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Media Decoder Blog: Gun-Focused Reality TV Shows Get New Scrutiny After Newtown Killings

December 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The topics of guns and gun use continue to resonate across the media landscape in the days after the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. One show that may be affected is the popular reality show “Sons of Guns,” which is shown on the Discovery Channel.

The show’s third season finished airing in October, but on Tuesday a spokeswoman for the network, Laurie Goldberg, could not state definitively what future, if any, the show might have on Discovery. “All I can say is, it is not on the schedule and it is not on the schedule in the near future,” Ms. Goldberg said.

Asked if the show had been renewed for another season, Ms. Goldberg said she did not know its status. “There is no data that I am aware of” about whether the show had been renewed, she said.

“Sons of Guns” deals with a custom gun-making company in Louisiana, Red Jacket Firearms, and often features customers firing specially made firearms, including assault rifles and sniper rifles. In a clip on the show’s Web site, the guitarist Joe Perry, from the rock group Aerosmith, is shown enjoying test-firing a fully automatic M4 assault rifle. (Then his wife gets a crack at shooting the weapon.)

The comments about the now-murky future of “Sons of Guns” come at the same time that Discovery is confirming that its other series about gun manufacturing, “American Guns,” has officially been canceled.

Ms. Goldberg said that decision was unrelated to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, which left 20 schoolchildren and six of their caretakers dead. Rather, she said, Discovery three months ago had quietly decided to drop the series.

Ratings for “American Guns” had fallen off, Ms. Goldberg said. She acknowledged, however, that “Sons of Guns” had had “pretty solid ratings.”

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/gun-focused-reality-tv-shows-get-new-scrutiny-after-newtown-killings/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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You’re the Boss Blog: The Queen of QVC Talks About the Risks of Dealing With Sharks

October 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Searching for Capital

A broker assesses the small-business lending market.

Lori Greiner: The Queen of QVC Lori Greiner: The Queen of QVC

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the popular reality show “Shark Tank” in which I discussed two entrepreneurs who decided not to participate because the producers insisted on taking a 5-percent stake in their company in exchange for the appearance.

As a follow-up, I recently had the chance to sit down with Lori Greiner, a k a the Queen of QVC, who recently made her debut as a full-time shark. We enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation — which has been condensed and edited below — about her hits and misses, the pros and cons of how entrepreneurs raise capital, and the lessons of  “Shark Tank.”

Every Friday night, millions of Americans of all ages sit down and watch the show, which encourages the belief that when a smart entrepreneur connects with a wealthy investor, the potential is unlimited. And sometimes it is. But when entrepreneurs and the investors enter into a contract, all parties need to think carefully about what the relationship means today — and what it will mean in the future. For example, did you realize that if you take on an investor, you might not be able to get a bank loan unless your investor guarantees the loan personally? I think that’s an important consideration for both investors and entrepreneurs.

Why do you think “Shark Tank” is so successful?

In a down economy, a time where people are feeling that things are difficult, hopeless, they’re worried they might lose their job, they tune in to Shark Tank, and they learn about how to possibly become their own boss.

Do you think the show could do a better job of teaching about entrepreneurship?

Well, I think the show is what it is, and I think it has a great formula that people enjoy. And I do hear all the time from students in colleges across the country that “Shark Tank” is shown in their business classes.

Can you share some of your “Shark Tank” lessons?

Yes, well, my Reader Rest was wildly successful. I think it’s the most successful product ever in “Shark Tank’s” history. It’s the magnetic glasses holder. We’ve gone well over 3 million in sales to date in less than a year.

Are there deals that you’ve made on the show that haven’t actually materialized into an investment?

Yes, there were a few. I was very disappointed about one of them, the Wine Balloon. I thought it was a great product, but he just wasn’t interested in moving forward.

So sometimes the deals break down in negotiations, or something changes in the product or in due diligence?

Well, sometimes in due diligence you find out things they didn’t say in those minutes in front of you, so you can be disappointed or surprised by things. But so far for me I haven’t had that issue beyond the Wine Balloon.

If you were starting a company, would you give away 5 percent of it in exchange for being on “Shark Tank?”

Yes, I would.

You think its worth it?

I do. To be able to get on “Shark Tank” is a tremendous opportunity, and if that means the difference between jump-starting your career and your idea or going nowhere, 5 percent is definitely worth it.

