Month: August 2014

An All-Out Attack on ‘Conservative Misinformation’

Ellen

10/31/2008   The New York Times

The Washington offices of Media Matters for America, a highly partisan research organization.

WASHINGTON — They are some of the more memorable slip-ups or slights within the news media’s coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.

A Fox News anchor asks whether Senator Barack Obama and his wife had greeted each other with a “terrorist fist jab.” Rush Limbaugh calls military personnel critical of the war in Iraq “phony soldiers.” Mr. Limbaugh and another Fox host repeat an accusation that Mr. Obama attended a madrassa, or Islamic school, in Indonesia.

Each of these moments might have slipped into the broadcast ether but for the efforts of Media Matters for America, the nonprofit, highly partisan research organization that was founded four years ago by David Brock, a formerly conservative author who has since gone liberal.

Ripping a page from an old Republican Party playbook, Media Matters has given the Democrats a weapon they have not had in previous campaigns: a rapid-fire, technologically sophisticated means to call out what it considers “conservative misinformation” on air or in print, then feed it to a Rolodex of reporters, cable channels and bloggers hungry for grist.

Producers for both “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central take calls from the organization. James Carville, the Democratic strategist and CNN commentator, has read from its items on the air, not least, he says, because they “just irritate the right to no end.”

“It was always kind of a dream, that we needed something like that,” Mr. Carville said. “I wouldn’t say they’ve become as effective as the entire conservative media backlash thing, but they’re probably more effective than any single entity.”

At the core of the Media Matters operation is its ability to hear and see so much of the news and commentary that streams across the nation’s airwaves, and to scan so many major newspapers and blogs. The group has an annual operating budget of more than $10 million — up from $3 million in 2004 — much of it donated by wealthy individuals with ties to the Democratic Party, including Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance; Steve Bing, a movie producer; and Marcy Carsey, a television producer.

That money allows the group to monitor and transcribe nearly every word not only on network and cable news but also on nationally syndicated talk radio and, lately, local radio. It was Media Matters that widely disseminated a transcript of Don Imus making racially and sexually offensive comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. (On its own this summer, the group also circulated a photo of this reporter that had been digitally altered by Fox News.)

Media Matters says it does not coordinate its efforts with the Obama campaign — the campaign has its own media-criticism Web site, FightTheSmears.com — though some Democratic operatives have, at the least, suggested potential items to Media Matters over the years.

But Mr. Brock, the founder and chairman of Media Matters, makes no secret of the candidate he favors in the election: he hosted two fund-raisers recently that, he said, raised $50,000 for Mr. Obama. And John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who helped create Media Matters, is a chairman of the team that would facilitate Mr. Obama’s transition to the White House, should he win.

“I’m a good progressive,” said Mr. Brock, who also gave money to the primary campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Though its sleek, glassed-in offices here on Massachusetts Avenue resemble the former law firm that once occupied them, the team of researchers search for the kind of “gotcha” moment that the organization might publicize.

“The local guys are harder to listen to,” said Julie Millican, 26, who oversees the transcription and analysis of more than a dozen radio programs, from Michael Savage and Mr. Limbaugh to Chris Baker of KTLK-FM in Minneapolis and Dan Caplis of KHOW-AM in Denver. Ms. Millican said local hosts “will go off and spend 20 minutes talking about a pothole in the neighborhood. The next thing you know, they’re calling Hillary Clinton a” — and here Ms. Millican used a vulgarity.

Each morning at 9:30, several dozen researchers and editors gather in a low-ceilinged conference room for their “edit call,” in which they essentially pick their shots. On a recent morning, they decided to take aim at Mr. Savage, the radio host who reaches an estimated eight million listeners a week, for saying that “the only people who don’t seem to vote based on race are white people of European origin.” He made his comment after suggesting that “B.O.,” as he calls Mr. Obama, was endorsed by former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell “because of his race.”

Whether Media Matters has affected the course of the 2008 election — by intimidating some reporters or commentators, or forcing a change in the tone of others — is difficult to judge, with no shortage of blogs now trying to do some version of what it does.

One of its most concerted campaigns was to cast doubt this summer on the veracity of “The Obama Nation,” a book by Jerome Corsi. In a live interview on MSNBC with the author, Contessa Brewer cited “some 8, 9, 10 pages of factual errors” unearthed by Media Matters, and then asked Mr. Corsi, “Why should we give you the credibility?”

While the book’s claims wound up getting little traction in the mainstream press, Media Matters was hardly alone in sounding the alarm.

“I don’t pay any attention to them,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of The Rothenberg Political Report, a Washington newsletter. “Whether it’s conservatives evaluating the media, or liberals evaluating the media, I just have no confidence in any of the ideological stuff.”

