NBC Says Nearly 220 Million Watched the Olympics

By BILL CARTER

NBC announced on Monday that its coverage of the London Olympics was the most watched entertainment or sporting event ever on American television.

That achievement reflects the total reach of the 17-day event across all the networks of NBCUniversal that carried Olympics programming. NBC said 219.4 million viewers - approaching two-thirds of the population of the country - caught at least some segment of the Games on some channel.

That number surpasses the figure for the Beijing Olympics, which NBC set at 215 million. NBC topped off what had been an above-all-expectations performance with a huge audience, 31 million, for the closing ceremony on Sunday night. That was the largest audience for an Olympics held outside the United States in 36 years. It topped the audience for the Beijing closing by 12 percent.

Over all, NBC's prime-time coverage, which was assailed by some critics, bloggers and social-media users for v arious offenses including not showing events live in the afternoons on NBC (though they could be streamed live on the Internet), had a nightly average of 31.1 million viewers, a figure rarely attained by any current television show. That meant the London Games also had the largest average audience in prime time of any non-United States Olympics since the Games in Montreal in 1976.

NBC's news shows, “Today” and “Nightly News” had their ratings soar during the Olympics, posting enormous margins over their main rival, ABC. In the second week of the Games, “Today” widened its advantage over “Good Morning America” to 1.6 million viewers and sent “GMA' to its lowest numbers in a year.

Despite instigating another online furor with its decision to interrupt coverage of the final night with a preview of a new sitcom, “Animal Practice,” NBC managed to expose that show (for good or ill) to 12.8 million viewers, and scored a 4.1 rating in the 18-to-49-y ear-old audience NBC sells to most advertisers. In isolation, that amounts to a hit rating for that group, though it meant half the audience in that category that had been watching the Olympics tuned out during the comedy.

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

Disney Is Sued Over Treatment of Muslim Employee Who Wears a Head Scarf

By BROOKS BARNES

A federal discrimination lawsuit filed on Monday against the Walt Disney Company by the American Civil Liberties Union contends that a Muslim woman was harassed and unfairly removed from her job after a dispute over her head scarf.

In response, a Disney spokeswoman said its theme parks have “a long history of accommodating a variety of religious requests from cast members of all faiths,” but had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

The suit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, says that Imane Boudlal, 28, was called names like “terrorist” and “camel” on a “weekly if not daily basis” during her two years working at the Storytellers Cafe at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif. Ms. Boudlal reported the harassment in writing to four different managers and none took action, according to the complaint.

The center of the suit, however, involves Ms. Boudlal's decision to wear a hea d scarf, or hijab, and the resulting employment options Disney gave her. The company, citing wardrobe policies intended to suit a theme, offered Ms. Boudlal various hats in keeping with the restaurant's early 1900s theme to wear over the hijab. Disney, which employs 80,000 people at its theme parks in North America, works out solutions to religion-related attire with some frequency in this manner.

Alternately, Ms. Boudlal was told that she could work “backstage” - out of public view - while wearing the head scarf as she pleased. Ms. Boudlal, according to the suit, “refused, explaining that she found these options humiliating and an infringement of her religious beliefs.” Subsequently, Disney “removed her from the cafe's schedule,” according to the suit.

In 2010, after Ms. Boudlal took her complaints to the news media, a Disney spokeswoman, Suzi Brown, linked the accusations of discrimination to a dispute between Disney a nd a hotel worker union over a new contract. An e-mail statement from Ms. Brown at the time also offers another view of Disney's version:

We met with Ms. Boudlal on Saturday and presented her with several options. She asked that the costume be altered. Those alterations were made and a modified costume was presented to her that meets our costuming guidelines and which we believe provides an accommodation of her religious beliefs. We also provided four different roles that she could transition to that would allow her to wear her own hijab. She has twice chosen to reject all of the options that we've presented.

Brooks Barnes writes about Hollywood with an emphasis on Disney. Follow @brooksbarnesnyt on Twitter.

Helen Gurley Brown, Who Gave Cosmopolitan Its Purr, Is Dead at 90

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Helen Gurley Brown, the former editor of Cosmopolitan who transformed the magazine in the 1960s into a source of sexual empowerment for women, died on Monday morning.

