Nearly 8 Million Tuned to \'Downton\' Premiere

Preliminary ratings for the third season premiere of “Downton Abbey” suggest that the show has done something remarkable: catapulted PBS into the same league as commercial broadcasters like ABC and NBC, at least for a night.

With 7.9 million viewers, the premiere on Sunday night “quadrupled the average PBS prime time rating and exceeded the average rating of the second season premiere of Â"'Downton AbbeyÂ"' by 96 percent,” PBS and a member station, WGBH, said in a news release on Monday.

The high viewership indicates two things: that many fans of the first two seasons tolerated the delay of months between the British premiere of the third season and the American premiere and that positive press for the show has generated new fans.

While “Downton Abbey” was on, PBS outrated Fox, ABC and NBC, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. (CBS still ranked No. 1 for the night with episodes of “The Good Wife” with 10 million viewers and “The Men talist” with 10.7 million.)

” ‘Â"Downton AbbeyÂ'' continues to enthrall audiences nationwide, and this season is especially riveting with the addition of Shirley MacLaine to the cast and the lively interaction between her and Maggie Smith,Â"” Paula Kerger, chief executive of PBS, said in a statement. Â"”I'm so pleased that audiences have returned to ‘Â'Downton AbbeyÂ'' on their local stations to continue to enjoy some of the best drama on television.Â"”

Coming Soon to Online Streaming: Led Zeppelin

In the 1960s and '70s, Led Zeppelin's tough negotiations with record companies and concert promoters helped transform the music industry. Now the band is poised to make a change to the industry's latest hot sector: online subscription services.

The band is in negotiations with a number of subscription services for the right to stream “Whole Lotta Love,” “Stairway to Heaven” and the rest of the band's classic catalog. If it does reach a deal, the band - one of the biggest-selling acts in history - could help legitimize the subscription market, which has been slow to build a large customer base.

“We're excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Led Zeppelin to activate streaming rights for their catalog,” a spokesman for the Warner Music Group, the band's longtime record label, said in a statement. “We're supportive of the band's discussions with W.M.G.'s streaming service partners to create a window of exclusivity to maximize the impact of t his launch.”

Among the companies in potential competition for the exclusive rights are Spotify, Rhapsody and Rdio, along with Deezer, which began in France and is interested in the American market. Depending on which service gets the deal, the band's presence could tip the competitive scales between them, putting a leader like Spotify far ahead or giving a needed boost to a smaller company like Rdio.

Because their catalogs are largely the same, the major subscription services compete on features like playlists and social integration, and also for exclusive content. Last year, the Red Hot Chili Peppers made an exclusive deal with Spotify, but many of the others now have the band's music as well. Metallica announced an exclusive deal with Spotify last month. These deals often come with marketing commitments as well as royalty advances, which for a band of Led Zeppelin's stature could be substantial.

Led Zeppelin has sold more than 111 million albums in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and, with listening to its heavy guitars and whomping drums still a teenage rite, its catalog has held on to strong sales. Last year, the band sold about 840,000 albums in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The band was relatively slow to adapt to digital music, holding out until 2007 to sell its music on iTunes. But while few major holdouts remain in the download market - one of the last, AC/DC, finally came to iTunes late last year - streaming services remain frightening territory to some of the music industry's biggest names.

The Beatles, the Eagles, Pink Floyd and AC/DC are among the older stars mostly absent from streaming services. Many younger acts, like Taylor Swift and Adele, have withheld their latest music from streaming - at least for a time - to protect more lucrative download and CD sales.

Media Company Taps N.F.L. Executive as President

BermanBraun, a fast-growing digital media/television/movie company, just scored a touchdown: Jeff Berman, a respected executive at the National Football League, will become the entertainment company's first president.

Mr. Berman (no relation to Gail Berman, who founded the company with Lloyd Braun) oversaw the N.F.L.'s extensive Web, mobile, social and nonconsole-gaming efforts.

BermanBraun operates Wonderwall.com (15 million unique users a month) and a growing roster of other lifestyle sites. Its television shows include the new NBC series “Deception,” which has its premiere on Monday night.

Although Ms. Berman and Mr. Braun have run the company without a president so far, business has grown to the degree that they needed a senior lieutenant.

Canceled ABC Soaps to be Reborn on the Web

LOS ANGELES â€" After some classic soap opera twists â€" union spats, outraged fans, squishy financing â€" a Hollywood production company, Prospect Park, on Monday confirmed that the canceled “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” would live on in cyberspace. For real this time.

Prospect Park, run by Jeff Kwatinetz, said production would resume in February on the serial dramas, both of which ended epic runs in recent months after ABC decided the costly programs had dim futures. When new episodes will be made available â€" via theOnlineNetwork.com â€" is not clear. Mr. Kwatinetz and his business partner, Rich Frank, also declined to say which cast members might return.