Do you think it’s a good idea for the entrepreneurs on the show to give away equity — or should some consider debt?

Well, I think the formulation on the show is that you are giving away an equity stake for X amount of dollars. And that’s how the show operates, really.

If you invest in a company and later the company needs a loan for working capital, would you be willing to personally guarantee that loan?

If I’ve invested in a company and they’re doing well, I would be happy to keep investing more money into it.

In exchange for more equity?

It depends on the situation, right? Each different situation with each different deal is different.

We see so many loans today that where any investor who owns 20 percent or more of the company has to  guarantee the loan personally.

Well, I think on “Shark Tank” we always joke that we’re the bank and the tank. People aren’t going to the banks for traditional loans. They’re coming to us. So it’s a different model. Do you follow me?

A lot of entrepreneurs give away equity, and I think there’s a trade off. We always tell them, if you’re going to give away equity and you’re going to give away more than 20 percent of your company, you better make sure that if you’re going to need a loan in the future that your investor will be willing to personally guarantee it. Otherwise, you’re going to have a problem.

I think a lot of people don’t like to personally guarantee loans.

Right, so does that inhibit the company’s ability to grow?

No.

What can the company do?

Well, I can only put this situation for myself where, if I’ve invested and it’s doing well and they need more money, I would put up more money for them.

In exchange for more equity, though, right?

Probably. Its hard for me to answer this because it’s a big hypothetical to me.

Have you ever taken equity or debt for a company that you started?

Honestly, this is a new way for me to operate. For the last 16 years, I’ve created my own products and I’ve helped other budding inventors with their products, and I have not chosen to go the path in taking an equity stake in their company.

Right. This equity stuff gets complicated. But did you ever take investors for your own companies?

No, never.

And did you ever need debt or loans?

I took out a loan with my first product, and that was it. That worked for me.

And you stayed in control, right?

Yes.

What do you think? If you had the opportunity to take an investment from Ms. Greiner or another Shark, would you consider it?

Ami Kassar founded MultiFunding, which is based near Philadelphia and helps small businesses find the right sources of financing for their companies.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/the-queen-of-qvc-talks-about-the-risks-of-dealing-with-sharks/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

Media Decoder Blog: Twitter Follower Saves ‘Amazing Race’ Team

September 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Just how attuned are television producers these days to chatter about their shows on Twitter? So much so that they watched in awe, half a world away, as two Twitter users saved a team on “The Amazing Race” from being kicked off the CBS show.

Kaylani Paliotta, left, and Lisa Tilley narrowly escaped being eliminated from the show.Sonja Flemming/CBSKaylani Paliotta, left, and Lisa Tilley narrowly escaped being eliminated from the show.

The 19th season of the race-around-the-world reality show had just started taping in June in Southern California when one of the contestants, Kaylani Paliotta, unknowingly left her passport at a gas station. The camera crew with Ms. Paliotta and her teammate, Lisa Tilley, noticed what had been left behind, but could not tell them. Instead, they sent word to producers at the next stop, Los Angeles International Airport, to expect a premature end to the team’s race.

“We were planning on eliminating this particular team,” said Phil Keoghan, the show’s host, “because there was no way they were going to travel.” A lost passport, he noted, led to a team’s dismissal two years earlier.

But this time, Twitter saved the day. Ryan Storms, a graphic artist and photographer who shares much about his life and promotes his business on Twitter, had been at the gas station and had given directions to Ms. Paliotta and Ms. Tilley. Shortly thereafter, when he spotted the lost passport, he described it on Twitter and wrote, “Looks like I have to look her up on Facebook.”

Mr. Keoghan said Mr. Storms’s messages were spotted right away by an anonymous “uber fan” of the show in Georgia who was apparently monitoring all Twitter mentions of “The Amazing Race.” Such fans act as “Amazing Race” detectives, tracking movements of contestants and discerning who might be winning along the way. The fan quickly replied to Mr. Storms, saying, “She’ll need her passport! Can you get it to LAX?”

Mr. Keoghan said with a chuckle, “He was forced into saving Kaylani.”

Also monitoring online mentions of the show were “Amazing Race” producers in Taiwan. When they saw the passport chatter, they informed counterparts in Los Angeles there might be hope for the team, after all.

“The information went all the way to Taiwan before it came back to us,” said Mr. Keoghan, who had hurried to the airport to conduct the elimination.