A spokesman for the Hearst Corporation, which publishes Cosmopolitan, said that Ms. Brown, 90, passed away after being hospitalized briefly at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.

Ms. Brown, who wrote “Sex and the Single Girl,” took over at the magazine - giving it its sexually frank tone - in 1965. She remained editor until 1997 and is still listed as editor in chief for Cosmopolitan International on all mastheads. Until her death, Ms. Brown was known for coming into her pink corner office nearly every day.

The Hearst statement reads: “It would be hard to overstate the importance to Hearst of her success with Cosmopolitan, or the value of the friendship many of us enjoyed with her. Helen was one of the world's most recognized magazine editors and book authors, and a true pioneer for women in journalism-and beyond.”

Other Coverage of Helen Gurley Brown

Citibank Joins the Simpler Checking-Disclosure Club

By ANN CARRNS

Citibank is the latest big bank to offer a slimmed-down, plain language disclosure for its checking account customers.

The bank joins other big institutions, including Chase and TD Bank, and a growing number of credit unions in adopting shorter, simplified disclosures, to help customers easily see the crucial fees and policies associated with an account.

Citi is now using a two-page form that outlines fees for its various checking accounts, including the amounts assessed for covering overdrafts. The document also explains how deposits and withdrawals are processed, and when deposits become available.

“There's only one thing you need to help manage fees,” the document's heading says. “The Facts.”

Citi adopted the form as part of a “plain talk” initiative, which aims to provide customers “with the facts they need to make informed decisions when opening an account or considering changes to their ban king relationship,” said Stephen Troutner, Citi's head of branch network and banking products for its domestic consumer banking, in a statement.

Citi, Chase and the other banks developed their new forms in cooperation with the Pew Safe Checking in the Electronic Age project, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which promotes simplified disclosures. A recent Pew analysis found the median length of a checking-account disclosure is 69 pages-down from 111 pages a year earlier, but still quite lengthy.

Pew had originally proposed that banks adopt a single-page document, but few banks have been able to shrink their verbiage enough to meet that goal.

CNN to Promote Nonfiction TV, not Reality TV, Network Says

By BILL CARTER

CNN says it is not getting into the reality television business, though it is considering adding weekend programs that are similar to a documentary-style travel show hosted by Anthony Bourdain that it will begin showing next year.

Responding to a report in The New York Post on Monday that it was entering into discussions about adding reality shows to its lineup, CNN issued a statement saying:

CNN, which recently announced the hiring of Anthony Bourdain as a contributor, is continuing to explore other nonfiction original series for the weekend. We routinely pursue new talent and programming concepts within the news category and often shoot pilots for any number of our networks.

Mr. Bourdain produces his CNN show through his own production company.

A CNN executive emphasized the distinction between reality shows, which on entertainment channels lean toward competitions like “Survivorâ € and celebrity slice-of-life series like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” and nonfiction programs, which are routine on news channels.

Other news networks do offer packaged nonfiction programs on the weekends. MSNBC has long relied on “Lockup,” a prison documentary series. And Fox News has presented the military history series “War Stories With Oliver North.”

CNN is clearly seeking new directions for its programs. Its ratings have recently hit 20-year lows and Jim Walton announced in July that he was stepping down as president, saying, “CNN needs new thinking.”

But his departure will not take place until the end of the year, which has led to speculation about who might replace Mr. Walton. Any major changes in the direction of CNN will most likely not take place until after a new top executive is named.

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

You Probably Have Too Much Stuff

August 13, 2012, 12:48 pm

By CARL RICHARDS

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at BAM Advisor Services. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published this year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

When a man named Andrew Hyde began an adventure in minimalism, he only owned 15 things. It eventually moved to 39 and now it sits around 60. It all started when he decided to take a trip around the world and sell everything he didn't need. As Mr. Hyde noted on his blog, it changed his life after a brief period of befuddlement:

I'm so confused by this. When we were growing up, didn't we all have the goal of a huge house full of things? I found a far more quality life by rejecting things as a gauge of success.