But Prospect Park has solved the union and financing problems that torpedoed the soap-saving effort after it was first announced last fall. The company on Monday confirmed that new agreements are in place with the major actors' union, SAG-AFTRA, and with the Directors Guild of America.

The “necessary financing” is also set, as is the involvement of Agnes Nixon, the creator of both soaps. The Online Network also named three other senior executives.

This is about more than saving soap operas, which have a relatively small but intensely loyal fan base. It is a bold bet that the Web - because of the proliferation of broadband, Internet-enabled TVs and the iPad - is now a practical way to funnel traditional shows to viewers.

If the popularity of streamed 30-minute and 60-minute shows on Netflix and Hulu is any indication, consumers are ready to move beyond using the Web for bite-size video, Mr. Kwatinetz and Mr. Rich are gambling.

A New Face Takes Over for Zucker on \'Katie\'

Michael Morrison started work on Monday as the new executive producer of “Katie,” the syndicated talk show hosted by Katie Couric.

Mr. Morrison is the replacement for Jeff Zucker, who was named the new president of CNN Worldwide back in November. Mr. Zucker wrapped up his work on “Katie” at the end of December. He officially starts work at CNN later this month.

A spokeswoman for the show confirmed Mr. Morrison's appointment on Monday. Mr. Morrison was the producer of “The Martha Stewart Show,” which was televised by the Hallmark Channel before being canceled last year. He also produced Ms. Stewart's “Cooking School” program for PBS recently. Previously Mr. Morrison has worked at A&E, Warner Bros. and NBC.

At “Katie,” he is inheriting the most successful new daytime talk show of the television season. The show has averaged 2.46 million viewers since its premiere in September, easily beating other new entrants like “The Steve Harvey Sh ow” and “The Jeff Probst Show.” The talk show has not been renewed for a second season yet, but probably will be soon.

Ms. Couric is the other executive producer of “Katie.” There are two co-executive producers, Michael Bass and Kathy Samuels.

Sony and BMG Are Said to Team Up on Bid for EMI

Sony and BMG, onetime partners in one of the music world's biggest mergers, are teaming up again on a bid to buy - and then divide between themselves - some of the recorded music assets of EMI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks between the companies.

The EMI assets are being sold by the Universal Music Group, which last year took the company over for $1.9 billion but is being required by the European Union to dispose of about a third of it to preserve competition.

The EMI labels up for sale include Parlophone, with acts like Coldplay and the Gorillaz, along with EMI's extensive classical catalog and other labels and subsidiaries across Europe. Universal is said to be seeking at least $650 million for the divestments, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Sony and BMG - which merged in 2004, then split up four years later when Sony bought out BMG's share - have agreed to submit a bid together in the EMI auction, but the two companies will not be forming another joint venture. Instead, if they are successful, EMI's divested assets would be split up even further, with Sony taking some and BMG taking others.

A spokesman for BMG declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The news of the partnership was first reported by The Financial Times.

In its latest incarnation, BMG is known as BMG Rights Management, and is a joint venture between the German media giant Bertelsmann, its original parent, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. BMG Rights has quickly built up a major music publishing empire, with a cat alog of more than one million songs, but it has also shown interest in recorded music. Last month it bought the back catalog of the Mute label, another part of the EMI auction, with music by Depeche Mode and Moby.

The auction for EMI's recorded music assets is still in its early stages. Among the parties said to be interested in bidding are the Warner Music Group; Ronald Perelman's company, MacAndrews & Forbes; and the team of Simon Fuller, the founder of “American Idol,” and Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records.

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

A Marquee B.C.S. Matchup? To Be Determined

Monday's Bowl Championship Series title game is attracting a significant amount of attention from fans and the news media. Google searches for the terms “BCS Championship Game” and “BCS Title Game” are on
pace to be about twice as high as they were last year. Senior executives at ESPN, which will televise the game, are openly speculating that the contest could challenge ratings records - perhaps matching the mark set in 2006, when the game between Texas and U.S.C. attracted a 21.7 Nielsen rating.

There are reasons for television executives to be excited. Notre Dame ranks as the fourth-most popular football program in the country, and Alabama as the eighth, according to an analysis I conducted in 2011. And the game could provide Notre Dame with its first national championship since 1988, in a year in which it began the season unranked in the Associated Press poll.

If you strip away the uniforms and the back story, however, the game looks only average by B.C.S. title standards. Six times in the past the two teams that competed for the title each entered the game undefeated, something which is not true this year. (Alabama lost to Texas A&M in November.)

