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Ad Companies Face a Widening Talent Gap

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A talent gap is growing between the skills that many new advertising jobs require and the number of people who have those skills. The dilemma, one familiar to many industries across the country, is particularly acute for jobs that require hard-core quantitative, mathematical and technical skills.

The talent pool, advertising technology company executives say, is not a deep one. And those who have the skills are in high demand, often fetching annual salaries that can reach $100,000.

“There is pain for hiring in digital at all levels,” said John Ebbert, managing editor of AdExchanger.com, a Web site dedicated to advertising technology.

“The marketers, the publishers, the ad tech companies, the agencies, data management companies — they’re all going for the same type of employee.”

The job board on AdExchanger, which is updated every 45 days, has postings for positions with titles like “Yield Optimization Manager” and “Director of Platform Marketing.” The number of jobs on the board has nearly doubled in the past year, Mr. Ebbert said, to 80 jobs every 45 days from 40.

The digital talent gap is driven in part by the enormous amount of user data that ad tech companies are collecting for agencies and marketers — data that is instrumental in directing ads to consumers and analyzing trends. New hires are needed for a variety of tasks, including writing code, creating digital advertisements, Web site development and statistical analysis.

“The demand has far outstripped the supply,” said Joe Zawadzki, the chief executive of MediaMath, an ad tech company in New York. “The number of things that you need to know is high and the number of people that have grown up knowing it is low.”

Mr. Zawadzki said that as of last week his company had 13 positions open and had gone to job boards, recruiters and even hosted technology-focused meet-ups to find people. In September, the company hired its first senior vice president for human capital to help with recruitment.

On average, Mr. Zawadzki said, it takes two to three months to find the right person — someone with a combination of pure quantitative skills, applied marketing skills and an understanding of how the advertising technology business works. With a limited talent pool, many ad tech firms are after the same people.

“Half my job is maintaining a mental Rolodex of people that are at various places,” Mr. Zawadzki said.

Edwin Lee, 40, is typical of the candidates that many ad tech companies are competing for. Mr. Lee, an economics major at Stanford who has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California, was hired as an account director at MediaMath in September. He came to the company after leaving a Silicon Valley start-up and began his new job after entertaining a variety of options, including other small start-ups and Google.

“For me it was like, ‘The world’s my oyster here — what do I want to do?’ ” said Mr. Lee, who describes his new job as “helping companies and clients make sense of something they don’t really understand and they hear a lot about.”

The difficulty in finding qualified candidates is affecting advertising agencies as well, said Jerry Neumann, a venture capitalist from Neu Venture Capital who invests in ad tech companies like 33 Across and YieldBot.

Agencies have not traditionally hired for skills like “number crunching, data visualization, quantitative analysis,” Mr. Neumann said. “They’ve never needed those in the past.” Instead, media buyers and even those on the creative side of agencies need to prepare for a new digital reality.

“The kind of media buying that’s happening now is much more quantitative” Mr. Neumann said. “The agencies are staffed for qualitative.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=123f4a2190c0ed5f8e51ccd05735a768

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Accusations Fly as Qantas Planes Return to the Skies

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A flight from Sydney to Jakarta departed shortly after the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia cleared it for takeoff Monday afternoon.

The resumption of service by Qantas followed 48 hours of travel chaos that left as many as 70,000 passengers stuck in airports around the globe, straining the airline’s relationship with its customers and drawing the ire of the Australian government.

In a statement, Qantas warned international customers to expect delays until at least Tuesday evening, Australian time. But it said domestic services would be running as scheduled from Tuesday morning.

Passengers booked to travel Monday from Los Angeles International airport, a major U.S. hub for Qantas, were told to report to the airport as scheduled. Still, the airline warned those who had been stranded by earlier cancellations to await further information before heading to the airport.

The tribunal’s decision in the early hours of Monday granted 21 days for Qantas and its workers to resolve their acrimonious dispute — the motivation for the airline’s halting of flights Saturday — and reach a binding agreement or face compulsory arbitration.

The action by Qantas that kept its planes out of the skies raised the stakes in the confrontation with its unions after months of tension.

The airline, one of the 10 largest in the world, was hit by a series of labor problems as employees voiced concern about wage inequality and the moving of jobs out of Australia. Workers staged various actions that included brief strikes and the refusal to work overtime.

Despite a direct appeal by the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, to solve the matter swiftly, hundreds of flights were canceled over the weekend and it took a court order to get the planes moving again.

