Average Consensus

Tension between the state Public Utilities Commission and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is hardly abnormal. In fact, the system is set up for a certain amount of built-in animosity.

But for a couple of years, the PUC and SDG&E; have disagreed over how much energy the typical SDG&E; customer uses each month.

SDG&E; claimed the typical residential customer used 400 kilowatt hours of electricity and 40 therms of gas each month, while the PUC’s figures were 450 and 50, respectively.

The numbers are important because utility and PUC officials use them to calculate how bulk rate increases or decreases will affect consumers.

Typically, the PUC would issue one set of projections and SDG&E; would issue a different set.

On Monday, however, the PUC finally bent, and without much fanfare.

In its release explaining 1985’s rate increase distribution, the PUC for the first time referred to the typical residential usage of 400 kilowatt hours and 40 therms.

Explained one SDG&E; staff member, “Two sets of numbers just got to be too much of a hassle.”

Free Throws

Not everyone with business acumen is in business.

Take Jim Sollars, head coach of Portland State University’s women’s basketball team, which was in town last weekend for a pair of games against University of San Diego and United States International University.

Sollars has only about $40,000 in scholarships and student aid available for his athletes each year, not much for a Division I school that competes against better-funded universities.

But Sollars’ is a keen fiscal mind. So when he took the head coaching job before last season, he figured it was best to make maximum use of the limited money.

His solution: He cut labor. Which, in this case, meant he trimmed the basketball squad from 15 to 10.

“I figured that it was better to give more money to fewer women and have it mean something,” he said during a Sunday morning practice.

It may be paying off.

Sollars’ team record this year is five wins, five losses. After 10 games last year, the team was 2-8.

The new year may bring added emphasis to computer security. That’s the implication from the national accountancy firm of Price Waterhouse, whose recent survey revealed that fewer than 75% of the firms polled used some type of computer security system.

There exists a “delicate balance” between keeping microcomputer systems “user friendly” and limiting access for security reasons, say Price Waterhouse officials.

As a result, firms should “integrate micros into overall policies regarding ethics and control over assets and confidential information.”

Other firms are also getting into the computer security field. John Burnham & Co.’s monthly newsletter reports that the firm now offers special “anti-hacker” insurance to protect companies from unauthorized access to their systems.

Burnham claims that a computer hacker can gain access to computer records with a touch-tone telephone and readily available electronic equipment costing less than $1,000. Between $3 billion and $5 billion per year is lost to computer theft, the newsletter claims.

That’s Advertising?

In the advertising world, 1984 may be remembered as the Year of the Screamer.

Hawkers have yelled their way into living rooms selling a variety of products, but especially stereo equipment and furniture.

Contrary to popular opinion, advertising pros bristle at the technique.

“It’s a terrible invasion of a certain kind of implied privacy,” said Jordan Lansky, principal of Kaufman, Lansky, Baker advertising. “I’ve heard nothing but people making notes to avoid the shop because the ads are obnoxious.”

Worse, Lansky says, is that the screamers often believe, mistakenly, that their high-pitched pitches are the reason for their products’ successes.

Not always true, Lansky maintains.

“A couple of the screamers happen to offer good value,” he said. “But it’s a perceived value because . . . it’s influenced others who think that it’s the screaming that is generating traffic.”

The screamers “actually would sell more with a civilized campaign because they wouldn’t offend anybody,” Lansky says.

And, just to set the record straight, Lansky believes that an overwhelmingly majority of the screamers do not hire outside advertising agencies to plan their ad campaigns, but instead use their own, in-house advertising personnel.