For Many Digital Music Services, Free Is Not a Choice

The competition among streaming music services is going global. It is also increasingly going free.

As CD and download sales cool, the music industry is looking to subscription services like Spotify, Rhapsody and Deezer to provide an attractive alternative to pirated content. But the growth of these companies has been relatively slow, and to compete against one another, more of them are opening free tiers â€" a move that gets attention, but has always caused worries that it could undermine the value of music.

Rdio, a subscription service created by the founders of Skype, is the latest to offer music gratis. On Monday, the service, whose regular prices are $5 and $10 a month, said that it would offer a free level in most of the countries in which it operates, after doing so in the United States in late 2011. The plan includes a limited amount of free music for six months â€" the company is secretive about exactly how much free music you get â€" and, unlike mos other services that have a free tier, it has no advertising.

“I don’t want to devalue the content,” said Drew Larner, the chief executive of Rdio. “But we certainly have come around to the fact that in order to get the largest amount of people into the top of the funnel, the state of play is now that a free offering is critical.”

For almost every service, the goal of free is to get listeners hooked so that they will eventually pay for access. Pandora is one notable exception: although it has a premium plan, the company’s effort to compete with radio has made free access â€" and ads â€" a central part of its plan.

Mr. Larner said that in the United States, the introduction of new music over a year ago, and a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign â€" with radio spots and banners in Times Square â€" had helped raise Rdio’s profile and draw new users, although he declin! ed to offer specific numbers. Rdio has never disclosed its user numbers, but they are believed to be far lower than those of Spotify, with five million paying users around the world, or Rhapsody, with one million.

Rdio is available in 17 countries, including Britain, Australia and France. The free version will be available in all countries except Germany and Brazil, because of licensing issues in those countries, Mr. Larner said. For Rdio, the decision not to include advertising means not only that it will forgo ads a source or revenue, but also that the company will be paying royalties for the free music out of its own pocket.

The move to free has largely been sparked by Spotify, but it has proved hard for others to resist. Shortly before Rdio added its free tier in the United States, Mog, another small competitor, came up with its own version. (It was no coincidence that Faebook was introducing its social graph around that time, which integrated entertainment apps.)

Deezer, a French service that has announced plans to open in more than 100 countries, recently announced that it was adding an ad-supported free tier. Rhapsody, online since 2011, has no free level.

Mog, which was bought last year by Beats Electronics, the headphone company, and is expected to return later this year in revamped form under the name Daisy, has not announced its future pricing plans.

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

Talk Show Called \'Kris\' Planned for Kris Jenner

MIAMI- The next person in line for a daytime talk show from Fox’s syndication division is Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the TV-friendly Kardashian family.

Twentieth Television, a production and syndication arm of the News Corporation, said Monday that it will produce a six-week test of a talk show called “Kris.” The one-hour show will be televised this summer by another unit of the News Corporation, the Fox-owned television stations in cities like New York and Los Angeles.

Summer tests have become Fox’s preferred way of trying out new talk shows. They ran “The Wendy Williams Show” for a few weeks in the summer of 2008; now it’s a staple of stations’ daytime lineups across the country.

The Fox-owned stations also tested a talk show by Bethenny Frankel last summer; that show, named “Bethenny,” will premiere on a more permanent basis this fall.

“Wouldn’t be summer without at least one test, would it,” Frank Cicha, the senio vice president of programming for the stations, said in a statement. “In all seriousness, we go into this believing that if it works, the Kris Jenner program could really compliment what we’ve got going with Wendy, Bethenny, etc.”

The test was announced during NATPE, a conference where syndication buyers and sellers meet each year.

Ms. Jenner brings instant name recognition to the talk show and the promise of cross-pollination with her other television franchises. She is best known for her role on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” the hit reality show on the E! channel. She is an executive producer as well as a star of that show. She’s also an executive producer of all the “Kardashian” spin-offs on E!. She’ll be a producer of “Kris,” as well.

Twentieth Television’s development of “Kris” may be a bad omen for “The Ricki Lake Show,” which it began to produce last fall. Ms. Lake’s show was overshadowed by a number of other talk show premieres, and Deadline.com reported Monday that it is “unlikely to continue next season.”