Moreover, for all the organization’s culling, the sheer number of items it pumps out can be overwhelming to those reporters who cover the news media, or the campaign.

“At the risk of incurring their wrath,” said Mark Z. Barabak, a political reporter for The Los Angeles Times who has covered the Obama and McCain campaigns, “I think it does become, at a certain point, white noise.”

Similarly, David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for National Public Radio, said: “They’re looking at every dangling participle, every dependent clause, every semicolon, every quotation — to see if it there’s some way it unfairly frames a cause, a party, a candidate, that they may have some feelings for.”

That said, Mr. Folkenflik said the organization was a source of useful leads, in part because of the “breadth of their research.”

At the least, the organization has succeeded in proving nettlesome to Republicans, as well as the mainstream press at times. “I think they are one of the most destructive organizations associated with American politics today,” said Frank Luntz, a pollster for Rudolph W. Giuliani and Newt Gingrich who this year has led on-camera voter focus groups on Fox News, a frequent Media Matters target. “They are vicious. They only understand one thing: attack, attack, attack.”

“If I were a Democrat, I would tell them to shut up,” Mr. Luntz said. “If I were a Republican, I would tell my candidates to ignore them.” And yet, the right should expect no let-up from Media Matters in the coming months, whoever is elected president, Mr. Brock said.

“The news obviously doesn’t stop when the election is over,” he said. “This was never created to be anything other than a permanent campaign for media accountability. It was not designed to rise and fall with election cycles.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2008
An article last Saturday about Media Matters for America, a left-leaning research group that seeks to combat what it calls “conservative misinformation,” provided insufficient context for a quotation from Julie Millican, who oversees the transcription and analysis of radio programs for the group. When Ms. Millican said that local hosts are “harder to listen to” because they might “spend 20 minutes talking about a pothole” and then use a vulgarity to describe Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was speaking generally. She was not referring specifically to either Chris Baker of Minneapolis or Dan Caplis of Denver.

 

 

 

Gotcha TV: Crews Stalk Bill O’Reilly’s Targets

Ellen
Published: April 15, 2009
The New York Times

When Bill O’Reilly’s camera crew ambushed Mike Hoyt at a bus stop in Teaneck, N.J., a few months ago, the on-camera confrontation and the microphone in his face reminded him, oddly enough, of the “60 Minutes” interviewer Mike Wallace.

Mr. Hoyt, executive editor of The Columbia Journalism Review, was well-versed in the venerable art of the on-camera, on-the-street confrontation, perfected by Mr. Wallace and other hard-charging television journalists in decades past. Now, in an appropriation of Mr. Wallace’s techniques, ambush interviews have become a distinguishing feature of Mr. O’Reilly’s program on the Fox News Channel.

Mr. Hoyt, one of more than 50 people that Mr. O’Reilly’s young producers have confronted in the past three years, said the interviews were “really just an attempt to make you look bad.” In almost every case Mr. O’Reilly uses the aggressive interviews to campaign for his point of view.

Mr. O’Reilly, the right-leaning commentator who has had the highest-rated cable show for about eight years, has called the interviews a way to hold people accountable for their actions. “When the bad guys won’t comment, when they run and hide, we will find them,” he said on “The O’Reilly Factor” recently.

In recent months the ambushes have come under increased scrutiny, partly because the targets have changed. While most of the initial subjects were judges and lawyers whom Mr. O’Reilly perceived to be soft on crime, many of the past year’s subjects have been political and personal opponents of the host. Mr. Hoyt, for instance, was criticized for assigning an essay about right-wing media to a writer with a liberal background. Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor for The New Yorker, was confronted for what Mr. O’Reilly described as taking a “Factor” segment out of context. And Amanda Terkel, a managing editor at the liberal Web site ThinkProgress.org, was interviewed about a protest she helped organize against Mr. O’Reilly.

Ms. Terkel’s case generated immense attention on the Internet last month partly because she called it an incident of stalking and harassment. ThinkProgress discussed taking legal action but instead decided to lead a mostly unsuccessful effort asking advertisers to boycott Mr. O’Reilly’s program.

The Fox News producer responsible for most of the ambush interviews, Jesse Watters, refused repeated interview requests. But the network did make David Tabacoff, the program’s senior executive producer, available to comment. Mr. Tabacoff — who started a telephone interview by asking, “This is going to be a fair piece, correct?” — said the interviews are “part of the journalistic mission” of “The O’Reilly Factor.” He called the program an “opinion-driven show that has a journalistic basis.”

“We’re trying to get answers from people,” he said. “Sometimes the only way to get them is via these methods.”

The attitude, as summarized by Mr. Watters in a BillOReilly.com blog post: “If they don’t come to us, we’ll go to them.”

