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If ‘Million Second Quiz’ Succeeds, NBC Gets the Grand Prize

September 6, 2013 by

Ask NBC, and the answer will be “The Million Second Quiz,” a groundbreaking competition that will start on Monday night and end 10 days later — the online component is 10 consecutive 24-hour days — with the presentation of what the network calls the biggest guaranteed pot of money in game show history. Whether that’s the right or wrong answer will be determined when the ratings start to come in.

At a time when shrinking network audiences are the norm, the “Quiz” is already winning attention for the scale of its ambitions, as symbolized by the three-story arena that has taken shape in the Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan, where the game will be played. In keeping with the million-second theme, it has the appearance of a gigantic hourglass; its sheer size almost says, “AMC and Netflix and YouTube can’t do this!”

After its debut on Monday, “Quiz” will be broadcast on NBC for an hour a night, every night, until Sept. 19, with one break for “Sunday Night Football.” In some ways, it is a throwback to a long-ago era when families would gather around the television set for big prime-time game shows. According to NBC, there hasn’t been a live game show scheduled in prime time since the 1960s.

Back then, though, viewers could only shout answers at the TV. Now, they can play along at home with an app. And when the game is not being played on TV, it will continue as a live, continuous stream on NBC.com.

Contestants, some of whom will be picked to compete on the basis of their Internet play, will take turns sitting in the “money chair,” where every second spent answering trivia questions is worth $10. Correct answers help them reach Winners Row, an area on the set where the five best players will live and sleep (and keep answering questions, lest they be kicked out of the top five) until the million seconds are up.

“This is the Olympics of quiz,” said Stephen Lambert, the British television producer who offered the idea to Paul Telegdy, NBC’s president of alternative and late-night programming. In the pitch, Mr. Lambert described the game “almost like a tennis match between two contestants.” After all, nothing attracts more viewers to broadcast television than big sporting events. That’s partly why the “Quiz” will try to look and feel like such an event, with its open-air setting.

Since the quiz show isn’t taped like, say, “Jeopardy,” some questions will be about the day’s news. “You might be asked, ‘President Obama signed what into law this morning?’ ” said the executive producer, David Hurwitz. Other questions will be asked by celebrities — inevitably, NBC celebrities. (“If there’s a question about the weather, who better to ask it than Al Roker?” Mr. Telegdy said.) On the final night, the final contestants on Winners Row will vie for a grand prize that could theoretically top out at $10 million, though it’s likely to be closer to $5 million.

Executives at NBC haven’t actually said this, but they clearly want the “Quiz” to be nothing short of a national event — the kind of big-ticket, must-see spectacle that turns up less and less often on the broadcast networks. To that end, the executives have hired Ryan Seacrest to host and have spent tens of millions of dollars to promote the game show this summer. They say that even some of their typical rivals might be caught rooting for it: Mr. Telegdy said a “competitive éminence grise from elsewhere in TV land” — he wouldn’t name the person — had sent him a well-wishing e-mail that said bluntly, “We all need this right now.”

The producers are aware that comparisons to the blockbuster ABC show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” are probably inevitable (though there is no phone-a-friend option on this show). “Millionaire,” hosted by Regis Philbin, wowed the television industry when it drew 10, 20 and sometimes even 30 million viewers in 1999 and 2000. It continues to chug along in syndication, now with Cedric the Entertainer as the host. One difference is that “Millionaire” was already a proven hit in Britain when it arrived in the United States; “Million Second Quiz” will start stateside first. If successful, it will spread around the world.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Telegdy said that “the line will probably go dead, and a robot will eject me from my seat” if he uttered a specific ratings prediction. But his noncommittal answer was telling in and of itself: the goal, he said, is to “get people talking about NBC.”

Once upon a time, that network didn’t have to try hard to achieve that; now it does. So its parent company, Comcast, is having all of its various properties support “Quiz” through ads, guest appearances, reports on newscasts and the like — a strategy that it calls “symphony” and that was previously applied to the singing competition “The Voice.”

Mr. Seacrest, who is best known for hosting Fox’s “American Idol” and who also has a wide-ranging contract with NBC, said that after he heard the initial pitch from Mr. Lambert and Mr. Telegdy, the NBCUniversal chief executive, Steve Burke, called him to reiterate how important the “Quiz” was going to be. Mr. Burke also did so in an e-mail to every employee of the company on Wednesday.

“There is already a lot of great buzz, and we think there is a chance ‘The Million Second Quiz’ could really break through,” Mr. Burke wrote.