Ms. Gillard tried to seize some credit for the resolution in a series of media appearances Monday. Her opponents argued, though, that she had failed to break the impasse herself because of her ties to the labor unions.

“I’ve done what I needed to do to get this dispute brought to an end, to get the planes back in the sky,” The Australian, a daily newspaper, quoted her as saying.

The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, wasted little time in blaming the government for the chaos, however, which some said was threatening to tarnish one of the nation’s most notable brands.

“I think the public has had a win, but it is no thanks to the Gillard government,” he said on Australian television.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, who faced sharp criticism over his decision to ground the fleet, struck a contrite tone. But he also blamed the unions for the disruption.

“I apologize to all Qantas passengers that have been impacted by the industrial action by unions over the past few months and in particular the past few days,” Mr. Joyce said in a statement.

He suggested that grounding the fleet had been a tactical move by the airline to break the deadlock with the unions.

“That was the only way we could bring that to a head,” Mr. Joyce was quoted as saying by Reuters after the ruling.

Qantas had to reduce and reschedule flights for weeks because of the labor actions. But the unions said they were the injured party and accused the company of planning to outsource the company’s operations to Asia.

Qantas, which employs about 35,000 people, said the grounding of the fleet had cost it an estimated $21 million a day. It was losing $16 million a week in revenue as a result of the union actions.

Two of the leading credit ratings agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard Poor’s, said Monday that they might lower the airline’s rating because of the fallout from the increasingly bitter industrial conflict.

But many investors and analysts seemed relieved that the shutdown of flights had ended and that a resolution to the disagreement with the unions might be in sight. The company’s shares closed up 4.4 percent in Sydney at 1.61 Australian dollars, or $1.06.

Qantas’s brand is unlikely to suffer in the long run, said Cameron McDonald, a Sydney-based aviation analyst with Deutsche Bank.

“It’s a fairly dramatic step,” Mr. McDonald said, referring to the grounding of flights. “The feedback that the company is giving down here is that they did what they deemed to be necessary to bring these things to a conclusion. And you’d have to say they achieved their aim.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f7f9d582b6a8d1a84d2b650d3bf66318

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Medicine Shortages Addressed in Obama Executive Order

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The order offers drug manufacturers and wholesalers both a helping hand and a gloved fist in efforts to prevent or resolve shortages that have worsened greatly in recent years, endangering thousands of lives.

It instructs the F.D.A. to do three things: broaden reporting of potential shortages of certain prescription drugs; speed reviews of applications to begin or alter production of these drugs; and provide more information to the Justice Department about possible instances of collusion or price gouging.

Such efforts are included in proposed legislation that has been pending in Congress since February despite bipartisan support for its provisions.

The order, the first since 1985 by a president to affect the functions of the Food and Drug Administration, is part of a series of recent executive orders involving such disparate issues as mortgage relief and jobs for veterans. They are intended to show that the president, plagued by low approval ratings, is working to resolve the nation’s problems despite a Congress largely paralyzed by partisan disagreements.

“The president’s action is a recognition of the fact that this is a serious problem, and we can and should do more to help solve it,” said an administration official who asked to remain anonymous to avoid upstaging the official announcement on Monday. “We can’t wait anymore.”

So far this year, at least 180 drugs that are crucial for treating childhood leukemia, breast and colon cancer, infections and other diseases have been declared in short supply — a record number. Prices for some have risen as much as eightyfold, and clinical trials for some experimental cures have been delayed because the studies must also offer older medicines that cannot be reliably provided.

Patients with entirely curable diseases have been forced to take medicines that may not be as effective, adding anxiety to an already terrible ordeal.

The president’s order is a modest effort that, while possibly helpful, is unlikely to resolve the problem soon or entirely. Administration officials characterized it as one step in a long and complicated effort. Indeed, Mr. Obama eschewed more ambitious proposals — like government drug stockpiling or manufacturing — that would have injected the government more directly into the nation’s drug market and cost more but that might have been more effective.

Still, Mr. Obama’s order and others he has issued recently reflect his belief in the power of government to improve people’s lives. By contrast, top Republican legislators and presidential candidates have almost uniformly argued that resolving the nation’s economic and other problems depends mostly on scaling back or ending government regulations to allow the free market to function more effectively. No regulatory agency touches people’s lives more thoroughly than the F.D.A., which regulates 25 cents of every dollar spent by consumers.