A Fox spokeswoman said the interview approach was first used in 2002. It became a staple of “The O’Reilly Factor” in 2006. Since then Mr. Watters, a 30-year-old who worked for a Republican candidate for New York attorney general, Dora Irizarry, before joining Fox in 2003, has approached high school principals, lawmakers, journalists and celebrities whom Mr. O’Reilly has accused of being dishonest. He conducts background checks, uses Google Earth’s mapping software to scout the locations and tries to identify a public place where he can surprise the person. Some interviews require days of waiting in trucks and hotels.

When the subjects don’t answer — at least not to the satisfaction of Mr. Watters — the questions become more provocative and emotional. Last summer Mr. Watters asked Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont about that state’s criminal statutes and asked, “About how many dead girls are we going to tolerate here?”

Sometimes the questions are statements. While trying to provoke a Florida judge last month Mr. Watters seemed to speak on behalf of the victims of a sexual molester, saying, “You owe that family an apology.”

While Mr. Watters has never been injured on the job, there have been some close calls. In Virginia Beach, while confronting Meyera Oberndorf, the city’s mayor, about its laws toward illegal immigrants that Mr. O’Reilly calls too lenient, Mr. Watters said the mayor’s husband tried, unsuccessfully, to seize the microphone. “This will be great TV,” Mr. Watters recalled remarking to the camera operator and sound technician in a blog post.

Rather than “60 Minutes,” the confrontations may bring to mind the liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who documented his attempts to ambush the chairman of General Motors in his 1989 film “Roger & Me” and later asked members of Congress to enlist their children to serve in Iraq in 2004’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Mr. O’Reilly has rejected the comparison, saying on Fox in 2006 that Mr. Moore is “doing it to put it in his movie and exploit it,” while “I’m doing it because there’s no other way to hold these villains accountable.”

Some subjects of the interviews strongly disagree. “They weren’t interested in my views,” Mr. Hoyt said of the January incident. “They just wanted to have me looking surprised or irked or whatever.” After several minutes at the bus stop, the camera crew tried to board the bus with Mr. Hoyt, disembarking only after the driver demanded that they leave.

In some cases the subjects of the interviews seek help from the police. Matthew Dowd, who has since retired as a Kansas judge, said Mr. Watters “kind of jumped me” outside a restaurant two years ago, prompting his wife to call 911. In at least three other instances, subjects called the police.

For some journalism practitioners Mr. O’Reilly’s tactics are unsettling. “Nobody should hijack the power of journalism or use the public airwaves (or cable signals) simply to settle personal scores,” Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that supports journalism education, said in an e-mail message.

Ten of the last 12 people confronted by Mr. O’Reilly’s crews were either outwardly liberal or had criticized Republicans. Fox staffers insist, however, that Mr. O’Reilly is not partisan, and Ron Mitchell, an “O’Reilly Factor” producer, said that “if you go over the dozens and dozens of these, the primary balance is not about left or right.” (In October, for instance, Mr. Watters approached the ousted Merrill Lynch chief executive, E. Stanley O’Neal, outside his apartment.)

Regardless, some people criticized by Mr. O’Reilly have learned how to avoid added embarrassment when it is their turn in front of Mr. Watters’s microphone. When he confronted Rosie O’Donnell at a book signing to ask about her views of 9/11 conspiracy theories — she had said on “The View” that it was impossible that World Trade Center 7 could have fallen the way it did “without explosives being involved” — a member of her entourage placed his hand over the camera lens. Ms. O’Donnell told her employee to stop, adding, “That’s what they want you to do.” Mr. O’Reilly played the tape the next weeknight.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/arts/television/16ambush.html

 

Supremely Bad Judgement

Ellen
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 23, 2010
The New York Times

In the wacky coda to one of the most searing chapters in American history, everyone remained true to form.

Anita Hill reacted with starchy disgust.

Ginni Thomas came across like a spiritually addled nut.

Clarence Thomas was mute, no doubt privately raging about the trouble women have caused him.

And now into the circus comes Lillian McEwen, an old girlfriend of Thomas’s.

Looking to shop a memoir, the 65-year-old McEwen used the occasion of Ginni’s weird phone message to Anita — asking her to “consider an apology” and “pray about this” and “O.K., have a good day!” — to open up to reporters.

If “the real Clarence” had been revealed at the time, he probably wouldn’t have ascended to the court, McEwen told The Times’s Ashley Parker. Especially since the real Clarence denied ever using the “grotesque” argot of the porn movies he regularly rented at a D.C. video store.

In her interviews, McEwen confirmed Thomas’s obsession with women with “huge, huge breasts,” with scouting the women he worked with as possible partners, and with talking about porn at work — while he was head of the federal agency that polices sexual harassment.

