Roberts Leaves \'Good Morning America\' for Medical Treatment

By BRIAN STELTER

Starting Friday, ABC's “Good Morning America” - which has surged ahead of the “Today” show in recent weeks to become the No. 1 morning television show in America - will be without its biggest star, Robin Roberts.

Ms. Roberts, who received a diagnosis of a rare bone marrow disorder in April, is about to undergo a bone marrow transplant that will leave her hospitalized or homebound for four months or more. The break presents clear challenges, not just for Ms. Roberts, who must regain her health, but also for ABC, which earns huge profits from the morning show. It will have to find a way to maintain its nascent winning streak without her.

Ms. Roberts signed off from the show on Thursday, a day earlier than expected, because she needed to visit her 88-year-old mother, who is ill, in Pass Christian, Miss. “I love you and I'll see you soon,” she told viewers, many of whom have gravitated to “Good Morning Americ a” because of her.

There are few if any precedents in the television industry for an extended leave of absence by a host, even on an ensemble show like “Good Morning America.” ABC thus finds itself in an extraordinarily difficult position: it has to keep viewers informed about Ms. Roberts's condition and encourage them to keep watching the program while she is away, but not appear to be exploitative or insensitive.

News coverage and public sympathy for Ms. Roberts could help “Good Morning America,” or her absence could lead viewers to try other morning shows. Ms. Roberts has been on the program for a decade, longer than any of her co-hosts; research by both ABC and NBC has indicated that she is widely admired by viewers.

“We are determined to maintain the momentum of the program, but we're also very realistic about the challenge we face,” Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, said in an interview on Thursday. Since Ms. Roberts's announcemen t in June, he has emphasized internally at ABC News that the co-host chair will remain hers. “Robin is irreplaceable,” he said.

In February, back when “Good Morning America” was No. 2, Ms. Roberts felt abnormally tired while covering the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. She followed up with doctors and, after some blood tests, underwent her first bone marrow test before a vacation at the end of March. (Katie Couric filled in for her, causing a media whirlwind.) When Ms. Roberts came home, the week of April 9, the doctors told her they suspected she had M.D.S., short for myelodysplastic syndromes, a rare blood and bone marrow disorder. She could barely pronounce it.

Further tests were done. On April 19, the same day the Nielsen ratings company confirmed that “Good Morning America” had defeated the NBC “Today” show for the first week in 17 years, Ms. Roberts's doctors confirmed the diagnosis.

A photo taken of Ms. Roberts and her co-hosts celebra ting the ratings victory on April 19 now sits, framed, in her dressing room.

“I look at that picture so differently than everybody else,” she said in an interview last month. “Because that is the day that it was like, ‘Yeah, it's M.D.S. Yes, you're going to have a bone marrow transplant. Yes, you're going to be out for a chunk of time. We don't know when.' It was all this - it was such a gray area. It was just maddening.”

Ms. Roberts kept the disorder a secret for weeks. Almost no one at ABC knew that she had been at the doctor's office when she was invited to interview President Obama in May - an interview that made international headlines for his changed view of gay marriage. On June 11, she told viewers of the diagnosis and said her older sister Sally-Ann, a television anchor in New Orleans, would be her bone marrow donor.

Morning television hosts have let viewers in on their personal struggles before. After her husband died in 1998, Ms. Couric , then at “Today,” drew attention to colorectal cancer and was credited by researchers with a nationwide increase in colonoscopies. (Ms. Roberts has similarly campaigned on behalf of Be The Match, a national marrow donation program.)

But the circumstances now are unique. Ms. Roberts's leave of absence is taking place in the age of social media, when she can post updates to Twitter and Facebook. And it's taking place at a time when “Good Morning America” has, for the first time in a generation, tasted victory over “Today.”

Since NBC removed Ann Curry from the co-host chair on “Today” at the end of June, that show has lost to “Good Morning America” every week with two big exceptions during the highly rated Summer Olympics, which were broadcast by NBC. Last week, “Good Morning America” had half a million viewers more than “Today,” one of its best performances to date. The two shows were effectively tied in the crucial demographic of viewe rs ages 25 to 54, with “Today” winning by just 5,000 last week. Two weeks ago, with Ms. Roberts on vacation, “Good Morning America” beat “Today” by about 200,000 viewers.

Neither Mr. Sherwood nor Tom Cibrowski, the senior executive producer of “Good Morning America,” would predict how the ratings race might change in the months to come. But Mr. Cibrowski said, “We feel that the show has a great amount of confidence and a great amount of buzz around it and that the viewers are going to keep coming.”

