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Television

Bob Costas Keeps His Focus on Guns and Violence

By BILL CARTER

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After stirring some intense debate with his comments last Sunday about how the easy access to a gun may have contributed to the murder committed by Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs and his subsequent suicide, the NBC sportscaster Bob Costas has continued to take his argument to more forums — including his own.

On “Costas Tonight,” his talk show on the NBC Sports Network, to be telecast Thursday night, Mr. Costas again thrashed out the issue of the prevalence of guns in American society, this time with two guests, the former basketball star Charles Barkley and the former tennis champion John McEnroe.

Mr. Costas has also scheduled an appearance Wednesday night on Bill O’Reilly’s top-rated cable program on Fox News.

On “Costas Tonight,” taped Tuesday night, Mr. Barkley said that owning and carrying guns were part of what he termed “black culture,” announcing on the show, “I carry a gun” — specifically, one in his car for last 20 years. Having that access to a gun, he said, makes him feel safer because “we jocks get robbed all the time.” He said, “I feel a sense of peace when I have it with me, but it would take extreme circumstances for me to even touch it.”

Mr. McEnroe, on the other hand, made much the same points that Mr. Costas had in his commentary Sunday and in an interview with The Times on Monday, saying that “there are too many scenarios that would make it that much easier to pick up a gun and do something.” Read more…

New Media

When My Friend Ellen Grossman Met Jay-Z

By TANZINA VEGA

I had seen the link circulating on Twitter Tuesday night. The many references to how gracious the rapper Jay-Z had been as he explained who he was to an unassuming “old lady” sitting next to him on the R train in October during a ride out to Brooklyn.

When I got into the office in the morning, I watched the clip that was embedded in a Gawker post with the headline, “Jay-Z Rides the Subway, Adorably Explains Who He Is to an Adorable Old Lady”

My immediate reaction? That’s no “adorable old lady,” that’s my dear friend Ellen Grossman. In an instant she had gone from being a largely anonymous New York artist, to Ellen Grossman, the Amiable New Yorker Who Asked Jay-Z if He Was Famous as He Was on the Way to Performing at the Barclays Center.

By Wednesday morning, Gawker had updated its post to let readers know that Ms. Grossman was also an artist and linked to her Web site. Readers joked that perhaps it was Jay-Z who should have asked who he was sitting next to, instead of the other way around.

My friend had become an overnight celebrity. Read more…

In Speaking of ‘Shiksas,’ Peeps Acknowledges Its Marketing Went a Bit Too Far

By STUART ELLIOTT
Just Born, the maker of Peeps, has decided to withdraw this e-card from a humorous campaign for its Christmas candies. The card uses the Yiddish word Just Born, the maker of Peeps, has decided to withdraw this e-card from a humorous campaign for its Christmas candies. The card uses the Yiddish word “shiksa” and shows a Peep wearing a yarmulke.

In another example of mishegas, Madison Avenue style, a marketer has withdrawn a humorous e-card that was part of an advertising campaign because the Yiddish-infused joke on the e-card ruffled a consumer’s feathers.

The e-card is part of a lighthearted campaign from Just Born, the maker of Peeps candies, that promotes products like the new Peeps Candy Cane Flavored Dipped Marshmallow Chicks. The idea behind the campaign is that it would express what the company terms “Peepsonality,” reflecting the offbeat, sometimes wacky, interest in Peeps among consumers in their teens, 20s and 30s.

The campaign, by the New York agency Terri & Sandy Solution, offers consumers a chance to send the e-cards, called “Peeps Offerings,” to friends and family as part of efforts to acknowledge the holiday season as a time for “peace, love, joy and reconciliation.”

The e-card in question carries this message: “I’m sorry for bringing a shiksa to your Hanukkah party.” Shiksa is the Yiddish word for a woman who is not Jewish, and to some it carries negative connotations beyond that straightforward definition.

Next to the message is an illustration of a new Peeps candy wearing a yarmulke.

Among the messages on the other e-cards, which are to be available on the Peeps Facebook page and Peeps Web site, are “I’m sorry for singing along during your Christmas recital” and “I’m sorry for using mistletoe as an excuse for kissing your mom.”

