ABC’s romance reality show “The Bachelor” has experienced a rare resurgence after a downswing that lasted several seasons , Amy Chozick and Bill Carter report. The show, which pairs a hunky man with dozens of heavily made-up women until he picks one as his fiancée, has become the unlikely exception in a television season when almost every other show on ABC and its competitors has declined. The audience has increased to 8.8 million viewers, 3.3 million of whom are 18 to 49 years old, the most attractive group for advertisers. The show is especially popular among women, particularly those in households that make more than $100,000 a year.
The contract dispute between Martha Stewart, J.C. Penney and Macy’s is unquestionably one of the most attention-getting contract law tiffs in recent memory, David Carr writes, but the best thing for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia may be to step away from the spotlight. Her original sin may have been taking a small, growing company public in 1999 — Martha Stewart Living now receives the scrutiny of a public company without capital benefits or operational guidance. Her company’s problems are typical of a magazine publisher (ad pages dropped 29 percent last year), and as Martha Stewart Living, inextricably tied to its namesake, transitions to a merchandising enterprise it might be wise to become less visible, possibly by going private once again.
“Harlem Shake’s” astounding viral success has attracted the attention of former reggaetón artist Hector Delgado and Philadelphia rapper Jayson Muson, whose work was prominently sampled in the song without permission, James C. McKinley Jr. writes. Both Mr. Delgado and Mr. Muson are seeking compensation from Mad Decent Records, the label that released the Baauer hit. Small labels like Mad Decent often rely on producers to clear their samples, especially in electronic dance music, because they do not have legal departments. The tale of this unexpected sensation highlights the free-for-all nature of underground dance music and the power of the Internet to create a No. 1 hit outside the major-label system.
A new ad campaign by Degree deodorant, which divided into men’s and women’s versions in 2005, will aim to persuade both sexes of Degree’s efficacy by showing how well it works for athletes of both sexes trying sports they don’t play professionally, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The campaign, by Davie Brown Entertainment, will feature athletes like Knicks star Carmelo Anthony in the boxing ring and Olympic track star Lolo Jones racing in a bobsled with the tagline “Do:More.” Degree had taken divergent approaches to advertise the two lines, with commercials for the men’s line emphasizing Degree’s ability to withstand high-impact sports like mountain biking and those for the women’s line focusing on how Degree does not stain clothing as women work and socialize.
Awesomeness TV, a YouTube-based channel for teenagers, is an early example of how YouTube can create new media crossovers, Brooks Barnes writes. The channel had not introduced its MTV-style programs last year at this time, but it now has an audience of over 400,000 and 80.6 million video views, and on Friday an Awesomeness movie will be released in AMC theaters. The movie, “Mindless Behavior: All Around the World,” is a concert film and documentary about the boy band Mindless Behavior — it will run in 120 theaters where social network data indicates the band is the most popular.
Harvard secretly searched the e-mail accounts of its staff members last fall to find who leaked news of its recent cheating scandal to the media, Richard Pérez-Peña reports. The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, who were not told that their accounts had been breached until a few days ago. Last August Harvard publicly revealed that “nearly half” of the students in a large government course had worked together or plagiarized for a take-home final exam in the spring of 2012. No deans were disciplined after the searches, but faculty members interviewed said they expected anger from the news.