NBC is hopeful that starting “Quiz” slightly ahead of the fall television season — which doesn’t officially get under way until Sept. 23 — will benefit both the game show and the new series that the network will introduce later. The logic works like this: there is relatively little competition next week, giving “Quiz” a better shot at being sampled by the public; if the show catches on, then all of NBC’s ads for new series like “The Blacklist” and “The Michael J. Fox Show” will be seen by many more people, and giving away $5 million or $10 million will feel like money well spent.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/business/media/if-million-second-quiz-succeeds-nbc-gets-the-grand-prize.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Al Jazeera Makes Limited American Debut

August 20, 2013 by

There was ample attention in journalistic circles as Al Jazeera America had its premiere on Tuesday — particularly among those who could not watch.

The news channel — which replaced Current TV at 3 p.m. Eastern time — was expected to be carried by five of the country’s 10 biggest television providers, but one of those, ATT U-verse, dropped Current, and thus Al Jazeera, late Monday night.

That decision irritated some U-verse subscribers, who complained online about the company’s move and which further limited Al Jazeera America’s potential audience on Day 1.

On Tuesday evening, Al Jazeera said it was looking to the court system to resolve the contract dispute.

“Unfortunately ATT’s decision to unilaterally delete Al Jazeera America presented us with circumstances that were untenable — an affiliate that has willfully and knowingly breached its contractual obligations,” the broadcaster said in a statement. “We had no choice but to take this action and to enforce Al Jazeera’s rights under its agreement with ATT — and to compel ATT to do the right thing.”

The complaint, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, accuses ATT of wrongful termination and seeks restoration of the channel as well as damages.

ATT said it had not yet seen the lawsuit. In a statement, it hinted that Current’s transformation into Al Jazeera gave it an opening to drop the channel: “As a result of our inability to come to terms on a new agreement and due to certain breaches of the existing agreement, we have decided not to carry Current TV on U-verse.”

People who were curious about the new channel but were not able to access it on TV found that they could not access it online, either. It is not being live-streamed on the Internet, much to the disappointment of a small but vocal group of longtime Al Jazeera viewers in the United States.

Those fans had grown accustomed to watching the pan-Arab broadcaster’s existing English-language news channel, called Al Jazeera English, via the Internet. But on Monday, Al Jazeera English turned off its live stream for users in the United States. It also started to geo-block the news reports it posts on YouTube, so that instead of seeing the videos, American users saw a message that said, “The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”

Al Jazeera officials said privately that in the run-up to the premiere of the new American channel, they had little choice but to acquiesce to cable and satellite providers, which generally discourage online competition of the kind that Al Jazeera English previously represented. In effect they have sacrificed Internet distribution for a shot at traditional distribution.

Al Jazeera’s decision made a certain amount of sense, considering that most Americans spend far more time with television than the Internet. Still, complaints about the blockade piled up on Al Jazeera America’s Facebook page. One of the most-liked comments criticized the broadcaster for “going backward” by prioritizing TV over the Internet.

The concerns were shared by some Al Jazeera staff members, especially those who have been at Al Jazeera English, or A.J.E. for short, for years. The live stream and the YouTube page were the main ways their work was seen in the United States until the restrictions were put in place this week. The staff’s complaints were channeled by Rob Reynolds, an A.J.E. correspondent based in Los Angeles, who wrote on Facebook on Monday that “the great blackout has begun.”

“Al Jazeera is now blocking all A.J.E. videos from the U.S.A.,” Mr. Reynolds wrote. “It’s a form of corporate censorship that would make the Chinese Politburo jealous. And an incredible show of disrespect to all the reporters operating in the U.S. who have helped build Al Jazeera’s brand name in this country.”

Mr. Reynolds deleted the Facebook post, but not before other Al Jazeera staff members saw it and shared it with each other approvingly. Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Reynolds said the post was intended for family and friends and was written out of frustration. He deleted it, he said, because he concluded that it was unfair to his colleagues. He said his reference to censorship was aimed at the cable and satellite providers, not his employer.

Mohamed Nanabhay, the former head of Al Jazeera English’s Web site, pointed out in an e-mail message that there were thousands of Al Jazeera videos “embedded on third-party sites across the Internet that have suddenly become unavailable to audiences” because of the blockade.

Mr. Nanabhay said Al Jazeera America could have gone in a different direction and tried to appeal to the growing number of Americans dissatisfied with cable, the so-called cord-cutters who access video online.

