NBC Delays Premiere of \'Community\'

October 8, 2012, 10:41 pm

By BILL CARTER

Fans of the NBC comedy “Community” were already worried about the network's commitment to the show because the show's creator, Dan Harmon, was removed at the end of last season, and the show was slated for the little-watched programming desert of Friday night.

But late Monday, NBC released news that both “Community” and another comedy slated for Fridays, “Whitney,” which were scheduled to have their season premieres on Oct. 19, will have their start dates delayed indefinitely.

NBC officials said the network was doing so well with its programs from Monday through Wednesday that it wanted to concentrate its promotional efforts on those nights.

NBC does have a successful drama on Friday s, “Grimm.”

Network officials indicated they may be saving the comedies to plug holes on other nights.

NBC's statement said:

“Without having to launch these comedies on Friday at this time, we can keep our promotion focused on earlier in the week - plus we will have both comedies in our back pocket if we need to make any schedule changes on those nights. When we have a better idea of viewing patterns in the next few weeks, we will announce new season premieres of ‘Whitney' and ‘Community.' ”

Digital Notes: Streaming Music Service Raises $130 Million

By BEN SISARIO

Deezer, a streaming music service that is a competitor to Spotify around the world, has raised $130 million in investment from Access Industries, the company that last year bought the Warner Music Group for $3.3 billion.

The investment will help Deezer, which began in France, continue its expansion around the planet, the company said in its announcement on Monday.

To build up their user and subscriber numbers, digital music services have been venturing around the planet, opening in Europe, South America, Asia, Australia and Africa.

Most companies, even ones like Spotify that began in Europe, have pushed hard to establish themselves in the United States, but Deezer has looked elsewhere, seeing the American market as saturated. Besides France, Britain and some other countries in Europe, it is also available in Mauritius, Thailand, Ivory Coast and Honduras.

The company says it has seven million monthly users, in cluding two million paying subscribers. Spotify, which for months has been said to be in the process of raising more than $200 million, has 15 million monthly users and four million paying subscribers. But while Spotify's lost about $57 million on $236 million in revenue last year, Deezer says it is profitable.

“We don't believe in gambling on the future of music,” Axel Dauchez, Deezer's chief executive, said in a statement. “Both the recovery and the future growth of the music business require companies like Deezer to develop profitable, long-term business models that deliver for all industry players - from authors and artists to digital distributors.”

An article in the French paper Le Figaro said that of the $130 million investment, about $32 million will be used to buy out existing shareholders, but a spokesman for Access declined to comment. The major record companies and Merlin, which negotiates on behalf of many independents, own a minority stake in Spotify.

When the Tax Tail Wags Your Investment Dog

October 8, 2012, 11:27 am

By RON LIEBER

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.

With less than a month to go until Election Day, it's hard to miss all of the speeches about taxes. Tax rates, tax codes, tax deductions. So it's easy to see why we're so tempted to get really focused on our own personal tax situation and how to eke out a better result for ourselves.

But you know the old saying that we shouldn't miss the forest because we're so focused on the trees? Well, it happens with our investment decisions and taxes on a regular basis.

I had a recent conversation with some friends about a rental home they owned. They were evaluating their options for the property. Should they keep it? Remodel it? Sell it and look for an alternative investment?

As we walked through the details, it became clear to all of us that they have a great little investment in the context of their overall financial plan. Based on the price they paid years ago, the money they put into the house, the rental history and the income they collect, it appeared to be a much better investment than the alternatives they were considering, even when we accounted for the risk associated with rental properties.

But as soon as we came to that conclusion, they asked me this: “Why did our accountant tell us the opposite?”

Now, their accountant prefaced his advice with the disclosure that his job was to focus on taxes. Based on that perspective, his advice was to sell it because they currently qualified f or a substantial tax savings on the capital gain that would not be available to them in the near future.

To be clear, the accountant didn't give my friends bad advice. Instead he gave them advice based on one perspective, taxes. The reality is that smart, long-term financial decisions need to take more than one thing into consideration. But because taxes are associated with so much emotion (given how much people truly hate paying them), it's incredibly easy to let taxes become our sole focus. And that can lead to bad decisions.

In this particular example, even when you included the tax savings, it still made sense to keep the property once we zoomed out and considered the decision in the context of their overall plan. In this instance, we were trying to avoid the trap of the tax tail wagging the investment dog.

Another situation where taxes can cloud our judgment comes in the form of spending more to deduct more. I've heard one of my doctor friends say that she'd been told to buy a larger home with a bigger mortgage so she could receive the greater interest deduction.

Now there may be other reasons to buy a bigger home, but spending another dollar in interest just so you can get something far less than that back in taxes just doesn't make sense unless it's part of some bigger plan.

Taxes and the way we feel about them can pull us into emotional quicksand. And when we make taxes our primary focus for financial decisions, it's no wonder we get trapped into making decisions we may regret later. In the case of my friends, if they'd skipped over their initial assessment and made the decision to keep or sell the rental property based solely on the tax advice, they most likely would have regretted it.

Yes, we need to know the tax implications of our decisions, and getting good advice on the issue is helpful. But we need to be really careful to not let one perspective keep us from seeing the forest and making the wis er decision for our overall plan.

 

Lena Dunham Signs Book Deal for More Than $3.5 Million

October 8, 2012, 10:32 am

By JULIE BOSMAN

Random House has acquired a book by Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old writer, actor and filmmaker, in one of the most heated auctions of the year.

The debut essay collection, “Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's Learned,” was hotly pursued by publishers after Ms. Dunham, the writer and star of the HBO comedy “Girls,” circulated a 66-page proposal with color, illustrations and a humor that publishing executives predicted could produce another bestseller like Tina Fey's blockbuster memoir, “Bossypants.”

