Thursday morning headlines

Reality checks: The media mob back east is still saying that this week's fires forced almost a million Californians to flee (it's on the Bloomberg main page). That's turning out to be, well, a bit exaggerated - as has much of the national coverage. The LAT reports on p1 that the number of those displaced was far lower - a pretty logical conclusion given that Qualcomm Stadium only had 17,000 people at the peak of the evacuation. The disconnect might have been the result of assuming that people who were told to leave actually left. Also, some evacuation orders were lifted within hours.

Numerous news organizations, including The Times, had estimated the total number evacuated at more than 800,000, with many outlets placing the number displaced at 1 million. Some San Diego officials have made the comparison to the Gulf Coast's mass evacuation when Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago, when 1.2 million left Greater New Orleans ahead of the approaching storm, according to a study by Louisiana State University. "We've evacuated more people than were evacuated in Katrina," San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said Wednesday. That statement now seems imprecise. Transportation analysts for the Automobile Club of Southern California said that because evacuation orders were issued over a period of days, it was unlikely that half a million people were moving all at once.

Fires are no Katrina: The politicians and pundits will try to find similarities, but to the insurance industry there's no comparison. This week's wildfires are likely to cost insurers about $1 billion; damages from Katrina resulted in a $41.1 billion payout (a spokeswoman for an industry trade group called the fire losses "pretty minimal." It's not just the money that's different: flooding damage is not covered in most home insurance policies, which led to all kinds of litigation after the hurricane (much of it won by insurers). Fire coverage is a standard part of any policy (this goes back hundreds of years). Of course, that doesn't mean there won't be problems. From the NYT:

Randy Maniloff, a lawyer in Philadelphia who specializes in defending insurance companies, said many homeowners would probably find that they did not buy enough coverage to rebuild their homes. After the worst recent outbreak of wildfires destroyed several thousand homes on the edge of San Diego in 2003, homeowners filed hundreds of lawsuits, Mr. Maniloff said, claiming that their agents and insurance companies should have advised them to buy more coverage. But this past April, he said, the first trial involving those cases ended in favor of the insurance company.

More recession worries: A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll finds 65 percent of those surveyed say a recession is likely in the next year. Among those making between $60,000 and $100,000, the figure is 74 percent. Meanwhile, WSJ economic guru David Wessel begins his Capital column thusly: "When we look back next year at this time, it will be clear what caused the recession of 2007-08." He doesn't quite come out and say it'll happen, but he figures we're headed that way with a triple whammy of falling home prices, higher oil prices, and greater caution by both lenders and borrowers. Still, he says that interest rate cuts should keep this one as short as mild as those of 1990-1 and 2001.

Burkle close on deal: The L.A. billionaire (well, he spends lots of time in NY these days) apparently is in hot and heavy merger talks with American Media, which owns the Star, National Enquirer and Men’s Fitness. The NY Post's Keith Kelly says the deal would combine the American Media titles with those from Burkle's Source Interlink (Motor Trend, Soap Opera Digest and a bunch of others). If a deal gets done, Kelly wonders about who would run the show: Burkle or American Media chieftain David Pecker.

Writers and rules: The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers has sent the WGA a cease-and-desist order, saying that the guild’s strike rules concerning the registration of scripts violates studios' property rights. The union rules are requiring writers to file copies of all unproduced material written for struck companies. Strike rules have already prompted the threat of a lawsuit by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees over the guild's plan to bar its members from writing animated features. (Variety)

Writers and reality: Not surprisingly, WGA President Patric Verrone denied up, down and sideways a Variety story that said the guild was giving up its efforts to represent writers/producers who work for reality shows. Verrone sent out a memo to his WGA lieutenants saying that the guild is still "committed to organizing reality." Well, maybe. I still wouldn't be surprised if reality was off the table and this was more of a cover-your-behind gesture. (By the way, today's Variety story on the contract talks was not written by Dave McNary, who broke the reality story and has handled most of the WGA coverage. Don't know what that means, if anything.)

Weird Iger story: The Hollywood Reporter covered what looked like a standard-issue Bob Iger speech about the need to focus more on digital technologies - and not old-school thinking that's reflected in the trade papers and pays too much attention to box office and ratings numbers. Such reporting, he says, "is rooted in the past." So here's the not-so-subtle plug that came next:

The Reporter editor Elizabeth Guider and senior vp and publishing director Eric Mika agreed with Iger. "He is absolutely correct," Mika said. "Reinventing our business model and coverage is what the new Hollywood Reporter is about." Added Guider, "Our job is to report on an increasingly complex business," including new revenue streams and ancillary businesses.

Tribune tea leaf-reading: The company's 7 percent drop in third-quarter earnings exceeded analyst expectations, so suddenly there's more encouragement being sounded about the prospects of taking the LAT parent private. Keep in mind, however, that the company's publishing group reported a 7 percent drop in revenue, with falls in classified advertising (down 18 percent) and retail (down 6 percent). (Chicago Tribune)

More trouble for PacSun: That's OC's Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., which will close its One Thousand Steps shoe-store division and seek "strategic alternatives" for the 154-store demo chain (that probably means a sale). The idea is to focus on its core surf and skate apparel business. The demo chain was seen as a growth area for PacSun, but sales have been weak. (LAT)

Higher biz travel costs: As usual, the culprits are full planes, higher fuel costs and hotels at record-high occupancy levels (makes you wonder about all the recession talk, eh?). U.S. biz travelers will see domestic economy-class airfares rise 1 percent to 5 percent in 2008, international biz class increase 5 percent to 10 percent, and hotel rates jump 5 percent to 8 percent. (MarketWatch)