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Over 40 years, John C. Malone has made his name through countless displays of shrewd deal-making that transformed the telecommunications industry. Now Mr. Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, appears to be trying to drum up a new round of consolidation in the sector where he first made his fortune.
This time, he is weighing a deal for Time Warner Cable, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. In this deal, Charter Communications, a cable operator in which Liberty owns 27 percent stake, would buy Time Warner Cable. Should he reach a deal, he will most likely use the combined company to roll up other cable operators, upending a status quo dominated by giants like Comcast.
Those possibilities are helping to build expectations for deals in an industry that investors and some analysts think is ready for more. Mr. Malone has recently become among the most vocal proponents, declaring in April that “there is more consolidation yet to be done.â€
Investors and analysts have speculated about transactions involving Cablevision and the privately held Cox Communications, as well as the satellite TV providers Dish Network and DirecTV.
! Shares in several paid-television companies have risen in the last month, with stock in Charter and Time Warner Cable jumping by double-digit percentages after media reports about Mr. Malone’s interest in a deal.
“Frothy is probably too polite a word†for the current climate, said Craig Moffett, the longtime Sanford C. Bernstein analyst who recently formed his own firm, Moffett Research.
Behind that push are visions of battles on multiple fronts. Uniting cable or satellite television companies would give them more power in negotiating with programming providers like the Walt Disney Company and Viacom, which are demanding ever-higher rates for their channels.
Mergers could also help bunt new challenges from companies like Intel, which is working on a subscriber TV service that would be delivered via the Internet.
But just as big a target is the broadband Internet service that cable companies also provide. While cable television is mature and will most likely decline in the future, Mr. Malone believes broadband has only one direction to go: up. The emerging online rivals to cable TV, like Netflix and Hulu, require the kind of fast data connections that companies like Charter supply.
Standing before cable executives ! in Denver! last September, at the naming of a theater in his honor, Mr. Malone, 72, praised high-speed Internet as “the stickiest product that I’ve ever seen.†People “would give up food before they would give up the Internet,†he added.
One potential source of profits would emerge if the government allowed cable companies to broadly charge their Internet customers more for heavy use of data. Comcast is already testing billing based on use in two small markets. And Mr. Malone told investors last month that cable companies could sell “various tiers of connectivity†in the future.
Other companies have aimed to shake up the field’s stalwarts, like Comcast as well as Verizon and AT&T. Dish Network has begun a hunt for merger partners â€" which so far has failed to land either Sprint Nextel or the wireless network operator Clearwire â€" in the hopes of creating a new pairing of satellite TV and wireless broadband services.
Still, Mr. Malone, a former engineer who built TCI into a giant over decades, is one of the oldest hands at wheeling and dealing. People close to him say that he is interested in fostering more cooperation in the cable industry, and in the past he has criticized Comcast, the biggest provider, for what he sees as a lack of initiative.
“He wants to assert some leadership,†one of these people said.
At the moment, one way of gaining a bigger podium for his views appears to be in helping Charter pursue a potential deal for Time Warner Cable.
Liberty’s chief executive, Gregory Maffei, met with his counterpart at Time Warner Cable, Glenn A. Britt, in late May to sell the benefits of a merger, the people briefed on the matter said. They declined to be named because the talks were private. The meeting didn’t conclude with a specific offer, though Mr. Britt was largely unmoved by the approach.
Since then, Liberty and Charter executives have strongly hinted to investors that they remain interested in a deal, done only on a friendly basis, in what observers say appears to be a quiet effort to move Time Warner Cable shareholders into the deal camp.
One person close to Mr. Malone cautioned that Liberty and Charter had not made a firm decision on what companies to pursue yet.
Time Warner Cable’s management is skeptical and uninterested, though it would be compelled to consider any offer that delvers a significant takeover premium for shareholders, one of the people briefed on the matter said.
A combination of Charter and Time Warner Cable, which both have nationwide coverage, would have about 15 million television subscribers. That would make it the third-biggest such service in the United States, behind only Comcast and DirecTV. The combined company would be the second-biggest broadband provider, behind Comcast.
A merger would give Charter more regional scale and clout with content providers. Merging with Time Warner Cable could allow Charter to cut programming costs by close to $400 million, according to several analysts.
It would also give the company more money to chase other deals.
Liberty has also implied that a deal would provide Time Warner Cable with a replacement for Mr. Britt, who is expected to retire this year, in the form of Thomas M. Rutledge, Charter’s chief executive and a longtime cable industry executive.
But any deal could be complex. Time! Warner C! able’s market value is $32.7 billion, nearly three times Charter’s $12.5 billion. And Time Warner Cable executives are uncomfortable with many aspects of a potential merger. They are pressing ahead with their own strategic plans; they think Charter’s market reach does not necessarily mesh with their own company’s, and they may be wary of the amount of debt that a transaction would involve.
Not everyone believes that big-ticket mergers are in the industry’s future. Mr. Moffett said he expected more action at the lower end of the marketplace, among the obscure cable companies that would be better off merging. It is there that Mr. Malone may find the most targets.
“The small operators simply can’t stand toe-to-toe with the big guys,†Mr. Moffett said. Mr. Malone, he added, probably thinks that “Charter is my ticket for the fire sale.â€
Accounts
â– E*Trade Financial, New York, and Grey New York â€" part of the Grey unit of the Grey Group, owned by WPP â€" are parting ways after working together since November 2007; during that time, Grey New York created the popular character known as the E*Trade baby, which appears in commercials and online ads. E*Trade Financial spent more than $110 million on advertising last year. Grey New York said it had resigned as the E*Trade Financial creative agency; E*Trade Financial said it had begun a review of its creative account and Grey New York decided not to participate. The end of the relationship came after Nick Utton, the chief marketing officer at E*Trade Financial who hired Grey New York, left the company and was replaced by Liza Landsman.