Along with Mr. Obama’s order, on Monday the administration will release two government reports that mostly blame a dysfunctional marketplace for drug shortages, directly contradicting assertions by some commentators that government rules are to blame. The analyses found that 74 percent of the medicines in short supply in 2010 were sterile injectibles, the kind of drugs delivered in hospitals or clinics to treat cancer or anesthetize patients before surgery.

The economic and technical hurdles to participating in this market have made it exceedingly inflexible, the analyses found. Just five large hospital buying groups purchase nearly 90 percent of the needed medicines, and only seven companies manufacture the vast majority of supply. In most cases, one company produces at least 90 percent of a drug’s supply, and crucial ingredients — many of them made in mammoth plants in India and China — are often difficult to find, verify and approve, so years are needed to create new capacity. While demand has grown steadily in recent years, supply capacity has remained largely unchanged.

With so much supply dependent on so few companies and facilities, safety problems that arise anywhere in the system can result in enormous disruptions. Nearly half of the shortages followed inspections that found serious quality problems, including injectibles that had glass shards, metal filings and bacterial and fungal contamination, the reports found.

Even the generic drug industry is calling for more regulation. The industry recently agreed to provide the F.D.A. with nearly $300 million annually to bolster inspections and speed drug applications. That amounts to about 1 percent of the industry’s revenues and about 5 percent of its profits in the United States, an extraordinary vote of confidence in the government’s ability to improve the situation.

This money and an industry campaign to build more capacity may eventually resolve much of the supply disruptions. In the meantime, Mr. Obama will promise Monday to strengthen the staff of the drug agency’s shortages team to deal with what are expected to be far more and detailed communications with manufacturers about events that could affect drug supplies, officials said.

The administration will also send letters to manufacturers reminding them of their legal responsibility to report pending supply disruptions of certain drugs and to encourage them to notify the drug agency of events that could possibly lead to disruptions even when not required to do so.

The rules needed to expand required notifications will take time to finalize, but the president’s order will speed that process, administration officials said. The president will also announce his support of legislation proposed in both the House and Senate to expand even further reporting requirements from manufacturers.

Mr. Obama’s order that the F.D.A. report to the Justice Department possible instances of price gouging or collusion is largely directed at the shadowy and fading world of small wholesalers that buy drugs from one set of users and in times of shortage sell them at huge markups to another. In one case, a leukemia drug that normally sold for $12 per vial was being sold for $990 per vial — 80 times higher. A survey found that small wholesalers typically increased prices by 650 percent during shortages.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b7e1756459687b5272d2bed3cd120257

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DealBook: Rajat Gupta’s Fateful Day

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Rajat K. Gupta, left, and his lawyer, Gary Naftalis, on Wednesday after Mr. Gupta was charged with insider trading.John Marshall Mantel for The New York TimesRajat K. Gupta, left, and his lawyer, Gary Naftalis, last week after Mr. Gupta was charged with insider trading.

On Sept. 23, 2008, Rajat K. Gupta called Raj Rajaratnam after a Goldman Sachs board meeting and told the hedge fund manager secrets about the bank, according to an indictment unsealed last week.

That same day, Mr. Gupta had two doctor appointments, dined with Ethiopia’s health minister and got a haircut.

His calendar for Sept. 23, 2008 — entered into evidence during Mr. Rajaratnam’s trial as Government Exhibit 3035 — provides a lens into the busy and influential life of Mr. Gupta at a time when federal prosecutors say he was also breaking the law.

Mr. Gupta, then 59, was an éminence grise in the worlds of international business and philanthropy, juggling his work as a senior partner at McKinsey, the elite management consulting firm that he had once run, with his public company directorships, investment activities and charitable pursuits.

After an early morning call with an executive in Qatar, Mr. Gupta spent the next several hours with physicians. He also sandwiched in a 15-minute haircut at an establishment called Rudy’s before being driven into Manhattan from his home in Westport, Conn.

Mr. Gupta did not get to his office at McKinsey until 2 p.m., the calendar says. He then had back-to-back meetings with Sandeep Tyagi, chairman of Estee Advisors, a money management firm based in Singapore, and K. Balasubramanian, a board member of the GMR Group, an infrastructure investment business in Bangalore, India.

The Goldman call came at 3 p.m. He participated in a 38-minute telephonic board meeting during which the bank approved a $5 billion investment by Warren E. Buffett — news that the convulsing stock market, and Goldman’s investors, would surely love.

The government highlighted Mr. Gupta’s Sept. 23 schedule at the Rajaratnam trial during the testimony of Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive.

