KPBS anchor Ebone Monet and George Belch, Senior Associate Dean of Marketing at the Fowler College of Business at SDSU, discuss some of the week’s top business stories.
Q: This week San Diego City Council members voted to implement a settlement agreement separating Civic San Diego from the city of San Diego. What will happen now that Civic San Diego no longer has a direct relationship with the city of San Diego?
A: A lot of people are very concerned that it will take longer [for development]... that they're going to ask for more oversight. I think one thing we're clearly going to see is that new projects are going to have to be more labor-friendly. Right now, the labor movement played an important role in this lawsuit and what's going to happen is that you're going to probably have to work with the unions to move things along. I think the big fear that developers have is that this is just going to take too long.
Q: ProFlowers is shutting down its San Diego location laying off at least 167 people after the company filed for bankruptcy. How did the company get in financial trouble?
A: ProFlowers was one of the first real e-commerce companies in San Diego. They got formed in 1998 right around the dot-com boom. They had a really strong run. They got integrated into a company called Provide Commerce in 2014 or so. They opened some other fruits and confectionery as Jerry farms and others. They got bought by FTD who wanted them for that flower segment which was a huge part of their business. But basically what happened here is that FTD was more or less the Fords, the Chevy's, the Chryslers in an industry that was getting overtaken by Porsche and Ferrari. The e-commerce business was just moving very quickly and they really weren't keeping up.
Q: Jeopardy! experienced a ratings boost thanks to a longtime champion. Will the gameshow retain its record ratings now that the champion has been voted off?
A: They'll go back down a little. But I think what jeopardy has to hope is maybe it brought some new people and maybe brought in some younger viewers. The big challenge Jeopardy has this like the rest of traditional television young people aren't watching as much TV. Maybe that will bring them in for that half hour a night. They'll go on and test their brain power against the champions on the show.
