A Fish, Er, Storm Named Nemo

“We’re ready for Nemo,” the Twitter account for the New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote on Thursday before listing all the tools at the city’s disposal for the blizzard that is expected to form on Friday.

Wait â€" Nemo

Yes, The Weather Channel’s new names for winter storms are catching on, much to the chagrin of the National Weather Service, which has advised its forecasters not to follow the channel’s lead. But some airlines, governors’ offices and media outlets are all playing along, publishing advisories with the Nemo name.

Seriously, though. Nemo

So far this winter weather season, The Weather Channel has bestowed storms with names like Athena, Caesar, Freyr, Iago, and Kahn. This one â€" bringing to mind the adorable orange fishie in the Disney/Pixar film “Finding Nemo” â€" is the funniest yet. The jokes flew on Thursday as fast as the snow is forecast to fall. “They have named this new Nor’easter Nemo. I am not looking for it,” wrote the actor an comedian Albert Brooks on Twitter.

“Nemo” â€" if we can call it that, for the purposes of this article â€" was trending on Twitter by Thursday morning. It’s a rather incongruous name, given that the impending blizzard is likely to be the biggest such storm that the Northeast has seen in several years. But “Jaws” isn’t a possibility; The Weather Channel isn’t weighing a name change. The winter storm names were all announced last November and are assigned in alphabetical order.

Besides, “Nemo is a Latin word,” explained Bryan Norcross, the channel meteorologist who helped conceive the storm-naming last year. The word means “no one” or “no man.” He said that, not “Finding Nemo,” was the inspiration for the name.

Captain Nemo, the famous Jules Verne character from “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” also came up when the channel was bra! instorming. “Captain Nemo was a pretty tough, fierce guy,” Mr. Norcross said.

Many reporters and weather experts continue to roll their eyes at the channel’s storm-naming, just as they did when it was announced last November. It’s widely viewed as a marketing ploy, even though some skeptics admit that the names help raise awareness about storms. On Thursday, a National Weather Service spokesman reiterated, “We never have, nor do we have any plans to consider naming winter storms.”

Mr. Norcross, for his part, said “the names are working well.”

“We expected that some people would pick it up because there’s a common sense aspect to this,” he said, adding that “in Europe they’ve been naming storms for over fifty years.”

This blizzard is the 14th named storm by the channel. “We’re a little ahead of our expectations,” Mr. Norcross said. “There have been a number of intense but fairly short-lived storms this year, unlike last year where we figure we wouldhave only named about seven. Each season is different.”

He mentioned another common-sensical reason for the names: “The fact is that Twitter needs a hashtag.”

For the record, then, the channel’s next names are Orko, Plato and Q.

Documents on New Zealand Labor Talks Related to Films May Be Made Public

LOS ANGELESâ€"The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Radio New Zealand has won a crucial ruling in their request for documents touching on the New Zealand government’s 2010 negotiations with Peter Jackson and Warner Brothers over changes to the country’s labor laws. Jonathan Handel, an avid chronicler of Hollywood labor news, reports in the Hollywood Reporter that New Zealand’s ombudsman last month recommended that the government make public the documents, which include exchanges with the Jackson and Warner camps. Warner and Mr. Jackson, who sought the labor law adjustment as they were deciding whether or not to film the Hobbit movies in New Zealand, have objected to the disclosure, Mr. Handel wrote in a Thursday morning post. But, in light of the ombudsman’s recommendation, the documents will go public on or about March 1, unless New Zealand’s governor-general blocks the releae.

NBC Shuts Down Hyperlocal Web Site

EveryBlock, a pioneering Web site for hyperlocal data-driven journalism, was shut down by its owner, NBCNews.com, on Thursday, disappointing long time fans of the site.

Hundreds of its users posted comments bemoaning the closure and wondering why it happened without warning. NBC characterized it as a hard but necessary decision, reflective of the challenges the owners of other community Web sites have faced in recent years.

“We did not take this decision lightly,” Vivian Schiller, the chief digital officer for NBC News, said in an e-mail message. Asked whether NBC considered a merger or a sale of EveryBlock, she said, “We looked at various options, both internal and external, but none of them were viable. This is tough business to make work.”

EveryBlock, which was founded in 2007 and initially funded with a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, attempted to pull together neighborhood-level information for users in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. It ws acquired by MSNBC.com, a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, in 2009, nurtured by the owners and allowed to remain relatively independent. When NBC and Microsoft parted ways last year, NBC turned into the sole owner of EveryBlock.

“The premise of EveryBlock was to offer you a custom site devoted to news in your neighborhood,” wrote Adrian Holovaty, the site’s founder, in a “RIP” blog post on Thursday. “We showed you nearby public records (crimes, building permits, restaurant inspections), pointed you to automatically indexed articles (newspapers, blogs, forums) and provided a sort of ‘geo-forum’ that let you talk with people who lived near you.”