The calendar established for the jury that the Goldman board meeting took place when it did. Then, using a phone log, prosecutors showed that Mr. Gupta called Mr. Rajaratnam immediately afterward. Minutes later, just before the stock market closed, Mr. Rajaratnam purchased large blocks of Goldman shares, according to trading records shown during the trial.

A jury convicted Mr. Rajaratanam in May. On Wednesday, the government charged Mr. Gupta, 62, with passing tips to Mr. Rajaratnam about Goldman and Procter Gamble, where he also served as a director. Two of the five counts against Mr. Gupta, who is fighting the charges, relate to Mr. Rajaratnam’s Sept. 23 Goldman trades.

His day did not end with the Goldman meeting. Mr. Gupta spent the balance of the afternoon on his numerous nonprofit causes, including a meeting with Julian Schweitzer, the World Bank‘s head of health nutrition, and Raymond G. Chambers, the United Nations special envoy for malaria. He had a separate sit-down with Michel Katzatchkine, the director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to discuss a project to root out disease in Rwanda.

During those meetings, around 5 p.m., Goldman announced Mr. Buffett’s big investment to the public.

Mr. Gupta closed out the day with a dinner at Django, the now-defunct midtown Manhattan brasserie, in honor of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the health minister of Ethiopia. He then spent the night in a room at the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue, the calendar shows. His suite was booked by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm where, just that month, he had been named a senior adviser.

The next morning, prosecutors say, with Goldman’s shares opening higher, Mr. Rajaratnam sold his position in the bank, booking an illegal profit of about $840,000.

Rajat K. Gupta’s calendar for Sept. 23, 2008

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c606cb8aaf760ab144c0ac1b9f410ddb

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Mixed Signals for European Central Bank as Data Point to Slowdown

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast Monday that euro zone economies will see a “marked slowdown” next year, and called on the European Union to clarify its anti-crisis measures, The Associated Press reported.

In an update of economic forecasts timed to coincide with this week’s meeting of the Group of 20 major economies, the Paris-based O.E.C.D. said “patches of mild negative growth” were likely in the euro zone in 2012.

It predicted economic growth in the euro zone would stall at 0.3 percent next year, after just 1.6 percent growth this year. That is down from the O.E.C.D.’s forecast in May of 2 percent growth in the euro zone in 2012.

“Detailed information is needed” on how the European Union will implement the package of measures announced last week aimed at resolving the European debt crisis, the O.E.C.D. said.

Inflation in the 17 countries that belong to the euro area was steady in October at 3 percent, according to figures from Eurostat, the European Union statistical agency. That was contrary to analyst predictions of a slight drop because of slowing economic growth. However, unemployment edged higher to 10.2 percent in September from 10.1 percent in August, Eurostat said.

The data, along with a muted official forecast for Spanish growth, offer no easy choices for Mario Draghi when he presides over his first monetary policy meeting as president of the European Central Bank on Thursday.

Some economists expect the E.C.B. to cut its benchmark interest rate on Thursday in response to signs of a marked slowdown by the euro area economy. The Bank of Spain said Monday that the Spanish economy stopped growing in the three months through September, as government austerity measures cut into domestic consumption.

At the same time, inflation remains well above the E.C.B.’s target of about 2 percent. As a result Mr. Draghi, anxious to establish his credentials as an inflation fighter, may be hesitant to preside over a rate cut just days after succeeding Jean-Claude Trichet as E.C.B. president.

“Our forecast is for the first cut to be delivered this week but this uncomfortably high headline inflation reading may make the E.C.B. want to wait until December,” analysts at HSBC wrote in a note to clients Monday.

Economists said joblessness was likely to rise further as the sovereign debt crisis continues to act as a drag on euro-area growth. An additional 188,000 people became unemployed in September, a total of 16.2 million people, the biggest increase in two years.

“The outlook is not particularly bright for the euro area labor market,” Francois Cabau, an analyst at Barclays Capital, wrote in a note.

Unemployment was highest in Spain, at 22.6 percent, and Greece, at 17.6 percent. Italy recorded one of the biggest jumps in joblessness, to 8.3 percent from 8 percent, as well as one of the biggest increases in inflation, to 3.8 percent from 3.6 percent.

The rise in Italian prices was caused partly by an increase in the value-added tax. Still, the data may add to the heat that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is feeling from other leaders, who are showing frustration with his failure to push through policies to make the Italian economy perform better. Italy has replaced Greece as the biggest threat to the euro area, as bond investors begin to doubt that the country will be able to service its debt.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=97129c5c581e857a4bc049ca9c7f4abb

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DealBook: Fed Suspends Business with MF Global

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

7:51 a.m. | Updated Shares in MF Global Holdings were halted for trading early on Monday, as the brokerage prepared to file for bankruptcy protection and sell some of its assets to the Interactive Brokers Group, according to people briefed on the matter.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement that it had suspended doing any business with MF Global until the firm “is fully capable of discharging the responsibilities set out in the New York Fed’s policy.”

