U.S. Open Fans Affected by Coverage Blackout Have Options

There will be 21 hours of third- and fourth-round United States Open tennis coverage on CBS from Saturday through Monday.

But more than 3.2 million Time Warner Cable customers in the New York, Los Angeles and Dallas markets will not be able to watch the coverage on their local CBS stations. A rights-fee dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS has resulted in a blackout of those stations.

That will prompt fans to seek alternatives. One is to watch the matches on USOpen.org, which is streaming them live and without a need for authentication. The second is to turn to the United States Open on the CBS Sports Network cable channel, which is not subject to the blackout, and which is showing tournament action all three days â€" but not the marquee matches that will be featured on CBS.

If the blackout is not lifted by Friday, when CBS’s tournament coverage resumes, fans in the affected markets will not be able to watch the men’s and women’s semifinals and finals on their local stations. But they will still be able to watch them at USOpen.org.

CBS and Time Warner are negotiating, but the impasse could push the blackout into football. The first crucial date is Sept. 14, when Alabama, the defending national champion, plays at Texas A&M at 3:30 p.m. Eastern, in a game of greater concern to fans in the Dallas area than in New York.

The next day, Peyton and Eli Manning will meet when Denver plays the Giants at MetLife Stadium at 4:25 p.m., also on CBS.

Jets fans get a temporary reprieve from blackout worries. The team’s season opener, on Sept. 8 against Tampa Bay, will be on Fox. The following Thursday, the Jets play at New England in prime time on NFL Network.

Their CBS schedule begins on Sept. 22, with a home game against Buffalo.

“Every other distributor in the country is carrying our games,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports. “We’re getting our games carried by companies in the same business as Time Warner, but the only company we can’t make a deal with is Time Warner.”

Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable, said: “We’re working hard to reach an agreement that represents a good deal for our customers. We appreciate their patience and hope to resolve this soon.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 31, 2013, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Fans Affected By Coverage Blackout Have Options.

Matthew Shear, Book Publisher, Dies at 57

Matthew Shear, the publisher of St. Martin’s Press, who helped writers like Janet Evanovich and Augusten Burroughs climb the best-seller lists, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 57.

A spokeswoman for St. Martin’s Press, where Mr. Shear was executive vice president and publisher, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.

Mr. Shear was a book publisher for more than 35 years and had worked at St. Martin’s since 1995.

In 2001 he published Ms. Evanovich’s first No. 1 New York Times best seller, “Hot Six.” “Running With Scissors” (2002), Mr. Burroughs’s first memoir, was on the Times list for three years and was adapted into a film starring Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin in 2006.

Matthew Joel Shear was born in Manhattan on Nov. 4, 1955. He graduated from Hofstra University with a theater degree in 1976.

In 1977 he became publicity manager at the New American Library. He later worked for Bantam Books, the Berkeley Publishing Group and Ballantine before joining St. Martin’s.

He is survived by his wife of 33 years, Sabrina; their daughters, Lindsey Munro and Hayley Shear; his mother, Sonia Aarons; and a sister, Stacey Hilsenrod.

A version of this article appears in print on August 31, 2013, on page D8 of the New York edition with the headline: Matthew Shear, Book Publisher, 57.

Cumulus Media Will Buy a Radio Syndicator

In a deal that could heighten the competition in radio against Clear Channel Communications, long the industry’s dominant player, Cumulus Media has agreed to buy Dial Global, a syndicator of sports, talk and music programming to thousands of stations, for $260 million.

Dr. Drew Pinsky tapes the “Loveline” talk show at Dial Global Studio in California.

Lewis W. Dickey Jr., the chief of Cumulus; he said the deal gave the company greater scale.

The deal, which was announced on Friday and is subject to regulatory approval, would let Cumulus beef up its syndication business with programs from the National Football League, the Olympics and Nascar, as well as news and entertainment. And it represents talk shows like “Loveline ” for advertising. Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks division dominates the market with major talk hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

“These transactions give us the necessary scale to provide the marketing and enterprise solutions our advertising and affiliate partners require,” Lewis W. Dickey Jr., the chief executive of Cumulus, said in a statement. “Our goal is to be the leading producer of premium audio content distributed through multiple platforms while continuing to build our broadcast platform in the top 100 U.S. markets.”

The complex deal involves four radio companies. To finance its acquisition of Dial, Cumulus is selling 68 of its stations to Townsquare Media, a broadcaster that operates mostly in small markets. Townsquare will pay $238 million for 53 of those stations.

For the other 15, Townsquare will give Cumulus five stations in Fresno, Calif., that it is acquiring as part of an 11-station deal with yet another radio owner, Peak II Holding. (To comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations, Townsquare will place three of the stations from Cumulus in trust for a future sale.)

If all the transactions are approved, which the companies said they expect by the end of the year, Cumulus will be left with 460 stations in the United States, and Townsquare with 312. CBS Radio has 126 stations, but most are in larger markets and have greater revenue.

“Cumulus wants to raise its profile in larger markets to better compete with CBS and Clear Channel, and Townsquare gets a lot bigger out of this in smaller markets,” said Tom Taylor, who writes a newsletter on the radio industry.

Developing and branding content has become critical for radio broadcasters as they face competition from satellite and digital services like Pandora. Those services are starting to become common features in new cars, radio’s traditional stronghold.

This year Cumulus brought country music back to the New York market with Nash FM (WNSH, 94.7 FM) It plans to extend the Nash brand on the radio and on other platforms. Clear Channel, too, has been heavily marketing its iHeartRadio app, which streams its stations and also has a Pandora-like custom listening feature; Clear Channel will present its third annual iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas next month.

“Players like Pandora are pushing into the car, so having other content that’s differentiated from music is a good place for them to be,” said James M. Marsh, a media analyst at Piper Jaffray & Company in New York.