A spokesman for Al Jazeera did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but the head of social media for the new channel, Riyaad Minty, hinted about a possible solution. To those “who have lost the live streams,” he wrote on Twitter, “We hear you. We’re working on it.”

The new American channel was supposed to be available in about 48 million homes, according to Nielsen. The loss of U-verse reduces that to around 45 million.

Still, that is a decent start for a new channel: many other now-successful cable channels, including Fox News and MSNBC, started in fewer homes.

On Tuesday, Al Jazeera America was available to some subscribers of Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, and Verizon FiOS. The biggest provider that is not yet carrying the new channel, Time Warner Cable, said it remained in negotiations about possibly carrying it in the future.

As for the channel itself, when it started Tuesday afternoon, it seemed to deliver on what it promised — serious, straightforward news. The first hour had a lengthy promotional video that said, among other things, “We will connect the world to America, and Americans to the world.” Then, at 4 p.m., the news began, led by the former CNN anchor Tony Harris, who updated viewers on the unrest in Egypt and a shooting at a school in Georgia.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/business/media/al-jazeera-makes-its-american-debut.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Stress Tests Find Banks Are Healthier, Bernanke Says

April 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Monday night that the central bank’s annual stress tests of major American banks were better able to detect risks in the financial system. He said the tests showed that the banking industry had grown much healthier since the financial crisis.

Mr. Bernanke, in a speech, noted that this year’s tests showed that 18 of the biggest banks had collectively doubled the cushions they hold against losses since the first tests were run in 2009. He said the tests were providing vital information to regulators.

The latest test results were released last month. They showed that all but one of the 18 banks were better prepared to withstand a severe American recession and an upheaval in financial markets. The tests are used to determine whether the banks can increase dividends or repurchase shares.

Mr. Bernanke was speaking to a financial markets conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In his prepared remarks, he said he viewed the first stress test conducted in 2009, months after the financial crisis struck, as “one of the critical turning points in the crisis.”

“It provided anxious investors with something they craved: credible information about prospective losses at banks,” he said.

Mr. Bernanke said that since the financial crisis, in the ensuing years, the Fed had worked to improve the stress tests so they could serve as a resource for banking regulators to monitor and detect threats to the financial system.

The stress tests have been criticized by some banks because the central bank has kept secret the full details of the computer models it is using to evaluate each bank. The Fed has defended this practice. It has argued that it is similar to teachers not giving students specific questions that will appear on a test to guard against students memorizing the answers.

“We hear criticism from bankers that our models are a ‘black box’ which frustrates their efforts to anticipate our supervisory findings,” Mr. Bernanke said. He said that over time, the banks should better understand the standards the tests are measuring.

In this year’s test, the Fed approved dividend payment plans and stock repurchase plans for 14 of the 18 banks outright.

Two of the banks, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, were told by the Fed that they could proceed with their plans, but would need to submit new capital plans. Two other banks, Ally Financial and BBT, were forbidden by the Fed to go through with their dividend increases and stock buybacks.

Ally Financial, the former financing arm of General Motors, fared the worst on the stress test. The Fed’s data showed that Ally’s projected capital level was below the minimum the Fed thinks a bank would need to survive a severe recession. Ally officials said they believed that the Fed’s testing models were unreasonable.

BBT, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., said it would resubmit its capital plan and that it believed it would be able to address the factors that had led to the Fed’s objections.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/stress-tests-find-banks-are-healthier-bernanke-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder Blog: Spotify, New to Advertising, Says, ‘I’ve Got the Music in Me’

March 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The category of digital music services is getting as crowded as CBGB was when the Ramones played. So the major competitors in the category are spending large sums on advertising campaigns that are meant to generate awareness, consideration and trial.

The newest entrant in the ad club is Spotify, which plans on Monday to start its first campaign aimed at American music lovers. Appropriately, the initial commercial in the campaign is to make its debut on a music reality competition series, “The Voice,” which is returning on Monday night on NBC for its fourth season.

The budget for the first three months of the Spotify effort in the United States, which is being aimed at consumers ages 18 to 40, is estimated at more than $10 million. The campaign, which also includes online ads in addition to commercials, is being created by Droga5 in New York, the first agency of record for Spotify.

The campaign promotes Spotify, which competes against streaming music services like Rdio, Deezer, Mog and Rhapsody, with the theme “For music.”

(What, you were expecting the ads to say, “Against music”?)