MF Global is a primary dealer, meaning that it is one of 22 firms allowed to trade directly with the Fed and make a market in securities like Treasury notes.

Original article: Jon S. Corzine, whose political ambitions came to a halt nearly two years ago when he was defeated for re-election as governor of New Jersey, is running out of time to prevent his revived Wall Street career from collapsing in failure.

His firm, MF Global — a powerhouse in the world of commodities and derivatives trading but little known outside Wall Street — was working frantically toward a potential sale late on Sunday.

Those discussions, which narrowed to one bidder, Interactive Brokers, came after investors — worried that MF Global was too vulnerable to the fallout from Europe’s debt crisis — deserted the firm, making it the first American financial institution to fall victim to those sovereign debt woes.

If the firm is unable to sell itself, other options, including bankruptcy, await. MF Global has hired restructuring and bankruptcy law firms including Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher Flom, said people briefed on the matter but unauthorized to speak publicly. One option is for MF Global to follow a precedent set by Lehman Brothers in 2008 by seeking bankruptcy protection for the parent company while selling some assets to Interactive Brokers.

Other Wall Street firms have not been spared damage from the European debt crisis. Shares at firms as large as Morgan Stanley fell this month over concerns that they were exposed to Europe’s troubles. And investment banks and brokerage firms are still licking their wounds from market volatility that has hurt trading operations.

MF Global began buying the debt of European countries like Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland last year, in a bet that the discounted prices of those bonds would soon recover. The gamble, though, went sour, and MF Global was hard hit as Greece’s troubled economy spread woes across the Continent. Although European leaders appeared to make progress last week toward resolving those problems, and other firms rebounded, MF Global continued to suffer.

The last-ditch rescue effort is a major blow to the reputation of Mr. Corzine, 64, who formerly co-led Goldman Sachs and was also a United States senator. With a sale of MF Global, Mr. Corzine’s role at the firm will almost certainly end, though he is expected to receive a severance payment of nearly $12.1 million.

Still, the departure will be bitter for Mr. Corzine, whose first stint on Wall Street ended with his ouster from Goldman Sachs. Along with Henry M. Paulson, another Goldman co-chief executive, who would later become Treasury secretary, Mr. Corzine, a former trader, led the firm through the Asian financial crisis of 1998. But trading losses in the last quarter of that year, on top of ill will within the firm over the decision to go public, led to Mr. Corzine’s exit in January 1999.

He revived his career with a successful run for the Senate from New Jersey in 2000, and left the Senate in 2005 to run for governor of New Jersey. A weak economy and a corruption scandal helped Christopher J. Christie defeat him for re-election in 2009.

Mr. Corzine’s arrival at MF Global in March 2010 was meant to be a triumphant return to Wall Street and to bond trading after a long absence. Though it is has operations worldwide, MF Global has just 2,800 employees, making it a fraction of the size of Goldman or Lehman.

Throughout the weekend, regulators focused on completing a deal that would sell at least a portion of the firm, a move that would avert a messy bankruptcy. But given its relatively small size, the firm is unlikely to send shock waves through the financial system.

Most of MF Global’s business involves executing and clearing trades in commodities and derivatives for clients like hedge funds. When Mr. Corzine joined, he sought to transform it into a full-fledged investment bank, in part by making riskier trades using the firm’s own capital.

A large part of that strategy backfired, as analysts and regulators worried about $6.3 billion in bonds issued by Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Portugal. By contrast, the much larger Morgan Stanley disclosed this month that it had just a $2.1 billion exposure to Europe.

Regulators were less confident in MF Global’s wager, asking it in August to raise the amount of money backing its bonds. The firm complied, though it argued that the bonds were trading at a few cents below par value.

Analysts appeared unimpressed. Late last Monday, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the firm’s credit rating, citing both weak financial performance and its European bond holdings. The next day, the firm reported a $186 million loss, its fourth loss in six quarters.

Two days later, both Moody’s and another major agency, Fitch Ratings, downgraded MF Global to junk status. Such a move is disastrous for a financial firm, since it limits the number of trading parties willing to do business and raises borrowing costs.