Cumulus Media Will Buy a Radio Syndicator

In a deal that could heighten the competition in radio against Clear Channel Communications, long the industry’s dominant player, Cumulus Media has agreed to buy Dial Global, a syndicator of sports, talk and music programming to thousands of stations, for $260 million.

Dr. Drew Pinsky tapes the “Loveline” talk show at Dial Global Studio in California.

Lewis W. Dickey Jr., the chief of Cumulus; he said the deal gave the company greater scale.

The deal, which was announced on Friday and is subject to regulatory approval, would let Cumulus beef up its syndication business with programs from the National Football League, the Olympics and Nascar, as well as news and entertainment. And it represents talk shows like “Loveline ” for advertising. Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks division dominates the market with major talk hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

“These transactions give us the necessary scale to provide the marketing and enterprise solutions our advertising and affiliate partners require,” Lewis W. Dickey Jr., the chief executive of Cumulus, said in a statement. “Our goal is to be the leading producer of premium audio content distributed through multiple platforms while continuing to build our broadcast platform in the top 100 U.S. markets.”

The complex deal involves four radio companies. To finance its acquisition of Dial, Cumulus is selling 68 of its stations to Townsquare Media, a broadcaster that operates mostly in small markets. Townsquare will pay $238 million for 53 of those stations.

For the other 15, Townsquare will give Cumulus five stations in Fresno, Calif., that it is acquiring as part of an 11-station deal with yet another radio owner, Peak II Holding. (To comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations, Townsquare will place three of the stations from Cumulus in trust for a future sale.)

If all the transactions are approved, which the companies said they expect by the end of the year, Cumulus will be left with 460 stations in the United States, and Townsquare with 312. CBS Radio has 126 stations, but most are in larger markets and have greater revenue.

“Cumulus wants to raise its profile in larger markets to better compete with CBS and Clear Channel, and Townsquare gets a lot bigger out of this in smaller markets,” said Tom Taylor, who writes a newsletter on the radio industry.

Developing and branding content has become critical for radio broadcasters as they face competition from satellite and digital services like Pandora. Those services are starting to become common features in new cars, radio’s traditional stronghold.

This year Cumulus brought country music back to the New York market with Nash FM (WNSH, 94.7 FM) It plans to extend the Nash brand on the radio and on other platforms. Clear Channel, too, has been heavily marketing its iHeartRadio app, which streams its stations and also has a Pandora-like custom listening feature; Clear Channel will present its third annual iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas next month.

“Players like Pandora are pushing into the car, so having other content that’s differentiated from music is a good place for them to be,” said James M. Marsh, a media analyst at Piper Jaffray & Company in New York.

For News From Syrian Battleground, a Reliance on Social Media

When Secretary of State John Kerry delivered the United States’ report on Friday about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, he noted that “all hell broke loose in the social media” just 90 minutes after the alleged attack. As evidence of atrocities, the report cites thousands of social media updates and videos, along with reports from intelligence agencies, journalists and medical personnel.

Fred Pleitgen reported from Damascus with video from an independent witness “who is absolutely trustworthy.”

Western journalists are struggling to cover what the world has so far seen largely through YouTube. But while some television news crews have been filing reports from Damascus, the dangers of reporters being killed or kidnapped there â€" as well as visa problems â€" have kept most journalists outside the country’s borders and heightened the need for third-party images.

“The difficulty of getting into Syria, the shrunken foreign correspondent corps, and the audience gains for social media make it likely this story will be consumed differently by the American public than tensions or conflicts in past years,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Syria the deadliest country in the world for reporters. Last year, 28 journalists working there were killed, and 18 have died so far this year, according to the group, a nonprofit based in New York.

Among the few television outlets broadcasting from Damascus are CBS News, the BBC and ITN, a British news provider. A CNN correspondent, Fred Pleitgen, had been reporting from Damascus, but his visa expired this week and he was relocated to Beirut, Lebanon, a spokeswoman for the network said.

The Wall Street Journal has a reporter in Damascus, and Reuters and The Associated Press both said that they had journalists inside Syria.

For many news organizations, though, Beirut or Syria’s borders are the closest they can safely get. Richard Engel, an NBC News correspondent who was held hostage for five days last year in Syria, traveled inside the country earlier this week, but most recently reported from the Turkish-Syrian border.

Reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times are in Beirut, and this week ABC News reopened its bureau there after two decades.

“It’s risky being in Damascus in the best of times, and when you’ve got U.S. missiles raining down on the city, it adds to the sense of risk,” said Jon Williams, ABC News’s managing editor for international news.

For networks without a Syrian correspondent, partnerships with other organizations supply some video. ABC works with the BBC, for example, and NBC with ITN. But the networks also rely on YouTube and other third-party sources, which have yielded some of the most vivid and disturbing video of the conflict, but has also brought a host of verification problems.

This week, CNN broadcast a film showing what purported to be evidence of mass graves, and said that it came from “an independent filmer who is absolutely trustworthy.” CBS News uses a team of Arabic-speaking employees in London to review third-party videos, according to Christopher Isham, its Washington bureau chief.

ABC News, Reuters and other outlets use Storyful, a company that scours social sites and verifies videos through tests like comparing street scenes to maps and checking an uploader’s affiliated accounts. The New York Times has also worked with Storyful in the past. David Clinch, Storyful’s executive editor, said it first learned of a possible chemical attack last week from videos, and alerted its clients within an hour of the incident.

“This content is often the only content available,” Mr. Clinch wrote in an e-mail, “because news organizations either can’t get to the scene of suspected chemical attacks, don’t have anyone in Syria (some do but most don’t) or their staff cannot go out from Damascus.”