Years later, some of the Democrats on that all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee told me they assumed there must have been a consensual romance between the boss and his subordinate. McEwen assumed so, too, because Clarence took Anita with him when he changed agencies. Hill has made it clear she felt no reciprocal attraction.

Joe Biden, the senator who ran those hearings, was leery of the liberal groups eager to use Hill as a pawn to checkmate Thomas. He circumscribed the testimony of women who could have corroborated Hill’s unappetizing portrait of a power-abusing predator.

For the written record, Biden allowed negative accounts only from women who had worked with Thomas. He also ruled out testimony from women who simply had personal relationships with Thomas, and did not respond to a note from McEwen — a former assistant U.S. attorney who had once worked as a counsel for Biden’s committee — reminding him of her long relationship with Thomas.

It’s too late to relitigate the shameful Thomas-Hill hearings. We’re stuck with a justice-for-life who lied his way onto the bench with the help of bullying Republicans and cowed Democrats.

We don’t know why Ginni Thomas, who was once in the thrall of a cultish self-help group called Lifespring, made that odd call to Hill at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. But we do know that the Thomases show supremely bad judgment. Mrs. Thomas, a queen of the Tea Party, is the founder of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, which she boasts will be bigger than the Tea Party. She sports and sells those foam Statue of Liberty-style crowns as she makes her case against the “tyranny” of President Obama and Congressional Democrats, who, she charges, are hurting the “core founding principles” of America.

As The Times’s Jackie Calmes wrote, Mrs. Thomas started her nonprofit in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and additional sums this year that we don’t know about yet. She does not have to disclose the donors, whose money makes possible the compensation she brings into the Thomas household.

There is no way to tell if her donors have cases before the Supreme Court or whether her husband knows their identities. And she never would have to disclose them if her husband had his way.

The 5-to-4 Citizens United decision last January gave corporations, foreign contributors, unions, Big Energy, Big Oil and superrich conservatives a green light to surreptitiously funnel in as much money as they want, whenever they want to elect or unelect candidates. As if that weren’t enough to breed corruption, Thomas was the only justice — in a rare case of detaching his hip from Antonin Scalia’s — to write a separate opinion calling for an end to donor disclosures.

In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court chose the Republican president. In Citizens United, the court may return Republicans to control of Congress. So much for conservatives’ professed disdain of judicial activism. And so much for the public’s long-held trust in the impartiality of the nation’s highest court.

Justice Stephen Breyer recently rejected the image of the high court as “nine junior varsity politicians.” But it’s even worse than that. The court has gone beyond mere politicization. Its liberals are moderate and reasonable, while the conservatives are dug in, guzzling Tea.

Thomas and Scalia have flouted ethics rules by attending seminars sponsored by Koch Industries, an energy and manufacturing conglomerate run by billionaire brothers that has donated more than $100 million to far-right causes.

Christine O’Donnell may not believe in the separation of church and state, but the Supreme Court does not believe in the separation of powers.

O.K., have a good day!

 

 

The Science Behind Suicide Contagion

Ellen

8/13/2014   The New York Times

When Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, with the cause listed as probable suicide, the nation reacted. In the months afterward, there was extensive news coverage, widespread sorrow and a spate of suicides. According to one study, the suicide rate in the United States jumped by 12 percent compared with the same months in the previous year.

Mental illness is not a communicable disease, but there’s a strong body of evidence that suicide is still contagious. Publicity surrounding a suicide has been repeatedly and definitively linked to a subsequent increase in suicide, especially among young people. Analysis suggests that at least 5 percent of youth suicides are influenced by contagion.

People who kill themselves are already vulnerable, but publicity around another suicide appears to make a difference as they are considering their options. The evidence suggests that suicide “outbreaks” and “clusters” are real phenomena; one death can set off others. There’s a particularly strong effect from celebrity suicides.

A sign at Kurt Cobain Memorial Park at Young Street Bridge in Aberdeen, Wash., his hometown. Coverage of his death was closely tied to messages about treatment for mental health and suicide prevention.

“Suicide contagion is real, which is why I’m concerned about it,” said Madelyn Gould, a professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University, who has studied suicide contagion extensively.

She’s particularly concerned this week, after the high-profile death of the comedian and actor Robin Williams.

Suicide prevention advocates have developed guidelines for news media coverage of suicide deaths. The idea is to avoid emphasizing or glamorizing suicide, or to make it seem like a simple or inevitable solution for people who are at risk. The guidelines have been shown to make a difference: A study in Vienna documented a significant drop in suicide risk when reporters began adhering to recommendations for coverage.

That aim has to be weighed against a journalistic duty to keep the public informed. And in the Internet era, a person who wants to know details of a suicide won’t have a hard time finding them. Most of the research on suicide contagion predates the rise of social media.