They have a detailed plan for fall and winter. Other female ABC News anchors will fill in for Ms. Roberts, one week at a time, beginning with Amy Robach on Friday and Elizabeth Vargas next week. Mr. Cibrowski said Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters and Ms. Couric would also fill in.

Many days, they will be joined by celebrity co-hosts in the 8 a.m. hour, including Oprah Winfrey and the cast of the ABC sitcom “Modern Family.” When Ms. Roberts is ready - though they know there is a risk of death from M.D.S., people at ABC never say “if” - she will call into the show via Skype, Mr. Cibrowski said, in a nod to new technology.

Ms. Roberts is scheduled to enter the hospital on Tuesday; the transplant is likely to take place the week after.

Inside the “Good Morning America” studio on Thursday, some members of the staff teared up as the singer Martina McBride played “I'm Gonna Love You Through It” for Ms. Roberts, who remained remarkably composed. After the show ended, Ms. Roberts stood up and said to the staff, “God bless, God speed, and I'll get back to you just as soon as I can,” emphasizing the word “soon.” Then she sought out Mr. Sherwood, who hugged her and wiped away a tear.

This Subway Series Is About Commerce, Not Baseball

By STUART ELLIOTT

A fast-food chain known for its ardent embrace of branded entertainment, embedding its products and restaurants in episodes of television series, is commissioning a series of its own, to be watched on a Web site where consumers watch TV shows.

Subway is introducing this week “4 to 9ers,” a scripted comedy series appearing on hulu.com. Plans call for six weekly online episodes, or webisodes, each running 10 or so minutes, with a new webisode to begin streaming each Tuesday.

The Subway series is branded entertainment in its purest form, with the focus of each show a Subway restaurant inside a shopping mall. The title “4 to 9ers” refers to the young employees of the restaurant, who work there from 4 to 9 p.m. after they finish high school for the day.

The first episode introduces the lead character, Mark (Ashton Moio), on his first day of his new after-school job at Subway. Other characters include a young woman who works at a wireless kiosk in the mall, who becomes a love interest for Mark; her obnoxious boyfriend; a dorky co-worker of Mark's; and a pompous mall cop.

If the characters sound sent from sitcom central casting, it is no accident. The series is being written, directed and produced by two longtime sitcom executives, James Widdoes of “Two and a Half Men” and Tim O'Donnell of “Dave's World,” through Content & Company in Los Angeles.

(Those with long memories may recall Mr. Widdoes played Hoover, the president of the fraternity in the movie “National Lampoon's Animal House.”)

The first episode of “4 to 9ers” reflects its creators' roots, moving along quickly, serving up tasty comic nuggets and including in the dialog references to cultural touchstones like Google and “Star Trek.”

There is also, reflecting a desire to appeal to a younger audience, a sardonic tone to the dialog that includes much irreverence toward authority figures. There is even at one point a mild oath that is sometimes heard in television sitcoms.

“As a quick service restaurant brand, an important audience to us is 18-to-24-year-olds,” said Tony Pace, senior vice president and global chief marketing officer at Subway, so a web series that depicts “what takes place after school” seemed like a worthwhile concept to explore.

Subway has sponsored webisodes before, Mr. Pace said, but none as polished and sitcom-like as “4 to 9ers.”

Marketers “need to be doing things like ‘4 to 9ers,'” he added, because such sponsored content is “the next manifestation” of the branded entertainment trend.

Among the television series with which Subway has made branded content deals are “Chuck” on NBC and “Hawaii Five-0” on CBS.

Although “4 to 9ers” is commissioned by an advertiser rather than a TV network, it is presented by Hulu as if it was a televis ion series, complete with this message on screen before a webisode begins: “The following program is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions by Subway.”

And before the first episode plays, there is, yes, a conventional commercial for Subway.

How Do You Say \'Abstract Expressionism\' in German?

By STUART ELLIOTT

A media agency has brought together two clients, an airline and a museum, for an unusual campaign.

The agency is Mindshare, part of the GroupM unit of WPP, and the clients are Lufthansa, the German airline,  and the Museum of Modern Art. At the heart of the campaign is an agreement for the museum to provide video content to the airline as the airline becomes a corporate member of the museum.