For those still within Syria, the challenge has simply been to stay safe. Mr. Isham said that CBS went to “extreme lengths” to protect its staff there, although he did not elaborate.

“Anytime you go into a combat zone, your folks are at risk,” he said. “You want to reduce that risk as much as possible.”

New Ad Organization to Promote Cross-Cultural Marketing

Five big names on Madison Avenue are joining forces to start an organization devoted to promoting what is known as cross-cultural marketing: pitches directed at a general market whose demographic makeup is becoming much more diverse.

The organization, called the Cross Cultural Marketing and Communications Association, is being started by the American Association of Advertising Agencies; Draftfcb, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies; PepsiCo; and two divisions of WPP, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and the Millward Brown research company.

The new association plans to introduce itself at the Total Market Industry Conference, which is set for Sept. 9 and 10 at the Ogilvy & Mather headquarters on the West Side of Manhattan. Speakers are to discuss subjects like demographic trends, how to engage new kinds of consumers, technological trends and how to attract and keep talented employees.

Cross-cultural marketing tries to reach diverse consumer groups, addressing similarities rather than differences. An example would be a recent commercial for Cheerios cereal, sold by General Mills, which featured an interracial family. That approach diverges from multicultural marketing, which is directed at specific demographic groups like Hispanics or African-Americans.

“The industry says you have to be in the general market box or in the multicultural marketing box,” said Jeffrey L. Bowman, the founder of the new organization. “Cross-cultural is inclusive of both boxes.”

Mr. Bowman’s day job is as the cross-cultural practice lead at Ogilvy & Mather, where he is also a managing director and senior partner. He has long advocated an approach that recognizes a “total market” rather than more narrowly focused marketing messages; before speaking to a reporter, he said this week, he had attended “a total market summit with Kimberly-Clark.”

The new association is “not a commercial for Ogilvy” or its cross-cultural practice, Mr. Bowman said. “We should think of the total market as a new revenue vertical for the industry.”

A member of the advisory board of the new association, Vita Harris, executive vice president and chief global strategy officer at Draftfcb, said one of its goals was “to start to ignite a community of people taking the total market seriously.”

A total market approach requires agencies and advertisers to have their “fingers on the pulse of consumers,” she added, and “a lot of that comes out of hiring people who reflect the consumer base” â€" that is, having a work force that is more diverse.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Bowman acknowledged that the new association joined a lengthy list of industry associations and organizations.

“We want to complement the other associations out there” rather than compete with them for attention and resources, Mr. Bowman said, adding: “If we’re successful, other organizations will adopt the total market approach. If we go away, great, it would mean we’ll have been successful.”

Common Sense: ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ Reveals Long Odds for New Authors

‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ Reveals Long Odds for New Authors

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

J.K. Rowling wrote the detective novel "The Cuckoo’s Calling" under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

“The Cuckoo’s Calling” became the publishing sensation of the summer when word leaked that its first-time author, Robert Galbraith, was none other than J. K. Rowling, the mega-best-selling creator of Harry Potter.

Mystery solved? Maybe not. It’s no surprise that “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” a detective story set in a London populated by supermodels and rock stars, shot to the top of best-seller lists once the identity of the author was revealed. But if the book is as good as critics are now saying it is, why didn’t it sell more copies before, especially since the rise of online publishing has supposedly made it easier than ever for first-time authors?

“It makes me sad,” Roxanne Coady, founder of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., and the online retailer JustTheRightBook.com, told me last week from Maine, where she said she was sitting near a stack of unread new books. “Because not everyone turns out to be a J. K. Rowling. It reminds me how difficult it is for even good books to succeed.”

It’s not entirely clear why Ms. Rowling decided she wanted “to fly under the radar,” as she put it on the Robert Galbraith Web site, other than to say that “being Robert Galbraith has been all about the work, which is my favorite part of being a writer.” Writing under a pseudonym obviously ruled out any tedious book signings or publicity appearances, but Ms. Rowling doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.

And it wasn’t about money, since Ms. Rowling is donating all royalties to charity. “If sales were what mattered to me most, I would have written under my own name, and with the greatest fanfare,” she said. (A spokeswoman in London for Ms. Rowling responded to my questions by directing me to the Galbraith Web site, and said Ms. Rowling would have no further comment.)

Ms. Rowling’s last book, “The Casual Vacancy,” an adult comedy of manners published under her name and the first since the end of the Potter series, was met with high expectations and withering reviews from prominent critics. Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times, “the real-life world she has limned in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that ‘The Casual Vacancy’ is not only disappointing â€" it’s dull.” The Los Angeles Times faulted “Rowling’s inability to engage us, to invest us sufficiently in her characters.”

Still, with hardcover sales of just over 1.3 million copies, it was the No. 1 hardcover fiction title of 2012, according to Publishers Weekly’s annual ranking, outselling John Grisham, James Patterson and Danielle Steel.

Ms. Rowling may well have felt that the reaction, both critical and commercial, was distorted by her fame, and hence decided on a pseudonym for “The Cuckoo’s Calling.” It’s not clear exactly who was in on the secret: her agent, of course, and at least someone at Little, Brown & Company, her publisher, including her editor, who also edited “The Casual Vacancy.” (“The Cuckoo’s Calling” was published by Mulholland Books, a Little, Brown imprint.) “Few people within the publishing house knew the true identity of Robert at the time,” Nicole Dewey, a Little, Brown spokeswoman, told me, declining to be more specific about who knew.

But that already distorted the experiment to some extent. Given how difficult it is for first-time fiction authors, especially in a crowded genre like mystery, to find both an agent and publisher, it’s not clear “The Cuckoo’s Calling” would have made it off the slush piles. At least one other publisher, Orion Books, which like Little, Brown, is a subsidiary of the Hachette Book Group, rejected the manuscript. An editor there told The Telegraph in London that the book “didn’t stand out.”