Just as important, it can also scare customers, especially after the toppling of bigger firms during the financial crisis, like Bear Stearns and Lehman.

As of Friday, only a small percentage of customer money had flowed out MF Global’s door, according to a person briefed on the matter.

By the end of last week and through the weekend, Mr. Corzine and his advisers at Evercore Partners had called seemingly every major Wall Street firm, offering to sell MF Global, or at least some of its businesses or trading positions. While the firm had held talks with another potential buyer, Jefferies Company, by Sunday evening Interactive Brokers appeared to be in pole position.

Founded in 1977 by its chief executive, Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers is a discount brokerage firm that places trades for customers on 90 exchanges.

The two firms share a deal history of sorts. In 2005, both competed for assets of Refco, which had filed for bankruptcy. MF Global emerged the victor with a $323 million bid.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=342e9f362bdedf8fc3347b334bd74ff5

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CNN Expected to Revamp Its Morning Lineup

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The channel, a unit of Time Warner, is expected to announce as early as this week that Soledad O’Brien, one of its former morning anchors, will start anchoring from 7 to 9 a.m. weekdays. Ashleigh Banfield, until recently a correspondent for ABC News, will start co-anchoring from 5 to 7 a.m.

The plan, described by three people with direct knowledge of it, will effectively dismantle “American Morning,” which has had about 10 co-anchors in its 10 years on CNN. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the changes had not been announced. A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment on Sunday.

Ms. Banfield, at 5 a.m., will have a co-anchor, the people with direct knowledge of the plans said. One possibility is Zoraida Sambolin, who was an early morning anchor in Chicago until this month. Time Out Chicago reported last week that CNN had hired her for a morning anchor slot. Ms. O’Brien, at 7 a.m., may be joined by an ensemble of contributors.

“American Morning” has been largely an afterthought in a time period defined by the “Today” show and “Good Morning America” on network television and by “Fox Friends” and “Morning Joe” on cable. The program also has routinely been beaten in the ratings by “Morning Express With Robin Meade” on CNN’s sister channel HLN.

The latest round of overhauls started last December, when the co-anchor John Roberts left the program and joined Fox News, and continued in July, when Kiran Chetry left. It is unclear whether the interim anchors of “American Morning,” Ali Velshi, Christine Romans and Carol Costello, will retain any role on the new morning programs.

Mr. Velshi, a business reporter, is expected to anchor a business program on CNN International.

Ms. O’Brien is well aware of the challenges CNN faces in the morning, having co-anchored “American Morning” between 2003 and 2006. In her memoir, “The Next Big Story,” she recalled how the ratings would rise and fall depending on the news cycle. “ ‘American Morning’ is a hard news show, and when the news is soft, a lot of people tune out,” she wrote.

She was dismissed from the program in 2007 and assigned to produce and host documentaries, something she perceived at first to be a “consolation prize” but came to view as a “backhanded” reward. Her documentaries, like the “Black in America” series, were warmly received by viewers and critics; the “In America” unit that produces them is expected to remain intact, according to two people with knowledge of the unit.

Ms. Banfield has been seen recently on “Good Morning America” as a correspondent. She joined ABC News two years ago after working as a host on TruTV and her contract is believed to be up in November.

She became well-known while anchoring for MSNBC after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and was briefly mentioned as a possible co-anchor for “Today,” but she departed the network in 2004 after giving a speech that was critical of television coverage of the Iraq war. She argued in the speech that too much of the coverage blindly embraced patriotic symbols and ignored civilian and military causalities and the other “horrors” of war.

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Cable TV Holding Web Rivals at Bay, Earnings Show

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But for the most part, the cords remain intact, the latest crop of earnings reports indicate. Considering the fragile economy, cable and satellite subscriptions seem to be faring better than the industry had feared and its Internet rivals had hoped.

Even as Internet video viewing increases, the vast majority of American households are still paying for television subscriptions and watching most video that way. Those who are canceling are doing so, it seems, because of poverty, not improved technology.

“Overwhelmingly, the losses are coming at the low end of the income spectrum,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein. Most such cord-cutters do not have a broadband Internet connection, he said.

Although cord-cutting losses adversely affect distributors, they have to date been largely offset by increases in broadband subscriptions and business services. Business clients are the single biggest area of growth for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the country’s top two cable distributors. That is one of the reasons why analysts say the companies are stable despite pressure on the television subscription front.

Speaking to investors last week, Glenn A. Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, called residential broadband and business services “our two most promising areas.”