â– Bernstein-Rein, Kansas City, Mo., and LAK Public Relations, New York, which worked for Hostess Brands, Kansas City, before the company went bankrupt, were hired by the new owner of Hostess Brands â€" a joint venture of Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos & Company â€" to handle advertising (Bernstein-Rein) and public relations (LAK) for the return of Hostess products like Twinkies, which is scheduled for July 15. Spending has not been determined.
■Rubio’s, Carlsbad, Calif., a chain of 196 restaurants that is known for its fish tacos, hired BarrettSF, San Francisco, as its creative agency. Spending was estimated at less than $1 million. The assignment had been handled by M.A.D.E., Long Beach, Calif.
People
â– Peter Sherman joined JWT New York, part of the JWT North America division of JWT, as chief executive, assuming duties from David Eastman, who will continue as chief executive of JWT North America. Mr. Sherman, who will report to Bob Jeffrey, chairman and chief executive of JWT, had been executive vice president and managing director at BBDO Europe, part of the BBDO Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group. JWT is owned by WPP.
â– Andrew Benett, global president at Havas Worldwide, was named to a new and additional post, chief executive of the Havas Worldwide New York unit of Havas Worldwide, as part of a reorganization. He assumes duties from Matt Ryan, co-chairman and president for global brands at Havas Worldwide New York, who will leave, the agency said. Also as part of the reorganization, Marty Susz, managing director of Havas Worldwide Tonic, will additionally serve as director for client services at Havas Worldwide New York; Alex Bombeck, co-president at Havas Worldwide Digital, will additionally serve as chief digital officer for New York; and Jason Jercinovic, co-president at Havas Worldwide Digital, will additionally serve as head of social media for North America. Havas Worldwide is part of the Havas Creative division of Havas.
Miscellany
â– VML, Kansas City, Mo., part of the Young & Rubicam Group unit of WPP, bought a majority stake in Native, Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, a digital agency that will be renamed Native VML. Financial terms were not disclosed.
â– The American Association of Advertising Agencies, New York, formed a data advisory council, to be composed of executives with experience in fields like analytics. The chairman of the council will be Donnovan Andrews, vice president for media sales and operations at Bazaarvoice.
â– SiteScout, Toronto, a media-buying platform, acquired through a subsidiary certain intellectual property assets of AdBrite, an online ad exchange that ceased operations in February. Financial terms were not disclosed.
â– Handsome Brands, London, a branding and design agency, opened its first office in North America, in Toronto.
The Supreme Court's rulings on a pair of landmark cases on Wednesday, which overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act and effectively legalized same-sex marriage in California, are the latest in a recent series of legal and legislative victories for same-sex marriage advocates worldwide.
By Aug. 1, same-sex marriage will be legal in California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington - all states where it was not legal one year earlier.
There are about 59 million people living in these seven states, which means that the availability of same-sex marriage in the United States as a percentage of population will have more than doubled within the year. As of early last year, same-sex marriage was legal only in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia, which have 35 million people among them.
The availability of same-sex marriage is increasing almost as rapidly on a global scale. It was legalized in Brazil and France earlier this year and will become legal in Uruguay and New Zealand by August.
A decision last month by a Brazilian judicial panel that is generally seen as legalizing same-sex marriage, but could be subject to appeal, is especially important to this math. Brazil has a population of about 194 million - more than the combined 169 million in the nine countries in Europe where same-sex marriage is now legal. The most recent decision followed court r ulings that had authorized same-sex marriage in more than a dozen Brazilian states.
Earlier this year, France, with a population of about 64 million, became the largest European country to legalize same-sex marriage, and the largest in the world to do so by legislative action.
By August, there will be about 585 million people living in countries or jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal. That is roughly double the 289 million people living in such places in August 2012. (These calculations are based on the most recent population estimates and do not account for population growth.)
Still, that represents only about 8 percent of the global population. No country in Asia, which has well more than half the world's people, has authorized same-sex marriage.
Instead, it's the New World that has taken the lead. Of the 585 million people living in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage will be legal by August, about 360 million are in the Americas.
With the coming resumption of same-sex marriage in California, where it was legal for a brief period in 2008 before voters passed Proposition 8, the United States will surpass Europe in the availability of same-sex marriage as measured by share of the population. By August, about 95 million Americans out of a population of 314 million - about 30 percent - will live in states where same-sex marriage is legal. In Europe, that number is 169 million residents out of a population of 736 million, or about 23 percent.< /p>
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Barbara Nitke for Netflix Taylor Schilling in “Orange Is the New Black,†an original Netflix series about an unlikely prisoner that goes online July 11.
Netflix, unlike so many of its rivals on cable and broadcast, doesn't share any ratings, so we won't know how popular “Orange Is the New Black†is after the show has its debut on the service. But we can surmise that it is already pretty popular inside Netflix.
The company announced on Thursday that it had ordered a second season, two full weeks before subscribers get to see the first season. Such an early pickup is a rarity in television.
“It is unusual,†Cindy Holland, the company's vice president for original content, acknowledged on Friday, but it was motivated by a practical matter: Netflix wanted to shorten the wait time between the first season and the second. In Season 2, she said, “our hope is that we can launch in late spring to early summer, rather than midsummer.â€
The one-hour series, which comes online July 11, has both dramatic and comedic elements. It comes from Jenji Kohan, who created “Weeds†for Showtime, and stars Taylor Schilling as an unlikely new inmate at a women's prison and Jason Biggs as the fiancé waiting for her release.
“Orange†has received raves from those who have seen the first episodes (The New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum called it a brilliant cross between “Oz†and “The L Word†on a podcast last week) but it doesn't have the same name recognition as other original Netflix offerings, like “House of Cards,†the political thriller that came online in February, or “Arrested Development,†the revival of the Fox comedy that came online one month ago. Renewing the show so early may boost interest in the first season's worth of episodes.