In a statement, Matt Pye, a vice president at Just Born, said, “At a time when holidays can be stressful, the Peeps e-cards were designed to offer a bit of fun and comic relief.” He added, however, that “We are sensitive to the concern any consumer may share and will not include this e-card” as part of the campaign. Read more…

Books

Cosmopolitan and Harlequin to Team Up for Steamy E-Fiction

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

What took so long?

Harlequin, the book publisher that made its name on steamy bodice-rippers for women, announced on Wednesday that it would team up with Cosmopolitan, the magazine for women who aspire to the low bodice-look, to produce steamy new digital fiction.

Obviously looking to get a piece of the overheated erotica market generated by the mega-best-selling “50 Shades” trilogy, the publishers promise that their series entitled “Cosmo Red Hot Reads” will feature “free-spirited women” committed to an “outgoing lifestyle.”

Harlequin will publish two original titles a month, beginning in May. The novels will be by Harlequin writers but have the Cosmo name on the imprint as well. The novels will distinguish themselves by being short in length (about 30,000 words a title) so they may be discreetly appreciated on mobile devices.

“Cosmo readers love fabulous fiction and if you picked up ’50 Shades of Grey’ then this is the book series for you,” Cosmopolitan’s editor-in-chief, Joanna Coles, said in a written statement. “This is fiction for the modern girl negotiating modern love — with all its unpredictability and complications!”

Newspapers

Train Wreck: The New York Post’s Subway Cover

By DAVID CARR
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

“It all happened so fast.”

That’s what R. Umar Abbasi, a freelance photographer for The New York Post, said of the fatal subway incident on Monday that he caught with his camera. One man threw another into harm’s way, causing him to be run over by an oncoming train. This last part happened in the blink of a shutter.

But the decision to put the image on the The Post’s cover and frame it with a lurid headline that said “this man is about to die”? That part didn’t happen quickly. The treatment of the photo was driven by a moral and commercial calculus that was sickening to behold. (If the image is not already burned into your skull, it can be found all over the Web, including in The New York Times’s City Room blog. Tut-tutting about a salacious photo here while enjoying the benefits of its replication seems inappropriate.)

And it’s not just the media commentators who are weighing in. Twitter crackled with invective and recriminations. Every once in a while a journalism ethics question actually engages the public, and so it was with the brutally documented death of Ki-Suck Han, 58, of Elmhurst, Queens. Here are some guesses why.

1. Within its four corners, The Post cover treatment neatly embodies everything people hate and suspect about the news media business: not only are journalists bystanders, moral and ethical eunuchs who don’t intervene when danger or evil presents itself, but perhaps they secretly root for its culmination.

2. We are all implicated by this photo, not just the man who took it. The ensuing coverage talked about how “graphic” the image was, but there is nothing graphic about it. Photographs of the dead are graphic, but they are of people on the other side, the ones that are beyond hope. Here there was no blood, no carnage, only someone who is doomed, but still among us. (The photographs of the jumpers from the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center are considered tasteless for the same reason.)

The picture of a man alone on a track in one of the most crowded cities in the world is a reminder that when bad things happen, we are often very much alone. The photographer did not put down his camera and attempt to intervene, but no one else on that platform set aside their fears and chose to act, either. And that indifference to the misery and peril of others is not restricted to that platform, or this city, or this country. It is widespread and endemic, an ugly fact about much of the world. Read more…

The Breakfast Meeting: A New Venture for Seacrest, Pandora Earnings, Disney on Netflix, and a Photo Controversy

By THE EDITORS
The Breakfast Meeting

What’s making news in media.

Ryan Seacrest announced Wednesday that he has taken a controlling stake in Civic Entertainment Group, a strategic marketing agency specializing in so-called experiential marketing. The company, with 45 employees, has been behind high-profile campaigns for clients like CNN, NBC, HBO, A&E and the N.F.L. Financial terms of the transaction, which was conducted through Mr. Seacrest’s new personal investment arm, the Seacrest Global Group, were not disclosed. Mr. Seacrest said the groups’ co-founders Stuart Ruderfer and David Cohn would continue to run the company independently in New York. As Brian Stelter reports, Mr. Seacrest said:

“They’ll do what they do best. I’ll hopefully be able to leverage some access.” Mr. Seacrest could theoretically line up some of the celebrities he interviews on the radio, or some of the reality stars whose shows he produces for the E! channel, for a future brand event put together by the group.