The ripple effects of hard times for American households are evident in the revenue and subscriber figures recently shared by Mr. Britt and others. Some cable subscribers are cutting back on premium channels like HBO or Showtime and are dropping the digital video recorders and landline telephones that they signed up for a few years ago.

Meanwhile, because fewer people are moving into new homes or starting families, there are fewer new households for distributors to sign up for TV and broadband service.

When it reported earnings on Friday, Cablevision, which mostly serves subscribers in the New York metropolitan area, said it believed that the number of occupied homes in its service area had declined in the last 12 months, putting additional pressure on the company.

Vijay Jayant, a senior managing director for the ISI Group, said he anticipated an overall dip in TV subscribers for the quarter, just as in the second quarter, when the top publicly traded distributors lost about 450,000 subscribers in total. (Each year the second quarter is affected by seasonal factors like the departure of college students; in the 2010 period, distributors lost 200,000 subscribers.)

But Mr. Jayant and other analysts remain bullish. Right now, he said, “it’s a housing issue, more than anything else.”

The lack of new housing, of course, is tied to the broader economy. When Time Warner Cable, which has been losing TV subscribers to competitors for years, reported a net loss of 128,000 in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, it noted that fully half were analog subscribers, who generally pay less and get fewer channels than digital subscribers. Analog subscribers represent about 25 percent of Time Warner Cable’s subscriber base.

“These are families that are struggling to make ends meet,” Mr. Moffett surmised.

Over all, it is striking how steady the levels of subscriptions have been. About 100 million households pay for TV subscriptions. “When you think about it, nearly everyone watches TV, and they watch a lot of it,” Mr. Britt said on Thursday.

The Cablevision chief operating officer, Tom Rutledge, struck a similarly optimistic note a day later. “Over the long term,” he said, “I think the business has a lot of growth to it.”

In some areas, Time Warner Cable has been marketing what it calls “TV Essentials,” a less expensive monthly package that lacks ESPN and other channels. Other distributors have shown interest in less costly tiers of service, too.

Mr. Britt told investors last week that although “TV Essentials” generated “lots of interest, the vast majority of customers who call about the offering end up taking a more robust video package.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 30, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Tom Rutledge as Cablevision’s chief executive. He is the company’s chief operating officer.

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Dawn Hudson’s New Job as the Academy’s Chief Is a Balancing Act

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Dawn Hudson, the first person to hold a newly created post as the organization’s chief executive, has hung in more than twice as long. But that does not mean Hollywood’s film academy is at ease with the latest strong-willed woman to promise what has always come hard for it: change.

In June, Ms. Hudson was named to replace the academy’s retiring executive director, Bruce Davis. A 20-year presence on the independent film scene, she arrived with a commitment to social and ethnic diversity, a determination to raise the academy’s public profile and a reputation for shaking things up.

“If you don’t want to say yes, don’t take her phone call,” advises Michael Donaldson, an admirer who was Ms. Hudson’s general counsel at a nonprofit called Film Independent, which supports independent filmmakers, and its predecessor, the Independent Feature Project/West.

In Bette Davis’s day, the fights were about whether to charge for Oscar night tickets and cutting screen extras out of the academy.

At issue today is whether Ms. Hudson can accomplish a delicate balancing act: opening the group to fresh talent and unleashing its vast resources — net assets topped $258 million last year, while television deals for the Academy Awards guarantee a billion dollars in revenue over the next decade — without losing the confidence of a 43-member board that built its nest egg, and the Oscar brand, by protecting what already works.

For some, this seems to be a defining moment in a film industry that has surrendered energy to television and other media, adding urgency to Ms. Hudson’s task as the awards season churns toward the Oscar ceremonies on Feb. 26.

“It’s about preserving the emotional connection that people have to the movies,” said Terry Press, a publicist who serves on one of the academy’s internal boards. “That’s got to be the mission.”

Ms. Hudson and Tom Sherak, the academy’s elected president, declined to be interviewed. Both said it was too early in Ms. Hudson’s tenure to discuss the direction that she might take the academy.

But interviews with academy members, including past and present governors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of prohibitions on public discussion of internal deliberations, make clear that Ms. Hudson was recruited to help fix what not everyone inside believes to be broken.

In the last few months, for instance, Ms. Hudson ruffled feathers by suggesting her own choices for annual invitations to the membership rolls — something that has largely been left to directors, writers and other artists in the academy’s various branches. Within the secretive academy, even small things like this can loom large. Some governors were offended, though as a member herself Ms. Hudson was entitled to offer names.