Times Announces Masthead Restructuring and Top Newsroom Appointments

The New York Times announced on Monday a restructured masthead and some key newsroom appointments, while also saying that the staff reductions the company was seeking had been accomplished primarily through voluntary buyouts.

In a memo to the staff, Jill Abramson, the executive editor, outlined many of the coming changes at the paper, saying she hopes they will help The Times continue “to meet the challenges of remaking ourselves for the digital age.”

Ms. Abramson acknowledged in her memo that this round of staff reductions seemed different from previous ones, because it resulted in the loss of some of the most prominent editors at the paper. Among those choosing to take buyout packages were John M. Geddes, a managing editor, Jim Roberts, assistant managing editor, and Jonathan Landman, the head of the culture department.

Ms. Abramson also presented plans for a newly transformed masthead. Larry Ingrassia, the former business editor, will become an assistant managing editor for new intiatives, which includes the expansion of The Times’s international coverage. Janet Elder will become an assistant managing editor with responsibility for overseeing newsroom resources, including the budget, as well as dealing with compensation and staff development. Ian Fisher will become an assistant managing editor for content operations, with responsibility for overseeing the continued integration of the digital and print sides of The Times.

Jason Stallman, a deputy sports editor, will be the new sports editor, replacing Joe Sexton, who announced last week he was moving to Pro Publica. Ms. Abramson said she would announce the new culture editor in the next two weeks.

Rick Berke, currently an assistant managing editor, will now focus on video, an area the company has been trying to expand. Glenn Kramon, another assistant managing editor, will join the business department to oversee technology coverage.

In early December, Ms. Abramson said The Times was seeking 30 managers who a! re not union members to accept buyout packages. The company also allowed employees represented by the Newspaper Guild the chance to volunteer for buyout packages as well. Employees had until last Thursday to decide whether to choose the buyout.

Ms. Abramson said at the time that if the paper did not get the required number of volunteers that the company would have to resort to layoffs. But her note to the staff Monday indicated that layoffs were kept to a minimum.

Doctors Say Barbara Walters Has Chicken Pox

Barbara Walters, who has remained hospitalized since a recent fall for treatment of a persistent fever, is suffering from chicken pox, her doctors told her this weekend.

The news was revealed on the ABC network show that Ms. Walters owns, “The View,” by the program’s host, Whoopi Goldberg, on Monday morning.

The diagnosis explains the fainting spell that Ms. Walters, who is 83, suffered in Washington last week, which led to her fall, and the lingering fever that has kept her hospitalized, first in Washington and now in Manhattan.

Ms. Goldberg said on the show that Ms. Walters had never previously contracted the condition, which is usually associated with children.

Tsujihara to Succeed Meyer as Head of Warner Brothers

LOS ANGELES â€" Kevin Tsujihara will succeed Barry Meyer as chief executive of Warner Brothers, Hollywood’s biggest movie and television studio, starting March 1, ending a high-profile and lingering competition for the job.

Mr. Meyer, who has led the studio since 1999, was expected to retire two years ago, but stayed on while a trio of executives were considered for his job. With the selection of Mr. Tsujihara, who has most recently lead Warner’s home entertainment unit, the question now becomes whether the other two candidates - Bruce Rosenblum, Warner’s television chief, and Jeff Robinov, who heads the movie division - will remain at the company.

Mr. Rosenblum, who was widely considered by Hollywood insiders to be the leading candidate to replace Mr. Meyer, immediately released a statement on Monday morning. “Obviously, I’m disappointed; who wouldn’t be” it read in part. He added that Warner “will be in good hands with Kevin.”

Mr. Tsujihara brings “the perfect cobination of strategic thinking, financial discipline, digital vision and management style” Jeff Bewkes, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, which owns the studio, said in his own statement.

Just a Minute: South Park\'s Matt Stone on Making the Most Analogue Thing Ever

Matt Stone says disruption is overrated and adds that Broadway â€" you might have heard something about “Book of Mormon” â€" has been very, very good for the South Park team.

Related: Fortifying the Empire ‘South Park’ Built

Dodgers, Signing Lucrative TV Deal, Plan to Start Regional Sports Network

The owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers said Monday that they intend to start a regional sports network in southern California, confirming
weeks of reports about the team’s plans.

