NEW YORK (AP) — Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons,” a new consumer survey suggests. That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday. The project’s report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site. About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online – including those who already do. There’s little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they’d look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment. “If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center. Last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002, according to the research firm eMarketer. Four of five Americans surveyed told the project that they never or hardly ever click on ads. Despite a lot of choices, traffic on news sites tends to be concentrated on the biggest – Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, AOL and The New York Times. “There was this view that we’re retreating into our own world of niche sites and that’s not true,” Rosenstiel said. That offers a glimmer of hope for establishing a pay system if operators of the biggest sites could somehow agree on how to do it, he said. The survey found that if forced to make a choice, consumers prefer some kind of subscription service to a pay-as-you-go plan. The Wall Street Journal requires readers to pay for content and The New York Times recently announced plans to charge for full access to its Web site. Starting next year under a metered system, Times readers will be allowed to click on a certain number of stories for free each month, with fees kicking in for readers who exceed that level. In addition to attempts to reach back and charge readers for content they have become accustomed to getting for free, news executives hope that advances in technology and changes in consumer habits will provide future revenue opportunities. The Associated Press last month announced a new business unit, AP Gateway, designed to develop and promote products that will help the cooperative, newspapers and broadcasters create revenue-producing products. The AP, for instance, will charge for an application it is developing for use on the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer. While consumers may seem reluctant to pay for news, they’re more likely to pay for the functionality of news products on various devices, including smart phones, said Jane Seagrave, senior vice president and chief revenue officer at The Associated Press. “I’m more hopeful now than I ever have been,” Seagrave said. “There seems to be a broad understanding that there is a value to professional journalism that is at risk right now.” Pew’s survey also noted how news habits are changing rapidly. Blogging is declining in frequency, one quarter of Americans now say they get some news on their mobile phones and people are looking for news more frequently on social Web sites, the survey found. For the online survey, the project interviewed 2,259 people from Dec. 28, 2009, to Jan. 19, 2010. The margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points. Beyond the online activity, the study found that cable news, led by Fox News Channel, seemed to be the only sector of the news industry thriving. Newspaper advertising revenue fell 26 percent in 2009 compared to the year before, the study said. Local TV and radio ad revenue were both off 22 percent. Network television ad revenue was down 8 percent. Network news division resources are down more than half since the late 1980s, and that doesn’t count ABC News’ recent announcement that it could lose as much as a quarter of its staff due to cutbacks. Newspaper spending on reporting and editing has fallen roughly 30 percent over the past decade, probably more at many big-city dailies, Rosenstiel said. — On the Net: http://www.journalism.org
March 15, 2010 | Posted in
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — To further cut costs at its movie studio, The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it will shut a San Francisco-area facility used to capture the performance of Jim Carrey for his digitally animated character, Scrooge, in “A Christmas Carol.” The closure of the facility in Marin County, north of San Francisco, will be completed by January and result in the loss of 450 jobs. The facility was built by ImageMovers Digital, a company co-founded by “A Christmas Carol” director Robert Zemeckis and partially owned by Disney. Motion-capture technology in that facility was used to make the movie; Carrey wore sensors as he acted out scenes, and the data were used to recreate his character on the screen. Before it closes, the complex will continue to be used by Zemeckis and his team to complete production of “Mars Needs Moms!,” a 3-D movie set for release in March 2011. “Given today’s economic realities, we need to find alternative ways to bring creative content to audiences and IMD no longer fits into our business model,” Walt Disney Studios president Alan Bergman said. In a statement, Zemeckis said he was “incredible proud” of the ImageMovers team and the work it accomplished. Disney said it hoped to come to a new long-term production deal with Zemeckis and his ImageMovers partners, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey, including one for a future project called “Yellow Submarine.” Disney’s studio has been paring costs and decreasing its movie slate, most recently putting a halt to “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” “Wedding Banned” and “Wild Hogs 2.” The cuts have occurred since Rich Ross, formerly the head of Disney Channels Worldwide, took over the studio in October following the abrupt resignation of Dick Cook and more than a year of disappointing results. Disney is also looking for a buyer of its Miramax Films division, which it bought from the Weinstein brothers in 1993. It shut down Miramax offices in January, and Disney CEO Bob Iger said last month that new investment in the unit would be limited to releasing its six remaining films through 2011.
