Sears and Penney Respond to ‘SNL’ Sketch Complaint

So did a comedy sketch on the Feb. 16 edition of “Saturday Night Live” called “Djesus Uncrossed” really lead two companies to ask NBC not to place their ads in future editions of the show

Not really.

In what appears to be a textbook case of companies dancing around a protest campaign organized by a special interest group, the companies, Sears and J.C. Penney, have made arrangements to avoid placing any ads adjacent to online replays of the sketch in question, but that will not affect any commercials in the television version of “SNL.”

That is not exactly how the situation was described in a news release issued Tuesday by The American Family Association, a long-time activist group that monitors television programming and initiates occasional advertiser boycotts to protest content it deems offensive. The release announced that the companies had “responded to the AFA by pulling their advertising from NBC’s show, ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ”

But J.C. Penney does not avertise in the television show, according to Kate Coultas, the senior manager of media relations for the company. And Sears, which does occasionally run commercials in “SNL,” never promised the AFA to stop doing so, and the protest by AFA will have no impact on its plans to advertise in the show in the future, according to an executive at the company. Because of the sensitivity of dealing with groups who can threaten to initiate consumer boycotts, the executive asked not to be identified.

A corporate spokesman for the company, Howard Riefs, did issue a statement, which said: “We received customer feedback about our ads running on NBC.com and Hulu in a rotation with other advertisers around the online rebroadcast of that particular SNL episode. We informed customers that it wasn’t supposed to happen, and while going forward we may advertise on the broadcast, we’ve taken steps to ensure that our commercials do not air online exactly as they did in thi! s situation.”

Tim Wildmon, the president of AFA, said in a telephone interview that the AFA had been told by Sears that “they were not going to advertise in the show anymore.”

All of this was in reaction to the “SNL” show on Feb. 16, which was hosted by Christoph Waltz, the actor who won the Oscar for his portrayal in the Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained.” The sketch was a satire on the often garish violence Mr. Tarantino uses in his films. It was called “Djesus Uncrossed” and featured Jesus as an action hero, back from the dead and “preaching anything but forgiveness.”

Presented as a movie trailer, the sketch followed Mr. Waltz as Jesus, wreaking vengeance on the Romans, with swords and guns that generated wild sprays of blood. It also included fake critical endorsements like: “I never knew how much Jesus used the N-word.”

The sketch drew an enormous amount of coment on Twitter and other sites; some took the show to task for crossing a line of taste, some praised the show for the daring (and humor) of the sketch.

Mr. Wildmon said that the protest began after “supporters alerted us to the sketch.” (He said he did not see it on the air.) Once he did watch it, he said, “I found it appalling. This was indefensible. It was not borderline. Using Jesus Christ himself as a cartoon figure I know you wouldn’t see them doing this with Muhammad.”

Mr. Wildmon said the the group followed its usual procedure, sending an e-mail to about 2 million followers and asking them to initiate a mass e-mail to advertisers, in this case Sears and J.C. Penney. They were chosen, Mr. Wildmon said, because they were “family businesses” that sold products to many of the group’s followers.

The AFA made no effort to contact NBC directly, he said, because reaching out to the advertisers was more effective.

Carter Murray Named as Chief of DraftFCB

The search for a new leader for the global advertising agency DraftFCB Worldwide, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, ended on Wednesday afternoon with the selection of an outsider from a rival agency owned by WPP.

Carter Murray is joining DraftFCB as chief executive after serving as president and chief executive for North America at Y&R, part of the Young & Rubicam Group division of WPP, as well as chief executive at the flagship Y&R New York office.

Mr. Murray, who is 38, will succeed Laurence Boschetto, 58, who has been chief executive at DraftFCB since 2009. Mr. Boschetto will remain through a transition period, Interpublic said in a news release, and then serve as a senior adviser to Interpublic.

Interpublic executives said last summer that they had begun seeking a successor to Mr. Boschetto after setbacks at DraftFCB that included losses of large accounts from clients like S.C. Johnson & Son and MillerCoors.