Few of the experts’ recommendations make much sense in the case of Mr. Williams. Studies suggest avoiding repetitive or prominent coverage; keeping the word suicide out of news headlines; and remaining silent about the means of suicide. “How can it not be prominent?” Ms. Gould said.

Experts also say articles should include information about how suicide can be avoided (for instance, noting that the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at 800-273-8255).

They also recommend avoiding coverage that describes death as an escape for a troubled person. One example was the 1994 death of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, who was beloved among young music fans, including in Seattle, where his career rose and where he was found dead. Local coverage of his suicide was closely tied to messages about treatment for mental health and suicide prevention, along with a very public discussion of the pain his death caused his family. Those factors may explain why his death bucked the pattern. In the months after Mr. Cobain’s death, calls to suicide prevention lines in the Seattle area surged and suicides actually went down.

“It’s different from any other cause of death,” said Christine Moutier, the chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “When someone dies of cancer or heart disease or AIDS, you don’t have to worry about messaging it wrong.”

 

Food’s New Ratings Recipe

Ellen

Courting younger demographic after cutting back on Emeril

2/8/2008   Broadcasting & Cable

Much like one who tires of eating broiled chicken for dinner too many Friday nights, Food Network has lately felt the need to mix things up a bit. The big question: Would a tweaked recipe bring more revenue and prime viewers to the table?

The network began asking the question last July in the wake of sagging ratings for its anchor show Emeril Live, which it then moved from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m. When the network ceased production of new episodes as of Dec. 11, the move led some to question whether Food could continue reaching the masses by relying on newly built stars.

But by making this transition, Food has become more palatable to viewers and advertisers alike. In addition to retaining some established stars and marketing new ones, the network has continued to develop non-instructional reality shows for prime. Now Food is adding new advertisers to its already-loyal partners. A subsequent increase in revenue, paired with an investment in consumer products lines and online partnerships, like a recent Food store powered by Cooking.com, point to healthy profits.

With renewed commitments from fan favorites Rachael Ray and Alton Brown, Food’s talent pool—including tattoo-plastered, spiky-haired Guy Fieri and ice hockey player/model-cum TV chef Danny Boome—skews younger, and the network has broken new advertiser categories such as electronics. In January 2008, its median age in prime was 45.6; in 2003, it was 50.3, according to Nielsen.

The addition of more reality fare, like the Fieri/Marc Summers-hosted Ultimate Recipe Showdown at night, has allowed for brand integrations that weren’t possible previously. (The Scripps-owned network, to some advertisers’ chagrin, remains continually steadfast in not showing product branding labels in its instructional cooking shows.)

“New talent is part of what makes the network exciting,” says General Manager Sergei Kuharsky. A former marketer for Johnson & Johnson, Kuharsky has helped spearhead an expanding line of Food Network products at Kohl’s, the partnership with Cooking.com and cookbook deals for new talent like Ellie Krieger. “Emeril had an incredible run like Friends, Frasier and Seinfeld. We celebrate that success—and we look forward to the new.”

The network is projected to grow ad revenue by 7.4% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2009 to $446 million, according to SNL Kagan research. Operating revenue is projected to grow 8.1% in 2008 and 9.4% in 2009 to $567.6 million. While the network’s total day viewing dipped 5% in 2007 to an average 556,000 total viewers, it was up 3% in prime to 799,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Food plans to premiere one new show a month for the next year, its most ambitious slate ever. In January, it debuted Ray’s new travel series Rachael’s Vacation, and Jamie At Home, a daytime cooking series that saw the return of Naked Chef Jamie Oliver to the network.

This month brings Ultimate Recipe Showdown and Down Home with the Neelys, in which an African-American couple of restaurateurs cook BBQ comfort food. The latter premiered as the network’s most-watched series in the five years of its In the Kitchen weekend block, with some 2 million viewers. March’s entrant is Rescue Chef, a daytime weekend show in which Boome helps regular cooks solve their culinary dilemmas.

Heading into this season’s upfront, the network is pitching advertisers on the benefits of hooking up with new talent as they rise. It has signed deals for two of its stars with major brand names, although at presstime could not say on the record which brands. And it has been finding new ways to blend product integrations into primetime reality shows—the winner of Ultimate Recipe Showdown, for instance, gets their recipe on the menu of TGI Fridays, along with $25,000.

“We’re in the world everyone else is in, trying to understand the best way to keep the editorial voice clean, while also in a fun way incorporating advertisers and brands when it fits with the show,” says Karen Grinthal, Food’s senior VP of ad sales.

Media buyers are responding kindly, many saying that the cutting back of Lagasse—who maintains a development deal with Food, and will continue to produce new episodes of Essence of Emeril through 2008—perhaps improved the network’s standing with some clients.