March 12, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — Red carpet regular Tinsley Mortimer is jumping from the social circuit to the national spotlight with her own reality television show. Cameras follow Mortimer and a few of her friends on the party circuit as they live their fabulous lives in New York City. But it’s not all champagne and velvet ropes. The show, “High Society,” which premiered Wednesday and will air weekly on The CW network, comes as Mortimer is newly single after splitting from her investment banker husband, Robert “Topper” Mortimer, whom she met in high school. It will feature Tinsley Mortimer, 34, moving out on her own, going on dates and dealing with a mother who’s unhappy about her impending divorce. In one episode, Mortimer’s friends throw her what they call a single shower to mark her bachelorette status. They each show a photo of an eligible man they think she could date. There’s a lot of giggling until her mother pulls out one of the photos from her wedding to Robert Mortimer and says he’s the perfect guy for her. Tinsley Mortimer says she understands where her mom is coming from. “No mother wants to see her daughter get divorced,” she says. “It’s hard when you grow apart. It’s scary and exciting. I feel like I’ve come out stronger from all this … filming this TV show was almost like therapy.” It also could be lucrative. The master plan is for “High Society” to expand the Tinsley Mortimer brand. Mortimer already designs a line of handbags for Samantha Thavasa and wants to branch out into clothing, home care and other items. “I’m a smart girl, and I work hard,” she says. “I’m very focused, and I want to build a business here. That’s really the larger goal, and that’s the reason I did a television show and all those risks that come along with that.” Plus, it could help her reputation. Mortimer says she hopes people will realize she’s more normal than they think. “I do not go out every night,” she says. “I do love to wear sweat pants and veg out.” — On the Net: High Society: http://www.cwtv.com/shows/high-society
March 12, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — VeriSign Inc., whose technology is key to allowing Internet users to access Web sites with names ending in “.com” and “.net,” plans to spend more than $300 million over the next decade to upgrade its systems. The upgrades will allow VeriSign’s machines to handle up to 4 quadrillion requests per day from computers trying to reach those sites. That’s a thousand times more lookups than the 4 trillion per day that the company can currently handle. Ken Silva, the company’s chief technology officer, said Thursday that the latest changes are needed to keep up with ballooning Internet traffic and with spikes in usage caused by major news events and computer attacks. Traffic volume is expected to soar along with the expansion of technologies such as Internet-connected televisions, navigation systems and video streaming. VeriSign is in two big businesses that are critical to the functioning of the Internet but both remain largely out of the public’s view. The most recognizable business involves selling “certificates” that Web sites can use to tell Web browsers that they are using encryption to protect data passing between a user’s computer and the Web site’s servers. That’s important for banking and e-commerce sites in protecting customers’ data. VeriSign is one of several large vendors of such Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. VeriSign also operates the registry of all “.com” and “.net” domain names. That means it’s responsible for ensuring that Internet users can reach sites registered with those names. When someone enters a Web address into a browser, the traffic doesn’t go directly to servers operated by that Web site. It often has to go through servers operated by VeriSign and other companies to translate the written name, such as verisign.com, into a numeric Internet Protocol, or IP, address that computers can understand. The last major infrastructure upgrade VeriSign announced was in 2007, when the company said it would spend more than $100 million to boost capacity tenfold by 2010. The amount represented about a quarter of the total $373 million VeriSign spent in those three years on all its capital expenditures. Last year the VeriSign, which is based in Mountain View, earned $245.6 million on revenue of $1.03 billion.
March 11, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — The sudden takedown of an Internet provider thought to be helping spread one of the most promiscuous pieces of malicious software out there appears to have cut off criminals from potentially millions of personal computers under their control. But the victory was short-lived. Less than a day after a service known as “AS Troyak” was unplugged from the Internet, security researchers said Wednesday it apparently had found a way to get back online, and criminals were reconnecting with their unmoored machines. The drama initially raised hopes of a sharp drop-off in fraud, because criminals could no longer communicate with many computers infected with a type of malware known as “ZeuS,” which is mostly used to steal online banking usernames and passwords. Hundreds of criminal operations around the world use the malware. It’s unknown how many computers are infected with ZeuS, but it’s estimated to be in the millions. Cisco Systems Inc. said as many as 25 percent of the world’s ZeuS-infected machines were unplugged from the massive “botnet” overnight with the takedown of AS Troyak. Botnets are networks of infected PCs that behave like criminals’ remote-control robots. They steal identities en masse and are used to attack Web sites. But instead of a slam-dunk victory, the incident wound up highlighting the whiplash pace at which criminals can resurrect their illicit businesses after what should have been a devastating setback. RSA, the security division of EMC Corp., said dozens of malicious servers that criminals used to spread ZeuS were connected to the Internet by AS Troyak. The service inexplicably went dark Tuesday, severing the ties between criminals and ZeuS-infected machines under their control. It’s not publicly known who pulled the plug. It could have been law enforcement, security researchers, or even the criminals themselves if they decided to move their operations to other servers. Shutting down malware operations is a constant cat-and-mouse game. Some services exist solely to host malicious content, and when their connections to the Internet are severed, it’s often relatively easy to find another provider willing to sell them a new connection. RSA researchers wrote in a note to clients that their experience shows that “these kinds of drastic changes are usually short-lived, as in the long run, criminals tend to restructure their criminal activity and relaunch their online attacks.” That apparently happened – and quickly. By Wednesday, researchers said the servers appeared to be back online, through a new Internet provider. Cisco researchers said a total of 68 command-and-control servers were brought down, but that it’s unknown how many infected computers were connected to each of those. But they added that the criminals may have known the servers were going to be brought down, because traffic to those servers spiked over the weekend, suggesting they were directing infected computers to point to new servers. One of the most high-profile takedowns of a malicious Web site hosting service involved a company called McColo Corp. whose Internet service was severed in the winter of 2008 after researchers amassed evidence of the company’s wrongdoing. Worldwide spam volumes almost instantly dropped by half, but within days started climbing again.
