BRIEFCASE INTEL RESTRUCTURES TROUBLESOME UNIT.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

SAN JOSE - Less than a week after warning of a $600 million fourth-quarter charge, Intel Corp. said it is consolidating the unit that caused the problem into another of its businesses.

The new Intel Communications Group will provide the silicon chip-based building blocks for networks, cellular phones and handheld computers. Cell phones and handhelds were previously handled by the semiconductor giant's Wireless Communications and Computing Group.

TiVo demand has shoppers on hold

SAN JOSE - After years of lukewarm demand, the elves at satellite television provider DirecTV are suddenly scrambling to fill holiday orders for its TiVo-based set-top boxes.

Some shoppers are finding they have to wait weeks before getting their digital video recording satellite receivers as ``unprecedented demand'' has led to supply shortages at various stores, DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci said Wednesday.

Marsocci said the backlog was limited to particular locations and not nationwide. Most large consumer electronics retailers still have inventory, he said.

The shortage is of DirecTV receivers with TiVo Inc.'s pioneering digital video recording technology that lets TV viewers record shows to a hard drive and pause live programming.

Demand surged after DirecTV lowered the price of its TiVo-based devices in October from $200 to $99, including installation.

HealthSouth exec ordered to prison

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A tearful former HealthSouth executive was ordered to prison for five months Wednesday and four co-workers got probation in the first sentencings linked to the fraud that rocked the rehabilitation chain.

All five contended they took part in the scheme to inflate earnings out of fear of losing their jobs, and all five got reduced sentences from U.S. District Judge Inge Johnson for their help in the investigation.

Former assistant controller Emery Harris, facing a maximum penalty of 15 years' imprisonment and $1.5 million in fines, was sentenced to five months in prison, another five months of home detention, ordered to forfeit $106,500 and fined $3,000.

Wiping away tears, Harris told Johnson he was relieved when an FBI agent and a prosecutor showed up in his driveway in March after a raid at the company's Birmingham headquarters.

First Call will stop using 'consensus'

NEW YORK - Thomson Corp.'s Thomson First Call unit, which compiles and distributes information on Wall Street estimates of companies' earnings, said Wednesday that it will no longer use the word ``consensus'' when referring to the average analyst estimate.

Instead, the company will use ``First Call mean'' when discussing the mathematical average of the projections of several individual analysts on a company's future earnings per share.

First Call is ``trying to be more precise,'' research director Chuck Hill said.