In any event, a publishing contract is hardly a guarantee of critical or commercial success. Much depends on how a new manuscript is treated by the publisher. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove Atlantic, is widely viewed as a master at introducing new literary talent to the marketplace. He published “Cold Mountain” by then first-time novelist Charles Frazier, which went on to win the National Book Award and sell over 11 million copies.

“There’s no question, if a publisher decides to get behind a book, to invest its publishing capital, to use its traction with the chains, with Amazon, fight for the promotion money to get the book into the front of stores, you can do a lot to bring attention to a worthy first novel,” he said.

Mr. Entrekin cited “Matterhorn,” by first-time novelist Karl Marlantes, which he published in 2010. The author “worked on the book for over 20 years and couldn’t find a publisher,” Mr. Entrekin said. Then, as the book was about to be published in a tiny first edition, Mr. Entrekin got a copy from a buyer at Barnes & Noble, loved it, and bought out the first printing.

He re-edited it, cut 300 pages, got advance quotes from prominent authors, introduced the author to booksellers and hosted a media lunch in Manhattan. Amazon.com gave the book a glowing review, chose it as a best book of the month, and got an exclusive review from Mark Bowden, author of “Black Hawk Down.” “ ‘Matterhorn’ is a great novel,” his review began. It sold over 400,000 copies.

Robin Roberts Plans to Return Full Time to ‘Good Morning America’

One year after leaving ABC’s “Good Morning America” for a bone-marrow transplant, and six months after returning part time, Robin Roberts is ready to return full time as the show’s co-host.

“The day after Labor Day I’ll be back to a five-day-a-week schedule,” she said at an event this week celebrating the United States Open tennis tournament, surprising the reporters in attendance.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said, according to People magazine. “I want to get back to my full life.”

When asked about the change at “Good Morning America,” an ABC spokesman referred back to Ms. Roberts’s published remarks. Those comments came almost a year to the day when she signed off from the show, having been given a diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndromes, known as M.D.S., a rare and debilitating blood disorder; the bone-marrow transplant that saved her life took place in September.

While Ms. Roberts was on medical leave, two ABC anchors, Amy Robach and Elizabeth Vargas, were her main substitutes. They continued to fill in after Ms. Roberts returned to the morning program in February, because Ms. Roberts typically worked three or four days a week, adhering to her doctors’ advice about a gradual comeback.

All the while, “Good Morning America” has been riding high in the ratings; last week, the program celebrated a full year at No. 1, marking a generational change in morning television, a category that had been led by NBC’s “Today” show for 16 years.

The Comedy Lineup Expands on Netflix

When you’re Aziz Ansari, people come up to you pretty frequently and say they enjoyed your stand-up specials. The first one had its premiere on Comedy Central in 2010; the second had its debut as a $5 Internet download in 2012. And when you’re Mr. Ansari, you can’t help noticing what people say next.

Aziz Ansari’s “Buried Alive” begins on Netflix this fall.

“They always mention that they watched it on Netflix,” said Mr. Ansari, the 30-year-old comedian best known as a creator of the MTV sketch-comedy series “Human Giant” and a star of the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

Until now, Netflix has given Mr. Ansari’s fans one more chance to hear his jokes, months or years after the telling. For his third stand-up special, Mr. Ansari is moving Netflix to the front of the line. His show “Buried Alive,” based on his tour of the same name, will make its Netflix debut on Nov. 1. It will be the biggest stand-up special distributed by Netflix to date, in much the same way that “House of Cards” was that streaming service’s first high-profile original drama.

There’s more comedy coming, the company says, as it opens another front of competition with HBO. In announcing the expansion into comedy specials and feature documentaries last month, the Netflix chief executive, Reed Hastings, said that the service had “become a big destination for fans of these much loved and often underdistributed genres.”

Mr. Ansari’s conversations with his fans bolster Mr. Hastings’s assertion. Netflix “seems like it’s the closest delivery service of media we have that actually matches up to our preferences and expectations,” he said in a telephone interview during a break from “Parks and Recreation” production. (Lately he has been binge-viewing the ABC drama “Scandal” through Netflix.)

Mr. Ansari said he was amused when a fan asked him on Twitter: “When are you going to put out another stand-up special on Netflix? I need more free stand-up.” Netflix, of course, costs $8 a month. “It’s so convenient, you don’t even think about the fact that you’re paying for it,” Mr. Ansari said.

Netflix’s forays into licensing the first-run rights to television shows, much as a TV network does, are predicated on the belief that people are more likely to keep paying if the service has exclusive programming. In June, the service presented a comedy special by John Hodgman, and last week it presented the premiere of one by Mike Birbiglia, who wrote positively on Twitter of Netflix’s international reach: “I signed a crazy contract that I think included other planets.”

Netflix has comedy specials by Marc Maron and Kathleen Madigan in the works. Mr. Ansari’s show is unlike those before it, a Netflix spokeswoman said, because the company intends to put a significant promotional campaign behind “Buried Alive,” billing it as original programming on par with “Arrested Development” or “Orange Is the New Black.”

“We’ve been working to make Netflix a great home for comedians to do their best work and to support their live performance careers, and having Aziz debut his new show with us is a validation of that strategy,” Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix, said in an e-mail.

Mr. Ansari’s special was taped in Philadelphia in April. He said the material was “a lot more mature” than that in his previous specials, focusing on the differences between the friends his age who are getting married and having children, and himself, a commitment-phobic comedian. “All that stuff seems very far away for me,” he said. His first book, announced last week by the Penguin Press,  will tackle similar themes about single life, but with new material.

