 8	4.0	9	1.4
Federated		4 to 8	4.8	8	8.5
Nordstrom		2 to 10	5.7	12	5.4
Saks		5 to 12	6.7	6	7.2
Dillard’s		1 to 2	0.6	7	-3
Bon-Ton Stores**		4 to -4	4.0	1	10.5
Gap		7 to -2	5.5	9	-8
Limited		6 to 11	8.2	10	12
Abercrombie		2 to 5	3.3	13	-3
Hot Topic**		9 to -3	6.1	9	4.3
Chico’s FAS^^		2 to 2	0.4	11	0.4
American Eagle		7 to 23	14.7	14	14
Aeropostale**		0 to 5	2.2	9	1
Pacific Sunwear		6 to -1	4.2	11	3.8
Ann Taylor		5 to 1	1.7	9	4.3
Gymboree		2 to 13	8.2	6	5
Bebe		7 to 13	9.8	6	5.8
Claire’s Stores		1 to 6	2.6	5	0
Children’s Place		8 to 17	11.3	6	12
Pier 1 Imports		18 to -4	12.2	5	15.3
Sharper Image		22 to -17	19.0	3	-27