Archives for January 2014

In the corporate thicket of News Corporation, according to a new book, Mr. Ailes dared to battle with Lachlan Murdoch, a son of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman, openly gloating when the younger Mr. Murdoch eventually left his post at the company and even commandeering his chair.

At Fox News, the book says, Mr. Ailes was disdainful of even his most bankable on-air talent, privately calling Bill O’Reilly “a book salesman with a TV show” and Brian Kilmeade, a peppy Fox host, “a soccer coach from Long Island.”

Those episodes are described in “The Loudest Voice in the Room” by Gabriel Sherman, a 560-page biography of Mr. Ailes being published on Jan. 21 by Random House.

The book aims to be an exhaustive look at Mr. Ailes’s life and his monumental career, particularly as chairman of Fox News Channel. Under his stewardship, the network, known best for its conservative opinion shows in prime time, dominates the cable news competition, frequently posting ratings better than those for its main rivals, MSNBC and CNN, combined. It has also become the most profitable division of News Corporation, its parent, with annual earnings that have been estimated at $1 billion.

The book describes in detail Mr. Ailes’s professional ambition, his desire to influence American politics through a conservative prism, and his status as a visionary who possessed an intuitive understanding of the power of television to shape public opinion. Before entering the corporate world, Mr. Ailes was a political consultant, and Mr. Sherman’s book credits him with being a pioneer in using television during election campaigns.

In the months before publication, the book has drawn sharp criticism from a chorus of people connected to Fox News, including employees and contributors who have taken to Twitter to attack Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Ailes, in what some viewed as an attempt to pre-empt Mr. Sherman’s book, cooperated with another biography, “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets, which was published last year by Sentinel, a conservative imprint at Penguin.

In his book, Mr. Sherman, a contributing editor at New York magazine, follows Mr. Ailes from his boyhood in Ohio to his perch as one of the most powerful figures in the history of television.

Despite being unsatisfied with many of the Republican candidates for president in 2012, Mr. Ailes endeavored to promote Mitt Romney on Fox News programs, the book says. Before the Wisconsin congressman Paul D. Ryan was chosen as Mr. Romney’s running mate, Mr. Ailes advised Mr. Ryan that his television skills needed work and recommended a speech coach.

At the beginning of the general election, a four-minute video criticizing President Obama’s policies was broadcast on “Fox and Friends,” provoking outrage from the left and prompting the network to say publicly that Mr. Ailes had no involvement in its creation. In “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Mr. Sherman writes that the video “was Ailes’s brainchild.”

The New York Times obtained a copy of the book in advance of its publication.

Mr. Sherman said in the source notes that he interviewed 614 people who knew or worked with Mr. Ailes for the book, which took more than three years to report and write. More than 100 pages are devoted to source notes and bibliography..

Former employees cited in the book talked of Mr. Ailes’s volatile temper and domineering behavior. In one anecdote, a television producer, Randi Harrison, told Mr. Sherman that while negotiating her salary with Mr. Ailes at CNBC in the 1980s, he offered her an additional $100 each week “if you agree to have sex with me whenever I want.”

A Fox News spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday: “These charges are false. While we have not read the book, the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News.”

The book also describes an explosive episode dating back to 1995, when Mr. Ailes was a high-ranking executive at NBC and locked in a power struggle with another executive, David Zaslav.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/biography-casts-critical-light-on-fox-news-chief.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Guggenheim Partners, which owns The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, with Dick Clark Productions, the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards, is expected to announce on Wednesday that Ms. Min will become co-president and chief creative officer. John Amato, formerly chief executive of The Backstage, a newspaper and website aimed at actors, will be co-president and will lead business efforts at Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter.

Lovingly or mockingly called “the bible” by music executives, Billboard has been the music industry’s steadfast trade paper for decades, outlasting all rivals and setting the terms for success through its still closely watched charts. But as the music industry has been cut in half in the last decade, Billboard has shrunk, churning through editors and losing circulation.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Min, 44, said she was aware of the challenges that Billboard and the industry it covers were confronting, but said she believed that the publication could find traction through a more visually arresting presentation and broader coverage.

“Music is one of the most powerful mediums around,” she said. “Billboard, because of its charts and coverage, has the credibility and authority to access great stories and the people who are making news. It’s the music industry after all — we should be able to have some fun with that.”

It is a formula that worked at The Hollywood Reporter, which Ms. Min took over in 2010, after a successful tenure at Us Weekly. Although she faced doubts about her task, she created a weekly magazine built on lush visuals and in-depth treatment of the machinations of Hollywood. The magazine covers became sought-after real estate, with film and television stars happy to pose for a magazine that is read in the canyons and on the studio lots of Los Angeles.

Despite a relatively stable circulation of 72,360, the magazine has not been a source of profit, but The Hollywood Reporter’s website attracted 11.89 million unique visitors last November, up from 9.24 million in November 2012, according to the tracking service comScore.