Mr. Ansari plans to release “Buried Alive” as a $5 download, but only after the Netflix premiere. The straight-to-fans strategy, pioneered by Louis C. K. in 2011, was successful for Mr. Ansari last year, he said, but its downside was obvious: “You’re kind of preaching to the choir.”

He added, as modestly as possible, “I have a pretty big choir.” But with the new special, he said, “my goal is to get people that don’t know my stuff already, and maybe expand my audience.”

That’s where Netflix comes in. The service has more than 30 million subscribers in the United States, and its algorithms for recommending shows keep improving. Mr. Ansari said that when he was at home using Netflix, his own shows are recommended to him all the time.

Unlike, say, passive viewers of Comedy Central, though, Netflix watchers requires at least a bit of action, which is a potential drawback for some. On Sunday Mr. Birbiglia told his Twitter followers that “apparently the only way to find” his Netflix special “is if you type in my last name.”

Mr. Ansari’s “Buried Alive” was filmed and edited before Netflix entered the picture. He said he bumped into Mr. Sarandos at an event in New York, and he commented on the popularity of Mr. Ansari’s past specials. That conversation led to the distribution deal. (Neither side would comment on the financial terms.)

“It’s an interesting time for someone to be releasing content,” Mr. Ansari said. “No one’s quite figured out things. You can do all types of things. At this moment, it really seems like Netflix is the way to go.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 29, 2013, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Comedy Lineup Expands on Netflix.

The TV Watch: Keith Olbermann’s Show Has Its Debut on ESPN2

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Bruce Dunning, CBS Correspondent, Dies at 73

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Times Site Is Disrupted in Attack by Hackers

The New York Times Web site was unavailable to readers on Tuesday afternoon after an online attack on the company’s domain name registrar. The attack also forced employees of The Times to take care in sending e-mails.

The hacking was just the latest of a major media organization, with The Financial Times and The Washington Post also having their operations disrupted within the last few months. It was also the second time this month that the Web site of The New York Times was unavailable for several hours.

Marc Frons, chief information officer for The New York Times Company, issued a statement at 4:20 p.m. on Tuesday warning employees that the disruption â€" which appeared to be affecting the Web site well into the evening â€" was “the result of a malicious external attack.” He advised employees to “be careful when sending e-mail communications until this situation is resolved.”

In an interview, Mr. Frons said the attack was carried out by a group known as “the Syrian Electronic Army, or someone trying very hard to be them.” The group attacked the company’s domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. The Web site first went down after 3 p.m.; once service was restored, the hackers quickly disrupted the site again. Shortly after 6 p.m., Mr. Frons said that “we believe that we are on the road to fixing the problem.”

The Syrian Electronic Army is a group of hackers who support President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Matt Johansen, head of the Threat Research Center at White Hat Security, posted on Twitter that he was directed to a Syrian Web domain when he tried to view The Times’s Web site.

Until now, The Times has been spared from being hacked by the S.E.A., but on Aug. 15, the group attacked The Washington Post’s Web site through a third-party service provided by a company called Outbrain. At the time, the S.E.A. also tried to hack CNN.

Just a day earlier, The Times’s Web site was down for several hours. The Times cited technical problems and said there was no indication the site had been hacked.

The S.E.A. first emerged in May 2011, during the first Syrian uprisings, when it started attacking a wide array of media outlets and nonprofits and spamming popular Facebook pages like President Obama’s and Oprah Winfrey’s with pro-Assad comments. Their goal, they said, was to offer a pro-government counternarrative to media coverage of Syria.

The group, which also disrupted The Financial Times in May, has consistently denied ties to the government and has said it does not target Syrian dissidents, but security researchers and Syrian rebels say they are not convinced. They say the group is the outward-facing campaign of a much quieter surveillance campaign focused on Syrian dissidents and are quick to point out that Mr. Assad once referred to the S.E.A. as “a real army in a virtual reality.”

In a post on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, the S.E.A. also said it had hacked the administrative contact information for Twitter’s domain name registry records. According to Whois.com, the S.E.A. was listed on the entries for Twitter’s administrative name, technical name and e-mail address.

Twitter said that at 4:49 p.m., the domain name records for one image server, twimg.com, were modified, affecting the viewing of images and photos for some users. By 6:29 p.m. the company said, it had regained control, although as of early evening, some users were still reporting problems receiving images.

The social networking company, based in San Francisco, said no user information had been affected.

Mr. Frons said the attacks on Twitter and The New York Times required significantly more skill than the string of S.E.A. attacks on media outlets earlier this year, when the group attacked Twitter accounts for dozens of outlets including The Associated Press. Those attacks caused the stock market to plunge after the group planted false tales of explosions at the White House.

“In terms of the sophistication of the attack, this is a big deal,” Mr. Frons said. “It’s sort of like breaking into the local savings and loan versus breaking into Fort Knox. A domain registrar should have extremely tight security because they are holding the security to hundreds if not thousands of Web sites.”

Vindu Goel contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on August 28, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Times Site Is Disrupted In Attack By Hackers.

Fandango Acquires a Rival in Movie Tickets

LOS ANGELES â€" Fandango, the fast-growing online seller of movie tickets, has swallowed a rival company that runs Hollywood Movie Money, a popular gift-certificate system that studios use to promote DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Fandango’s acquisition of the company, Quantum Loyalty Solutions, catapults the online ticket seller deep into a backwater of the movie business, but a lucrative backwater nonetheless, said Paul Yanover, Fandango’s president.

“It’s a great accelerator for us,” he said.

Studios pay Quantum a fee to handle the distribution and redemption of promotional (usually, free) tickets to movies, which are often used to bolster sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. One recent offer: Buy “Monsters Inc.” on Blu-ray and get free tickets to “Monsters University.”