The network, to be named SportsNet LA, will be backed by Time Warner Cable, one of the main television distributors in the region, with a commitment of $7 to $8 billion over the next 25 years. The price tag, though not made public by the parties, was confirmed by a person with direct
knowledge of the deal. Analysts said it was the most lucrative television deal for a single team in sports history.

Time Warner Cable will carry the Dodgers network and will be in charge of convincing others to carry it, as well. In exchange Time Warner
Cable will keep all the advertising revenue that it sells for the network. The Dodgers owners said in a news release on Monday that SportsNet LA would carry all the team’s games and “comprehensive behind-the-scenes Dodger programming.”

The multi-billion-dolla deal with the Dodgers seemingly flies in the face of Time Warner Cable’s public statements about tamping down on
the rising costs of programming. SportsNet LA is likely to amount to somewhere between $4 and $5 a month per subscriber in southern California, and
some of that cost will be passed on subscribers through their monthly cable bills, with Time Warner Cable also absorbing some of the cost.

But Time Warner Cable says that doing business directly with the Dodgers cuts out the middleman, in this case Fox Sports, which was also bidding for rights to the Dodgers games. The company said the same thing when it outbid Fox to carry Los Angeles Lakers games in 2011, a 20-year deal valued at $3 billion.

David Rone, the president of Time Warner Cable Sports, said of the Dodgers agreement in a statement, “This deal, like our Lakers’ deal, furthers our efforts to attain greater certainty and control over local and regional sports programming costs! .”

Fox Sports, owned by the News Corporation, disputes this notion, in part since its bid for the Dodgers was significantly less than Time Warner Cable’s bid. Dodgers games will continue to be televised on Fox Sports’ Prime Ticket network until the new network starts in 2014.

A group led by Magic Johnson and financed by Guggenheim Partners bought the Dodgers in a deal valued at $2.3 billion last year. “We concluded last year that the best way to give our fans what they want â€" more content and more Dodger baseball â€" was to launch our own network,” Mark Walter, the founder of Guggenheim Partners and the chairman of the Dodgers franchise, said in a statement.

The network will be operated by American Media Productions, or AMP for short, a subsidiary of the Dodgers ownership group. “The creation of
AMP will provide substantial financial resources over the coming years for the Dodgers to build on their storied legacy and bring a World
Championship home to Los Angeles,€ Mr. Walter said.

The financial terms of the arrangement were not released. The arrangement will require the approval of Major League Baseball.

Assessing the impending deal last week, the Nomura analyst Michael Nathanson said Time Warner Cable should “be careful what they wish
for.” In a note to investors, he pointed out that the News Corporation will likely use the high rates for the Lakers and Dodgers channels as
negotiating leverage for other regional sports networks. News Corporation recently acquired 49 percent of YES, the Yankees channel in New York City, and full ownership of a channel that carries the Cleveland Indians in Ohio. Time Warner Cable is a major distributor in New York and Ohio.

Mr. Nathanson also said, “Clearly, the L.A. sports market is experiencing significant price inflation and it is still early days whether these levels of investments will prove to be justified many years down the road or if we have reached the top of the sports rights bu! bble.”

The Breakfast Meeting: Courting Future Cable Subscribers, a Newspaper Reality Show, and a Saucy Ad Campaign

Tivli, a start-up founded by two Harvard graduates, is trying to reconcile students’ viewing habits, which increasingly involve mobile devices, with the desire of cable companies like Comcast and programmers like HBO to be paid for wireless content. As Brian Stelter reports, resident students at Harvard and, of as of last week, Yale, can use a service created by Tivli to stream local TV stations, a couple of dozen cable channels and the universities’ own in-house channels to computers, tablets or video game consoles. This ability, available anywhere on campus, may be part of the answer to a conundrum for the television industry. Young people watch less TV than they used to, and some say they do not see the pint of an expensive cable or satellite subscription. If they become accustomed to viewing programming through services like HBO GO while in college, however, some believe it could lead them to become cable subscribers after they graduate.