The success of the magazine and the website has been less about conquering the entertainment news beat than capturing the Hollywood zeitgeist with its covers. Its round tables of entertainment luminaries have drawn attention. And what had been a dowdy also-ran in Hollywood now hosts a robust schedule of events and parties.

Billboard is still the most authoritative voice covering the music world, although it has struggled to reinvent itself as tumult in the music industry has reduced its pool of traditional subscribers. Its average circulation for the first half of 2013 was 16,524 copies, according to BPA Worldwide, after declining steadily since the 1990s, when it reached about 40,000.

Its website has remained one of the most popular music publications online, driven by music news and Billboard’s charts. Over the last year the site received an average of 3.3 million visitors a month in the United States, according to comScore, putting it slightly behind Rolling Stone but ahead of music outlets like Pitchfork and Spin.

To adapt to the changing music industry, Billboard has expanded its coverage into the periphery of technology, advertising and branding — the source of more and more of the money in music since sales have plunged. It has also developed an extensive business in industry conferences, and licenses its name to various businesses, including a concert hall in Tokyo.

Its charts have also adapted to changes in how music is consumed. Last year, it began to incorporate YouTube in the way it compiles the Hot 100, its standard pop singles chart.

“What we are really trying to achieve is platform maximization,” Todd Boehly, the president of Guggenheim Partners, said in an interview. “We would have the print, we would have the digital and it would be my goal that we would have other forms of distribution over the next several years.”

The changes at Billboard are part of an effort to expand the company’s footprint in live award events built on well-known media products — the Billboard Music Awards, the Golden Globes and the American Music Awards all continue to draw — at time when broadcast television is struggling to attract audiences in real time.

Guggenheim, whose principals have an interest in the Los Angeles Dodgers, is seeking to buy or build entertainment assets that live on multiple platforms.

In addition to expanding the role of Ms. Min, who will be responsible for the editorial direction of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, the company announced that its Prometheus Global Media group would be split into two groups: an entertainment group consisting of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter and The Madison Avenue Group, made up of Adweek, the Clios, the annual advertising awards, and Film Expo.

Asked about changes in staff at Billboard, Ms. Min pointed out that most of the employees who were at The Hollywood Reporter when she took over remained there.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/new-leader-at-billboard-sees-future-in-visuals.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Boston Globe announced on Tuesday that it would hire John L. Allen Jr., a journalist for The National Catholic Reporter, and explore starting a free-standing publication dedicated to Catholicism.

“There is a resurgence of global interest in the Catholic Church, inspired by the words and deeds of the newly installed leader, Pope Francis,” Brian McGrory, the editor of The Globe, said in a statement.

Mr. Allen, 48, who has reported on the Vatican from Rome, has written nine books and is a senior Vatican analyst for CNN, “is basically the reporter that bishops and cardinals call to find out what’s going on within the confines of the Vatican,” Mr. McGrory said.

Mr. Allen’s hiring, and the plans for a publication aimed at Catholics, come as more news organizations seek to break out specialized content for specific groups. They are among the first moves made by The Globe since it was purchased from The New York Times Company by John W. Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, in 2013.

According to the 2010 U.S. Religion Census by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, Massachusetts has nearly three million Catholics out of a population of over 6.5 million.

Pope Francis was selected as Time magazine’s person of the year in 2013, after a series of comments in which he played down issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and spoke out against financial inequality. Though he is a popular figure, some more conservative members of the church have said they feel abandoned by his attempts to appeal to a broader audience.

In an article announcing Mr. Allen’s departure, Dennis Coday, the editor of The National Catholic Reporter, said that he was sad to lose him but that “more media outlets providing accurate, fair coverage of the church can only enhance all our efforts.”

The Boston Globe won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service for “courageous, comprehensive coverage of sexual abuse by priests” in the Catholic Church, according to its website.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/boston-globe-hires-journalist-to-focus-on-catholicism.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The proof is in the ratings for the show’s fourth-season premiere on Sunday, which not only set a record for the series, with 10.2 million viewers, but also further confirmed “Downton” as a major player in what has become a golden age for drama on television.

The audience for the “Downton Abbey” premiere on PBS was almost exactly the same size as that for the series finale of “Breaking Bad” on AMC, this season’s most-talked-about episode of television drama. That finale averaged 10.3 million viewers. (In both cases, the figures are for only the audiences who watched the episodes the nights they were on; the numbers grow significantly when delayed viewing is counted.)

The “Downton” audience was also virtually the same as that for this season’s premiere of “Scandal,” the hot drama on ABC (10.5 million).

“Downton” easily topped a host of television’s most celebrated cable dramas in terms of viewership. “Mad Men” on AMC had 3.4 million viewers for its most recent premiere. “Game of Thrones” on HBO had 4.4 million for its initial airing. The recent season finale of “Homeland” on Showtime had 2.4 million viewers.

“Downton” fits into the same category as those shows in several respects. It is a serial drama, runs each season for a limited number of episodes and benefits from binge watching. In the case of “Downton,” viewers are able to catch up on previous seasons on Amazon Prime. (They had been available on Netflix until this past July.)