March 11, 2010 | Posted in
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. will sell the online services of other business software makers in an effort to fill its own product gaps and persuade more companies to rely on applications piped over the Internet. The online store that was announced late Tuesday marks another step in Google’s crusade to convert the world to “cloud computing,” the idea of running applications in Web browsers instead of installing them on individual hard drives. The information entered in the programs also is stored in data centers run by third parties such as Google. More than 50 software makers have agreed to sell their Internet programs through Google, which will keep 20 percent of the sales. The prices are expected to range from $50 annually to several hundred dollars annually per user. Intuit Inc., a maker of business accounting software, and Concur Technologies Inc., a maker of expense reimbursement software, are among the best-known vendors peddling their wares in Google’s store. All the applications sold in Google’s store can be melded with Google’s own cloud-computing services, said Vic Gundotra, the company’s vice president of engineering. Google views cloud computing as a way to deepen people’s dependence on its services and generate more revenue beyond the Internet search advertising that provides virtually all its income. Cloud computing also provides Google with a weapon that could weaken one of its biggest rivals, Microsoft Corp. Although it’s introducing more online alternatives, Microsoft still makes most of its money from individual computer licenses of its Windows operating system and software programs. The applications store could also could provide fodder for the low-cost computers that will run on a Google operating system named after its Chrome Web browser. The first computers using Chrome OS won’t have a hard drive, meaning they will need Internet access and cloud-computing services to perform the tasks routinely done on Windows-powered machines. Google began offering a free online suite of e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications in 2006. It has been selling a more sophisticated package of online services for $50 per user for the past three years. Cloud computing can be a tough sell to corporate decision makers worried about security risks and business disruptions if a technology glitch or major meltdown blocks access to vital applications and data stored on external servers. Google has invested billions of dollars during the past five years to keep its systems up and running. Nevertheless, Google’s applications users occasionally have been cut off from their e-mail accounts and other services. About 25 million people working for more than 2 million businesses, government agencies and schools use Google’s online applications, according to the company. Google won’t say how many users pay for the service, but the number is growing rapidly. The company’s revenue from software licensing and other non-advertising sources totaled $762 million last year, more than quadrupling from $181 million in 2007.