When I came across his original story of only owning 15 items, I was so inspired I immediately went home and found 15 things to give away. Most of these things were clothes that I had long since stopped wearing, but I held on them because . . . well, just because. In fact I have no idea why I still had a tie I hadn't worn in four years or a shirt that no longer fit.

I still own way more than 39 things, but getting rid of some of them felt amazingly good. In the process, I realized how much holding on to those things was actually costing me. That is the paradox.

When we hold on to stuff we no longer want or use, it does indeed cost us something more, if only in the time spent organizing and contemplating them. I can't tell you how many times I have thought about getting rid of that tie (for instance), and every time I went to choose a shirt for the day, I would think about the few that no longer fit.

Even though Hyde's example is an extreme one, I love thinking about extreme examples because they have the power to compel us to act. In this case I found myself thinking:

• Why exactly do you own what you own?
• What could you get rid of and not miss?
• Do I really still need that?
• What is it costing me to own that?

Maybe the attachment to stuff comes in part from a notion that we should be prepared for anything. When David Friedlander interviewed Mr. Hyde about his project, he highlighted this issue:

Americans in particular like to be prepared for the worst-case-scenario, having separate cookie cutters for Christmas and Halloween. We seldom consider how negligible the consequences are when we running out of something or are unprepared. Nor do we consider how high the consequences are for being over-prepared…

Think about that for a second: there's a consequence for being over-prepared. Often that consequence goes beyond the financial cost. It can easily have a physical cost that we didn't expect, say in the need for more space to put all of our stuff.

In a way, this all circles back to the notion of buying good things and holding on to them for a long time. It can help to think in terms of, “Do I have room-physical, emotional, mental-to bring one more thing into my life?”

If the idea of cutting down on your possessions is equally appealing, but still daunting, start simple:

1. At the end of every season, go through your clothes. If you didn't wear it one time, get rid of it.
2. This process will generate a stack of stuff. For what it's worth, don't try to sell it on eBay. It's another cost (in time). So save yourself a headache, donate it to a charity and take the tax credit.

You don't need to get down to 39 possessions to feel the impact. Instead, this exercise is about getting clear on why you own what you own and what it might be costing you to own it.

Huffington Post Begins an Online TV Network

August 13, 2012, 12:11 pm

By BRIAN STELTER

The Huffington Post on Monday began what it hopes will be a never-ending news talk show on the Internet, HuffPost Live.

The online network is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to rethink what television should look and feel like when streamed via the Internet. Accordingly, a chat box took up the same amount of space as the live video, and a bright red button labeled “join this segment” let viewers sign up to participate through their own webcams.

The segments themselves, at least initially, didn't stray much from a television script. The first hour, from 10 to 11 a.m. Eastern, was dominated by talk about the presidential race and about the actress Jennifer Aniston's engagement to the actor Justin Theroux. But the people talking were a mixture of paid hosts and unpaid viewers at home. “Continue commenting!” a host encouraged chatters at the end of the first hour. “We love it, love it, love it.”

The network will have 12 hours of programming on weekdays and reflects a serious push within the media industry to produce the kind of online video that advertisers are asking for. Cadillac and Verizon are the two advertisers that The Huffington Post calls “founding partners” of the network.

“Now that almost everyone in the country is watching online video, it just makes sense that some people would want live programming, too,” said Mike Vorhaus, a digital-media analyst who heads Magid Advisors. “Of course, with the Web, it will be recorded and replayed forever.” Indeed, The Huffington Post expects that much of the consumption of its live programming will happen later, through links to conversations that were recorded earlier.

The Huffington Post, which is owned by AOL, isn't alone. Other companies that previously didn't think of themselves as live video sources, like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, are vying for attention the same way that traditional video sources like CNN and the BBC are, both with live programming and replays. And Ken Lerer, a co-founder of The Huffington Post, is investing in a live video startup that has been code-named Planet Daily and has yet to start.

It's very early going, according to executives involved in the new ventures. Amid the excitement about HuffPost Live on Monday there was a skeptical undercurrent that asked, in effect, will anyone watch this after the first day?

Mr. Vorhaus's first half-hour of viewing - which he admitted he never would have done “just for fun” - “didn't give me much other than a talking head in a box and a stream of Tweets,” he said.