Speculation on Madison Avenue was that a replacement for Mr. Boschetto would most likely come from outside DraftFCB. The search was described as lengthy, with some candidates declining to be considered.

Mr. Murray has worked at Y&R for a year. He previously worked at Leo Burnett Worldwide and Publicis Worldwide, two agencies owned by the Publicis Groupe that are also major competitors of DraftFCB.

Howard Draft, the “Draft” in DraftFCB, will continue as executive chairman of the agency, Interpublic said. DraftFCB was formed by Interpublic in 2006 through the merger of Draft Worldwide with an agency known by many names, most notably Foote, Cone & Belding.

Disney Shareholders Endorse Pay of Chief Executive

LOS ANGELES - As expected, two shareholder resolutions challenging how the Walt Disney Company is managed were defeated on Wednesday at the entertainment conglomerate’s annual meeting in Phoenix.

At the same time, slightly more Disney shareholders supported the company in a federally required say-on-pay test, in which executive compensation is put to a vote. About 57.6 percent of shareholders supported Disney’s pay package for Robert A. Iger, chairman and chief xecutive, up from 56.9 percent last year.

Mr. Iger’s pay for 2012 totaled $40.2 million, a 20 percent increase from a year earlier. His compensation is largely tied to Disney’s financial performance; profit soared 18 percent last year, to $5.7 billion.

Because of its high profile, Disney is a routine target for shareholder advocates. But the company’s strong performance recently made this year’s push a difficult one. A proposal to allow some stock owners to nominate board candidates failed with only 39.8 percent of voters supporting it.

The more controversial proposal involved forcing the company to prevent future chief executives from also holding the title of board chairman. Mr. Iger has held both top jobs since last March. This proposal only received support from 35.2 percent of shareholders, despite media reports in recent weeks that Mr. Iger was under fire.

Speaking during the comment section of the meeting, Roy P. Disney, the grandson of the company’s co-founde! r, took aim at shareholder advocates. “It’s unfortunate that this company should be used as a podium” for those seeking to make a point about corporate governance, he said.

All 10 members of Disney’s board were also re-elected.

As part of the meeting, Mr. Iger showed a model of the castle planned as the centerpiece of a sprawling new theme park resort under construction in Shanghai. The Enchanted Storybook Castle, as Disney called it, is by far the largest featured at any Disney park and looked a smidge like the Hogwarts castle from the Harry Potter movies.

In one of the gathering’s livelier moments, a shareholder identifying himself as Dwight Morgan complained about Disney for the first time opening a Starbucks inside the Disneyland Resort in California; in particular Mr. Morgan was concerned about the role potentially played by Orin C. Smith, a Disney board member and the retired chief executive of Starbucks.

“I’ve heard nothing but bad comments,” Mr. Morgan said.

Mr. Iger responded that the deal was independently vetted and came after years of guest complaints about the quality of Disney’s coffee. “I don’t mean to be cheeky,” Mr. Iger said, “but that has become one of the most popular Starbucks in the country, and we’re going to add more.”

On ABC Family, an Episode in Sign Language

On Monday night, ABC Family did something that no commercial television outlet in the United States had ever done: it broadcast an entire episode of a show in sign language, with closed captioning turned on by default.

Advocates for the deaf and hard-of-hearing cheered the move, and they wondered: would viewers tune in specifically for the almost-silent episode of the series, “Switched at Birth,” one of ABC Family’s most popular Or would viewers turn it off, potentially perturbed by the lack of audio There was a normal musical score, and a scene at the beginning of the episode with audible dialogue, but the rest of the dialogue was in sign language.

Broadly speaking, neither outcome came true. The show’s overnight Nielsen ratings were down, but only slightly. Most fans of the show stayed with it â€" 1.6 million, according to the overnight ratings. The series this season has averaged 1.7 million viewers.

In the show’s target demographic, women 12 to 34, 748,000 viewers tuned in,down just a little bit from the season average of 777,000. About a quarter of those viewers usually record the show and watch it later, so the final ratings won’t come in for a while.