The campaign is scheduled to begin on Saturday as a 30-minute program, composed of video content supplied by the museum, that will play on the culture channel of the in-flight entertainment systems on Lufthansa planes. The videos will be narrated by David Rockefeller Jr., who is a trustee of the museum.

A 60-second video about MoMA will also be shown on Lufthansa flights, serving as an invitation to passengers to visit the museum while they are visiting New York City.

The campaign is coming at no cost to either the museum or the airline. MoMA provides the videos and the membership and Lufthansa provides an outlet where the videos can be watched. (Lufthansa will offer the benefits of the membership to its employees and the best customers among its frequent fliers.)

The campaign is indicative of efforts by media agencies to come up with new and different ideas for clients beyond traditional ad buys. These days, it seems, for a campaign to get noticed, the media part has to be as creative as the creative part.

The genesis of the campaign was asking a question on behalf of MoMA, “How do you reach international travelers before they get to New York?” said Mariya Kemper, a group planning director at Mindshare who works on both the Lufthansa and museum accounts at the agency.

“We're always thinking about different things MoMA can do to get that bigger international audience, with a finite budget,” she added.

In developing a medi a plan for Lufthansa, hitting on “passion points of customers,” Ms. Kemper said, one of the areas identified was culture and the arts.

That led to the museum, and to a thought that “if we can match these two clients we can try to create value for both brands,” she added.

Nicola Lange, director for marketing and customer relations for the Americas at Lufthansa, said the airline had tried “to set up a partnership with MoMA before.”

“We know from our customer demographics that they are very interested in art,” she added.

Ms. Lange praised Mindshare for putting “a lot of hard work into finding the right people who should be talking to each other.”

Kim Mitchell, chief communications officer at the museum, said that about 60 percent of the estimated 3 million visitors to MoMA each year are from overseas.

“We're always looking for ways to reach the international traveler,” Ms. Mitchell said.

The museum plans to refre sh the video content for the 30-minute program four times a year, she added.

Ms. Mitchell and Ms. Lange said the museum, and the airline, plan to evaluate the campaign as it proceeds during the coming year.

Which Bug Repellent Is Best?

By ANN CARRNS

If your family is like ours, you'll be spending time outdoors this Labor Day weekend. And if you're a mother like me (read: a worrier), you're well aware of news reports about the abundance of ticks this year, and about an increase in cases of West Nile virus in some parts of the country.

That means we'll be spraying ourselves and our children with bug repellent, to ward off both ticks and the pesky mosquitoes that carry West Nile. (Generally we avoid slathering our offspring with chemicals. But we make an exception in this case, if they're going to be out in nature for extended periods of time). But which repellent is best?

Consumer Reports has updated a test of widely available repellents that work on both deer ticks and mosquitoes that carry West Nile, along with cost information on a per-ounce basis. The six top-rated products are $2 an ounce or less. The data on costs is from 2010, according to Consumer Reports, but all the products are currently available.  (And a quick check online suggests prices are about the same, or in some cases, lower.)

Just how much chemical you are comfortable exposing yourself and your children to is up to you. The four top-ranked brands - Off Deep Woods Sportsmen II, Cutter Backwoods Unscented, Off Family Care Smooth & Dry, and 3M Ultrathon Insect Repellent - all contain DEET in varying concentrations from 15 percent to 30 percent, and were able to repel mosquitoes for at least eight hours.

DEET is effective, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is safe when used as directed, but you shouldn't use it on babies under 2 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using products with more than 30 percent DEET on children.

The fifth- and sixth-ranked products - Repel Plant Based Lemon Eucalyptus and Natrapel 8-hour with Picaridin - don't contain DEET, but provided long-lasting protec tion as well.

The lower-ranked products also repelled mosquitoes effectively, but generally for shorter periods of time, and some had other drawbacks, like a tendency to stain clothing.

The upshot, Consumer Report says, is that “most of the tested products will do the job if you're going to be outside for only a couple of hours, but look for a highly rated product to protect you on longer excursions.”

The E.P.A. has information on its Web site to help you choose a repellent based on your specific needs, although it doesn't include cost data. General information about West Nile is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Are you stepping up your use of bug repellent due to West Nile?

Which Bug Repellent Is Best?

By ANN CARRNS

If your family is like ours, you'll be spending time outdoors this Labor Day weekend. And if you're a mother like me (read: a worrier), you're well aware of news reports about the abundance of ticks this year, and about an increase in cases of West Nile virus in some parts of the country.