Mr. Storms hurried to the airport too. “I would hope that if it was me that had lost my passport, someone would have returned it,” he wrote in an e-mail message. He arrived in time, and the close call was turned into a plot point on Sunday’s premiere of the new season.

Mr. Storms’s final Twitter message that day read: “I’m joining the Amazing Race!”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f14d3eb33a89f954968301903b230621

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Abercrombie Wants Off ‘Jersey Shore’ (Wink-Wink)

August 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now Abercrombie Fitch is doing one better: it has offered to pay the cast members of the trashy-and-proud MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” never to wear its clothes on air. “This association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans,” the company said in a news release.

Michael S. Jeffries, Abercrombie’s chairman and chief executive, said on Wednesday that the company was “having a lot of fun” with the proposed payoff, which analysts and MTV characterized as a publicity stunt — even if a pretty good one for a slow day in August.

Drew Kerr, a public relations consultant in New York, said the move reminded him of Larry Flynt offering famous people millions to pose for Hustler. “It’s offering something publicly that you know is never going to happen, but you do it because it’s just made for the press,” he said.

In a news release with the title “Abercrombie Fitch Proposes a Win-Win Situation,” the company said on Tuesday that it had become concerned after noticing that a cast member, Mike Sorrentino, known as “the Situation,” had taken to wearing its clothes. Mr. Sorrentino’s nickname is a reference to his six-pack abs.

It is hard to imagine Abercrombie’s fans were too distressed — they would probably be more upset if their parents started wearing the clothes. After all, Abercrombie is a mass-market brand that goes after teenagers and is not shy about controversy — when it opened its Paris store earlier this year, it paraded shirtless models along the Champs-Élysées before the police shut the show down.

Jordan Yospe, a lawyer who handles product-placement deals in movies and television shows, said that if Abercrombie were serious about keeping its clothing off the Situation, it would have pursued legal options rather than offering him money.

“They could try to prevent the series from airing their intellectual property without their permission,” said Mr. Yospe, a lawyer at Manatt, Phelps Phillips in Los Angeles. Logos and labels fall under fair-use law, he said, and shows have to get approval from the owner of the intellectual property to use them.

That’s why on so many low-end reality shows, brands are often blurred, Mr. Yospe said — the shows either could not or did not try to get approval. Abercrombie “could say, ‘Blur ’em,’ ” if they really wanted to sever the association, Mr. Yospe said.

However, in issuing a news release instead, Abercrombie seemed pleased to fan the flames. And MTV played along on Wednesday. “It’s a clever P.R. stunt, and we’d love to work with them on other ways they can leverage ‘Jersey Shore’ to reach the largest youth audience on television,” it said in an e-mail.

Mr. Kerr, the public relations consultant, said the episode echoed one last year on the same show, when rumors about product placement surrounded Mr. Sorrentino’s cast mate Nicole Polizzi, known as “Snooki,” a brunette with voluminous hair who likes to wear tiny leopard-print dresses. The contention, never confirmed but given media attention nonetheless, was that luxury handbag companies were supplying Snooki with rival brands’ purses so that theirs would not be associated with her.

Abercrombie reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and its executives seemed rather pleased with their Situation situation in a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

“Is no one going to ask about the Situation?” Mr. Jeffries, the chief executive, asked after a series of questions about Abercrombie’s finances and strategy.

Finally, an analyst did, and Mr. Jeffries explained the background.

“Last Friday morning, I was with a group of people here and someone came up and said, ‘Mike, I have terrible, terrible news for you. Last night on “Jersey Shore,” the Situation had A. F. product on.’ We all said, ‘Oh! That’s terrible! What are we going to do about it?’ And the group kind of came up with the solution: Let’s pay them not to wear our product.”

John D. Morris, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said the move was a smart one because it left an optimistic tone to Abercrombie’s conference call.

“This puts the name Abercrombie top of mind during the all-important back-to-school season,” he said. He added that while Abercrombie’s quarterly results beat forecasts, executives’ caution about the rest of the year seemed worrisome. “Our take was, if they were so concerned about the current state of business, would they be bringing up something as grave as the Situation?” Mr. Morris said.

Still, Abercrombie’s stock fell more than 8 percent on Wednesday, dropping $6.15 a share to close at $64.87.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a11e2d6418ef555ef814d8a3591b7229

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Abercrombie Offers ‘Jersey Shore’ Cast a Paid Non-Product Placement

August 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now Abercrombie Fitch is doing one better: it has offered to pay the cast members of the trashy-and-proud MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” never to wear its clothes on air. “This association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans,” the company said in a news release.

Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie’s chairman and chief executive, said on Wednesday that the company was “having a lot of fun” with the proposed payoff, which analysts and MTV characterized as a publicity stunt — even if a pretty good one for a slow day in August.

Drew Kerr, a public relations consultant in New York, said the move reminded him of Larry Flynt offering famous people millions to pose for Hustler. “It’s offering something publicly that you know is never going to happen, but you do it because it’s just made for the press,” he said.

In a news release with the title “Abercrombie Fitch Proposes a Win-Win Situation,” the company said on Tuesday that it had become concerned after noticing that a cast member, Mike Sorrentino, known as “the Situation,” had taken to wearing its clothes. Mr. Sorrentino’s nickname is a reference to his six-pack abs.

It is hard to imagine Abercrombie’s fans were too distressed — they would probably be more upset if their parents started wearing the clothes. After all, Abercrombie is a mass-market brand that goes after teenagers and is not shy about controversy — when it opened its Paris store earlier this year, it paraded shirtless models along the Champs-Élysées before the police shut the show down.

Jordan Yospe, a lawyer who handles product-placement deals in movies and television shows, said that if Abercrombie were serious about keeping its clothing off the Situation, it would have pursued legal options rather than offering him money.

“They could try to prevent the series from airing their intellectual property without their permission,” said Mr. Yospe, a lawyer at Manatt, Phelps Phillips in Los Angeles. Logos and labels fall under fair-use law, he said, and shows have to get approval from the owner of the intellectual property to use them.

That’s why on so many low-end reality shows, brands are often blurred, Mr. Yospe said — the shows either could not or did not try to get approval. Abercrombie “could say, ‘Blur ’em,’ ” if they really wanted to sever the association, Mr. Yospe said.

However, in issuing a news release instead, Abercrombie seemed pleased to fan the flames. And MTV played along on Wednesday. “It’s a clever P.R. stunt, and we’d love to work with them on other ways they can leverage “Jersey Shore” to reach the largest youth audience on television,” it said in an e-mail.

Mr. Kerr, the public relations consultant, said the episode echoed one last year on the same show, when rumors about product placement surrounded Mr. Sorrentino’s cast mate Nicole Polizzi, known as “Snooki,” a brunette with voluminous hair who likes to wear tiny leopard-print dresses. The contention, never confirmed but given media attention nonetheless, was that luxury handbag companies were supplying Snooki with rival brands’ purses so that theirs would not be associated with her.

Abercrombie reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and its executives seemed rather pleased with their Situation situation in a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

“Is no one going to ask about the Situation?” Mr. Jeffries, the chief executive, asked after a series of questions about Abercrombie’s finances and strategy.

Finally, an analyst did, and Mr. Jeffries explained the background.

“Last Friday morning, I was with a group of people here and someone came up and said, ‘Mike, I have terrible, terrible news for you. Last night on “Jersey Shore,” the Situation had A. F. product on.’ We all said, ‘Oh! That’s terrible! What are we going to do about it?’ And the group kind of came up with the solution: Let’s pay them not to wear our product.”

John D. Morris, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said the move was a smart one because it left an optimistic tone to Abercrombie’s conference call.

“This puts the name Abercrombie top of mind during the all-important back-to-school season,” he said. He added that while Abercrombie’s quarterly results beat forecasts, executives’ caution about the rest of the year seemed worrisome. “Our take was, if they were so concerned about the current state of business, would they be bringing up something as grave as the Situation?” Mr. Morris said.

Still, Abercrombie’s stock fel more than 8 percent on Wednesday, dropping $6.15 to close at $64.87.

 

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a11e2d6418ef555ef814d8a3591b7229

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Hulu, Billed as Tomorrow’s TV, Looks Boxed In

July 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Every sitcom. Every drama, documentary, reality show.

All of it — everything — Right Here Now.

This is the radical potential of the Internet. And this is the implicit promise of Hulu, the innovative Web site that drew the original borders of online television — the TV of tomorrow.

Hulu’s stated mission: “Help people find and enjoy the world’s premium video content when, where and how they want it.”

In the space of just four years, Hulu has done just that — to a point. Only now, with its industry in flux and the company up for sale, the divide between what is and what might be seems as daunting as ever.