“Switched at Birth” features several deaf or hard-of-hearing characters, so every episode incorporates sign language in some way. But Monday’s episode went further.

“The concept of the episode is ‘this is what life is like for a deaf person,’” Lizzy Weiss, the creator, said in an interview.

While the episode was being televised on Monday night, Ms. Weiss quipped on Twitter, “Are commercials always this loud or are our ears readjusted after watching” the all-sign language episode

Content Lives On, Even if Web Site Doesn’t

Some journalists just can’t stop working.

As the magazine Budget Travel winds its way through bankruptcy court and its lawyers insist that its staff stop working, the Web site continues to chug along with periodic posts by Robert Firpo Cappiello. On March 1, he wrote about how travelers can save on Rail Europe this month. On Feb. 27 he debated whether Las Vegas was safe. On Feb. 22, he introduced readers to “America’s coolest small town.”

But the lawyers handling Budget Travel’s bankruptcy had no idea that Budget Travel was still publishing material. According to e-mails included in the bankruptcy filing, Robert A. Wolf, a legal adviser on the case, ordered Elaine Alimonti, Budget Travel’s vice president and publisher, in a Feb. 14th e-mail to “cease and desist immediately from conducting any and all business activities on behalf of Budget Travel.”

Robert Geltzer, the trustee handling the case, was also not aware that the Budget Travel Web site was still producing new conent.

“I don’t read the Web site,” Mr. Geltzer said. “It’s not an official document.”

According to e-mails in the filing, Ms. Alimonti tried to explain to the courts that it isn’t easy to simply shut a Web site down.

“Because the Budget Travel business is primarily digital, and cloud-based, operations continue beyond the control of the staff: Consumers are still able to schedule vacations via the Web site; consumers are still buying and paying for subscriptions.”

She urged the bankruptcy court to continue to let the Web site function because it made it desirable to potential bidders, including Morris Communications and Travel Leaders. Both companies declined to comment about whether they were interested in Budget Travel.

Mr. Geltzer said that Allan L. Gropper, the federal bankruptcy judge on the case, was flexible about the process of shutting down the Web site. But Mr. Geltzer was firm that he would not pay any Budget Trave! l employees for their continued efforts.
“No one will be paid a penny for it,” he said.

Budget Travel’s long-running financial problems stem from its relationship to the company owned by the Wall Street investor Alphonse Fletcher Jr. of Fletcher International. In 2011, Mr. Fletcher filed a lawsuit against the Dakota, a residence on the upper west side of Manhattan, accusing the co-op of race discrimination for not letting him purchase another apartment in the building. The building’s board argued that its concerns were financial.

Since then, Budget Travel, along with many other operations owned by Mr. Fletcher’s company, have fallen into the hands of the bankruptcy court. According to court records, at least four vendors recently sued Budget Travel for not paying its bills for paper stock, rent and staffing services.

Ms. Alimonto and Mr. Cappiello did not repond to e-mails and phone messages left for them. But in a letter Ms. Alimento sent to Judge Gropper on Feb. 19, she wrote, “The asset is such that potential acquirers will lose interest if the company is left to deteriorate.”

‘Smash’ Ratings Hit a New Low on NBC

Can “Smash” stay on the air The enormously publicized â€" and enormously expensive â€" NBC drama crashed to a new ratings low Tuesday night, hitting a level that only a few weeks ago caused another NBC drama, “Do No Harm,” to be yanked off the air.

On Tuesday, “Smash” pulled in only 2.6 million viewers and a remarkably low 0.7 rating in the audience that NBC sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49. Not only was that the worst number recorded Tuesday by any show on network television, it is exactly the same rating that pushed “Do No Harm” over the ratings cliff.

That medical drama won the unfortunate distinction of scoring the lowest ratings for its premiere of any drama in network history; now “Smash” has sunk to that level.

But “Smash” may yet survive for several reasons, beginning with its close association with Bob Greenblatt, the top NBC Entertainment executive, who brought the show with him from Showtime when he joined NBC. More significan, perhaps, is that NBC has an enormous amount already invested in “Smash.”