And Notre Dame, though it has come through in the clutch so far, has not looked dominant, having won five of its games by a touchdown or less, including two wins in overtime. Its average margin of victory this season has been 16 points, considerably less than the 36-point average victory margin that Texas achieved before playing in the 2006 B.C.S. Championship at the Rose Bowl, or the 29-point winning margin t hat U.S.C. had on average that same season.

Another way to measure team strength is through computer power rankings, such as those developed by Jeff Sagarin for USA Today. The “predictor” version of Mr. Sagarin's ratings, which account for margin of victory, are considered more reliable by bookmakers than those that evaluate wins and losses alone. (Mr. Sagarin produces a separate version of his ratings for use in the official B.C.S. formula, which forbids the use of margin-of-victory calculations.)

Notre Dame has a 93.3 rating according to Mr. Sagarin, lower than the average rating of 97.1 for teams to play in the B.C.S. Championship Game since its inception in 1999. This is partly because its strength of schedule has been only average, ranking 27th in the country, according to Mr. Sagarin. (Notre Dame scheduled aggressively, but some of its traditional rivals l ike Purdue and Boston College had down years.) Alabama has a higher rating, 98.9, despite having taken a loss on the year; they are also 10-point favorites at some sports books in Las Vegas.

The teams' combined rating, 192.2, ranks in the middle of the pack historically. By contrast, Texas and U.S.C. combined for a 207.9 rating in the 2005-6 season, the highest figure in the history of the B.C.S. title game.

(The chart below provides Sagarin ratings for past B.C.S. title game participants. Because the historical versions of Mr. Sagarin's ratings available online were calculated at the end of the season - that is, after the B.C.S. title game was played - I have adjusted them by taking out the scoring margin in the championship itself so as to approximate what they would have been in advance of the game.)

Fortunately for Notre Dame, the computers and bookmakers are not always right. The Las Vegas betting favorite is just 8-6 historically in the B.C.S. title game, and two teams (Miami in 2003 and Oklahoma in 2001) won despite being underdogs by 10 points or more.

Instead, the best determinant of television ratings for the B.C.S. Championship has simply been what the teams did once they got onto the field. In order for this year's game to live up to its advanced billing, it will very probably need to remain competitive through all four quarters, as the U.S.C.-Texas game did in 2006.

One simple way to measure the competitiveness of a football game is to take the average margin separating the teams after each of the four quarters. This helps to distinguish games that are competitive throughout from those in which the trailing team scores a meaningless touchdown or two late in the game to bring the margin superficially closer.

According to this measure, the least competitive games in the B.C.S. championship came in 2002, when Miami took a 34-0 lead over Nebraska in the second quarter and never looked back, and in 2005, when U.S.C. crushed Oklahoma 55-19. Both matchups had seemed attractive enough on paper. But these wound up being the two lowest-rated games in B.C.S. title history, registering Nielsen ratings of 13.8 and 13.7. In contrast, the six B.C.S title games where the score margin averaged less than a touchdown throughout the game had 17.5 ratings on average, about 25 percent higher.

Part of the attraction of this year's game is that, despite being the nominal No. 1 seed, Notre Dame ente rs the championship as underdogs - certainly in the view of Las Vegas bookies and computer programs like Mr. Sagarin's, but also in the mind of most football fans who have seen Southeastern Conference teams (including Alabama) romp to six national championships in a row. If Notre Dame is able to keep pace with Alabama, the game should be remembered as a classic. But underdog stories that end in a 55-19 or 34-0 defeat don't usually hold their audience's attention.

Two Custom-Publishing Powerhouses Join Forces

Two companies that are leaders in the custom publishing industry â€" producing publications at the behest of marketers â€" are being combined under the aegis of a New York-based private equity firm.

The companies are McMurry, based in Phoenix, and TMG Custom Media, based in Washington and once known as the Magazine Group. They are merging in a transaction being overseen by the investment firm, the Wicks Group of Companies, which is taking a significant majority stake in the combined company, to be named McMurry/TMG.

Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. The combined McMurry/TMG will have annual revenue of almost $100 million, Wicks said, and 270 employees. McMurry/TMG will be based in New York, where each of the two companies now has an office.

The deal to create McMurry/TMG is being formally announced on Monday morning, although details began leaking on Friday.

Chris McMurry, who had been chief executive at McMurry, and the founders of TMG Custom Media, Richard Creighton and Jane Ottenberg, will own minority interests in McMurry/TMG. They will be involved in the combined company, Wicks said. Their new posts or roles were not specified.

Custom publishing is a venerable industry, known in the past primarily for the creation and distribution of magazines on behalf of automakers, lodging chains and retailers. But it is being revitalized as part of a trend as advertisers increasingly become involved in the creation of content aimed at consumers, known as content marketing.