Pandora Media reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, with revenue of $120 million — up 60 percent from the same period last year — and net income matching analyst expectations at 1 cent a share. But the company also lowered its expectations for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year, warning that it would face a loss of 6 to 9 cents per share, greater than it had earlier expected. That news led to a steep decline in the company’s stock price in after-hours trading. Ben Sisario writes:

Pandora’s stock, which had closed up 5.5 percent on Tuesday, at $9.45, fell 18 percent in after-hour trading, once its earnings were released. The stock is down almost 41 percent from its initial offering in June 2011. The company also faces looming competition from Microsoft, which recently introduced a new digital service, Xbox Music; and from Apple, which is said to be preparing an Internet radio service for imminent release, although Apple has not commented on those reports. Spotify and other digital music services also offer competing radio features.

Walt Disney Studios said on Tuesday that it had completed a deal to show films from its Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm banners on Netflix, the first time that one of Hollywood’s Big Six studios has chosen Web streaming over pay television. Read more…

After a Quarterly Gain, Pandora Warns of a Loss to Come

By BEN SISARIO

Pandora Media, the company behind the Internet radio service Pandora, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity. But investors are concerned about its future.

The company reported $120 million in revenue for its fiscal third quarter, which ended in October, up 60 percent from the same period last year. Pandora also had net income of $2.1 million, or 1 cent a share, matching analysts’ predictions. The company offered 3.6 billion hours of personalized music streams to its users during the quarter, which amounted to 59 million people.

“This quarter exceeded our expectations as we monetized mobile at record levels and grew total mobile revenue 112 percent,” Joe Kennedy, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

But the company also lowered its expectations for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year, warning that it would face a loss of 6 to 9 cents a share, greater than it had earlier expected. In a conference call with analysts, Mr. Kennedy said he anticipated a drop in advertising in January because of concerns about the economy.

Pandora’s stock closed up 5.5 percent on Tuesday, at $9.45, but once its earnings were released the price fell nearly 18 percent in after-hours trading. The stock was down almost 41 percent from its initial offering in June 2011. Read more…

Bob Costas, Gun Rights Commentator and Sportscaster, to Appear on MSNBC

By BILL CARTER

Bob Costas will appear as a guest on “The Last Word,” the MSNBC program hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell, on Tuesday night at 10 p.m.

It will be Mr. Costas’s first television interview since his commentary Sunday night after the murder-suicide by a Kansas City Chiefs football player. Mr. Costas has found himself thrust in the middle of the intense debate about guns in America.

He spoke to The Times on Monday to expand on his remarks Sunday night.

Critics, including, some on Fox News (though not its most popular host, Bill O’Reilly, who spoke out in favor of some controls on guns during his show Monday night) attacked Mr. Costas for using the forum of N.F.L. coverage to make a personal political statement. Mr. Costas, in the interview with The Times, noted that it is understood that he has a forum on NBC’s Sunday night football coverage to speak out on issues that concern him.

He stressed in his more expansive comments on Monday that he was not looking to undermine the Second Amendment protections on gun ownership but rather was seeking what he called “enlightened legislation” to bring what he labeled the country’s “gun culture” under some reasonable control.

advertising

Publicis Groupe Makes an Acquisition, After Explaining the Joy of Acquisitions

By STUART ELLIOTT

Talk about a poker face. On Tuesday morning, at a session of the UBS 40th annual global media and communications conference in Midtown Manhattan, Jean-Michel Etienne, chief financial officer of the Publicis Groupe, spoke frequently about his company’s many acquisitions.

Mr. Etienne listed the deals that the Publicis Groupe — the world’s third-largest advertising holding group by revenue —  made in the third quarter; discussed the pending acquisition of the giant LBi digital agency; and talked about the 70 acquisitions that the company made from January 2007 through December 2011.

About three hours after he finished his presentation, reporters received in their e-mail in-boxes a news release about another Publicis Groupe acquisition. It was not brought up by Mr. Etienne — not even in a hint.

The agency is AR New York, a well-regarded shop that specializes in working for marketers in fashion, beauty and luxury goods. AR New York was founded in 1996 and works for, or has worked for, brands that include Asprey, Brioni, Dolce & Gabbana, Neiman Marcus, the St. Regis Hotels and Resorts, Valentino and Versace.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Read more…

New Media

Netflix Reaches Deal to Show New Disney Films in 2016

By BROOKS BARNES
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, called the deal with Disney Evan Agostini/Associated Press Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, called the deal with Disney “a bold leap forward for Internet television.”