The site, in fact, was one of the first to collect big sets of data from local governments and make the data accessible to citizens, something now known as the open-data movement.

But! the Web site’s losses were considerable, and NBC evidently saw no way to change that. Ms. Schiller said in a memorandum to NBC News Digital staff members that “we didn’t see a strategic fit for EveryBlock within the portfolio.” That portfolio includes NBCNews.com (formerly known as MSNBC.com), Today.com, The Grio, and BreakingNews.com. In the spring it will restart MSNBC.com as a standalone Web site for the MSNBC cable channel.

“We will continue to support and expand in strategic areas; whether it’s a flagship like NBCNews.com, a new venture like msnbc.com, a nimble startup like Breaking News, or other businesses with big ideas,” Ms. Schiller wrote. “As we move forward, I want us to be thoughtful about how we invest, taking a hard look at where we can and should win, and how we deploy the resources to make it happen.”

Mr. Holovaty, who exited EveryBlock last year, said h learned of NBC’s decision like its users did, through a blog post on Thursday morning.

“We’re sorry to report that EveryBlock has closed its doors,” read the post, which replaced all the existing content on the site. “It’s no secret that the news industry is in the midst of a massive change. Within the world of neighborhood news there’s an exciting pace of innovation yet increasing challenges to building a profitable business. Though EveryBlock has been able to build an engaged community over the years, we’re faced with the decision to wrap things up.”

Complaints piled up on the blog post, with one calling the sudden shut-down “unneighborly.” “This is going to leave a major void in my desire for local news and neighborhood happenings,” another wrote.

Implicit in many of the comments was a deeper anxiety about the ability of neighborhood news sites to prosper at a time when advertising trends are not in their favor. Some users suggested an alternative site,! NextDoor.com, and others posted links to Facebook pages for particular neighborhoods, hoping to reconvene in new corners of the Web.

NBC Shuts Down Hyperlocal Web Site

EveryBlock, a pioneering Web site for hyperlocal data-driven journalism, was shut down by its owner, NBCNews.com, on Thursday, disappointing long time fans of the site.

Hundreds of its users posted comments bemoaning the closure and wondering why it happened without warning. NBC characterized it as a hard but necessary decision, reflective of the challenges the owners of other community Web sites have faced in recent years.

“We did not take this decision lightly,” Vivian Schiller, the chief digital officer for NBC News, said in an e-mail message. Asked whether NBC considered a merger or a sale of EveryBlock, she said, “We looked at various options, both internal and external, but none of them were viable. This is tough business to make work.”

EveryBlock, which was founded in 2007 and initially funded with a $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, attempted to pull together neighborhood-level information for users in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. It ws acquired by MSNBC.com, a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, in 2009, nurtured by the owners and allowed to remain relatively independent. When NBC and Microsoft parted ways last year, NBC turned into the sole owner of EveryBlock.

“The premise of EveryBlock was to offer you a custom site devoted to news in your neighborhood,” wrote Adrian Holovaty, the site’s founder, in a “RIP” blog post on Thursday. “We showed you nearby public records (crimes, building permits, restaurant inspections), pointed you to automatically indexed articles (newspapers, blogs, forums) and provided a sort of ‘geo-forum’ that let you talk with people who lived near you.”

The site, in fact, was one of the first to collect big sets of data from local governments and make the data accessible to citizens, something now known as the open-data movement.

But! the Web site’s losses were considerable, and NBC evidently saw no way to change that. Ms. Schiller said in a memorandum to NBC News Digital staff members that “we didn’t see a strategic fit for EveryBlock within the portfolio.” That portfolio includes NBCNews.com (formerly known as MSNBC.com), Today.com, The Grio, and BreakingNews.com. In the spring it will restart MSNBC.com as a standalone Web site for the MSNBC cable channel.

“We will continue to support and expand in strategic areas; whether it’s a flagship like NBCNews.com, a new venture like msnbc.com, a nimble startup like Breaking News, or other businesses with big ideas,” Ms. Schiller wrote. “As we move forward, I want us to be thoughtful about how we invest, taking a hard look at where we can and should win, and how we deploy the resources to make it happen.”

Mr. Holovaty, who exited EveryBlock last year, said h learned of NBC’s decision like its users did, through a blog post on Thursday morning.

“We’re sorry to report that EveryBlock has closed its doors,” read the post, which replaced all the existing content on the site. “It’s no secret that the news industry is in the midst of a massive change. Within the world of neighborhood news there’s an exciting pace of innovation yet increasing challenges to building a profitable business. Though EveryBlock has been able to build an engaged community over the years, we’re faced with the decision to wrap things up.”

Complaints piled up on the blog post, with one calling the sudden shut-down “unneighborly.” “This is going to leave a major void in my desire for local news and neighborhood happenings,” another wrote.