“To the industry, an early renewal is a vote of confidence in the show's creators,†said Diane Gordon, the television editor for Studio System News, an industry Web site. “To fans, it encourages them to watch a show because they know it won't disappear after two or three episodes, as often happens on broadcast networks. â€
Earning the loyalty of fans is critical for a service like Netflix, which depends on monthly subscriber fees. “Orange†continues the company's push to compete with traditional sources of entertainment and, along the way, alter the definition of television.
Television executives could recall only a few other occasions when additional episodes were ordered ahead of a premiere - some prophetic and others, well, not. The premium-cable channel Starz did so with “Boss,†a drama led by Kelsey Grammer, only to have that series wind down after two seasons. More successfully, Starz renewed “Spartacus†a full month before viewers saw the first episode in 2010.
“Even the best of shows take more than one season to fully develop,†Chris Albrecht, the chief executive of Starz, said in an e-mail. “While we are always mindful of the audience, we are not slaves to ratings, which offers the creative teams we have confidence in the luxury of time to develop the stories and characters.â€
HBO, the category leader, has a tendency to renew shows within weeks, and sometimes within days, of their start dates. In these cases, the network executives have already seen many of the coming episodes, so they have a good sense of what to expect.
Because Netflix releases all the episodes of a season at the same time, the executives there have already seen all 13 episodes of “Orange Is the New Black.†“We don't have the benefit of having viewing information from our subscribers yet, but we do know creatively everything about the season,†Ms. Holland said.
Ms. Kohan alluded to that when she spoke at the New York premiere of the series at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. “I feel like I'm at the end of a pregnancy and I just want it out,†she said.
The announcement means that Netflix has renewed all of its original series to date, with one exception, “Arrested Development.†(While the company would like more episodes, it has warned that reassembling the cast would be very difficult.) It committed to two seasons of “House of Cards†from the get-go (the second is in production now); it long ago ordered more episodes of “Lilyhammer; and this month it renewed the horror series “Hemlock Grove.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on June 29, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: No One's Seen It, but Netflix Renews It.
Sponsors have cut ties with Paula Deen, who has admitted using racist language. But some fans have rallied to her side.
Paula Deen got a rare bit of good news on Thursday: Her new cookbook hit No. 1 on the best-seller list at Amazon.com, as thousands of fans - many of them springing to her defense as she faces accusations of racism - ordered the book months before its October release.
But on Friday, its publisher, Random House, said it would not publish the cookbook, and would cancel a five-book contract it signed with Ms. Deen last year.
The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name.
Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee.
Her frantic efforts to stanch the flow of negative opinion by defending herself on the “Today†show and posting apologetic videos on YouTube have rallied many of her admirers. They have threatened boycotts of Walmart, created a “We Support Paula Deen†Facebook page that has well over half a million “likes,†and started a campaign to flood the Food Network offices with empty butter wrappers, a symbol of Ms. Deen's indulgent cooking style.
But these efforts have not, apparently, made a difference to Ms. Deen's corporate partners.
Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, said in a statement Friday afternoon, “After careful consideration, Ballantine Books has made the difficult decision to cancel the publication of ‘Paula Deen's New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up.' “
The book, co-written by Melissa Clark, a dining columnist for The New York Times, was to feature lighter fare than the fat- and sugar-laden recipes Ms. Deen has promoted in previous books and on her television shows.
A person with knowledge of Random House's decision to cancel the contract said, “When Walmart, Target and J. C. Penney all announced they are discontinuing their Paula Deen business, including books, it is awfully tough to stay the course of a publication. It was a business decision.â€
Ms. Deen has published 14 cookbooks, starting in 1998 with “The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.†Together, they have sold more than eight million copies.
But many of the sales outlets that normally sell thousands of Ms. Deen's books - like Walmart, Target, Kmart and QVC - would have refused to carry the new one.
Random House would not disclose the amount Ms. Deen was to be paid, but a person with knowledge of the contract said it involved millions of dollars. It is unclear whether Ms. Deen will have to return any of it, or whether a clause in the contract would allow the publisher to cancel the pact because of Ms. Deen's behavior.
“That's why God invented lawyers,†said Mr. Applebaum.
On Thursday, the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it was suspending its use of Ms. Deen as a spokeswoman for the drug. The company, which has the top-selling portfolio of diabetes medications in the United States, has reached out vigorously to black Americans in its marketing and medical sponsorships.
Ms. Deen began a multiplatform campaign to promote the drug on the same day last year she revealed she had Type 2 diabetes. That set off public criticism that she had misserved her audience. She had received the diagnosis two years earlier, yet had continued to promote recipes high in sugar and fat.
Didra Brown Taylor, the executive director of the Beautyshop Project, a national diabetes screening initiative that offers free blood tests in hair salons in low-income neighborhoods, said that Ms. Deen's conflict of interest was noted by program participants at the time, and that the current crisis had confirmed many in their beliefs that Ms. Deen might be more opportunistic than honest.
“She was cooking food that a diabetic would not eat,†Ms. Taylor said. “And to profit from that and then to profit from a diabetes drug, that's hypocrisy.â€
She said African-Americans were unlikely to forget Ms. Deen's more recent admission that she used racial epithets. “It's more than a rumor,†Ms. Taylor said. “She can't say that she didn't say it.â€
Leslie Kaufman contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 29, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Publisher Drops Book Deal With TV Chef Even as Orders Rise.
This interview with Paul Venables, founder and executive creative director of Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising agency in San Francisco, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Paul Venables, founder and executive creative director of Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising agency in San Francisco, says he would advise college graduates to volunteer for a task that the boss hates, and to “make it great.â€
Q. Were you in leadership roles early on?
A. My first job managing people was when I was 16, and I was given the keys to Carvel Store No. 1587 in Stratford, Conn. I was managing people who would come back on college break to work at the ice cream shop. They were older than me, and that was tricky. I learned a lot.