The network's namesake, Arianna Huffington , started the live stream at 10 a.m. the same grandiose way that cable networks used to arrive, with a flashy video and a declaration of its mission. “Seven years ago, HuffPost disrupted the way people engage with news,” she said. “And now, with HuffPost Live, you're invited to be part of a different kind of conversation, whoever you are, wherever you are.”

Ms. Huffington was joined on a couch in the network's new studio by Roy Sekoff, the president of the network. Mr. Sekoff was the founding editor of the Web site with her in 2005. “This is not a new brand that we're trying to create,” Mr. Sekoff. “This is just an extension of a brand we hope that you already love, The Huffington Post.”

Like the main Web site, which promotes the fact that it garners millions of user comments each month, HuffPost Live says it will encourage conversation among viewers. A video reel showed sample webcam users “live from my kitchen,” “my bedroom,” “live fro m my office, “from my music studio,” “live from a 30-foot travel trailer in a parking lot in rural New Mexico.” They were beamed in through the Hangouts tool promoted by Google.

The segments themselves will be selected by HuffPost Live producers and 10 young hosts who were hired earlier this year. Among the first to appear on Monday morning was Abby Huntsman, a daughter of the former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr. Several of the other hosts have progressive backgrounds.

Along with the hosts and the viewer-guests, the network will bring on The Huffington Post's writers and editors. What it won't have is traditional reporters in the field, preferring mostly to talk about the news rather than gather it independently. Talking, of course, tends to be cheaper than reporting.

There were a couple of technical glitches in the first hours, but nothing overtly surprising.

The first hour was produced from HuffPost Live's studio in New York. The network also has a studio in Los Angeles and what it calls a satellite studio in Washington, D.C. By the second hour, Ms. Huntsman and several webcam guests had moved away from the campaign talk and onto another passion of Ms. Huffington's: the need for a good night's sleep. The segment was titled “unplugging and recharging” - an inside joke by the producers, perhaps?

WOR-AM, Prominent New York Station, Is Sold to Clear Channel

August 13, 2012, 12:15 pm

By BEN SISARIO

WOR-AM, the talk radio station that is the oldest operating broadcasters in New York City, has been sold to Clear Channel Communications, giving the company its sixth station in New York and its first AM signal in the area.

It was sold for an undisclosed amount by the Buckley Broadcasting Corporation, which has owned it since 1989, the companies announced on Monday morning. The deal is pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

WOR, broadcasting at 710 AM, was founded in 1922 and has played important roles in radio history. It was one of the first to use a directional antenna and was the first AM station in New York to use HD radio technology. It also has a wide-reaching 50,000-watt signal.

The station has a current lineup of conservative talk programs, with Michael Savage and John R. Gambling and also a show featuring David Paterson, the former New York governor. It also carries a show with Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, that is distributed by one of Clear Channel's biggest rivals, Cumulus Media.

“WOR is an iconic New York City brand with a rich history and an exciting future,” John Hogan, the chief executive of Clear Channel's radio and media division, said in a statement. “We believe WOR makes our already incredible platform even more interesting for listeners, advertisers, and strategic partners and we look forward to the tremendous potential WOR adds to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment New York.”

“By passing the baton to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, WOR listeners, advertisers and employees will gain access to the unparalleled resources of a worldwide, multidim ensional media and entertainment company,” added Joseph Bilotta, president of Buckley Radio. “We have had a great run with WOR and could not be more confident that it is poised for another great run as part of the Clear Channel Media and Entertainment team.”

Rick Buckley, the president of the station and the Buckley company, died last year.

Clear Channel is the largest radio broadcaster in the country, with more than 850 stations. It already has five FM stations in New York, including the two top-rated ones: WLTW, at 106.7, known as Lite FM; and WHTZ, at 100.3, known as Z100, the area's dominant Top 40 brand.

In the July rankings from Arbitron, the standard radio-ratings service, WOR ranked 19th with a total audience of 626,000.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Google to Buy Frommer\'s From Wiley Publishing

August 13, 2012, 12:15 pm

By JULIE BOSMAN

Google will buy the Frommer's brand from John Wiley & Sons, the publisher said on Monday, in a deal that will further expand Google's ambitions in the travel business.