Bidding climbed past $3.5 million, several publishers who were involved in the negotiations said. Theresa Zoro, a spokeswoman for Random House, declined to comment on the ad vance.

Ms. Dunham chose Random House Publishing Group over the weekend after meeting with several publishers as late as Friday afternoon. The deal was negotiated by Gina Centrello, president and publisher of the Random House Publishing Group. Ms. Dunham was represented by Kimberly Witherspoon, a literary agent with Inkwell Management.

Susan Kamil, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Random House, confirmed the acquisition on Monday, saying in a statement, “We're thrilled to welcome Lena to Random House. Her skill on the page as a writer is remarkable-fresh, wise, so assured. She is that rare literary talent that will only grow from strength to strength and we look forward to helping her build a long career as an author.”

Random House described the book as “in the tradition of Helen Gurley Brown, David Sedaris, and Nora Ephron,” offering “frank and funny advice on everything from sex to eating to traveling to work.” Random House bought U.S. and Canadian rights to the book.

According to the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by the Times, the book will cover topics like work, friendship, travel, sex, love and mortality. One chapter is described as “an account of some radically and hilariously inappropriate ways I have been treated at work/by professionals because of my age and gender.”

Another chapter, titled “Body,” reads, “Red lipstick with a sunburn: How to dress for a business meeting and other hard-earned fashion lessons from the size 10 who went to the Met Ball.”

The essay collection will be edited by Andy Ward, an executive editor at Random House.

Ms. Dunham said in a statement that she was “thrilled to be working with and learning from the brilliant minds at Random House, and to be among their incredible roster of authors. I look forward to digging deep with Andy and co. to produce the most thoughtful and personal book I can.”

CNN Creates Documentary Unit

October 8, 2012, 10:02 am

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES - CNN, laboring to make itself more relevant, has decided that part of the answer involves movies - at least the nonfiction kind - and on Monday plans to announce the creation of CNN Films.

Cut to CNN executives shopping at Sundance? “We very well might,” said Mark Whitaker, executive vice president and managing editor of CNN Worldwide. Mr. Whitaker also envisions CNN working with a distributor for theatrical releases.

But first, baby steps. CNN plans to broadcast premieres of documentaries in prime time - about one every three months, Mr. Whitaker said - and to surround them with special editions of CNN programs that will discuss topics of the films. Examples of such related program ming include round-table discussions and behind-the-scenes footage. Related programming will be posted on the Web.

CNN International will also show the films, which is important to documentarians, who struggle to be seen overseas.

CNN has already acquired one documentary, “Girl Rising,” an ardent look at the importance of improving education for girls in countries like Egypt and Cambodia. The film is directed by Richard E. Robbins, an Oscar nominee for “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.” “It's exciting in part because I feel like it freed me from the burden of including certain statistics,” he said. “I feel like CNN is going to be able to provide so much context.”

“Girl Rising,” about 100 minutes long, features “vocal performances” from Meryl Streep and Selena Gomez. CNN Films has also signed development deals with Andrew Rossi (“Page One: Inside The New York Times”) and Alex Gibney, an Oscar winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side.” Mr. Gibney called it “a great opportunity for creative freedom and wide distribution” in a statement.

Mr. Robbins predicted other documentary directors would be thrilled to have a new television outlet but acknowledged some doubt, adding they are “skeptical of the bastions of power.”

Mr. Whitaker noted that CNN had had success with homegrown documentaries, notably Soledad O'Brien's “In America” series. “But this is part of a larger effort to reach out to the independent world,” he said, for programming with more point of view and personality.

The Breakfast Meeting: Debate Prep on \'S.N.L.\' and The F.T.\'s True Colors

By THE EDITORS

What's so funny about marginal tax rates? That was the question facing the writers and performers of “Saturday Night Live” who had to turn last week's presidential debate into comedy in just five days. The usually secretive Lorne Michaels let Bill Carter watch the whole process.

Tucker Carlson, once the bright young intellectual of the conservative movement, is now best known for rehashing a five-year-old Obama video last week and for supporting one of the reporters from his Daily Caller Web site who yelled at the president. A still-young Mr. Carlson tells Brian Stelter what happened and, yep, it involves the media.

While President Obama and Mitt Romney try to make front-page news, their spouses are fighting a proxy battle in women's magazines in an effort to make their husbands more relatable. And, yes, there still is the traditional cookie bake-off, and the results look closer than Wisconsin's.

On social medi a, campaigns are betting that Tumblr pages and shared playlists on Spotify will be able to capture voters' attention and, just maybe, actual votes. It shouldn't surprise you to hear that Big Bird has made an appearance. But is Lindsay Lohan really that interested in the presidential debates?

And while the Obama campaign may be slightly more engaged on social media, Mitt Romney is catching up where it counts: money. The Republican candidate has made inroads in Silicon Valley, where investors like Marc Andreessen are shifting allegiances after supporting Mr. Obama in 2008.

Google has announced that YouTube will add more than 50 channels of original programming, expanding its push into professionally produced content that is turning the video service into something more resembling television.

Lex Fenwick, a longtime official at Bloomberg, is remaking Dow Jones in his own image, which includes combativeness, open offices and, according to a report from Reuters, large amounts of profanity.

Reports of the demise of Clive James, the British novelist and memoirist, are, well, not greatly exaggerated: he is sick but still alive and still kicking in an interview with Sarah Lyall in which he describes his complicated life and his latest novel, “Nefertiti in the Flak Tower.”

And finally, an answer to one of the great mysteries of journalism: just what color is The Financial Times? Is it salmon, rose or pink? Color experts finally settle the issue.

Monday Reading: Strategies for Saving on Holiday Airfares

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.