LOS ANGELES — Walt Disney Studios said on Tuesday that it had completed a deal to show films from its Disney, Pixar and Marvel banners on Netflix, replacing a less lucrative pact with Starz.

The agreement is the first time one of Hollywood’s big studios has chosen Web streaming over pay television. Netflix has made similar “output” deals with smaller movie suppliers like DreamWorks Animation and the Weinstein Company. But all of the majors — Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony and 20th Century Fox — have stayed with Starz, HBO or Showtime until now.

Library titles like “Dumbo,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Pocahontas” will become available on Netflix immediately, Disney said. Netflix will begin streaming new release Disney films starting in late 2016, when the current accord with Starz expires. The deal announced on Tuesday includes direct-to-DVD movies.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but analysts estimated that the deal could be worth about $300 million annually for Disney. The deal does not include films from DreamWorks Studios, which has a theatrical distribution arrangement with Disney but relies on Showtime as a pay-TV partner. Nevertheless, the deal will include movies from Lucasfilm, which Disney is acquiring.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, called the deal “a bold leap forward for Internet television.” Janice Marinelli, president of Disney-ABC Domestic Television, said in a statement, “Netflix continues to meet the demands of its subscribers in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.” Read more…

Music

Digital Notes: iTunes Expands to 56 Countries, Including Russia and India

By BEN SISARIO

Apple has introduced its iTunes store in 56 new countries, including Russia, Turkey, India and South Africa, the company announced on Tuesday. The move nearly doubles the number of countries in which the store operates, and is also the latest step in a rush among various digital music services to capture new markets overseas.

Digital Notes

Daily updates on the business of digital music.

With those additions, the iTunes store now operates in 119 countries around the world, and since it was introduced in 2003 has sold more than 20 billion songs. The announcement of its expansion comes a few days after Apple released — a month or so late — the latest streamlined update of the underlying iTunes program, to mixed, but mostly positive, reviews (not counting a few outright screeds suggesting that the program has outlasted its usefulness).

As the popularity of streaming and cloud access for music grows, digital services are sprouting up quickly all over the world, leading to an increasingly crowded marketplace. Read more…

The Breakfast Meeting: The Royal Pregnancy, and Ailes’s Offer to Petraeus

By NOAM COHEN
The Breakfast Meeting

What’s making news in media.

The news that Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, are expecting a baby brought wishes of congratulations from the British public and excitement among the country’s news media outlets, who had a grand old time with their royal wedding in April 2011, Sarah Lyall writes. The confirmation by the royal family came early in the pregnancy because Ms. Middleton had checked into a hospital with “acute morning sickness.” Ms. Lyall writes:

Few people could be more excited than the editors of the newspapers and magazines that cover the royal family, who with any luck will have months of things to write about: What will it be, boy or girl? How fat will the duchess look in her pregnancy clothes? What is happening behind closed doors?

 

In spring 2011, a Fox News analyst visited David H. Petraeus in Afghanistan carrying a message from Roger Ailes, the head of the network: rather than accept the C.I.A. post, as Mr. Petraeus later did, he should insist on being named to the top military post, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or better yet, run against President Obama. The message was conveyed by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst, writes Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, who obtained a tape of the conversation.

  • Ms. McFarland laid out additional points: Mr. Ailes was offering to resign Fox News to run the campaign, and his boss, Rupert Murdoch would “bankroll it.” In an interview with Mr. Woodward, Mr. Ailes confirmed he had told Ms. McFarland to speak with General Petraeus: “It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have. I thought the Republican field needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.”

Michiko Kakutani on Tuesday reviewed “The Revolution Was Televised,” a self-published book by Alan Sepinwall, who writes the blog “What’s Alan Watching?” The book’s goal is to explain how and why a new golden age of TV (primarily cable TV, it should be said) came to be. These “great millennial dramas,” led by “The Sopranos,” but also “The Wire,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Mad Men,” and “Breaking Bad,” he writes, allowed TV to “step out from the shadow of the cinema.” Ms. Kakutani describes their qualities:

bold, innovative shows that have pushed the boundaries of storytelling, mixed high and low culture, and demonstrated that the small screen could be an ideal medium for writers and directors eager to create complex, challenging narratives with “moral shades of gray.”

