Ryan Seacrest announced Wednesday that he has taken a controlling stake in Civic Entertainment Group, a strategic marketing agency specializing in so-called experiential marketing. The company, with 45 employees, has been behind high-profile campaigns for clients like CNN, NBC, HBO, A&E and the N.F.L. Financial terms of the transaction, which was conducted through Mr. Seacrest's new personal investment arm, the Seacrest Global Group, were not disclosed. Mr. Seacrest said the groups' co-founders Stuart Ruderfer and David Cohn would continue to run the company independently in New York. As Brian Stelter reports, Mr. Seacrest said:
“They'll do what they do best. I'll hopefully be able to leverage some access.†Mr. Seacrest could theoretically line up some of the celebrities he interviews on the radio, or some of the reality stars whose shows he produces for the E! channel, for a future brand event put together by the group.
Pandora Media reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, with revenue of $120 million - up 60 percent from the same period last year - and net income matching analyst expectations at 1 cent a share. But the company also lowered its expectations for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year, warning that it would face a loss of 6 to 9 cents per share, greater than it had earlier expected. That news led to a steep decline in the company's stock price in after-hours trading. Ben Sisario writes:
Pandora's stock, which had closed up 5.5 percent on Tuesday, at $9.45, fell 18 percent in after-hour trading, once its earnings were released. The stock is down almost 41 percent from its initial offering in June 2011. The company also faces looming competition from Microsoft, which recently introduced a new digital service, Xbox Music; and from Apple, which is said to be preparing an Internet radio service for imminent release, although Apple has not commented on those reports. Spotify and other digital music services also offer competing radio features.
Walt Disney Studios said on Tuesday that it had completed a deal to show films from its Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm banners on Netflix, the first time that one of Hollywood's Big Six studios has chosen Web streaming over pay television. Netflix, as Brooks Barnes reports, has made similar deals with smaller movie suppliers like DreamWorks Animation and the Weinstein Company. But all of the majors â€" Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony and 20th Century Fox â€" have stayed with Starz, HBO or Showtime until now.
In the past, Starz, HBO and Showtime paid about $20 million a picture for exclusive rights a few months after films arrive on DVD. But Netflix - capitalizing on a consumer shift to streaming content on computers, tablets and Internet-connected televisions - has been aggressively going after the business by offering more lucrative terms. With the Disney deal, Netflix will be able to offer customers exclusive access to a pipeline of films that are reliably some of the year's biggest box-office successes. Netflix has also made it a priority to strengthen its children's and family offerings.
A front page photograph of a man about to be struck and kill ed by a subway train sparked an online debate Tuesday over the The New York Post's decision to publish the picture, and the actions of the photographer who took it. The online news site Capital New York talked to four veteran tabloid photographers who vigorously defended the photographer. One stated, in part:
There's at least a dozen other people on that platform, any able-bodied person could have tried (assuming we actually knew how much time the victim had between the fall, and impact) to try and help him. So anyone who's going to cry, “Why didn't he help?,†really needs to ask that of any of the other people there. Monday-morning QB-ing this is kind of pointless. The guy is dead. They're ei ther all guilty of turning their back on this guy, or they're not. Can't lay blame on this guy alone.