Implicit in many of the comments was a deeper anxiety about the ability of neighborhood news sites to prosper at a time when advertising trends are not in their favor. Some users suggested an alternative site,! NextDoor.com, and others posted links to Facebook pages for particular neighborhoods, hoping to reconvene in new corners of the Web.

Led by Celebrity Titles, Magazine Newsstand Sales Slide

As the magazine industry continues to suffer from declining circulation, celebrity gossip magazines and young women’s titles have taken some of the biggest hits.

According to data released by the Alliance for Audited Media on Thursday morning, overall paid and verified circulation of magazines declined slightly by 0.3 percent in the second half of 2012. But newsstand sales - which are often viewed as the best barometer of how well a magazine is doing - dropped by 8.2 percent.

These figures were far worse for celebrity magazines, which largely suffered double-digit declines. People’s newsstand sales dropped by 12.2 percent while US Weekly experienced a 14.6 percent decline. In Touch Weekly declined by 14.8 percent and Life & Style Weekly suffered a 19.1 percent drop on newsstands.

Some young women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, which often attract an overlapping audience as celebrity magazines, also suffered major hits. Cosmopolitan had an 18.5 percent decline in newsstad sales while Glamour’s newsstand sales declined by 14.5 percent.

John Harrington, an industry consultant, said that both categories are suffering because young women can access a lot of similar content online.

“They’re fighting all the social media and information that’s just available in so many places,” said Mr. Harrington about the kinds of pressures these magazines are under. “Some of the same factors are that their audience are people who are digitally adept and tend to go to social media.”
While all magazines reported a rise in digital subscribers and the number of average digital magazine copies more than doubled from the year before, these numbers still make up less than 1 percent of the entire magazine industry’s average circulation.

Industry experts said that magazines also suffered from what was and was not happening in the world. Steven Cohn, editor of the Media Industry Newsletter, said that celebrity weeklies didn’t! benefit from the boom that comes from celebrity weddings, births or deaths in recent months. He expects that business prospects may improve for these titles in the second half of the year after Prince William and Kate Middleton have their first child.

“In the second half of 2012, there was no royal wedding. There was no tragedy like the death of Michael Jackson,” said Mr. Cohen. “They should get a bump by the royal birth.”

Mr. Cohen added that Hurricane Sandy also may have hurt newsstand sales. He noted that even during an election year, Time Inc. experienced a decline in newsstand sales. Newsstand sales for the magazine declined to 58,776 in the second half of 2012 from 76,555 from the same time in 2011.

“I think Sandy is a factor,” said Mr. Cohen. “It certainly hurt newsstand in New York and New Jersey, which is the biggest market in the country.”

While Family Circle and Woman’s Day both noted rises in their newsstand sales, Mr. Harrington said that both magazine had cut back their frequency of publication to 12 times a year from 15 times a year. Both magazines also are relatively inexpensive.

“That helped their average newsstand sales and they’re still relatively lower priced items,” said Mr. Harrington.

Warner Music Group Buys EMI Assets for $765 Million

The Warner Music Group, the smallest of the three remaining major record companies, said on Thursday that it had made a deal to pay $765 million for the Parlophone Label Group, a package of divestments from the EMI label required by European regulators as part of the Universal Music Group’s $1.9 billion deal for EMI last year.

“This is a very important milestone for Warner Music, reflecting our commitment to artist development by strengthening our worldwide roster, global footprint and executive talent,” Len Blavatnik, the founder of Access Industries, Warner’s parent company, said in a statement.

The Parlophone group consists of EMI’s historic Parlophone label, home to artists like Coldplay, Blur and Kylie Minogue; EMI’s flagship label, with Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden and the D.J. David Guetta; as well as other labels like Chrysalis and EMI subsidiaries across Europe. They amount to about a third of EMI’s assets.

The deal is a win for Warner, whose international infrastructur has been relatively week compared with its major competitors, and for Universal, which came under intense pressure during the deal’s regulatory review process in Europe but ended up with a higher price than had been expected.

Early estimates for EMI’s castoffs were somewhat above $500 million, but with some smaller assets yet to be sold, Universal could get over $800 million, vastly reducing the price it paid for the bulk of EMI. Universal will hold on to EMI’s Capitol and Virgin labels, including artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Katy Perry and Lady Antebellum.

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

New Novel Takes Readers Downstairs at Longbourn

Did you ever wonder as you read Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” just who was dressing the five girls in the house for the balls Or bringing those eagerly anticipated notes from Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley to the drawing room

And there surely must have been some dishy gossip in the kitchen of the Longbourn estate when Lydia ran off with the evil Mr. Wickham.