NBC, looking for newsmen and newswomen to star in a planned reality show, has received more than 150 responses from newspapers across the nation. As Christine Haughney reports, NBC executives say they’ve been inundated with all types of pitches, from newspaper editors talking about how they are struggling to survive to newspaper staffs eager to show off their talents, sometimes well beyond their coverage of school meetings. NBC executives said they were intrigued by how quirky and diverse some newspapers were â€" from the Kodiak Daily Mirror in Kodiak, Alaska, to the Hungry Horse News, wh! ich is run out of a log building near an entrance to Glacier National Park in Montana. As NBC’s producers start the process of reading and deciding which newspapers may make the final cut, newspaper editors like Richard Hanners, editor of The Hungry Horse News in Columbia Falls, Mont., are waiting for answers. Mr. Hanners said that while he hadn’t heard that his colleagues had pitched his newspaper for a reality show, he was receptive to it because his newspaper was rich with stories.

WBEZ, the Chicago public radio station, is hoping that Chicagoans will help create a new generation of listeners. In a new ad campaign that begins on Friday, the station encourages residents of the city to, well, “hook up” with other Chicagoans and procreate. As Tanzina Vega reports, a tag line on one ad sums up the new campaign, called “2032 Membership Drive,” succinctly: â€We Want Listeners Tomorrow. Go Make Babies Today.” Other ads read: “Do It. For Chicago.” and “Interesting People Make Interesting People.” Daniel Ash, the vice president for corporate sponsorship, marketing, membership and partnerships at Chicago Public Media, which owns the station, said the campaign was meant to playfully encourage listeners in their 20s and 30s to “make babies” so that by 2032, the station will have a slew of teenage listeners. “We wanted to break the mold and take some risks,” Mr. Ash said.

The Breakfast Meeting: Courting Future Cable Subscribers, a Newspaper Reality Show, and a Saucy Ad Campaign

Tivli, a start-up founded by two Harvard graduates, is trying to reconcile students’ viewing habits, which increasingly involve mobile devices, with the desire of cable companies like Comcast and programmers like HBO to be paid for wireless content. As Brian Stelter reports, resident students at Harvard and, of as of last week, Yale, can use a service created by Tivli to stream local TV stations, a couple of dozen cable channels and the universities’ own in-house channels to computers, tablets or video game consoles. This ability, available anywhere on campus, may be part of the answer to a conundrum for the television industry. Young people watch less TV than they used to, and some say they do not see the pint of an expensive cable or satellite subscription. If they become accustomed to viewing programming through services like HBO GO while in college, however, some believe it could lead them to become cable subscribers after they graduate.

NBC, looking for newsmen and newswomen to star in a planned reality show, has received more than 150 responses from newspapers across the nation. As Christine Haughney reports, NBC executives say they’ve been inundated with all types of pitches, from newspaper editors talking about how they are struggling to survive to newspaper staffs eager to show off their talents, sometimes well beyond their coverage of school meetings. NBC executives said they were intrigued by how quirky and diverse some newspapers were â€" from the Kodiak Daily Mirror in Kodiak, Alaska, to the Hungry Horse News, wh! ich is run out of a log building near an entrance to Glacier National Park in Montana. As NBC’s producers start the process of reading and deciding which newspapers may make the final cut, newspaper editors like Richard Hanners, editor of The Hungry Horse News in Columbia Falls, Mont., are waiting for answers. Mr. Hanners said that while he hadn’t heard that his colleagues had pitched his newspaper for a reality show, he was receptive to it because his newspaper was rich with stories.

WBEZ, the Chicago public radio station, is hoping that Chicagoans will help create a new generation of listeners. In a new ad campaign that begins on Friday, the station encourages residents of the city to, well, “hook up” with other Chicagoans and procreate. As Tanzina Vega reports, a tag line on one ad sums up the new campaign, called “2032 Membership Drive,” succinctly: â€We Want Listeners Tomorrow. Go Make Babies Today.” Other ads read: “Do It. For Chicago.” and “Interesting People Make Interesting People.” Daniel Ash, the vice president for corporate sponsorship, marketing, membership and partnerships at Chicago Public Media, which owns the station, said the campaign was meant to playfully encourage listeners in their 20s and 30s to “make babies” so that by 2032, the station will have a slew of teenage listeners. “We wanted to break the mold and take some risks,” Mr. Ash said.