Wiley, a 200-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., said that it agreed last week to sell all of its travel assets to Google, using the proceeds from the sale to bolster its trade, scientific, scholarly and educational businesses, among others.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In March, Wiley said that it was putting Frommer's up for sale, along with Webster's New World and CliffsNotes. The publishing properties that Wiley intended to sell generate about $85 million in annual revenue, the publisher said.

In a surprise ac quisition last year, Google paid $151 million for Zagat, a deal that promised to give Google a significant boost in local services. Marissa Mayer, then Google's vice president for local, maps and location services (she recently became the chief executive at Yahoo) said the company would expand Zagat's team of salespeople, fact-checkers, contractors and reviewers, and continue to publish the slim red guidebooks that were so closely identified with the brand.

The Breakfast Meeting: Lobbying Romney to Pick Ryan, and Seeking an Olympic Afterglow

By NOAM COHEN

Mitt Romney's selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin over the weekend to be his running mate is being credited with shoring up Mr. Romney's conservative bona fides - something his campaign would have known because conservative publications had been telling him through editorials that he should pick Mr. Ryan to shore up his conservative bona fides. The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal both wrote editorials promoting Mr. Ryan for the Republican ticket: The Journal's editorial on Thursday (Why Not Paul Ryan?) and The Weekly Standard's editorial dated Monday but online earlier (Go for the Gold, Mitt!). Perhaps this is the reason, Michael Barbaro writes, that Mr. Romney's camp was eager to announce the day he made the decision, Aug. 1: “Mr. Romney is sensitive to the perception that he acts at the behest of the party's right wing. Now, he is making the case that he had settled on Mr. Ryan well before a chorus o f conservatives told him to.”

• Dylan Byers, writing in Politico, notes that this is the second consecutive example of Bill Kristol (an earlier backer of Sarah Palin) successfully making the case for a vice-presidential nominee via the magazine he edits, The Weekly Standard. Mr. Byers reached out to the campaign for comment. “Bill Kristol?” Andrea Saul, the Romney campaign press secretary, asked in response to Politico's request for comment. She declined to say anything more.
• The reviews were in immediately, including from Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation own The Journal, and who once owned The Weekly Standard. He took to Twitter to write: “Thank God! Now we might have a real election on the great issues of the day. Paul Ryan almost perfect choice.”

The London Olympics were a boon to NBC, drawing a bigger audience than it had predicted, never mind the online objections to coverage that focused on taped packages of the big events. But the network is still waiting for results - namely whether promotion of new fall series during the Games will help them become successful, Bill Carter writes. The network's track record would leave little reason for hope, with a litany of shows in previous years that were screened before the huge audience watching the Games and then quickly disappeared, including “LAX,” “Father of the Pride” and “Crusoe.” Minimally, the network believes the Games will give a shot in the arm to its news programs.

MundoFox, a new Spanish-language network, began airing on Monday in 50 cities in the United States, including Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York, Tanzina Vega reports. (By the end of the year it will reach nearly 80 percent of Latino audiences in the country.) The network, which is a partnership between Fox International Channels, owned by the News Corporation, and RCN Television in Colombia, is a $50 million effort to compete with the dominant pla yers Univision and Telemundo. Executives compare the effort to Fox's beginnings, 25 years ago, when it had to carve an offbeat identity different than the big three networks. The prime-time programming will be more American-style, she writes, infusing more action, quick wit and on-location shoots into scripted shows.

The recent efforts by the newsweeklies Time and Newsweek to reach the public with attention-grabbing covers - the latest being Newsweek's image of a woman waiting eagerly for a dangling piece of asparagus - speak to magazines' steep uphill challenge. Newsstand sales and advertising are down, and it is hard to see how magazines can return to their dominant role in the culture, David Carr writes in his Media Equation column.

The fatal shooting by police officers of a man brandishing a knife in Times Square on Saturday afternoon sent crowds scrambling for cover (or for their cellphones and cameras), Patrick McGeehan writes. On the City Room blog, Michae l Schwirtz and Aaron Edwards cataloged some of the photos and videos taken by bystanders, as well as the online debate about how the police responded. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg agreed with his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, on Sunday, saying the officers “probably acted in responsible ways” in trying to stop “somebody who must have been mentally deranged.”