That means we'll be spraying ourselves and our children with bug repellent, to ward off both ticks and the pesky mosquitoes that carry West Nile. (Generally we avoid slathering our offspring with chemicals. But we make an exception in this case, if they're going to be out in nature for extended periods of time). But which repellent is best?

Consumer Reports has updated a test of widely available repellents that work on both deer ticks and mosquitoes that carry West Nile, along with cost information on a per-ounce basis. The six top-rated products are $2 an ounce or less. The data on costs is from 2010, according to Consumer Reports, but all the products are currently available.  (And a quick check online suggests prices are about the same, or in some cases, lower.)

Just how much chemical you are comfortable exposing yourself and your children to is up to you. The four top-ranked brands - Off Deep Woods Sportsmen II, Cutter Backwoods Unscented, Off Family Care Smooth & Dry, and 3M Ultrathon Insect Repellent - all contain DEET in varying concentrations from 15 percent to 30 percent, and were able to repel mosquitoes for at least eight hours.

DEET is effective, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is safe when used as directed, but you shouldn't use it on babies under 2 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using products with more than 30 percent DEET on children.

The fifth- and sixth-ranked products - Repel Plant Based Lemon Eucalyptus and Natrapel 8-hour with Picaridin - don't contain DEET, but provided long-lasting protec tion as well.

The lower-ranked products also repelled mosquitoes effectively, but generally for shorter periods of time, and some had other drawbacks, like a tendency to stain clothing.

The upshot, Consumer Report says, is that “most of the tested products will do the job if you're going to be outside for only a couple of hours, but look for a highly rated product to protect you on longer excursions.”

The E.P.A. has information on its Web site to help you choose a repellent based on your specific needs, although it doesn't include cost data. General information about West Nile is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Are you stepping up your use of bug repellent due to West Nile?

App From The A.P. Gets Ad Campaign

By STUART ELLIOTT

One of the most robust advertising categories these days is media, as companies like Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation, Disney, CBS and Discovery Communications promote their television, film and other entertainment products and properties.

Now joining the ranks of those giants, albeit in a small way, is The Associated Press, the not-for-profit cooperative American news agency. The A.P. is, for what it believes to be the first time, running advertising aimed at consumers.

The ads, beginning to appear this week, are intended to promote The A.P.'s mobile news app, called A.P. Mobile. The app, which is free, can be downloaded from a Web site, getapmobile.com, as well as obtained from sources that include the app stores on Apple, Android, Blackberry and Windows phones.

The A.P. has run ads before that were aimed at journalists, saluting employees who have won press awards and honors; those ads appeared in newspa pers and on Web sites read by reporters and editors like poynter.org.

The ads for the app, by contrast, are intended for the general public. They are in the form of posters that are being displayed on the Metro-North New Haven, Harlem and Hudson lines.

“We have to think about a marketing strategy,” said Jim Kennedy, senior vice president for strategy and digital products at The A.P. in New York. “That's brand-new territory.”

“Mobile will be the place for breaking news,” he added, “and we've got to get our brand out there.”

The goal of the campaign is to help “build our base of usage” for the app, Mr. Kennedy said. “Just being in the App Store is not good enough.”

The A.P. introduced the initial version of the app in 2008, he added, and a redesigned version was brought out in March for devices like iPads and iPhones.

“There have been nearly 2 million downloads of the new app since March,” Mr. Kennedy said, and the app receivesd 60 million page views each month.

There are plans to upgrade the Android version in stages by the end of the year, he added.

The A.P. app is ad-supported, with the ads sold by a company named Verve Wireless. Recent advertisers have included Fidelity and Porsche, Mr. Kennedy said.

The ads for A.P. Mobile were created internally at The A.P. In keeping with the just-the-facts reputation of the news service, the ads are straightforward and free of glitz.

The posters depict three reasons why consumers would want the app: to get the latest news, sports information and entertainment coverage.

“A.P. Mobile. It's about getting it right,” says the ad for news, which shows a photograph of a riot in Cairo. The app offers “breaking global and local news at your fingertips,” the ad promises.

The ad for sports features a photograph of Eli Manning of the New York Giants. “A.P. Mobile. It's what' s in the moment,” the headline reads; the ad goes on to say the app provides “Every game. Every season. A.P. covers all the action.”

(“I just felt like we might as well have a New York team,” Mr. Kennedy said, and with the coming of football season it made sense to use a football player rather than a baseball player.)