“[The network has] grown to the point where they’re bigger than some of their talent,” says Bill Holba, who works with packaged good products as VP/associate director of national broadcast for Initiative. “And they’ve got a corner in the market that no one’s taking away at this point.”

“Food Network has done a good job at seeking out and developing talent,” says Dave Kornett, senior VP of national broadcast at PHD. “I would have every confidence they’ll be able to replace talent that’s leaving with a more younger and current feel.”

 

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/news-articles/foods-new-ratings-recipe/84342

 

From TV’s viewpoint, housing market is hot

Ellen

Burst of home-flipping and improvement programs reflects what’s on people’s minds, executives say.

3/10/2008   Associate Press

NEW YORK — Real estate may have cooled considerably as an investment, but not real estate television.

House-flipping and home-renovation programs are still big hits on cable. While “for-sale” signs sprout on lawns across the country, TV programmers are like developers who plow ahead with new housing projects anyway.

A new season of the A&E Network’s “Flip This House” — one of a troika, with TLC’s “Flip That House” and Bravo’s “Flipping Out” — premieres Saturday night.

A&E has several new programs in development. On TLC, at least six new ones are beginning in the next year, starting with “Date My House,” hosted by former “Bachelor” Bob Guiney, in which potential buyers spend a night in a home on the market.

HGTV had its highest prime-time ratings ever in January. Nine of its top 10 series deal with the housing market, including “House Hunters,” “My First Place,” “Hidden Potential,” “Buy Me” and “Designed to Sell.” The network on Feb. 29 did a special theme day of “taking the big leap,” or investing in that first house.

“What’s driving interest right now is that people are worried about it: ‘What’s the value of my home? How can I increase interest in my home?’ ” said Jim Samples, HGTV president. “And then there’s the ‘life-goes-on’ factor. People are still changing jobs, families are still getting bigger. If anything, they tend to nest in this environment.”

Samples admitted, though, that one of his first questions last fall upon taking over HGTV was how the housing market downturn would affect the network’s programs.

HGTV essentially built itself on the public fascination with property. At its start, the network had shows on crafts and landscaping, but now the home is the focus. “House Hunters,” which premiered in 1999, helped introduce real estate as a prime TV target.

When TLC’s “Trading Spaces” became a sensation, it showed that renovation and decoration could be entertainment instead of simply chores.

The network has concentrated recently on reviving that franchise, even bringing back original host Paige Davis after a two-year absence.

“Flip That House” will become more reflective of the economy, said Brant Pinvidic, TLC’s senior vice president of programming. Not every “flipper” gets rich quick. The show will make sure every time at the end to clearly outline how each investor did, he said.

“If the programming reflects the attitudes in the community and what people are feeling, it will do better than if the programs feel outdated,” Pinvidic said.

A&E’s “Flip This House” is expanding its cast of characters for the upcoming fourth season, adding renovation teams in Atlanta and Los Angeles to join returning “flippers” from San Antonio and New Haven, Conn.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/10/entertainment/et-housetv10

 

Primetime Ratings: Private Practice Makes Perfect for ABC

Ellen

Grey’s Anatomy Spinoff Propels Network to Wednesday-Night Win

10/18/2007   Broadcasting & Cable

ABC won Wednesday night in the 18-49 demo with a 3.7 rating/10 share average, according to Nielsen Media Research overnight numbers.

Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice was the top rated show on ABC and any network with a 4.4/11 from 9 p.m.-10 p.m., although that was down from last week’s 4.8/1.

Quirky ABC drama Pushing Daisies (Twin Peaks meets Six Feet Under with a touch of Target commercial) was even with last week at a 3.6/10.

CBS was second on the night with a 3.5/9, led by CSI: NY with a 4.1/11 from 10 p.m.-11 p.m. to win its time period handily. Kid Nation continued to underwhelm after its early overhype at a 2.4/7 for last place in its 8 p.m.-9 p.m. time period.

NBC was third with a 3.1/8, topped by Bionic Woman, although that show continued its slide in the overnights, down from last week’s 3.8/10 and way down from its debut 5.5/14. It also dropped from a 3.5/9 in its first half-hour to a 3.2/8 in its second.

Fox was fourth with a 2.8/8 led by the just-renewedKitchen Nightmares at a 3.2/8, up from last week’s 3/8.

The CW was fifth with a 1.9/5 topped by America’s Next Top Model, which beat CBS and tied with Fox for third place from 8 p.m.-9 p.m.

 

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/programming/primetime-ratings-private-practice-makes-perfect-abc/30903

 

Desperate for Ratings: “Desperate Housewives” Has Record Low Audience

Ellen

4/15/2008   THR

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” fell to a record low rating for an original episode as the suburban soap returned to the air on Sunday after being sidelined for more than three months by the writers strike.