Fandango, which makes money by charging a processing fee for online ticket sales and by selling advertising on its Web site, has long worked to build a voucher business and has made some inroads. But Quantum has been a strong competitor, relying on longstanding relationships with studios and theater owners to resist Fandango’s push into its territory.

Quantum has a theater network that includes 36,897 screens. Fandango, which is part of NBC Universal, handles ticketing for about 21,000 screens.

Officer Is Indicted on Charges of Lying About Photographer's Arrest

A New York City police officer who had arrested a photographer working for The New York Times has been indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors accusing him of fabricating the reasons for the arrest, the Bronx district attorney announced on Monday.

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Red Burns, ‘Godmother of Silicon Alley,' Dies at 88

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Red Burns, founder of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University.

Red Burns, an educator who gained wide recognition for pushing for more creative uses of modern communications, helping to lead the movement for public access to cable television and starting a celebrated New York University program to foster Internet wizards, died on Friday at her Manhattan home. She was 88.

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National Briefing | Washington: Prosecutors Press Subpoena for Times Reporter in Leak Case

Prosecutors Press Subpoena for Times Reporter in Leak Case

The Justice Department on Monday asked a full federal appeals court not to hear arguments from lawyers for a New York Times reporter, James Risen, whom prosecutors have subpoenaed to testify in a criminal leak case against a former C.I.A. officer, Jeffrey Sterling. A three-judge panel of the appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled in July that reporters have no special privilege to avoid testifying about their sources and that Mr. Risen, who prosecutors say used Mr. Sterling as a source for a 2006 book on the C.I.A., would have to testify. Mr. Risen's lawyers asked the full 15-judge court to reconsider the case, but the Justice Department argued in Monday's filing that the ruling was correct and that no further hearing was justified.

A version of this brief appears in print on August 27, 2013, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Prosecutors Press Subpoena For Reporter In Leak Case.

Remote Control: To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense

To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense

Richard Perry/The New York Times

A control room at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., focusing on Internet operations, mobile devices and other technology.

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National Briefing | Washington: Prosecutors Press Subpoena for Times Reporter in Leak Case

Prosecutors Press Subpoena for Times Reporter in Leak Case

The Justice Department on Monday asked a full federal appeals court not to hear arguments from lawyers for a New York Times reporter, James Risen, whom prosecutors have subpoenaed to testify in a criminal leak case against a former C.I.A. officer, Jeffrey Sterling. A three-judge panel of the appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled in July that reporters have no special privilege to avoid testifying about their sources and that Mr. Risen, who prosecutors say used Mr. Sterling as a source for a 2006 book on the C.I.A., would have to testify. Mr. Risen’s lawyers asked the full 15-judge court to reconsider the case, but the Justice Department argued in Monday’s filing that the ruling was correct and that no further hearing was justified.

A version of this brief appears in print on August 27, 2013, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Prosecutors Press Subpoena For Reporter In Leak Case.

Remote Control: To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense

To Protect Its Empire, ESPN Stays on Offense

Richard Perry/The New York Times

A control room at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., focusing on Internet operations, mobile devices and other technology. Aided by billions of dollars from cable TV fees, ESPN has grown into the most dominant force in sports media.

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Olbermann Set to Return to ESPN and Sports News

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A Calculated Push Into Entertainment Lifts ‘Duck Dynasty\' Family\'s Fortunes

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Advertising: A Small Upstart to Oversee Ad Agencies

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Spit-Take in Hollywood at Dog Treat Promotion

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The Media Equation: War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist

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News From the Advertising Industry

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M.L.B. Media Company Buys Rights to Live Concert

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Remote Control: At Louisville, Athletic Boom Is Rooted in ESPN Partnership

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Webdenda: Accounts and People of Note in the Ad Industry

Accounts and People of Note in the Ad Industry

Victor Acosta joined the Los Angeles office of Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener in a new post, associate planning director. He had been a senior strategic planner at David & Goliath, Los Angeles.

Belk, Charlotte, N.C., the department store chain, chose Harmelin Media, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., as its agency for broadcast media buying. Billings were not disclosed. The assignment had previously been handled by Mindshare, part of the GroupM unit of WPP.

CBS Films, Los Angeles, part of the CBS Corporation, consolidated its media account at Starcom USA, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe. The agency, which already handles planning and buying for CBS Films in traditional media, was also awarded the assignment for planning and buying in digital media; billings were not disclosed. The digital assignment had previously been handled by the Los Angeles office of Media Storm, part of the Water Cooler Group.

Todd Cullen joined Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, New York, part of WPP, as global chief data officer. He assumes duties from Dimitri Maex, who after establishing the agency's worldwide data and analytics practice was promoted to managing director at OgilvyOne New York, part of the OgilvyOne division of Ogilvy & Mather. Mr. Cullen had most recently been vice president for global data products at Acxiom, Little Rock, Ark.

Tyler Easterling, vice president and director for account management at the Brandon Agency, Myrtle Beach, S.C., was named chief operating officer. She assumes duties from Erin Barrett, who had been chief operating officer and director for public relations; Ms. Barrett is now vice president and director for public relations.

Espresso, San Francisco, was introduced by Ogilvy Public Relations, part of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide division of WPP, to specialize in public relations for start-up companies and fledgling brands.

Sarah Foss joined the New York office of Yangaroo as president. She succeeds Karen Dealy, who left, the company said, for personal reasons. Ms. Foss had been executive vice president for sales and client services at Encompass Digital Media, New York.

Fusion - the cable channel being introduced by the ABC News division of ABC, part of the Walt Disney Company, and Univision Communications - named its first advertising sales team. They are Jose Castaneda, account executive for Fusion sales; Noreen Iqbal, director for Fusion planning and pricing; Mark Olsen, vice president for Fusion sales; and Jay Williams, account executive for Fusion sales.