Super Bowl Ad Watch

Home Soda Maker to Join Coca-Cola and Pepsi as Super Bowl Advertiser

By STUART ELLIOTT

An upstart marketer may bring some fizz to the annual advertising bowl that takes place inside the Super Bowl.

SodaStream International, which sells the SodaStream home soda maker system as an alternative to bottled soft drinks, is joining the ranks of marketers that will advertise during Super Bowl XLVII on CBS on Feb. 3, 2013. The SodaStream USA unit of the company is to announce on Tuesday morning that it is buying a commercial that is scheduled to appear in the fourth quarter of the game.

What makes the company’s arrival onto the Super Bowl particularly interesting is that the two largest soft-drink marketers, Coca-Cola and the PepsiCo Americas Beverages unit of PepsiCo, are also scheduled to advertise during Super Bowl XLVII – and the Pepsi-Cola brand is also the sponsor of the halftime show.

SodaStream, however, has always been adept at generating attention for its products by presenting itself as an underdog and tweaking the mainstream soft-drink makers.

The current commercial for SodaStream  promotes the SodaStream system as a way to save 2,000 bottles of soda a year, which are shown exploding in stores and warehouses each time someone uses a SodaStream machine. “If you love the bubbles,” an announcer says, “set them free.” Read more…

Television

At Halftime, Costas Put Spotlight on Guns. By Morning, the Spotlight Was on Him.

By BILL CARTER

Bob Costas recognized that he was likely to be walking into a minefield with his commentary during halftime of the Sunday night National Football League game on NBC. Prompted by the horror of a  murder-suicide carried out the day before by a Kansas City Chiefs football player, Mr. Costas quoted approvingly, and extensively, from a sports column that decried Americans’ easy access to guns.

But Mr. Costas says he has been given the freedom by NBC to editorialize on subjects related to football and sports — views that the network neither specifically endorses nor opposes. And he was convinced, he said in a telephone interview on Monday, that “it was likely that these two people would not be dead” if there hadn’t been a gun available that made it easy to take a life in a moment of anger.

After a flight overnight Sunday back from Dallas, where the Cowboys hosted the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night, Mr. Costas said he woke to “a zillion text messages and phone messages” about his commentary. Most of them were supportive, he said, but there was also a torrent of harshly critical comments from defenders of gun ownership, whether online or on TV shows like “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News Network. Some of those critics called for NBC to fire him.

In the Monday interview, Mr. Costas said, “I am emphatically not backing off from anything I said.” But he noted that in the commentary he had quoted from a column posted on the Web site of Fox Sports by the writer Jason Whitlock. Since he was not able to reach Mr. Whitlock before going on the air on Sunday, Mr. Costas said he did not feel it proper to edit or add extensively to those comments.

What he sought to do in his comments the day after, Mr. Costas said, was not to clarify his remarks but to expand on them. Chiefly, he said, he wanted to emphasize that “I do not think the Second Amendment should be repealed and I do not think, under reasonable circumstances, that people should be prohibited from having guns.”

But he said, “I think most reasonable people think we do not have sufficient controls on the availability of guns and ammunition.” Read more…

Television

‘Walking Dead’ Ratings Eclipse Even Those of Top Broadcast Shows

By BILL CARTER

Underscoring how potent cable programming has become, AMC’s zombie series “The Walking Dead” completed its fall season Sunday night with higher ratings in the most important audience category for advertisers — viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 — than any show on the broadcast networks.

Over all, “Walking Dead” averaged a 5.3 rating in that 18 to 49 age group, for its first airing of each episode, a number that topped the initial rating for that category for such network hits as “The Big Bang Theory,” “Modern Family” and “The Voice.”

The show’s finale Sunday night averaged 10.5 million viewers, just short of the record that the show set for cable television with its premiere this season, 10.9 million viewers. Either total would rank as a hit number by any television standard.

But “Walking Dead” has proved to be especially valuable for his appeal to younger viewers. Sunday’s finale was seen by 6.9 million viewers in that 18 to 49 segment of the audience. By comparison, the top network series “Big Bang” has averaged 6.3 million for its first day of exposure.