Backers say moves of that sort reflect Ms. Hudson’s conviction that the academy needs new faces, many from underrepresented ethnic or social groups.

“I don’t think anyone, any white person, in this town is more dedicated to diversity than Dawn Hudson,” said Stephanie Allain Bray, a black producer who is an academy member and who worked with Ms. Hudson on the board of Film Independent.

Diversity is not a strong suit of the academy’s governors; all but one are white, only six are women, and the average age appears to be over 60.

Along with prominent names like the director Kathryn Bigelow and the actor Tom Hanks, the board includes seasoned but less-recognized film workers like Kevin O’Connell from the sound branch, and Richard Crudo, a cinematographer.

Because physical attendance is expected at board meetings, virtually all of the governors are Californians. Making the rounds at private meetings in New York recently, Ms. Hudson suggested opening up the board with the help of video technology like Skype, something Mr. Sherak has also advocated.

“She’s a woman of intelligence, guts and compromise,” offered Sidney Ganis, a past academy president who was on the search committee that recruited Ms. Hudson, and who became acquainted with her as a member of the Film Independent board. Ms. Hudson, Mr. Ganis said, has been raising questions since she took over in an attempt to understand the academy, not dictating changes in practice or policy.

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Concerns Raised about Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood.

The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

But the research is arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled.

Authorities in the Florida Keys, which in 2009 experienced its first cases of dengue fever in decades, hope to conduct an open-air test of the modified mosquitoes as early as December, pending approval from the Agriculture Department.

“It’s a more ecologically friendly way to control mosquitoes than spraying insecticides,” said Coleen Fitzsimmons, a spokeswoman for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District.

The Agriculture Department, meanwhile, is looking at using genetic engineering to help control farm pests like the Mediterranean fruit fly, or medfly, and the cotton-munching pink bollworm, according to an environmental impact statement it published in 2008. Millions of genetically engineered bollworms have been released over cotton fields in Yuma County, Ariz.

Yet even supporters of the research worry it could provoke a public reaction similar to the one that has limited the acceptance of genetically modified crops. In particular, critics say that Oxitec, the British biotechnology company that developed the dengue-fighting mosquito, has rushed into field testing without sufficient review and public consultation, sometimes in countries with weak regulations.

“Even if the harms don’t materialize, this will undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the research enterprise,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of international health law at Georgetown University.

The first release, which was discussed in a scientific paper published online on Sunday by the journal Nature Biotechnology, took place in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean in 2009 and caught the international scientific community by surprise. Oxitec has subsequently released the modified mosquitoes in Malaysia and Brazil.

Luke Alphey, the chief scientist at Oxitec, said the company had left the review and community outreach to authorities in the host countries.

“They know much better how to communicate with people in those communities than we do coming in from the U.K.” he said.

Dr. Alphey was a zoology researcher at Oxford before co-founding Oxitec in 2002. The company has raised about $24 million from investors, including Oxford, he said. A major backer is East Hill Advisors, which is run by the New England businessman Landon T. Clay, former chief executive of Eaton Vance, an investment management firm.

Oxitec says its approach is an extension of a technique used successfully for decades to suppress or even eradicate pests, which involves the release of millions of sterile insects that mate with wild ones, producing no offspring.

But the technique has not been successfully used for mosquitoes, in part because the radiation usually used to sterilize the insects also injures them, making it difficult for them to compete for mates against wild counterparts.

Oxitec has created Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the species that is the main transmitter of the dengue and yellow fever viruses, containing a gene that will kill them unless they are given tetracycline, a common antibiotic.

In the lab, with tetracycline provided, the mosquitoes can be bred for generations and multiplied. Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available. They live long enough to mate but their progeny will die before adulthood.

The study published on Sunday looked at how successfully the lab-reared, genetically modified insects could mate. About 19,000 engineered mosquitoes were released over four weeks in 2009 in a 25-acre area on Grand Cayman island.

Based on data from traps, the genetically engineered males accounted for 16 percent of the overall male population in the test zone, and the lethal gene was found in almost 10 percent of larvae. Those figures suggest the genetically engineered males were about half as successful in mating as wild ones, a rate sufficient to suppress the population.

Oxitec has already said a larger trial on Grand Cayman island in 2010 reduced the population of the targeted mosquito by 80 percent for three months. That work has not yet been published.

Dr. Alphey said the technique was safe because only males were released, while only females bite people and spread the disease, adding that it should have little environmental impact. “It’s exquisitely targeted to the specific organism you are trying to take out,” he said.

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