The idea is to present Spotify as the champion of music for every moment and mood, whatever the particular genre that gets someone reeling with the feeling or moving and a-grooving. To underline that, the initial commercial, which depicts the fun and energy of a giant concert, has no music whatsoever on the soundtrack.

“It’s been said that the best songs don’t give answers but instead answer questions,” a narrator begins. “So, why? Why can a song change the world?”

“Because music is a force for good, for change, for whatever,” the narrator continues as on screen a concertgoer is body-surfing above an enormous crowd. “Because we were all conceived to a 4/4 beat. Because music cannot be stopped, cannot be contained.”

“Because music makes us scream ‘Koo koo cachoo’ and mean it,” the narrator concludes. “Because music is worth fighting for. Why? Because it’s music.” The commercial ends with the words “Spotify” and “For music” on screen.

The absence of music in the commercial signals that “music is personal; it means something different to everyone,” said Erin Clift, vice president for global marketing and partnerships at the New York office of Spotify.

Globally, Spotify has more than 24 million active users, of whom more than 6 million are paid subscribers. The service began in Sweden and came to this country two years ago.

“Our initial growth was with music enthusiasts,” Ms. Clift said. “We’re looking for that next group ready to experience music in a new way,” she added, which is “a mass, mainstream audience.”

To help achieve that, the campaign depicts Spotify as “the company that gives consumers music for every one of those moments” in life that it makes a difference, Ms. Clift says, seeking to reach potential users on an emotional level.

Subsequent commercials in the campaign also try to make emotional connections through playing up the importance of music while, again, not actually playing any particular song.

In one spot, featuring a man on his daily commute who is wearing headphones, he muses, “I’m back in the place that made you and I us.” The spot declares that Spotify is “for all the songs that remind you of her.”

In another spot, young men and women dancing at a party are having so much fun that they “don’t care that it’s a Tuesday or whose apartment it is.” Spotify, according to the spot, is “for always being able to find a new beat.”

An ad intended to appear online, on display and video networks like AOL, Buzz Media and Videology, echoes the dance commercial, showing two shirtless young men and a young woman performing awkward dance steps. “Because music doesn’t judge,” the headline reads.

Below, the text reads: “Find all the songs you need to get weird. And all the rest.”

Another online ad is centered on a photograph of a young couple about to engage in what looks as if it will be a wet, sloppy kiss. “Because mixtapes still work,” the headline reads.

Below, the text reads: “Find all the songs you need to seal the deal. And all the rest.”

David Droga, creative chairman at Droga5, said the campaign, like music, is “not judgmental.”

“We’re bringing it back to the essence of what makes music great,” he added, offering a “visceral” take on how “it’s bigger than all of us.”

“It’s more than files and devices and platforms,” Mr. Droga said. “It’s about the music.” He called Spotify “a mission brand” and the campaign’s goal is “to get across their values,” he said.

There are plans for additional ads, according to Mr. Droga, in that “this is the start of a much bigger integrated campaign.”

The media planning and buying part of the campaign is being handled by the Starcom division of the Starcom MediaVest Group, which is owned by the Publicis Groupe.

Spotify has “a dual challenge, building a brand and building a business,” said Lisa Weinstein, president for global digital, data and analytics at the Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago, who is involved in the campaign because of the digital focus of Spotify’s business.

That means Spotify needs to be concerned about consumers at the top of the marketing funnel, she added, referring to the brand image aspects of the campaign, as well as those “lower down the funnel” who are considering becoming paying subscribers.

Spotify has enjoyed “a high growth rate,” Ms. Weinstein said, “but there is still a tremendous opportunity” to grow further by taking advantage of earned media — social platforms like Twitter — and owned media like spotify.com as well as the paid media in which the campaign will appear.

Spotify is the most recent digital or e-commerce marketer to start advertising in traditional media to reach mainstream consumers. Others include Fab.com, Rdio, Viggle and Warby Parker.

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Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/spotify-new-to-advertising-says-ive-got-the-music-in-me/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder Blog: Media Company Taps N.F.L. Executive as President

January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

BermanBraun, a fast-growing digital media/television/movie company, just scored a touchdown: Jeff Berman, a respected executive at the National Football League, will become the entertainment company’s first president.

Mr. Berman (no relation to Gail Berman, who founded the company with Lloyd Braun) oversaw the N.F.L.’s extensive Web, mobile, social and nonconsole-gaming efforts.