This is the future of TV? Really? Today you can watch some shows on Hulu in their entirety. But others you can’t watch at all. Most fall somewhere in between — bound by contractual handcuffs that hamper prospective viewers. Making it even more baffling, some episodes are free while others require an $8-a-month subscription.

“It makes catching up on a show or starting a new show very difficult,” complains Marta Garczarczyk, a fund-raiser for a science museum in Minnesota who tried to watch the ABC’s “Cougar Town” and Fox’s “Glee” through the site last season.

Hulu executives largely have their hands tied. Viewers want more shows on more screens. But Hulu’s partners — the big networks — want steady profits. And, for the moment, the networks seem to have the upper hand.

Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal, part of Comcast; Fox Entertainment, part of the News Corporation; and ABC, part of Disney. An investment firm, Providence Equity Partners, owns about 10 percent.

Partnerships of rivals rarely last. And so Hulu finds itself on the block this summer. Representatives of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and others have kicked the tires, although no clear buyer has yet emerged and Hulu has steadfastly declined to comment.

But no matter who ends up spending billions to buy Hulu, the trick will be satisfying viewers. As Jason Kilar, Hulu’s visionary chief executive, put it in a blog post last February, “History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers.”

But — through no fault of Mr. Kilar — further limitations on the site’s bounty of free video may be on the horizon. For all the innovation that Hulu represents, the site also lays bare the gulf between what online viewers want and what TV companies are willing to give them.

“Customers always win,” Mr. Kilar has been known to tell his staff.

Maybe. But not always without a fight.

EVEN critics of Hulu concede that this company has accomplished something astonishing. It has helped to free television from the tyranny of the TV set.

For decades, people watched television one way: through a boxy contraption, tied to a schedule set by broadcasters. It was all supported by advertisers and beamed free over the airwaves.

As cable and satellite choices proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s, the business model changed: shows and channels were financed both by advertisers and subscribers. But the TV set and its TV Guide-era schedules still reigned. Not until 2006, when ABC became the first network to stream shows like “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” on the Internet, did television programming truly roam free. A year after that, Hulu began taking mainstream the idea of streaming on TV, computers and cellphones.

The first hint of television’s unbundling actually came back in the 1980s, when viewers snapped up videocassette recorders. For the first time, they could record shows and watch them when they wanted. Once that happened, there was no going back. VCRs paved the way for TiVo and DVD box sets.

Each generation of technology met resistance from some in the television industry, a fact that Mr. Kilar knew at first hand before joining Hulu. While working at Amazon.com in the late 1990s, he wrote the business plan for the company’s VHS and DVD businesses. He witnessed skirmishes with TV studio chiefs who worried that direct sales of shows would damage the Blockbuster rental model. Over time, the studios came to embrace the sales model.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=49aed3d30ebb670b7527fa35abbd34f5

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Comcast Said to Be in Talks Over G4 Cable Channel

June 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It is unclear how close the parties are to a deal, but representatives of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Comcast’s NBCUniversal division were said to have met in New York on Wednesday, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to comment.

The talks were first reported by the Web site of The Wall Street Journal.

Ultimate Fighting Championship, which produces popular but sometimes controversial mixed martial arts matches, is known to be seeking an expansion of its television footprint. It is in talks with several different potential distributors, one of the people said.

Last fall, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White, predicted in an interview that the league would start its own network “within the next couple years.” At the time he also expressed an eagerness to bring Ultimate Fighting Championship fights to broadcast television in the United States for the first time. Presumably a deal with Comcast could also include specials on the NBC broadcast network, which Comcast also controls.

Representatives for Comcast, G4 and Ultimate Fighting Championship declined to comment Wednesday. Two of the people with knowledge of the NBC-Universal talks said that Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is privately held, could take ownership of 60 percent or more of G4, which is one of the lowest-rated cable channels in Comcast’s portfolio. Its intended audience of men ages 18 to 34 overlaps well with Ultimate Fighting Championship’s audience on Spike, a unit of Viacom, which has carried a fighting reality show for the last six years.

Spike’s deal with U.F.C. for the show, “The Ultimate Fighter,” expires in six months. Negotiations between Spike and Ultimate Fighting Championship for a new deal started almost a year ago, one of the people said, but broke down after Ultimate Fighting Championship proposed a dramatic increase in Spike’s annual payment.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6b572a08ed8c576de88bf36dcf3f8e00

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