Jeff Gunderman, senior vice president and general manager at Eye Mall Media (USA), New York, part of Ten Network Holdings, was named to a new post, president.

Michael Hannon joined TechMedia Network, New York, in a new post, vice president for yield and revenue optimization. He had been general manager for the real-time buying exchange and advertising operations at PulsePoint.

Mary Kay, Addison, Tex., agreed to be the 2014 client sponsor of the 41st annual National Student Advertising Competition that is to take place during the annual national conference of the American Advertising Federation, which is scheduled for May 28-30 in Boca Raton, Fla. Each year, a major advertiser agrees to sponsor the competition, and the participating college and university students develop marketing campaigns for that sponsor. Recent previous sponsors include Glidden paint, Nissan, J. C. Penney and State Farm.

Corey Mitchell joined Arnold Worldwide, part of the Havas Creative division of Havas, as president for its New York operation. He succeeds Lynn Power, who resigned, the agency said. Mr. Mitchell had most recently been executive vice president and managing director at MRM Worldwide, part of the McCann Worldgroup unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Nature's Way, Green Bay, Wis., selected Dailey, West Hollywood, Calif., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, to handle duties for its Alive brand of multivitamins that include brand strategy, creative work, media and Web site development. Billings were not disclosed; recent annual spending was estimated at $20 million. The assignment had been handled by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group.

Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com.

Q. This is in reference to your story last week about a campaign for a new cat food from Merrick Pet Care with a food blog “written” by a feline critic named W. (Mittens) Bloomfield, an acerbic American Shorthair. It reminds me of a proposed cat food commercial created by some wit that featured a mouse as the presenter. The last line was, “After all, I am cat food.” It was not produced, Stuart.

I was at Grey. I think it was by a copywriter who held another job at a different agency. Mornings at Grey. Afternoons at the other agency. He also set up a Vietnamese boutique in Greenwich Village. This was 1965, so that's something.

I think he finally left the business and set up a direct mail operation selling things like taps for shoes. I heard he got rich. But that was a long time ago in a land far away. The ad biz was a bit wacky in those days.

A. Thanks, dear reader, for the stroll down memory lane. I hope your anecdote will inspire a plot thread for a forthcoming episode of “Mad Men.”

Q. A cat critic named W. (Mittens) Bloomfield? I would have named him Addison DeMittens!

A. Thanks, dear reader, for the tip of the hat to one of my all-time favorite movies, “All About Eve,” and one of my all-time favorite characters, an acerbic theater critic named Addison DeWitt, played by George Sanders.

One of the film's best lines comes when DeWitt offers a newspaper to Karen Richards, played by Celeste Holm. “Why not read my column to pass the time?” he asks. “The minutes will fly like hours.”

Campaign Spotlight: Never Mind Citi Bike, Here\'s Campus Bike

Never Mind Citi Bike, Here's Campus Bike

A bicycle giveaway and bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions.

In 1892, a song celebrated “a bicycle built for two.” More than a century later, a campaign for a university is upping the ante with an offer of bicycles built for a hundred.

The University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio, is promising 100 incoming freshmen free bikes in exchange for pledges to forgo bringing cars to campus for the first two years they are enrolled. The program was being promoted to the freshmen members of the Class of 2017 in a campaign by an agency named 160 Over 90, which is based in Philadelphia and also has an office in Newport Beach, Calif.

The campaign has included a section of the university's Web site and postcards inserted in admission packets. The students were asked a teaser question, “When is two greater than four?”; those whose curiosities were piqued could learn more about the program, which was portrayed as “protecting the planet two wheels at a time.”

The free bicycles, which the University of Dayton is purchasing from a company named Linus Bike, complement an initiative that the school began two years ago, offering students a chance to participate in a bicycle-sharing program. (The freshmen receiving the free bikes are not obliged to share them, but it is expected that many will do so, at least occasionally.)

The 100 first-year students who have won the Linus bikes were chosen from 293 who submitted pledges, out of about 1,600 eligible incoming freshmen. (The Class of 2017 totals close to 1,900 students, of whom around 300 are from outside the United States and would not be bringing cars to campus; they did not receive the information about the free bikes in their admission packets.)

Both the bicycle giveaway and the bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions. The private Roman Catholic university, founded in 1850 by the Society of Mary, has three principles in its mission statement, one of which is “the common good.”

The campaign, with a total budget estimated at $90,000, is emblematic of the increasing efforts by colleges and universities to differentiate themselves through advertising and marketing. The goals of such campaigns include recruiting students, assuring the parents of those students that their children have made the right choice, encouraging alumni to make donations and seeking new faculty members.

Just how competitive the higher-education category is getting was reinforced by an ad in the Sept. 2/9 issue of The Nation magazine, which asks, “What if the best education in America was in Canada?” The ad encourages residents of the United States to attend the University of British Columbia.

“We all basically say the same thing: ‘We have excellent students. We have excellent faculty. All our graduates are successful,'” says Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at the University of Dayton.

The ads “might as well be” for “the University of Utopia,” he adds.

As a result, “we need to differentiate who we are in a cluttered market,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, adding that even before he began in his job, in November 2006, “I clearly knew U.D. needed to tell its story.”

That led to a decision he made in the first month on the job, he adds, to hire 160 Over 90, which has also created ads for colleges and universities like Loyola University Maryland, Michigan State University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

As a Marianist university, “we are very humble about who we are,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, so in considering how to promote the university, “we said, ‘How do we brag about being humble?'”

The idea soon emerged that “we don't want to tell people who we are,” he adds. “We want to show people who we are, in tangible ways.”

The first project for the university from the agency was a view book that “created so much stir in the higher education marketplace,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, describing how its cover read, “Do you know more about Lindsay Lohan than Darfur?”