BermanBraun operates Wonderwall.com (15 million unique users a month) and a growing roster of other lifestyle sites. Its television shows include the new NBC series “Deception,” which has its premiere on Monday night.

Although Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun have run the company without a president so far, business has grown to the degree that they needed a senior lieutenant.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/media-company-taps-n-f-l-executive-as-president/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Hackers Impersonate Google to Snoop on Users in Iran

August 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

SAN FRANCISCO — Hackers passed themselves off as the Internet giant Google with the apparent goal of snooping on people using Google services in Iran, the company said.

It was the latest in a string of breaches that call into question the reliability of certificates that are supposed to verify the authenticity of Web sites. Such breaches make dissidents and human rights workers particularly vulnerable because they can allow repressive regimes, or supporters of those regimes, to spy on their online activities.

In this case, the attackers hacked into the site of a Dutch company, one of many that have the authority to issue the digital certificates, and obtained one that they used to impersonate Google. When users in Iran went to a Google site, including Gmail and Google Docs, they could be intercepted by the impostors in what is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

In a statement posted late Monday night on its security blog, Google said those affected “were primarily located in Iran.” It did not offer further details.

The Web site certification firm, DigiNotar, revoked the fraudulent certificate as soon as the attack came to light, Google said.

F-Secure, a security firm, said on Tuesday that it had found evidence that hackers had left their mark on DigiNotar’s Web site, scrawling the digital equivalent of graffiti and calling themselves “Iranian Hacker.” But it said the pages in question had been on the site for years and were probably unrelated to the certificate problem.

Companies like Google are keen to reassure their customers that their online communications are secure, but breaches like this highlight the vulnerability of the certificate system.

Similar man-in-the-middle attacks have been used to get between e-commerce sites and their customers to steal credit card numbers and other personal information.

A range of government entities and private companies worldwide are authorized to issue authentication certificates. Another issuer was attacked earlier this year by a hacker who said he was a patriotic Iranian.

Security experts have been calling for an overhaul of the system. Earlier this year, Google proposed allowing Web site owners to specify which entities could issue certificates for their sites.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/technology/internet/hackers-impersonate-google-to-snoop-on-users-in-iran.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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U.S. May Have Way to Cover Bills After Deadline, for Week

July 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Thanks to an inflow of tax payments and maneuvering by the Treasury Department, the government can probably continue to pay all of its bills for several days after Aug. 2, providing potentially critical breathing room for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, according to estimates by several Wall Street banks and a Washington research organization.

The consensus is that the government will not run short of money until Aug. 10, when it would be unable to cut millions of Social Security checks without borrowing more money.

President Obama has described Aug. 2 as a “hard deadline” for Congress to increase the maximum amount that the government is allowed to borrow.

“We have to do it by next Tuesday, Aug. 2, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills,” Mr. Obama told the nation in his speech on Monday night.

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, restated that position on Tuesday.

“That’s not a guess. That’s not a political opinion,” Mr. Carney said. “It is the judgment of career analysts at the Treasury Department. We give up our borrowing authority without action by Congress. And the result of that risks default for the United States for the first time in our history.”

That description, however, conflates two distinct events.

The government will exhaust its ability to borrow more money on Aug. 2, which is equivalent to maxing out a credit card. But there still will be cash in the federal wallet.

Some Republicans have expressed skepticism about the Aug. 2 deadline, describing it as an artificial line drawn by the Obama administration for political reasons. Analysts emphasize, however, that the deadline is real; it’s just the date that is inexact.

“Should policy makers wait till Aug. 10 to come to an agreement? If they can agree sooner, absolutely not. There are no definites in this case,” analysts for Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients entitled “Is August 2 really ‘August 2’?”

Analysts also said that all of the estimates, including those from Treasury, were necessarily inexact, because they relied on variables like incoming tax payments. That means each passing day without a deal increases the risk that money will run out.

“This is more like predicting the weather than predicting the sunrise,” said Jay Powell of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit in Washington that has analyzed the issue.

There are other risks in waiting. The Treasury must continue to repay debts as they come due, then borrow the same amounts anew. Officials are concerned that it will become harder to find investors for United States government securities, and that remaining buyers will demand higher interest rates.

The Treasury plans to auction about $87 billion in short-term securities next Monday and Tuesday. The following week it plans to hold a much larger auction of long-term debt.

All told, the government plans to borrow almost $500 billion in August. If interest rates climb by even a tenth of a percentage point, the annual cost would rise by $500 million.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=968f2a14c35bd7d2c1750af1ad0794e5

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