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — Annie Leibovitz, the photographer who mismanaged her fortune so badly that she faced losing legal rights to some of pop culture’s most enduring images, has reached a long-term agreement with a private investment firm to help manage her debt and market her vast portfolio, both sides said Tuesday. Leibovitz, 60, will retain total control of her multimillion-dollar portfolio under the deal she signed with Colony Capital LLC of Santa Monica, Calif., on Monday, said Richard Nanula, a principal with the firm. Under the agreement, Colony will become the photographer’s sole creditor and help market her archive of such provocative images as a nude John Lennon cuddling with a clothed Yoko Ono hours before his death, as well as a nude and very pregnant Demi Moore. Leibovitz obtained an extension last year to repay a $24 million loan to a Manhattan firm, Art Capital Group, in a financial dispute that had threatened her rights to those images and others. The specific terms of the new deal were not disclosed, but Nanula said “it pays off all the Art Capital loan. … It cleans up the rest of her balance sheet.” The Colony loan also contains more than $20 million of real estate collateral, Nanula added – Leibovitz’s three Manhattan town houses. The Art Capital loan was repaid Monday, he said. Art Capital confirmed the repayment and said in a statement that it “is pleased to announce that its loan to Annie Leibovitz has been satisfied. We are encouraged by the results of this complex transaction and wish Ms. Leibovitz the best in all of her future endeavors.” “It’s long-term in nature,” Nanula said of the partnership with Leibovitz. “Our interest is in helping her be successful and to be her financial partner.” “Colony is a dedicated and creative team,” Leibovitz said in a statement. “We will be working on new projects, and I will have the support and freedom necessary for nurturing my work and preserving my archive.” “Colony Capital, LLC has formed a new partnership with Annie Leibovitz, one of world’s greatest portrait photographers,” the firm said in a statement. “We are delighted to be able to do that here by partnering with Ms. Leibovitz in a business relationship that allows her to continue to flourish as an artist while together we seek opportunities to enhance the value of the magnificent body of work she has created over the past 40 years.” Those opportunities, Nanula said, could involve traveling exhibitions of Leibovitz’s works, books and fine-art copies of her photographs. He stressed that any commercialization of her work would be decided by Leibovitz and that Colony would be her financial partner in any such venture. Leibovitz’s portfolio is estimated to contain more than 100,000 images and 1 million negatives. “It’s one of the most valuable and unexploited” photo archives, Nanula said. The deal between Colony and Leibovitz was first reported in the Financial Times on Tuesday. Colony Capital is a global firm that focuses primarily on real estate-related assets, securities and operating companies. Last year, it purchased a loan with a face value of $23.5 million on Michael Jackson’s Neverland in California, giving it the rights to the late singer’s nearly 3,000-acre property. In the course of her 40-year career, Leibovitz’s lens has captured such famous faces as Queen Elizabeth II and Bruce Springsteen, many for the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Rolling Stone. In 2008, Leibovitz put up as collateral the three town houses, an upstate New York property and the copyright to her images to secure the Art Capital loan to repay debt that the firm said stemmed from mortgage obligations, tax liens and unpaid bills. Art Capital, an independent provider of financing for the art world, agreed at the time it extended the repayment on the loan to sell back the rights to her works.
March 9, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — Andy Richter, Conan O’Brien’s sidekick at “The Tonight Show,” is acknowledging some ill will toward NBC and Jay Leno in the wake of the network’s late-night upheaval. “Why wouldn’t I?” said Richter, who was filling in Tuesday for Regis Philbin on “Live! with Regis and Kelly.” Richter told Kelly Ripa he was frustrated that Leno was allowed to reclaim “The Tonight Show” host chair just nine months after O’Brien had inherited that plum assignment. “NBC, definitely, everybody said they were going to do something and they didn’t,” said Richter, implying the network broke long-standing commitments it made to O’Brien. O’Brien left NBC and “Tonight” in January amid complaints by NBC of low ratings. NBC had proposed reinstating Leno in the 11:35 p.m. EST slot and bumping O’Brien back a half-hour. O’Brien’s future is unclear. So is Richter’s, though he said, for now, he’s still an NBC employee, “so we’ll see if those checks keep coming.” He called a rumored live concert tour for O’Brien and Co. “a distinct possibility.” It all ended much quicker than he could have imagined, said Richter, who figured his “Tonight” job was “as good as it gets in show business.” He said he figured “I’m a tenured professor of show business now,” but quickly learned otherwise. “I guess I’m really good at getting kicked off the air, because it’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years.” Ripa had a suggestion for his next career move. “You and Conan should do another show on another network called ‘We Were on The Tonight Show,’” she joked. “Wouldn’t that be exciting!” — On the Net: http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/regisandkelly/index.html
March 9, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — An estimated 41.3 million people saw “The Hurt Locker” top the popular “Avatar” for best picture in the most-watched Academy Awards telecast since 2005. Oscar viewership was up 14 percent over last year, the Nielsen Co. said Monday, keeping with a trend of bigger audiences for major events on broadcast television a month after the Super Bowl set the mark for most-watched telecast ever. In true film fashion, the Oscars built to a big climax when the Iraqi war thriller “The Hurt Locker” and its director, Kathryn Bigelow, topped “Avatar,” directed by her ex-husband James Cameron. Bigelow was the first woman to win the Oscar for best director. The audience was up from the 36.3 million who saw “Slumdog Millionaire” win best picture last year and 32 million – Oscar’s smallest audience on record – in 2008, Nielsen said. The Oscars had just over 42 million watch in 2005, when “Million Dollar Baby” was the big winner. The Oscar ratings fall in line with bigger audiences for awards shows in recent months. The Golden Globes were up 14 percent over the year before, and the performance-heavy Grammys up 36 percent, Nielsen said. The Emmys, the Tonys and the Miss America pageant all saw higher ratings. Analysts say fewer chances for Americans to gather in front of the television set for communal events may help make these events more popular. With a poor economy, more people are staying home, too. The Internet may also help draw viewers; experts say many people are online while the shows are on, and they comment about them to friends. Ratings for the New York market appeared unaffected by a business dispute between Cablevision and ABC’s parent, Walt Disney Co. ABC had been dropped by Cablevision for its 3.1 million subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Sunday, and the network was not restored until 13 minutes after the Academy Awards telecast began. Still, New York ranked No. 13 among among the 56 biggest media markets in the country, Nielsen said. New York’s overnight rating was 11 percent above the average for all of the big markets.