But I've always been a guy with a lot of opinions. And with opinions often comes conviction, and you see a better way to do things. So you become vocal and you get comfortable standing up in front of people or talking to people or swaying a room to move in a certain direction.
I should point out that I'm one of seven children, and it was a zoo at my house and therefore you had to work to be heard. Not only did you have to be crafty, smart and loud, but you also had to be on your toes to convince other people to do what you wanted, especially since I was on the younger end. Learning to navigate in that household, I developed some communication skills.
Q. I've been struck by the number of C.E.O.'s I've interviewed who come from large families.
A. I'm sixth out of seven, so I had five other teachers in the house. I learned certain things from my parents, but each kid had different interests, different styles, and I would learn and almost pick and choose from them - “That looks effective,†or “That's smart.â€
Q. How did you break into the industry?
A. I went to Madison Avenue to get a job, any job, in advertising. So I pounded the pavement, and at the time, you had to take typing tests at all the big agencies. I failed them all. Then I took a job at a small agency. They didn't require typing tests, and the job I took was as the receptionist. Talk about learning people skills. You interact with absolutely everybody in the building - all the clients, all the people, all the vendors. I picked people's brains about what they did and how they thought, and it was just a really helpful starting point.
The weird thing is right from that first job, I knew that someday I wanted my own agency. Every job I had after that, I gleaned the information I wanted, thinking: “I'm going to do that. I'm not going to do that.â€
Q. Give me an example.
A. A big part of the job is motivating creative people with varied backgrounds and interests. What generally doesn't work, or only works for a short time, is the fear-based motivation, the overt competition. Competition is healthy at some level, but when it's presented as “Two parties are going to dance and we're going to pick who wins,†I believe creativity is suffocated. You may get results once or twice because you lit a fire and people performed. But as an ongoing way to cultivate creativity, I think you have to make people feel like you believe in them. It's as simple as that.
Q. What else about your culture?
A. We give out a lot of awards. We give a spousal award to the spouse or significant other who we think has put up with us monopolizing an employee's time or sending them on a lot of travel. We'll give them something like a weekend away and massages up in the wine country.
We also have an award where we literally give a golden commode - we call it the golden toilet award - to somebody in the trenches who is making things happen and is calm under pressure and takes care of things with dignity.
We also have an old-timers award. We're coming up on 12 years now, but when we were six years old, we realized we had some people who had been here for five years. That's pretty good, especially in advertising, where time is a bit like dog years. So we came up with the idea to give people this big glass beer stein boot with the five-year old-timer award emblazoned on it. It comes with a thousand-dollar bar tab at a pub around the corner, and they can spend it however they want. We suspected this would happen, but they often invite the newbies out and so you get this mixing of generations. There's a great cross-pollination of people and values and ideas. I think we're up to 38 old-timers by now.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I was so focused on starting a company that I was maniacal about every little thing we did. In the last five years, I really focused on the fact that the secret to this thing is the culture. If I get the culture right, it will attract the right people, and they're going to do the right kind of work.
The culture is not all foosball and Pizza Fridays. We have both and we enjoy both. But culture is about people knowing you're there to support them, not looking over their shoulder waiting for them to fail, and that you're there to help when they hit tough times. They can be very honest, come into your office and sit down and say, “I screwed up - help me out,†as opposed to trying to hide it.
I also want to make sure that managers know that their job is to get the people who work for them to be asking to work for them. So they can't do that old trick of managing up to me and the partners, and being a complete jackal to the people below. They know I'm asking people constantly: “Hey, are they giving you timely feedback? Are they helpful? Are they courteous? Do they have basic human decency?†These things are important.
Q. What career advice would you give to new college grads?
A. The advertising-specific one is ask for the headaches. Find something your boss is doing that he hates doing - it's difficult, painful, time-consuming - and say, “I'll take that,†and make it great. Too many people ask for the choice assignments. Do the dishes really well and you'll be a very valuable person.
The broader advice is that the only things you can control in your life are your attitude and your effort. You can't control all the craziness of the people around you, the circumstances, the situations, the failures and successes. Give it your all and have a positive attitude. It goes a long way in the world. That's underappreciated, I think.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2013, on page BU2 of the New York edition with the headline: Just Starting? Always Ask For The Toughest Jobs.
Yana Paskova for The New York Times The growing audiobooks industry has given many actors a steady check. Katherine Kellgren has recorded nearly 200.
Gabra Zackman is a new kind of acting star: she is heard, but unheard-of.
Katherine Kellgren's first reading job was for “Wicked Widow,†a bodice ripper that still makes her giggle with embarrassment.
Ms. Zackman had classical training through the Shakespeare Theater of Washington, has worked in regional theaters for the last two decades and has had a sprinkling of appearances on television shows like “Law and Order.†Those performances, however, have brought neither fame nor fortune.
Instead, like a growing number of actors, she has found steady employment as a reader in the booming world of audiobooks.
In recent years, Ms. Zackman has recorded more than 200 titles, and she says she can now count on steady work of two books a month, earning $1,000 to $3,000 a book. The income helps her make the payments on her one-bedroom Manhattan apartment while giving her the freedom to travel around the country and perform.
Once a small backwater of the publishing industry, in part because of the cumbersome nature of tapes, audiobooks are now flourishing. Sales have been rising by double digits annually in recent years. A recent survey by industry groups showed that audiobook revenue climbed 22 percent in 2012 compared with 2011.
Much of the growth can be attributed to the business's digital transformation - from how books are recorded (increasingly at studios in the actors' homes) to how they are sold (through subscription or individually on the Internet) and consumed (downloaded to mobile devices).