The show drew 16 million viewers, down about 15 percent from its season average of 18.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was still enough to win the 9 p.m. hour by a wide margin, and give ABC the nightly honors with 10.5 million viewers.

“Housewives” was hurt by the absence of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” as a lead-in. Instead, ABC moved the fast-fading “Oprah’s Big Give” to the 8 p.m. slot (8.9 million viewers vs. a season average of 11.5 million).

At 10 p.m., ABC tried out Thursday regular “Eli Stone,” which benefited from the strong lead-in (9.2 million vs a season average of 8.2 million).

CBS was second for the night (10.4 million) with “60 Minutes” (14.1 million), “Big Brother” (10.7 million), “Cold Case” (8.8 million) and “Dexter” (8.2 million).

NBC (5.3 million) was dragged down by recycled episodes of USA Network’s “Monk” (5.2 million) and “Psych” (4.2 million). Fox averaged 5.1 million viewers overall.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/15/us-ratings-idUSN1233431920080415

 

Stars before pilot pickup is new trend

Ellen

2/28/2008   The Hollywood Reporter

With the pilot season truncated to three months because of the writers strike, some broadcast networks are switching the order of pilot casting and pickups to save time and give themselves a better shot at sought-after talent.

On Wednesday, British actor Toby Stephens (“Die Another Day”) was cast as the lead in Fox’s drama “Inseparable.” However, the project has not yet been picked up to pilot.

A modern-day Jekyll and Hyde tale about a partially paralyzed forensic psychiatrist (Stephens) with a split personality whose alter ego is a charismatic criminal, “Inseparable” was pitched before the strike by creator Shaun Cassidy, who originally developed it several years ago. The network asked for a revised draft, which Cassidy couldn’t complete before the work stoppage began.

To get a head start when the strike concluded, Fox brass in January gave their blessing for casting to begin on the ABC Studios-produced project but delayed an official pilot order until they read Cassidy’s new draft (HR 1/11).

In similar fashion, two comedy projects, Fox’s “Don’t Bring Frank” and CBS’ “Ex Life,” were cleared to begin casting Friday before the projects have been picked up to pilots (HR 2/25).

Casting on CBS’ drama pilot “Mythological X” also will start before there is a script in place. The project had been in development at CBS, but when it greenlighted it to pilot Wednesday, the network also tapped a new writer, Diane Ruggiero, to pen a new script.

The move allows the networks to get an early start on the casting process, avoiding the mad rush when “everyone will be trying to tap the same talent pool,” one agent said. “That pool gets depleted very quickly.”

Another early trend emerging from the pilot pickup season, which started in earnest this week with CBS ordering a quartet of shows, is the expanding invasion of foreign formats.

The prolonged strike prompted the broadcast nets to take a closer look at international series.

Last year, a record seven foreign formats — three dramas and four comedies — made it to pilot stage. With the thick of pilot ordering still days away, that number already has been surpassed this year.

CBS on Wednesday picked up two pilots based on international formats: the British “Ny-Lon” and the Israeli “Mythological X.”

“Frank” also is based on a British format, as are ABC’s drama “Life on Mars” and NBC’s comedy “Father Ted,” while NBC’s “Kath & Kim” comes from Australia. Additionally, Canadian imports “Flashpoint” and “The Listener” recently were handed series orders by CBS and NBC, respectively.

NBC Uni, CBS Corp. and News Corp. toppers have promised major shakeups of the pilot process in the wake of the writers strike. But so far, aside from some minor tweaks like jump-starting casting, the biggest news this post-strike pilot season seems to be how business-as-usual it has been.

“They said they won’t be picking up pilots, and they’re doing just that,” one agent said.

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/stars-before-pilot-pickup-is-105783

 

50 Million New Reasons BuzzFeed Wants to Take Its Content Far Beyond Lists

Ellen

8/10/2014   NYT

Jonah Peretti, above left, a co-founder and chief of BuzzFeed, with Ben Smith, editor in chief.

Here are three completely crazy insights about BuzzFeed, the viral content start-up:

1. BuzzFeed is a web traffic sensation that draws 150 million average monthly viewers.

2. Numbered lists, like this one, are what the site is most famous for and drive much of its audience.

3. BuzzFeed wants to be known for much, much more.

To help make that happen, BuzzFeed just closed a new $50 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. The investment values the company at about $850 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

Now the question is whether BuzzFeed can maintain the agility and skills of a tech start-up while building the breadth of a large media company.

“As we grow, how can we maintain a culture that can still be entrepreneurial?” said Jonah Peretti, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. “What if a Hollywood studio or a news organization was run like a start-up?”