For instance, a food service marketer, US Foods, recently hired a custom publishing company, Imagination, to create a quarterly aimed at consumers, and at restaurant owners and operators, the traditional target audience for US Foods.

Not only are the advertisers that pay for the custom publications taking larger roles in the process, the publications are going beyond print into realms like digital, mobile, social media and video. For example, the US Foods quarterly, called Food Fanatics, has a Web site and a presence in social media and is also available as a PDF.

“We see a real shift going on from traditional advertising to a content-driven strategy,” Dan Kortick, managing partner at Wicks, said in a phone interview on Friday.

“It's more about engagement than exposure,” Mr. Kortick said, as content marketing offers “real engagement with your customer base.”

Mr. Kortick acknowledged that his observation about engagement versus exposure came from Matthew Petersen, who had been president at TMG Custom Media. Mr. Petersen becomes chief executive at McMurry/TMG.

“We have reached out to a great number of the clients” of TMG Custom Media and McMurry, Mr. Petersen said on Friday, “and we are confident they will embrace the combined entity and the increased capabilities we bring to them.”

Clients of McMurry, which began in 1984, include CBS Television, part of the CBS Corporation; Ritz-Carlton, part of Marriott International; and United Parcel Service. Clients of TMG Custom Media, which dates to 1981, include CDW and WebMD.

Fred Petrovsky, who had been president at McMurry, is becoming chief operating officer at McMurry/TMG. Keith Sedlak, who had been senior vice president for client partnerships at TMG Custom Media, becomes chief revenue officer at the combined company.

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, which specializes in fields like media, represented TMG Custom Media and McMurry in the transaction. Wicks, which invests in companies in fields like media, information and education, was advised by AMR International.

The Breakfast Meeting: A Digital Kingdom and the Future of TVs

Walt Disney World plans to begin introducing a vacation management system called MyMagic+ in the coming months that will drastically change the way Disney World visitors - some 30 million people a year - do just about everything. Visitors will wear rubber bracelets encoded with credit card information allowing them to buy everything from corn dogs to Mickey Mouse ears with a tap of the wrist. Smartphone alerts will signal when it is time to ride Space Mountain without standing in line. The ambitious plan, as Brooks Barnes reports, moves Disney deeper into the hotly debated terrain of personal data collection. Like most major companies, Disney wants to have as much information about its customers' preferences as it can get, so it can appeal to them more efficiently. The company already collects data to use in future sa les campaigns, but parts of MyMagic+ will allow Disney to track guest behavior in minute detail for the first time.

The future of the television will be on display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where television makers like Samsung, Sony, LG and Panasonic will try to grab the attention of convention attendees otherwise occupied with the latest smartphones, laptops and tablets. To answer the challenge, the television makers will display new products with supersize screens and quadrupled levels of detail in their images. As Brian X. Chen reports, the manufacturers will also continue to push the idea of “smart” sets by adding applications and other interactive elements. For the electronics industry, the television is an important but increasingly difficult product to sell.

Obs cure cable channels are feeling the heat from major cable distributors that increasingly are talking about dropping underperforming channels from their lineups. As Brian Stelter reports, distributors have talked for years about belt-tightening, but two things are different now: potential Web competitors are creeping up and programming costs are soaring, particularly for sports channels and broadcasters. Independently owned channels are more imperiled than low-rated channels owned by media conglomerates like the Walt Disney Company and Viacom. VH1 Classic and ESPNU are not going away any time soon, but on New Year's Day, Verizon FiOS yanked Youtoo TV, a fledgling channel that features videos submitted by viewers, and Time Warner Cable dropped Ovation, which bills itself a s an arts and culture channel. At the same time, in a move criticized by the programmers of some low-rated channels, distributors continue to give new and unproven channels a chance. Time Warner Cable, for example, started to carry BBC World News and RLTV, formerly called Retirement Living TV, in the last few months.

Edward Wyatt reports that the Federal Trade Commission's decision to drop its two-year investigation into Google has drawn criticism from some observers who believe the commission's inquiry focused on the wrong area. Instead of considering harm to people who come to Google to search for information, Google's competitors and their supporters say the government should have been looking at whether Google's actions harmed its real customers - the companies that pay billions of dollars each year to advertise on Google's site. In its reports, the F.T.C. did not detail how it defined harm or what quantitative measures it had used to determine that Google users were better off. But interviews with people on all sides of the investigation - government officials, Google supporters, advocates for Microsoft and other competitors, and antitrust experts and economists - show that many of the yardsticks the commission used to measure its outcomes were remarkably similar to Google's own. Not surprisingly, they cast Google in a favorable light. F.T.C. officials said they considered data from a wide range of sources - those with interests aligned with Google as well as against it. The officials also bought quantitative data about Internet usage and conducted interviews with experts who were independent of all sides.