That development is good for publishers and authors, of course. But it has also created a burgeoning employment opportunity for actors pursuing stardom on the stage and screen, allowing them to pay their bills doing something other than waiting on tables.
Ms. Zackman says the demand for her work is tied in part to her dedication to her craft, and she does extensive research before each book, with the aim of infusing intonation and emotion into each character's voice. She also gives credit to Audible.com, a company in Newark that is pushing the digital revolution in audiobooks, and which has become her main employer.
“I get to have a whole flourishing life as an actress because they have given me an opportunity to practice and to be employed,†she said.
Audible, the biggest producer and seller of audiobooks, says it produced some 10,000 recorded works last year - either directly or through a service it provides that allows authors to contract directly with actors. Each book amounts to an average of two or three days in the studio, but can be more, for the person voicing the book.
Donald R. Katz, the founder and chief executive of Audible, which was bought by Amazon.com in 2008, said that his company employed 2,000 actors to read books last year, and he speculated that he was probably the largest single employer of actors in the New York area.
The actors' guild says there is no way to calculate such a number but it confirms that not only is audio narration work suddenly plentiful, but that it is also lucrative enough to allow many of its members to survive on it.
As with other forms of acting, compensation varies according to fame. An unknown actor might earn a few thousand dollars for a book, while stars like Nicole Kidman, who recently narrated Virginia Woolf's “To the Lighthouse†for Audible, can be paid in the hundreds of thousands.
Still, Michelle Lee Cobb, president of the Audio Publishers Association, said “there are hundreds of actors who make their living reading books and we are seeing more and more people trying.â€
The field is so promising that drama schools, including prestigious institutions like Juilliard and Yale, have started offering audio narration workshops.
Courtney Blackwell Burton, director of career services at Juilliard, said: “It is very exciting because it is a new source of income and work that really uses their training. We are really pushing this idea of entrepreneurship, and with narration you can even have your own studio in your home.â€
Since the workshops started in 2008, eight Juilliard actors have recorded 62 books for Audible, she said.
Katherine Kellgren has led narration classes at various acting schools. She said she was excited that audio narration, which is different from other forms of acting, is finally getting recognition as a craft.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Actors Today Don't Just Read for the Part. Reading IS the Part..
I WAS born in California, but I moved every year that I was in grammar school. My father was a sales manager for Paper Mate, and it moved him around. I lived in several states, and the experience shaped me: change became normal and inevitable. I decided that I could roll with it or be crushed by it, and I learned to roll with it.
David Yarnold, president & C.E.O of the National Audubon Society, New York.
While studying mass communications at what was then San Jose State College, I wrote a story about a man who trained seals and whales at Marine World Africa USA, in Redwood Shores, Calif. The park's vice president for marketing liked the article and offered me a job that turned into educating schoolchildren and others about the park, animals and nature.
A young staff member and I brought a llama, a falcon and an 80-pound lion cub to a mall one day, and she accidentally let the lion loose. He ran into the mall; I ran after him and found him nose to nose with a toddler in a stroller. I dove for the cub, grabbed him to my chest, and rolled away from the stroller. Luckily, that was the end of it.
I graduated with a degree in photojournalism in 1976. Afterward, I worked as chief photographer for The Longview Daily News in Washington State, then briefly in public relations and for The Associated Press. In 1978, I joined The San Jose Mercury News as its first picture editor and was promoted to managing editor 16 years later. In 1995, Knight Ridder, the paper's parent company, appointed me as the first vice president for content of its online division, Knight Ridder Digital.
The group was like any Silicon Valley start-up at the time. We had terrific ideas but no business model. We tried publishing an early online magazine, but it was shuttered after 18 months. (The group eventually switched to providing online services through Real Cities, an online information network.) I returned to my job as managing editor at The Mercury News, a post that had been left open, and rose to executive editor in 1999.
A few years later, I started thinking about an encore career. In 2005, I joined the Environmental Defense Fund as executive director and had the chance to work in China and on corporate partnerships with companies including Wal-Mart. I was promoted to president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund in 2003. It was a great learning ground for someone new to nonprofits and environmentalism.
A recruiter contacted me in 2010 about the top position at the National Audubon Society, and I joined that August. My first challenge was to find a unifying message for the society. After a month in which I listened to staff members, chapter leaders and our international partners, a story emerged. Birds' migratory routes are like four superhighways in the sky, and below them are their rest stops and homes. When you connect all these flyways and habitats, there's a web of biodiversity, and it's our job to protect that. I'm not a bird expert, but I'm skilled in figuring out a story. That vision became the basis of our new strategic plan.
We've improved our corporate functions, from I.T. to finance, and have engaged more fully with our 470 chapters. They're our strength. We're also experimenting with new ways to reach young people, as with apps and games. Two weeks after I started, I joined some chapter members on a birding trip down the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. I had new binoculars and was desperately looking for the birds I was hearing all around me. I saw four people farther down the boat holding their iPhones to the sky. All four were using apps of loud and melodious bird calls to try to attract birds.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2013, on page BU10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Journalist Takes Wing.
I WAS born in California, but I moved every year that I was in grammar school. My father was a sales manager for Paper Mate, and it moved him around. I lived in several states, and the experience shaped me: change became normal and inevitable. I decided that I could roll with it or be crushed by it, and I learned to roll with it.
David Yarnold, president & C.E.O of the National Audubon Society, New York.
While studying mass communications at what was then San Jose State College, I wrote a story about a man who trained seals and whales at Marine World Africa USA, in Redwood Shores, Calif. The park’s vice president for marketing liked the article and offered me a job that turned into educating schoolchildren and others about the park, animals and nature.
