This week, Richard Branson creates a stir with his “No way BA/AA” campaign, an internal storm is brewing at the New York Times over the pricing of its iPad digital edition and tweets take the suspense out of Winter Olympics.

Virgin Atlantic says no to British Airways/American Airlines collaboration

On Feb 15, Europe’s third-largest carrier British Airways won an antitrust approval that would allow it to further its plans of a deeper alliance with American Airlines on lucrative routes across the North Atlantic. Analysts say the alliance would boost BA’s earnings by £150 million (RM789 million).

Virgin Atlantic chief executive officer (CEO) Richard Branson, however, said the alliance would enable the two giant carriers to “co-operate in ways normally forbidden under antitrust laws as collusion, such as coordinating fares and schedules”.

The US government has also given provisional approval to the carriers, plus fellow Oneworld members Finnair, Iberia and Royal Jordanian to combine operations on routes from Europe to the US, Canada and Mexico.

Taking his objection a step further, Branson launched the “No way BA/AA” campaign, which would see the slogan plastered over all Virgin carriers.

“It’s part of a major lobbying/advertising campaign to stop this unholy alliance from taking place,” he said on the day of the launch last week.  

Storm brews at NYT over iPad app

Apple’s iPad may have been hailed as the potential saviour to newspapers, but it is causing some internal feud among the folks at the New York Times (NYT).

One of the US’ most prominent newspapers is divided between the print circulation department, which would like to price NYT’s forthcoming iPad digital edition at US$20 (RM68) to US$30 per month, and the digital operations arm, which wants to charge the app at US$10 a month.

According to sources that technology blog ValleyWag approached, the high fee proposed by the circulation department was driven by fears that readers would cancel the print subscription if they could get the same thing on their iPad for a lower price.

A lower price for a digital edition of the paper would be expected by readers, considering that costs of distribution and printing involved in printing a physical copy were removed.

The digital team, which will provide interactive content for the iPad no matter what happens, does not want print circulation to have control of pricing, marketing and other facets of the product.

This would prove something of an uphill battle for digital as print circulation has had control over NYT’s other electronic editions, like the Kindle, which is also considered pricey.

The dispute has apparently escalated all the way to the top of the Times Building, with top executives now debating which way to go.

Winter Olympics' spoiler

One of the things that makes micro-blogging site Twitter so appealing is that it allows users to provide real time updates. When it comes to the Winter Olympics, however, people don’t appreciate knowing the results before they get a chance to watch it on TV.

NBC news chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd received a flood of angry tweets after he tweeted about American skier Lindsey Vonn’s gold-medal win at least four hours before NBC’s Olympic coverage was aired.  

US television network NBC, airs much of the Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage in taped delay for prime time audiences.

“I agree that this is all NBC's fault for keeping us beholden. But I just don't think Tweeters need to deliberately spoil results,” tweeted one viewer last Wednesday.

A Toronto-based watcher, however, put the blame on the network: “Why should NBC control what's discussed when?... In Canada, we have had live coverage for years.”

NBC has argued that it is packaging coverage of the Olympics for prime time because that’s when most viewers are watching – and when the most ad dollars are available.

But NBC’s decision to delay much of the coverage has also put the network’s own reporters in an awkward position. Anchor Brian Williams reports the day’s results on “NBC Nightly News” with a graphic, but first warns viewers who don’t want to know with a spoiler alert.