The ad for entertainment coverage features a photo of the actress Charlize Theron. The headline reads: “A.P. Mobile. It's what's in the spotlight.” According to the ad, the app offers “All the names. All the glamour. A.P. covers entertainment.”

The budget for the campaign, which is to run through October, is in the low five figures, Mr. Kennedy said.

“We'll see how it goes,” he added. “It's a great test to see if people would respond.”

Is This Thing On? Yahoo Firing Proves the Perils of Feeding Many Platforms

August 30, 2012, 11:40 am

By DAVID CARR

David Chalian, the Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, was fired in record time on Wednesday after he was overheard on a hot mic making a remark about Mitt Romney and his wife not caring about the African-American victims of Hurricane Isaac. The comment came during a webcast at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., where Yahoo is partnered with ABC News.

The fact that a journalist for a large digital news enterprise was fired for what is a classic television error is a reminder of how much things have changed. Webcasts have little of the audience of television, but all of the potential pitfalls. As digital enterprises move toward the complicated world of prompters, microphones and live commen tary, it's clear that some eggs are going to get broken in making this particular new media omelet.

It was not that long ago when a journalist had a single route to the ocean. If she or he was a print reporter, they did their reporting, wrote their stories and then went home. But now, instead being issued a hammer to make a story, reporters are handed a whole tool belt of power equipment to get the word out, which is great until it is not.

Reporters, especially in political realms, are supposed to be dervishes of content, writing stories, blogging items, doing updates on Facebook and Twitter, going on cable to serve as a talking head or making their own videos. The campaign bus has been replaced by a rolling, always-on and always hungry media apparatus.

But sometimes reporters fall into the crevices when trying to cross from one platform to the other. Television broadcasters end up in trouble for something they tweeted. A radio person can get the gate for s omething he popped off about on cable television. A print journalist, working in the high wire world of live television, ends up saying something dumb and ill-considered. Or journalists can get so jammed up feeding all manner of platforms that they end up cutting a corner or getting sloppy.

With new media moving into legacy media realms, and so-called old media adopting the tools of the insurgency, the possibility for pratfalls multiply.

Mr. Chalain was dismissed for making what many described as a bad joke during an online broadcast for Yahoo News. Certainly, if you are in the business of live-streaming coverage of events in a way that combines audio and video, it behooves participants to remember that they are working around pipes that head out into the world and you have to know when you are on “air,” or whatever it is called on the Web, and when you are not.

But working journalists have to punch in with the knowledge that someone is always poised, l ike crows on a wire, looking for evidence of bias or error. (Some suggested, on Twitter, of course, that given Mr. Chalain's history of fair-minded reporting and solid work, that Yahoo moved too precipitously.)

Media outlets want their reporters to be everywhere, creating a persistent media identity regardless of platform and developing news muscles as different routes to an audience open up. It's made for a golden age of sorts, a time when audiences have access to voices and thinking they crave on almost any medium they wish. But it makes a once simple task - find the news, report it out, make a story - far more complicated.

When news of his hot-mic miscue mushroomed, Mr. Chalian, a former broadcast editor and producer, took to Twitter and then Facebook to apologize.

I am profoundly sorry for making an inappropriate and thoughtless joke. Full statement here: http://t.co/Z2BrqCfq

- David Chalian (@DavidChalian) 29 Aug 12

Mr. Chalian said something really dumb and tasteless that suggested significant personal bias, so it is no surprise he ended up in trouble. But you get the feeling that the bold new world we operate in played a role in his demise. The answer to “Is this thing on?” is always yes.

Employers That Forbid You From Telling Others What You Make

August 30, 2012, 10:48 am

By RON LIEBER

My jaw hit the floor earlier this month when I tuned in to a Marketplace report that noted that there are employers that contractually forbid employees from telling anyone how much money they make.

It's a free country, and private employers can do what they wish in this respect, though plenty of companies (and many public employers) make a point of sharing salary data so there is no question about who is making the most (and, hopefully, why).

I doubt that a clause in an employment agreement mandating salary silence would be a deal killer for anyone in this economic environment. But doesn't this sort of mandated vow of silence raise suspicions in the eyes of people who work for these employers? What are they hoping to hide from their employees, and why?

If you work (or have worked) for such an employer, please name it below and tell us a bit about why you think the rule came to be and whether it was a good or bad thing.

Thursday Reading: Severe Diet May Not Prolong Life

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.

Thursday Reading: Severe Diet May Not Prolong Life

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.