A young staff member and I brought a llama, a falcon and an 80-pound lion cub to a mall one day, and she accidentally let the lion loose. He ran into the mall; I ran after him and found him nose to nose with a toddler in a stroller. I dove for the cub, grabbed him to my chest, and rolled away from the stroller. Luckily, that was the end of it.
I graduated with a degree in photojournalism in 1976. Afterward, I worked as chief photographer for The Longview Daily News in Washington State, then briefly in public relations and for The Associated Press. In 1978, I joined The San Jose Mercury News as its first picture editor and was promoted to managing editor 16 years later. In 1995, Knight Ridder, the paper’s parent company, appointed me as the first vice president for content of its online division, Knight Ridder Digital.
The group was like any Silicon Valley start-up at the time. We had terrific ideas but no business model. We tried publishing an early online magazine, but it was shuttered after 18 months. (The group eventually switched to providing online services through Real Cities, an online information network.) I returned to my job as managing editor at The Mercury News, a post that had been left open, and rose to executive editor in 1999.
A few years later, I started thinking about an encore career. In 2005, I joined the Environmental Defense Fund as executive director and had the chance to work in China and on corporate partnerships with companies including Wal-Mart. I was promoted to president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund in 2003. It was a great learning ground for someone new to nonprofits and environmentalism.
A recruiter contacted me in 2010 about the top position at the National Audubon Society, and I joined that August. My first challenge was to find a unifying message for the society. After a month in which I listened to staff members, chapter leaders and our international partners, a story emerged. Birds’ migratory routes are like four superhighways in the sky, and below them are their rest stops and homes. When you connect all these flyways and habitats, there’s a web of biodiversity, and it’s our job to protect that. I’m not a bird expert, but I’m skilled in figuring out a story. That vision became the basis of our new strategic plan.
We’ve improved our corporate functions, from I.T. to finance, and have engaged more fully with our 470 chapters. They’re our strength. We’re also experimenting with new ways to reach young people, as with apps and games. Two weeks after I started, I joined some chapter members on a birding trip down the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. I had new binoculars and was desperately looking for the birds I was hearing all around me. I saw four people farther down the boat holding their iPhones to the sky. All four were using apps of loud and melodious bird calls to try to attract birds.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2013, on page BU10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Journalist Takes Wing.
Yana Paskova for The New York Times The growing audiobooks industry has given many actors a steady check. Katherine Kellgren has recorded nearly 200.
Gabra Zackman is a new kind of acting star: she is heard, but unheard-of.
Katherine Kellgren’s first reading job was for “Wicked Widow,†a bodice ripper that still makes her giggle with embarrassment.
Ms. Zackman had classical training through the Shakespeare Theater of Washington, has worked in regional theaters for the last two decades and has had a sprinkling of appearances on television shows like “Law and Order.†Those performances, however, have brought neither fame nor fortune.
Instead, like a growing number of actors, she has found steady employment as a reader in the booming world of audiobooks.
In recent years, Ms. Zackman has recorded more than 200 titles, and she says she can now count on steady work of two books a month, earning $1,000 to $3,000 a book. The income helps her make the payments on her one-bedroom Manhattan apartment while giving her the freedom to travel around the country and perform.
Once a small backwater of the publishing industry, in part because of the cumbersome nature of tapes, audiobooks are now flourishing. Sales have been rising by double digits annually in recent years. A recent survey by industry groups showed that audiobook revenue climbed 22 percent in 2012 compared with 2011.
Much of the growth can be attributed to the business’s digital transformation â€" from how books are recorded (increasingly at studios in the actors’ homes) to how they are sold (through subscription or individually on the Internet) and consumed (downloaded to mobile devices).
That development is good for publishers and authors, of course. But it has also created a burgeoning employment opportunity for actors pursuing stardom on the stage and screen, allowing them to pay their bills doing something other than waiting on tables.
Ms. Zackman says the demand for her work is tied in part to her dedication to her craft, and she does extensive research before each book, with the aim of infusing intonation and emotion into each character’s voice. She also gives credit to Audible.com, a company in Newark that is pushing the digital revolution in audiobooks, and which has become her main employer.
“I get to have a whole flourishing life as an actress because they have given me an opportunity to practice and to be employed,†she said.
Audible, the biggest producer and seller of audiobooks, says it produced some 10,000 recorded works last year â€" either directly or through a service it provides that allows authors to contract directly with actors. Each book amounts to an average of two or three days in the studio, but can be more, for the person voicing the book.
Donald R. Katz, the founder and chief executive of Audible, which was bought by Amazon.com in 2008, said that his company employed 2,000 actors to read books last year, and he speculated that he was probably the largest single employer of actors in the New York area.
The actors’ guild says there is no way to calculate such a number but it confirms that not only is audio narration work suddenly plentiful, but that it is also lucrative enough to allow many of its members to survive on it.
As with other forms of acting, compensation varies according to fame. An unknown actor might earn a few thousand dollars for a book, while stars like Nicole Kidman, who recently narrated Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse†for Audible, can be paid in the hundreds of thousands.
Still, Michelle Lee Cobb, president of the Audio Publishers Association, said “there are hundreds of actors who make their living reading books and we are seeing more and more people trying.â€
The field is so promising that drama schools, including prestigious institutions like Juilliard and Yale, have started offering audio narration workshops.
Courtney Blackwell Burton, director of career services at Juilliard, said: “It is very exciting because it is a new source of income and work that really uses their training. We are really pushing this idea of entrepreneurship, and with narration you can even have your own studio in your home.â€
Since the workshops started in 2008, eight Juilliard actors have recorded 62 books for Audible, she said.
Katherine Kellgren has led narration classes at various acting schools. She said she was excited that audio narration, which is different from other forms of acting, is finally getting recognition as a craft.