“It was a modern way, a contemporary way, of bringing” prospective students, many of whom are 17 years old, “into the conversation,” he adds.

Another example Mr. Kumarasamy offers is a 36-foot interactive wall at the university's visitors center, which is designed to be engaging as well as illustrate the concept of community.

“The more people go toward the wall, the more it'll reveal the full picture” of the University of Dayton, he adds, and “when nobody engages,” there is nothing to see.

The bike giveaway is intended to “demonstrate our commitment to sustainability,” Mr. Kumarasamy says. “We don't just tell you to be environmentally friendly.”

“The one thing we always say is that what we do has to be true to our mission, extend the value and commitment of our brand,” he adds.

Advertising: A Soft Sell for Air Fresheners, With Joan Rivers in Reality Show Spoofs

A Soft Sell for Air Fresheners, With Joan Rivers in Reality Show Spoofs

Joan Rivers and her daughter, Melissa, with a crowd of faux suitors in a scene from the Web series "Romancing the Joan" for Renuzit air fresheners.

CAN a frank, bawdy comedian and her equally outspoken daughter find happiness selling air fresheners? And can a maker of air fresheners find happiness with such seemingly unlikely pitchwomen? When the product-peddling aspects of the advertising can be soft-pedaled - as now occurs increasingly on Madison Avenue, in a trend known as content marketing - the answer may be “yes.”

The comedian is Joan Rivers, who, with her daughter, Melissa Rivers, are to appear in a series of humorous online video clips that promote the Renuzit line of air fresheners sold by Henkel. The seven planned episodes of the Web series will spoof “The Bachelorette” and other romance-centric reality competition shows on television by presenting 18 hunky young men competing for a chance to date Joan Rivers, who is advised during her “journey” - the Web series mockingly appropriates the trappings of its target - by her daughter.

The Web series, titled “Romancing the Joan,” serves up vintage Rivers, both mother and daughter, playing up the laughs as it plays down the commercial aspects. In one episode, Joan Rivers describes a romantic moment as being “like ‘Eyes Wide Shut,' but with heterosexual tension.” In another episode, she confides, “If the doctor had left my tear ducts, I'd be crying now.”

Melissa Rivers, for her part, canoodles with a contestant behind her mother's back, warns Joan during the penultimate episode that “we need to have a finale, or we don't get paid” and reminds the contestants: “We're sponsored by an air freshener. It's on your call sheets.”

“Romancing the Joan,” with a budget estimated at $1.5 million, is being created and produced for Renuzit by SheKnows, a publisher of Web sites like SheKnows, allParenting and Chef Mom. SheKnows has previously developed online series for marketers like Canon, LG, Procter & Gamble and Welch's.

“Romancing the Joan” is intended to complement conventional ads for Renuzit, carrying the theme “Choose them all,” to be introduced soon by Pereira & O'Dell, an agency in San Francisco. In those ads, each of the 18 Renuzit scents appears next to a hunky young man; “Romancing the Joan” turns each hunky contestant into a personification of a scent like After the Rain Ryan, Hawaiian Oasis Heath and Raspberry Richard.

SheKnows and Renuzit were brought together by the brand's media agency, OMD, part of the Omnicom Group, which has been a prominent player in the content marketing realm. Content marketing, also known as branded content, pairs products and media companies for ads that are primarily meant to be entertaining or informative, seeking to avoid the hard-sell tactics that turn off most consumers.

“It seemed like a natural fit,” said Jeff Huffman, director for air care marketing and innovation at the Henkel Consumer Goods unit of Henkel in Scottsdale, Ariz., because the participation of Joan and Melissa Rivers “could really help us create some buzz.”

Also, Ms. Rivers “overindexes against our air-care target,” he added, which, translated from marketing-speak, means that the consumers at whom Henkel aims Renuzit ads watch episodes of TV series like “Fashion Police” and “Joan Knows Best” more than the general population.

There was “a lot of learning, a lot of late-night conversations” involved in the Web series, Mr. Huffman said, “but it was well worth it at the end.” That was partly because Henkel had to “release a little bit of creative control,” he added, and partly because the contents of the videos are “a little more racy” than the company is used to.

Still, “we're comfortable with it,” Mr. Huffman said, because “we knew going into it that it's Joan's persona, that she'd be pushing the boundaries.”

“She is who she is, a feisty 80-year-old lady who works very hard,” he added. “A tame Joan would come off as not Joan, and not authentic.”

Samantha Skey, chief revenue officer at the New York office of SheKnows, said: “As brands make more branded content, they'll be a little more comfortable with the funny. We hope it works; it'll allow us to make cooler content.”

“The spoofing of reality TV and the playing with pop-culture memes should help achieve the brand objective, to cut through and get a wide audience,” Ms. Skey said.

Teasers to promote “Romancing the Joan” are to begin appearing this week in social media. The initial two episodes of the Web series are to make their debut on sheknows.com on Sept. 9, with all seven - about 38 minutes, in total - to run by Sept. 30.

Joan Rivers said she was pleased with how “Romancing the Joan” turned out because she and Melissa “could be ourselves” and “they spared no expense; they didn't cheese out on anything.”

Joan Rivers also praised how, with content marketing, the sponsor is “not slapping you over the head” with a sales spiel. Her daughter echoed her, saying: “It's branded content, but the operative word is ‘content.' That makes it more fun.”

Speaking of fun, Joan Rivers left several voice messages on a reporter's work phone because, she explained, “you might want some jokes” to accompany this article.

Most of what she said was too liberally peppered with sex for a family newspaper, but what follows are a couple of the cleaner jests. She said she wanted to be on a dating show “because all the guys I meet on Grindr are gay,” referring to the dating app for gay men.

“I'm just looking for a couple hours of fun and a new safe word,” she added.