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Emmys Draw 17 Million Viewers, Up From Recent Shows

September 23, 2013 by

More than 17 million people were tuned in at any average minute during the three-hour-plus telecast, according to Nielsen data supplied by CBS, the network whose turn it was to televise the awards ceremony. That average compared favorably to last year, when about 13 million viewers watched on ABC.

CBS estimated that about 40 million people caught some portion of Sunday’s telecast. The Emmys audience was inflated by the highly rated Jets-Bills football game that immediately preceded the awards on CBS (and delayed the start time by a couple of minutes).

Cable award winners like HBO’s “Veep” and Showtime’s “Homeland,” which have much smaller audiences than CBS, welcomed the exposure to millions of potential new viewers. The biggest winner of the night, AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” was competing with the Emmys somewhat — its second-to-last episode was shown at 9 p.m. Eastern, during the second hour of the ceremony.

“Breaking Bad” has been scoring new personal bests in the ratings as it barrels toward a Sept. 29 finale, and Sunday was no exception: 6.6 million viewers tuned in, beating last week’s record of 6.4 million. The audience for the show continues to skew young, with 4.3 million viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

At times on Sunday the Emmys show seemed as dark as the drug-fueled story lines of “Breaking Bad”; some viewers took to calling them the “death Emmys” on Twitter because of the inordinate number of in-memoriam segments about deceased stars. But the producers will be able to point to the ratings in rationalizing their programming choices. CBS said the total of 17.6 million viewers was the best for the Emmys since 2005.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/business/media/emmys-draw-17-million-viewers-up-from-recent-shows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

You’re the Boss Blog: Getting the Message Across to Your Employees

November 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

She Owns It

Portraits of women entrepreneurs.

Alexandra MayzlerSara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlexandra Mayzler

How do you get your employees to think like you? During a recent meeting of our business group, Alexandra Mayzler raised that question as she weighs expanding her business, Thinking Caps Tutoring, into new markets. Thinking Caps currently has locations in New York City and Austin, Tex. Ms. Mayzler is considering opening a Houston outpost,but said she wants to be sure systems are in place before taking the plunge.

Over the summer, Ms. Mayzler worked with her staff to create a manual that provides a blueprint for opening and running a Thinking Caps location. The detailed manual offers guidance on everything from the proper way to save a document, to the script to use when first meeting with a student’s family. But, said Ms. Mayzler, “It’s really boring, and I think no one will want to read it.” She hopes to find a more dynamic and engaging way to present the information, and she would also like to improve the way the company trains its tutors, which she fears is too boring.

“We’ve written four operations manuals for the company at this point,” said group member Carissa Reiniger, who founded Silver Lining Limited in 2005. At first, all of the information was included in one document. But it was too much, said Ms. Reiniger. She has since broken it into components. For example, she said, Silver Lining’s manuals include a brand book and a “sales bible.”

“Did you sit down and write it one fine day?” asked Ms. Mayzler.

“I hired someone to sit me down and ask me questions,” said Ms. Reiniger. When she did the writing herself, she said, she found she spoke in a way that made sense to her but not necessarily to the intended audiences. Getting someone to translate her thoughts into a form that others could more readily absorb worked well, she said.

Still, Ms. Mayzler wondered about the boredom. She asked how Silver Lining, which offers an online tool that helps small businesses set and reach financial goals, presents the information. Ms. Reiniger uses Google Sites, an application that lets her create separate Web sites for the different categories of people in the company, including the staff and the certified experts who teach her Silver Lining Action Plan. The sites provide access to materials relevant to each group.

Like Ms. Mayzler, Jessica Johnson, another business group member, has spent the last few months working to standardize processes at her growing company, Johnson Security Bureau. Toward that end, she used a grant from the Economic Development Administration to hire a human resources consulting firm. Working with the consultants, Johnson Security created an intranet site to store material for the company’s guards, including their schedules and information on company policies.

The site is also easy to update. One day, after spotting an earring on a uniformed guard, a client called Ms. Johnson to ask if that was allowed. “No,” she said. Although the policy was stated in the company’s written manual, it was then added to the Web site — “for people who don’t like paper,” said Ms. Johnson.

Susan Parker, a group member who owns BariJay, a dress manufacturer, asked how the employees were notified of such additions. The site generates and sends e-mails, said Ms. Johnson.

Ms. Reiniger pointed out that, while it’s her responsibility to notify the staff of new policies, it is their responsibility to be aware of them. New employees sign a document to that effect. She added that her perspective on presenting company policies has changed. “I built this amazing manual, and no one ever read it,” she said. She now sees Silver Lining’s written polices more as risk management tools and less as “something I’m going to force everyone to read.”

“That’s exactly where I am,” Ms. Mayzler said. “Except we’re working with 13-year-olds, and their parents only care about the end result.” If a tutor doesn’t read her policies, it becomes Ms. Mayzler’s problem.

“I agree with that,” said Ms. Reiniger. “It’s all of our problems if our products don’t work.”

Ms. Mayzler agreed. She has a manual and her tutors seem to be reading it, she said, but based on some of their questions, she senses the material is not having an impact. “For all their good intentions, something’s not clicking in the way we’re communicating,” she said. “We’re teachers, so we should be able to figure this out.” Now, instead of thinking about how to teach math to a 13-year-old, Ms. Mayzler said she will continue to think about how to teach a 25-year-old.

You can follow Adriana Gardella on Twitter.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=721f740e289bb1315a696375981f4459

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

New Cutbacks Announced by BBC

October 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mark Thompson, the broadcaster’s director general, told his staff that the changes — which amount to cuts of £670 million or about $1.03 billion a year, or a 20 percent reduction in spending over five years — would lead to a “smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”

But he said that no television or radio stations would be closed down and that some money would be reinvested in new programming and services.

The BBC is financed mostly through a government-approved license fee, paid every year by every household in Britain that owns a television set. The fee brings in about £3.6 billion a year. In the early part of the decade, spending increased annually, allowing the broadcaster to expand its services and introduce new channels.

But after a series of embarrassing episodes, including the disclosure of the huge salaries paid to layers of bureaucrats in the organization, the BBC was forced to curtail its spending. And last year, confronted with a Conservative-led government skeptical of its financing model, the BBC agreed to freeze the license fee at its current rate of £145.60 until 2017.

The steps amounts to a 16 percent cut in income, the BBC says. It has also decided to redirect 4 percent of its current spending elsewhere. Among other things, Mr. Thompson said, it plans to invest more money in dramas and comedies for its flagship channel, BBC 1. Meanwhile, its second channel, BBC 2, will broadcast only reruns in the daytime.

Some of the people faced with losing their jobs might be “retrained and redeployed,” Mr. Thompson said. In addition to the cuts, a further 1,000 employees will be relocated to Salford, near Manchester, where the BBC has moved a portion of its operations.

Unions reacted with dismay, saying that the BBC would lose credibility and audiences if it continued to cut its services.

“They are destroying jobs, and destroying the BBC,” said Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, a union that represents technicians.

Mr. Thompson said that after years of budget-slicing, the broadcaster had cut its spending as much as possible and could not sustain another freeze or decrease in the license fee. .

“I don’t think we could do this again,” he said. “Another real terms cut in the license fee would lead to a loss of services, or potentially a diminution of quality, or both.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=45eb8bd31aeed146109a4f048e9b59f8

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,