The success of “Downton Abbey” continues to grow, despite the fact that the events of each season can easily be learned in advance. The season is broadcast in the fall on British television. PBS, however, continues to resist synchronizing with the British airing.

The PBS president, Paula Kerger, has defended that decision, saying “Downton” has become a “post-holiday tradition” for fans in the United States. Gareth Neame, one of the show’s executive producers, said in a recent conversation that maintaining this schedule helps the series because it means that “Downton” avoids facing the fusillade of broadcast network premieres in the fall.

The success of “Downton” has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the television business. NBC has already signed Julian Fellowes, who writes every episode of “Downton,” to create a series for American television, a drama to be set in New York in the 1880s.

Mr. Fellowes said in a recent interview that he will write only the pilot for the NBC show before returning to write the fifth season of “Downton.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/downton-abbey-returns-to-a-record-audience.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

But it has never been easy. The Spirits were excluded from the 1976 merger of the two leagues. So the Silnas watched unhappily as the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets, the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs were absorbed into the N.B.A. But the Silnas negotiated an astonishing benefit that was critical to the merger: an agreement to be paid one-seventh of the national television revenue that each of the four teams was to receive, as long as the league continued to exist. That amounted to being paid in perpetuity, and so far, the deal has provided the Silnas with about $300 million.

Their deal is as much a part of A.B.A. history as red, white and blue basketballs, the 3-point line and the big Afros of Julius Erving and Darnell Hillman. It is a lasting memory of how, through luck or prescience, the Silnas and their lawyer, Donald Schupak, capitalized on the league’s growing popularity.

The N.B.A. has tried to buy them out, including an effort before the financial crash in 2008. Negotiations have picked up in the last six to nine months.

On Tuesday, the Silnas, the league and the four former A.B.A. teams will announce a conditional deal that will end the Silnas’ golden annuity. Almost.

The Silnas are to receive a $500 million upfront payment, financed through a private placement of notes by JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, according to three people with direct knowledge of the agreement. The deal would end the enormous perpetual payments and settle a lawsuit filed in federal court by the Silnas that demanded additional compensation from sources of television revenue that did not exist in 1976, including NBA TV, foreign broadcasting of games and League Pass, the service that lets fans watch out-of-market games.

Still, the league is not getting rid of the Silnas altogether. They will continue to get some television revenue, some of it from the disputed sources named in their lawsuit, through a new partnership that is to be formed with the Nets, the Pacers, the Nuggets and the Spurs, according to the people with knowledge of the agreement. But at some point, the Silnas can be bought out of their interest in the partnership.

The Silnas, of course, did not have to settle. They could have continued to make money from the N.B.A., without ever having to invest in players or build an arena. Clearly, their old agreement would have to be honored as long as the N.B.A. continued to exist.

But there is a reluctance, more by Daniel, 69, than Ozzie, 80, to keep fighting the league, said one of the people who discussed the agreement. Although wealthy people often plan their estates, much of the Silnas’ riches from the N.B.A. is already in family trusts.

Bob Costas, the NBC sportscaster who called Spirits games, said in a telephone interview, “My guess is that for the N.B.A., the upside is that in the foreseeable future, there will come a time when they will not have to look at this and blanch and it will be in the past.”

League officials declined to comment because the settlement must be approved by the judge, Loretta A. Preska, who has presided over the case in United States District Court in Manhattan.

The Silnas’ deal resonates, at least in part, because it appears that they snookered the league, or, more accurately, the Nets, the Pacers, the Nuggets and the Spurs, who dealt directly with the brothers.

But Michael Goldberg, the A.B.A.’s former general counsel, recalled in a recent interview that the four teams were desperate to get into the N.B.A. and willing to satisfy the Silnas.

“Schupak said they’d take TV rights in perpetuity as a kind of Hail Mary to get money down the road,” he said. “What was missing was someone saying, ‘Thirty years, 50 years, or until something happens, and it’s over.’ ”

The Spirits got a sweeter deal than the Kentucky Colonels, who were also not absorbed into the league. John Y. Brown, the Colonels’ owner, got $3 million to fold his team.

And while the Silnas, who were planning to move the franchise to Utah at the time of the merger, did not bring a roster that included Caldwell Jones and Marvin Barnes into the N.B.A., they got a $2.2 million payment — and all that television money. They never acquired another team and have attended to their investments (some of which went sour during the Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi scheme).

But their deal, widely called the greatest in sports history, if not in American business, lives on as a remnant of the marriage of the undercapitalized A.B.A. and the N.B.A. in its mid-1970s doldrums, before Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.

“The only way to appreciate this,” Goldberg said, “is to go back in a time capsule to the bidding wars between the leagues; the N.B.A. tiring of them, and saying, ‘Let’s take four teams, but not St. Louis and Kentucky, and we’ll move on.’ ”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/sports/basketball/payout-may-come-for-an-aba-team-that-is-long-gone.html?partner=rss&emc=rss