This interview with Paul Venables, founder and executive creative director of Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising agency in San Francisco, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Paul Venables, founder and executive creative director of Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising agency in San Francisco, says he would advise college graduates to volunteer for a task that the boss hates, and to “make it great.â€
Q. Were you in leadership roles early on?
A. My first job managing people was when I was 16, and I was given the keys to Carvel Store No. 1587 in Stratford, Conn. I was managing people who would come back on college break to work at the ice cream shop. They were older than me, and that was tricky. I learned a lot.
But I’ve always been a guy with a lot of opinions. And with opinions often comes conviction, and you see a better way to do things. So you become vocal and you get comfortable standing up in front of people or talking to people or swaying a room to move in a certain direction.
I should point out that I’m one of seven children, and it was a zoo at my house and therefore you had to work to be heard. Not only did you have to be crafty, smart and loud, but you also had to be on your toes to convince other people to do what you wanted, especially since I was on the younger end. Learning to navigate in that household, I developed some communication skills.
Q. I’ve been struck by the number of C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed who come from large families.
A. I’m sixth out of seven, so I had five other teachers in the house. I learned certain things from my parents, but each kid had different interests, different styles, and I would learn and almost pick and choose from them â€" “That looks effective,†or “That’s smart.â€
Q. How did you break into the industry?
A. I went to Madison Avenue to get a job, any job, in advertising. So I pounded the pavement, and at the time, you had to take typing tests at all the big agencies. I failed them all. Then I took a job at a small agency. They didn’t require typing tests, and the job I took was as the receptionist. Talk about learning people skills. You interact with absolutely everybody in the building â€" all the clients, all the people, all the vendors. I picked people’s brains about what they did and how they thought, and it was just a really helpful starting point.
The weird thing is right from that first job, I knew that someday I wanted my own agency. Every job I had after that, I gleaned the information I wanted, thinking: “I’m going to do that. I’m not going to do that.â€
Q. Give me an example.
A. A big part of the job is motivating creative people with varied backgrounds and interests. What generally doesn’t work, or only works for a short time, is the fear-based motivation, the overt competition. Competition is healthy at some level, but when it’s presented as “Two parties are going to dance and we’re going to pick who wins,†I believe creativity is suffocated. You may get results once or twice because you lit a fire and people performed. But as an ongoing way to cultivate creativity, I think you have to make people feel like you believe in them. It’s as simple as that.
Q. What else about your culture?
A. We give out a lot of awards. We give a spousal award to the spouse or significant other who we think has put up with us monopolizing an employee’s time or sending them on a lot of travel. We’ll give them something like a weekend away and massages up in the wine country.
We also have an award where we literally give a golden commode â€" we call it the golden toilet award â€" to somebody in the trenches who is making things happen and is calm under pressure and takes care of things with dignity.
We also have an old-timers award. We’re coming up on 12 years now, but when we were six years old, we realized we had some people who had been here for five years. That’s pretty good, especially in advertising, where time is a bit like dog years. So we came up with the idea to give people this big glass beer stein boot with the five-year old-timer award emblazoned on it. It comes with a thousand-dollar bar tab at a pub around the corner, and they can spend it however they want. We suspected this would happen, but they often invite the newbies out and so you get this mixing of generations. There’s a great cross-pollination of people and values and ideas. I think we’re up to 38 old-timers by now.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I was so focused on starting a company that I was maniacal about every little thing we did. In the last five years, I really focused on the fact that the secret to this thing is the culture. If I get the culture right, it will attract the right people, and they’re going to do the right kind of work.
The culture is not all foosball and Pizza Fridays. We have both and we enjoy both. But culture is about people knowing you’re there to support them, not looking over their shoulder waiting for them to fail, and that you’re there to help when they hit tough times. They can be very honest, come into your office and sit down and say, “I screwed up â€" help me out,†as opposed to trying to hide it.
I also want to make sure that managers know that their job is to get the people who work for them to be asking to work for them. So they can’t do that old trick of managing up to me and the partners, and being a complete jackal to the people below. They know I’m asking people constantly: “Hey, are they giving you timely feedback? Are they helpful? Are they courteous? Do they have basic human decency?†These things are important.
Q. What career advice would you give to new college grads?
A. The advertising-specific one is ask for the headaches. Find something your boss is doing that he hates doing â€" it’s difficult, painful, time-consuming â€" and say, “I’ll take that,†and make it great. Too many people ask for the choice assignments. Do the dishes really well and you’ll be a very valuable person.
The broader advice is that the only things you can control in your life are your attitude and your effort. You can’t control all the craziness of the people around you, the circumstances, the situations, the failures and successes. Give it your all and have a positive attitude. It goes a long way in the world. That’s underappreciated, I think.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 30, 2013, on page BU2 of the New York edition with the headline: Just Starting? Always Ask For The Toughest Jobs.
Sponsors have cut ties with Paula Deen, who has admitted using racist language. But some fans have rallied to her side.
Paula Deen got a rare bit of good news on Thursday: Her new cookbook hit No. 1 on the best-seller list at Amazon.com, as thousands of fans â€" many of them springing to her defense as she faces accusations of racism â€" ordered the book months before its October release.
But on Friday, its publisher, Random House, said it would not publish the cookbook, and would cancel a five-book contract it signed with Ms. Deen last year.
The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name.
Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee.
Her frantic efforts to stanch the flow of negative opinion by defending herself on the “Today†show and posting apologetic videos on YouTube have rallied many of her admirers. They have threatened boycotts of Walmart, created a “We Support Paula Deen†Facebook page that has well over half a million “likes,†and started a campaign to flood the Food Network offices with empty butter wrappers, a symbol of Ms. Deen’s indulgent cooking style.
But these efforts have not, apparently, made a difference to Ms. Deen’s corporate partners.
Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, said in a statement Friday afternoon, “After careful consideration, Ballantine Books has made the difficult decision to cancel the publication of ‘Paula Deen’s New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up.’ “
The book, co-written by Melissa Clark, a dining columnist for The New York Times, was to feature lighter fare than the fat- and sugar-laden recipes Ms. Deen has promoted in previous books and on her television shows.
A person with knowledge of Random House’s decision to cancel the contract said, “When Walmart, Target and J. C. Penney all announced they are discontinuing their Paula Deen business, including books, it is awfully tough to stay the course of a publication. It was a business decision.â€
Ms. Deen has published 14 cookbooks, starting in 1998 with “The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.†Together, they have sold more than eight million copies.
But many of the sales outlets that normally sell thousands of Ms. Deen’s books â€" like Walmart, Target, Kmart and QVC â€" would have refused to carry the new one.
Random House would not disclose the amount Ms. Deen was to be paid, but a person with knowledge of the contract said it involved millions of dollars. It is unclear whether Ms. Deen will have to return any of it, or whether a clause in the contract would allow the publisher to cancel the pact because of Ms. Deen’s behavior.
“That’s why God invented lawyers,†said Mr. Applebaum.
On Thursday, the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it was suspending its use of Ms. Deen as a spokeswoman for the drug. The company, which has the top-selling portfolio of diabetes medications in the United States, has reached out vigorously to black Americans in its marketing and medical sponsorships.
Ms. Deen began a multiplatform campaign to promote the drug on the same day last year she revealed she had Type 2 diabetes. That set off public criticism that she had misserved her audience. She had received the diagnosis two years earlier, yet had continued to promote recipes high in sugar and fat.
Didra Brown Taylor, the executive director of the Beautyshop Project, a national diabetes screening initiative that offers free blood tests in hair salons in low-income neighborhoods, said that Ms. Deen’s conflict of interest was noted by program participants at the time, and that the current crisis had confirmed many in their beliefs that Ms. Deen might be more opportunistic than honest.
“She was cooking food that a diabetic would not eat,†Ms. Taylor said. “And to profit from that and then to profit from a diabetes drug, that’s hypocrisy.â€
She said African-Americans were unlikely to forget Ms. Deen’s more recent admission that she used racial epithets. “It’s more than a rumor,†Ms. Taylor said. “She can’t say that she didn’t say it.â€
Leslie Kaufman contributed reporting.
Barbara Nitke for Netflix Taylor Schilling in “Orange Is the New Black,†an original Netflix series about an unlikely prisoner that goes online July 11.
Netflix, unlike so many of its rivals on cable and broadcast, doesn’t share any ratings, so we won’t know how popular “Orange Is the New Black†is after the show has its debut on the service. But we can surmise that it is already pretty popular inside Netflix.
The company announced on Thursday that it had ordered a second season, two full weeks before subscribers get to see the first season. Such an early pickup is a rarity in television.
“It is unusual,†Cindy Holland, the company’s vice president for original content, acknowledged on Friday, but it was motivated by a practical matter: Netflix wanted to shorten the wait time between the first season and the second. In Season 2, she said, “our hope is that we can launch in late spring to early summer, rather than midsummer.â€
The one-hour series, which comes online July 11, has both dramatic and comedic elements. It comes from Jenji Kohan, who created “Weeds†for Showtime, and stars Taylor Schilling as an unlikely new inmate at a women’s prison and Jason Biggs as the fiancé waiting for her release.
“Orange†has received raves from those who have seen the first episodes (The New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum called it a brilliant cross between “Oz†and “The L Word†on a podcast last week) but it doesn’t have the same name recognition as other original Netflix offerings, like “House of Cards,†the political thriller that came online in February, or “Arrested Development,†the revival of the Fox comedy that came online one month ago. Renewing the show so early may boost interest in the first season’s worth of episodes.
“To the industry, an early renewal is a vote of confidence in the show’s creators,†said Diane Gordon, the television editor for Studio System News, an industry Web site. “To fans, it encourages them to watch a show because they know it won’t disappear after two or three episodes, as often happens on broadcast networks. â€
Earning the loyalty of fans is critical for a service like Netflix, which depends on monthly subscriber fees. “Orange†continues the company’s push to compete with traditional sources of entertainment and, along the way, alter the definition of television.
Television executives could recall only a few other occasions when additional episodes were ordered ahead of a premiere â€" some prophetic and others, well, not. The premium-cable channel Starz did so with “Boss,†a drama led by Kelsey Grammer, only to have that series wind down after two seasons. More successfully, Starz renewed “Spartacus†a full month before viewers saw the first episode in 2010.
“Even the best of shows take more than one season to fully develop,†Chris Albrecht, the chief executive of Starz, said in an e-mail. “While we are always mindful of the audience, we are not slaves to ratings, which offers the creative teams we have confidence in the luxury of time to develop the stories and characters.â€
HBO, the category leader, has a tendency to renew shows within weeks, and sometimes within days, of their start dates. In these cases, the network executives have already seen many of the coming episodes, so they have a good sense of what to expect.
Because Netflix releases all the episodes of a season at the same time, the executives there have already seen all 13 episodes of “Orange Is the New Black.†“We don’t have the benefit of having viewing information from our subscribers yet, but we do know creatively everything about the season,†Ms. Holland said.
Ms. Kohan alluded to that when she spoke at the New York premiere of the series at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. “I feel like I’m at the end of a pregnancy and I just want it out,†she said.
The announcement means that Netflix has renewed all of its original series to date, with one exception, “Arrested Development.†(While the company would like more episodes, it has warned that reassembling the cast would be very difficult.) It committed to two seasons of “House of Cards†from the get-go (the second is in production now); it long ago ordered more episodes of “Lilyhammer; and this month it renewed the horror series “Hemlock Grove.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on June 29, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: No One’s Seen It, but Netflix Renews It .