Monday Reading: Is Your Family Ready for a Volunteer Trip?

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

As Bird Talk Flies Off, a Question: What Magazine Do You Miss Most?

By THE EDITORS

Monday brought news of the end of Bird Talk magazine. Adding to the indignity, subscribers were being sent copies of Dog Fancy in its place, Christine Haughney reports. (Sending copies of Cat Fancy with a smiling feline on the cover would be the cruelest cut of all, we suppose.)

Despite an eager readership who looked forward to the monthly centerfold - and who were known to pose their birds with a copy (see photo above) â€" Bird Talk appears to be another casualty of the Internet. The issues were getting thinner, and Bird Talk content is going to migrate to BirdChannel.com.

Magazines have shutting down and breaking hearts since long before the arrival of the Internet, and their disappearances can feel like a rebuke, or when a friend moves out of town. There are many examples of painfully felt magazine closures: the science-fiction publishing Omni; or the literary experiments Wigwag and Doubletake; or the alt-teen Sassy. What was your most bittersweet magazine loss? Please share in the comments below.

A Bird Magazine\'s Final Chirps in Print

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

For three decades, fans of Bird Talk magazine have dutifully collected issues for their articles and centerfolds. But the September issue is the last that will appear in print, leaving disappointed subscribers with BirdChannel.com, the magazine's related site, as the only way to read the publication's information on all types of birds - from love birds to macaws and cockatoos.

“This is the end of an era, a sad statement on the current state of the country, and a significant loss to all current and future parrot owners,” said Linda LaFleur, a Bird Talk subscriber for more than 20 years, whose parrots have appeared on Bird Talk's covers and as centerfolds.

What has riled up Bird Talk subscribers even more is that the magazine's publisher plans to send them copies of Dog Fancy in its place.

“People who chose to subscribe to Bird Talk don't want Dog Fancy,” said Dr. Anthony Pilny, an occasional Bird Talk contributor and a veterinarian at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine on the Upper West Side. The magazine is so popular among his clients that bird owners often swiped them from the waiting room.

“We don't see or treat dogs or cats in the hospital,” he said. “I don't think we would put a journal of dogs and cats in the waiting room.”

Lisa MacDonald, a spokeswoman for BowTie Inc., which owns Bird Talk and Dog Fancy, said Dog Fancy was being sent because “when looking at past survey and poll information for our subscribers to see what other pets were in the home, dogs were far and away the most common ‘other' pet.”

Bird Talk's fans recognize that the magazine has been struggling. Over the squawks of her nine parrots, Susan Chamberlain, a 28-year columnist with Bird Talk, said that in the early 1990s issues were as thick as 172 pages. A recent issue barely had 50 pages.

Ms. Chamberlain said she would continue to contribute articles. But she fears readers are less likely to read online. “People liked to hold the magazine in their hands,” she said.

Daniel Kopulos, owner of the pet shop Fauna on the Upper West Side, said that while he kept old copies of Bird Talk, he felt in recent years that it offered less information about species and “more of people telling their individual stories or comedic adventures with their pet bird.”

The decision to shut down print publication appears to have been sudden. Dr. Pilny said that he had filed a commissioned article to a Bird Talk editor in early July about the most common reasons pet cockatoos visit the vet. He still does not know whether it will run online.

Lorelei Tibbetts, the hospital manager who works with Dr. Pilny, said that she had learned about the switch when a Bow Tie advertising representative contacted her about moving the practice's advertisements to Reptiles Magazine. She agreed, but said the practice treats far more birds th an reptiles.

There can be some bright side to switching to digital. Barbara Heidenreich, editor of Good Bird Magazine, said that since she made her publication online only in 2010, she has been able to experiment more with video and audio clips, which are ideal for bird stories. She also said that in the past when she advertised her animal training business in Bird Talk, she never got any actual business.

It's still unclear what Dr. Pilny will do with copies of Dog Fancy. “We would probably just donate it to a dog or cat hospital waiting room,” he said.