March 8, 2010 | Posted in
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LONDON (AP) — It’s the new front in the nanny state: Microchips placed in garbage bins to monitor how much people throw away. A pro-privacy group warns in a new report that more than 2.6 million of the chips have been surreptitiously installed in what is seen as a first step toward charging those who toss too much. Proponents say it’s a bid to push recycling. Opponents say it stinks. “They should mind their own business,” said Terry Williams, an unemployed Londoner who thinks the government is meddling. “I believe they have gone too far. It’s not like we are throwing away anything that is illegal.” The advocacy group Big Brother Watch found through a series of Freedom of Information requests that many local governments, called councils in Britain, are installing the microchips in trash cans distributed to households, but in most cases have not yet activated them – in part because officials know the move would be unpopular. “They are waiting for the political climate to change before they start using them,” said campaign director Dylan Sharpe, who predicted that families that produce large amounts of garbage would be fined. The trash microchips are now part of the British information grid, which already includes a heavy reliance on closed-circuit television surveillance and cameras to monitor the population, particularly on the crowded public transportation system. “This is yet another piece of surveillance that the councils are taking on in our daily life,” said Sharpe. “With this information they can tell if we are home or not, and the information is stored on their database, which is not that secure.” He said the “pay as you throw” policy councils are planning to implement would discriminate against large families that generate more waste and might encourage people to burn their refuse – or dump it illegally – rather than pay extra. “That’s what’s happened in Ireland, where they’re tried this,” he said. “Over the last 10 years we’ve seen a massive increase in CCTV, and the introduction of laws allowing police to search at random. There has been a general trend in this country toward gathering as much data as possible.” But Gary Hopkins, a councilor in Bristol, said the microchips will be a useful tool in an innovative program to reward people who reduce household waste, not part of a secret plan to charge those who produce high volumes. “It’s voluntary, not compulsory,” he said. “A compulsory plan would not work. We’ve managed to persuade the people of Bristol to participate in the recycling program. We want to encourage the people who aren’t using it to join in as well.” The government’s ambitious information-gathering plans go still further. Security officials working on counterterrorism plans have lobbied for greater powers to track every e-mail, text, and phone call made in the U.K. The country already maintains an extensive DNA database that is, per capita, the largest in the world. Then there are the alleged “nanny state” initiatives designed to use laws and regulation to modify troublesome social behavior. The government in January banned some drinking games and bar promotions in an effort to curb binge drinking, and a government-funded design effort is under way to produce a shatterproof pint glass so drunken “lager louts” will be less able to break glasses and use the shards as weapons. The government may even get involved in the effort to help young women have a better self-image by requiring advertisers who retouch photos of fashion models to print disclaimers making clear that the airbrushed models don’t look that great in real life. The thinking is that this would make women less like to try to starve themselves into perfection. The use of microchips in trash bins has spread dramatically in the last year, the new study shows. Microchips were first fitted into some British trash bins eight years ago, and the debate over whether the state has the right to weigh or otherwise analyze residents’ refuse has surfaced periodically since. In 2006, then-British environment minister Ben Bradshaw told Britons that they might someday have to pay for the amount of waste they produce – arguing that the practice would encourage people to waste less and reduce pressure on landfills while making recycling more popular. His successor, David Miliband, moved to lift a ban which prevented local officials from offering financial incentives for recycling – further clearing the way for the use of garbage-monitoring microchips. The nature of the chips and their exact purpose vary across the country: Some of the chips are intended to sense the weight of the garbage piled into a bin. Others are meant to track the whereabouts of the bin itself, or check whether it has been emptied. None of the chips are used to charge residents in so-called “pay-as-you-throw” plans – at least so far. But many believe the microchips are part of a stealth plan to increase fees and fines. “It makes me very angry,” said Nat Spencer, 35, of London. “I’ve been thinking of moving out, it’s gotten that bad.” — On the Net: Big Brother Watch report: http://bit.ly/aNIv2d — Associated Press Writers Raphael G. Satter and Chonel LaPorte contributed to this report.
March 5, 2010 | Posted in
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