That is exactly what Mr. Peretti is going to try. On Monday, BuzzFeed will announce that its new cash infusion will be used to make several major changes, including introducing new content sections, creating an in-house incubator for new technology and potential acquisitions, and putting far more resources toward BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, its Los Angeles-based video arm.

The goal: Try a bunch of new features, and fast.

BuzzFeed, which is based in New York, started in 2006 as a kind of laboratory for viral content — the kinds of highly shareable lists, videos and memes that pepper social media sites. But in recent years, the company has added more traditional content, building a track record for delivering breaking news and deeply reported articles, and it has tried to marry its two halves in one site.

But what has really set BuzzFeed apart, Mr. Peretti said, is its grasp of technology. The company, which now has 550 employees, has been especially successful at distributing its lists and content through mobile devices and through social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Ze Frank, president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which is contemplating full-length films.

The photo-sharing site Pinterest, in particular, now drives more traffic to BuzzFeed’s Life section than Twitter does, Mr. Peretti said. Social media accounts for 75 percent of BuzzFeed’s referral traffic, according to the company.

Chris Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who will join BuzzFeed’s board, said: “We think of BuzzFeed as more of a technology company. They embrace Internet culture. Everything is first optimized for mobile and social channels.”

Still, the company faces the same problem that more traditional publications do — rates for traditional online advertising, on general interest sites like BuzzFeed, have dropped consistently from year to year.

To keep up, sites must either perpetually increase traffic at a steady clip, or innovate and move into new and potentially more lucrative areas like so-called native advertising and video.

Already, most of BuzzFeed’s revenue is derived from BuzzFeed Creative, the company’s 75-person unit dedicated to creating for brands custom video and list-style advertising content that looks similar to its own editorial content. Mr. Peretti declined to share financial details, but he said BuzzFeed’s revenue for the first half of 2014 was twice as much as the first half of 2013. According to Mr. Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz, BuzzFeed is expected to generate revenue in the triple-digit millions of dollars by the end of 2014.

Another media company, Vice, has prospered on a similar blend of such content offerings, and has also made a significant proportion of its money from its in-house advertising agency. It offers brands the publication’s ethos, and writing and video-making skills, as a way to reach consumers.

Still, some analysts consider BuzzFeed’s continued reliance on social media sites for traffic as a major liability. In 2011, The Washington Post introduced its Social Reader app, a major initiative that allowed users to read and share articles from the newspaper within Facebook’s News Feed. This initially reaped loads of web traffic for the publication. But when users complained that they were getting spammed by constant notifications of what their friends were reading, Facebook changed its News Feed settings, and traffic for the Social Reader plummeted.

“If Facebook decides to tinker with its algorithms tomorrow, these viral publishers could be gone in the blink of an eye,” said Nate Elliott, an analyst with Forrester Research. “They’re putting their entire existence in another company’s hands.”

This is not Mr. Peretti’s first media enterprise, however. He was a co-founder, along with Arianna Huffington and the venture capitalist Kenneth Lerer, of The Huffington Post. That online media start-up, which relied heavily on showing up in Google search results for traffic, was sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million. Mr. Lerer, also a BuzzFeed co-founder and investor, will soon take a more active role at BuzzFeed as executive chairman.

The push into more areas might help insulate BuzzFeed, too, from an overdependence on social media. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which is led by Ze Frank, a web video pioneer, aims to produce new videos — from six-second clips made for social media to more traditional 22-minute shows — at a rapid-fire pace. Initially, his team will focus on independent distribution, hosting video content on BuzzFeed.com, YouTube or other digital platforms. But BuzzFeed Motion Pictures could also look to produce feature-length films or shows, working in conjunction with traditional Hollywood studios.

The company also plans a fast expansion into international markets, already a major driver of the site’s new-user growth, with plans to open offices in Japan, Germany, Mexico and India this year.

And the future of BuzzFeed may not even be on BuzzFeed.com. One of the company’s nascent ideas, BuzzFeed Distributed, will be a team of 20 people producing content that lives entirely on other popular platforms, like Tumblr, Instagram or Snapchat.

Initially, it will not be a direct revenue stream for the company. But Mr. Peretti says he thinks it will ultimately give the company a much larger reach than traditional counts of web page views can measure.

“We’re organizing ourselves to be a media company for the way people consume media today,” Mr. Peretti said.

Correction: August 10, 2014
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the surname of BuzzFeed’s chief executive. As the article correctly noted, he is Jonah Peretti, not Paretti.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/technology/a-move-to-go-beyond-lists-for-content-at-buzzfeed.html?_r=0&gwh=9E3089954186954C858D4FC6BCE2953E&gwt=pay&assetType=nyt_now