More meetings = less work … Pets bigger than the Superbowl … Golden age of Indian TV … Women plan for earlier retirement

More meetings adds up to less work

Next time you call a meeting, think carefully about who you invite and how valuable their time is. Studies have estimated that 30-75% of corporate meetings are not necessary, and they are usually longer then they need be, The Age writes. The time wasting is mainly due to the fact that the person organising the meeting does not value employees’ time.

There are ways improve. Hold smaller meetings, avoid follow up meetings with one-on-ones, and delegate responsibility to consider options to one person instead of having a “what can we do?” meeting.

Pets: bigger than the Superbowl?

Entrepreneurs starting up pet care boutiques are on to something, if a story on the Puppy Superbowl by Small Business Trends is any indication.

The Puppy Bowl, as it is known, involves a bunch of puppies bouncing around a big room made up to look like a sporting arena. Cameras placed strategically around the room catch all the action and broadcast it on the Animal Planet cable channel in the US.

Who would watch puppies playing in a room for three hours? Well, several million Americans, that’s who, and this in competition against the actual Superbowl, one of the world’s most watched sporting events.

And where there are viewers, there are advertisers. In fact, Puppy Bowl was so popular, Animal Planet has already released the DVD.

Look forward to the puppy AFL/Rugby grand final, coming soon.

In India, the golden age of television is now

The New York Times writes that the pace of change in India is supercharged because the country is catching up to, and in some cases leapfrogging, developments that took decades to play out elsewhere.

Vikas Bajaj writes that the Indian television business is more than twice as big as the movie business, with an estimated $3.4 billion in revenue in 2005, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and it is starting to exert a cultural influence.

“Television ownership is growing fast here, and it has plenty more room to expand. There are roughly 105 million homes with televisions in India, up from 88 million in 2000. The current number of television households is about the same as in the United States, though for India that amounts to only about half of the country’s households, compared with 98 per cent in the United States.

“Advertising spending on Indian television increased by 21 per cent a year, on average, from 1995 to 2005, when it reached $1.6 billion, according to ZenithOptimedia, which tracks advertising globally. Double-digit growth rates are expected to continue for years.

Such numbers are very tempting to companies like News Corporation, Disney, Time Warner and Viacom, which are losing viewers and advertisers in their core western markets. (In addition to the domestic market, Indian television is also delivered via satellite and cable to Indian communities globally.)”

Vast majority of older women don’t plan to work until they are 65.

A survey of women between the ages of 45 and 64 by Commonwealth Financial Planning found that 70% want to stop working before 65, writes Superfunds, the magazine of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia.

This means most women will need to be self funded, at least until the old-age pension kicks in at 65.

Forty-six per cent of those surveyed in the 45 to 64 age group said they were saving for their retirement by building wealth in assets such as shares and property; 37% were making extra contributions to their super on a regular basis. More than 80% of younger women – aged between 25 and 44 – said they expected income from super to be their main source of retirement income.