If you are like most readers, Longbourn’s servants never crossed your mind. But Jo Baker, a British novelist, has been paying close attention. She recently completed a book titled “Longbourn,” named after the Bennet’s home, which tells a parallel story of “Pride and Prejudice” â€" the story downstairs.

Ms. Baker’s agent, Clare Alexander, says that the relationship of “Longbourn” to “Pride and Prejudice” is analogous to that of the plays “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” and “Hamlet” â€" the servants are a jumping-off point for the tale, and then become characters in their own right.

Therehave been many attempts over the years by authors to incorporate Jane Austen’s beloved novel into their own work. Recently, the mystery writer P.D. James scored a success with “Death Comes to Pemberley” (2011) about a murder that occurs on the Darcy family manor years into the marriage of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth.

But Ms. Baker’s novel, which is already finished, set the British publishing market on fire last week when it went on auction. Ms. Alexander, her agent, said the response has been overwhelming. “I sent it out last week,” she said. “Knopf bought it Monday. On Wednesday, it was bought by Doubleday in the U.K. By Thursday the film rights had gone. By Friday we had signed up two foreign translations.”

There are now agreements for eight translations. The film will be a coproduction between Random House Studios and Focus Features. A person familiar with the bidding said that the value of the collective deals was in the high six figures.

Ms. Baker said she was dr! awn to the parallel story of Longbourn because of her own family history. “If I’d been living at the time, I wouldn’t have got to go to the ball,” she wrote in an e-mail, explaining her inspiration. “I would’ve been stuck at home, with the sewing. Just a few generations back, my family were in service (we still have some cutlery from this era. My great-aunt maintained it was a ‘gift’ from her employer; her sisters all believed that she’d nicked it). I am not a gentleman’s daughter, as Elizabeth so assuredly is. (No offense, Dad.)”

The auction of the book came at a time when there is heightened interest in the interplay between servants and the lords and ladies they serve, in part because of the popularity of the “Downton Abbey” series, currently shown on PBS. Still, Ms. Alexander says there is no way the novel would have fared so well during bidding if it hadn’t been a delightful read.

Ms. Baker is no overnight success. She is 39 and her previous novels “The Mermaid€™s Child,” “The Telling,” and “Offcomer” were not notable, popular or financial successes.

“She is trying to keep her head straight,” said Ms. Alexander. “When I told her about the film deal she went off and planted a hedge just to keep herself grounded.”

The Breakfast Meeting: Cable Lifts Earnings at Time Warner and News Corp. and the Surprise Seller of a Malibu Mansion

Cable television propelled Time Warner to a 51-percent increase in net income during the final quarter of 2012, offsetting weaknesses in magazine publishing and movies, Amy Chozick reports. Revenue rose 5 percent for the company’s television networks, which include TNT, TBS and CNN, even as Time Inc., the nation’s largest magazine publisher, prepared to lay off 6 percent of its work force. Revenue at the Warner Brothers studio fell 4 percent, despite strong performances by “Argo” and “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” The results point to a widening gap between the rapidly growing cable television industry and the troubled magazine and, to a lesser extent, movie businesses.

News Corporation also grew through its cable offerings, though perhaps for different reasons, my Chozick writes. Growth at the company’s cable channels like FX, Fox News and regional sports channels helped News Corp. more than double its net income in the three-month period that ended Dec. 31, offsetting lingering costs from the phone hacking scandal and the expense of a planned split of the media conglomerate into two companies. Fox Group will include the company’s cable channels, while the company’s newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, and the Harper Collins publishing and Australian pay-TV assets will become a new company called News Corporation. The results highlight how disparate Rupert Murdoch’s empire has become: Cable channels now make up more than 60 percent of the company’s overall profit, while publishing, though stronger than last year, continues to struggle.

Barbie has listed the mansion she has lived in since 1971 in the imaginations of millions, perhaps in response to the rising housing market. Mattel, the company that owns ! the Barbie brand, announced that her home is available for an asking price of $25 million, as part of an ad campaign that will combine actual and imaginary elements, Stuart Elliot explains. For instance, a section of Trulia, the real estate Web site, will carry a listing. The campaign is intended to rejuvenate Barbie sales, which flagged about 4 percent in the last quarter, the third quarterly decline in 2012.

Steven Spielberg’s fascination with Abraham Lincoln began with a visit to the Lincoln Memorial when he was six years old, the director told Melena Ryzik. “Lincoln,” which now leads the Oscar nominations with a dozen nominations, was the final result. But it did not come easily â€" the film took more than 12 years to coe together, involved multiple script rewrites and required a reverential respect for detail.

“Community,” one of NBC’s quirkiest and most original comedy shows, returns for its fourth season this evening without the guiding hand of Dan Harmon, the show’s creator, who was let go last season. Fans of the show can expect a sad simulacrum of “Community” that lacks the dense, fast-paced humor that required careful attention, Mike Hale writes.