The show has completed all 17 episodes it had scheduled this year. At a cost of about $4 million an episode, NBC has already spent about $70 million on the show. To pull it off the air now, after just four of those completed episodes have been broadcast, would mean NBC would have no chance to recoup the rest of its investment.

But NBC did remove “Do No Harm” despite having paid for 13 completed episodes of that show. (NBC may broadcast the remaining 11 at some later date, but at a much lower advertising rate.)

There is also evidence that NBC still believes “Smash” does not belong in the same category as “Do No Harm.’ Last week, the network’s public relations department pointed out that “Smash” may have a small audience, but it is among the most affluent audiences in television. That makes its small audience a bit more attractive to advertisers.

T! his week, the account of the abysmal ratings for “Smash” included the note that the Broadway drama is still heavily viewed on a delayed basis, with last week’s rating growing by 66 percent after three days of delayed viewing, rising to a 1.5 rating from a 0.9. Three days’ worth of added viewing is what advertisers will pay for, so “Smash” looks somewhat better financially when that accounting is included.

Fate of Four Time Inc. Magazines Are an Issue in Talks With Meredith

What do you do with iconic magazines no one seems to want

That is the question Time Warner is currently grappling with as the company tries to close a deal with Meredith Corporation that would spin off its Time Inc. magazines into a separate company with Meredith’s titles.

On Wednesday, three people briefed on the negotiations who could not discuss private conversations publicly, said Meredith and Time Warner executives could not agree on what to do with four Time Inc. titles: Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated.

Time Warner still wants to complete the deal, but if talks fall through, the media giant could spin off Time Inc. on its own, without a partner, or keep its 21 magazines, the people said.

Time Warner had considered keeping the four news and sports magazines, which executives originally believed have synergies with its CNN cable channel. But the thinking on the magazines, which like the rest of the industry have faced industry-wide downturns in revenue, has change, these people said.

Under the initial deal that has been discussed for weeks, Meredith, which publishes stalwarts like Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, would combine its magazines with Time Inc.’s publications, including InStyle, People and Real Simple, into a separate company. The new company would borrow money to pay a one-time dividend of around $1.75 billion back to Time Warner.

That company would essentially be a women’s magazine publisher focused on strong female-friendly titles like People and Ladies’ Home Journal. Meredith executives have privately said that Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated wouldn’t fit, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. Plus, they are expensive to operate.

Another sticking point in the negotiations is IPC Media, a London-based magazine company owned by Time Inc. that publishes a mix of general interest and upmarket titles like In Style, Country Life and Decanter. ! IPC also includes an advertising business and a news trade and sales distribution company called Marketforce.

Founded by Edwin Thomas in 1902 with the publication of Successful Farming magazine, Meredith, based in Des Moines, Iowa, has always been a folksy domestic company with strong roots in the Midwest. Time Inc.’s international business would make for an odd pairing.

In addition to its 18 magazines, Meredith owns 13 local broadcast television stations including My KSMO TV in Kansas City, Mo., and WGCL 46 in Atlanta, which would remain in the existing Meredith structure.

The Time Inc. domestic titles that are at issue in the negotiations have struggled in recent years because of a tough advertising market and declining newsstand sales. Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated all experienced declines in advertising pages in 2012 compared with 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Time’s advertising page declined by 12.2 percent and Sports Illustrated’s by 5.5 percent. Money’s pages dropped by 5 percent and Fortune experienced a 4 percent decline.

Time and Fortune have experienced overall declines in their circulation in the past five years of about two percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But they have also suffered big declines in newsstand sales. Fortune’s and Time’s newsstand sales fell by 33 percent and 45 percent, respectively, from 2007 to 2012. Sports Illustrated suffered a 46 percent decline in newsstand sales. Money took the biggest hit with an overall circulation decline over the past five years of 7.6 percent and a 50 percent decline in newsstand sales.

Meanwhile, InStyle, a property that is far more desirable to Meredith, has seen its advertising pages grow by 5.4 percent between 2011 and 2012. Its overall circulation rose over the past five years by 4 percent. Its newsstand sales dropped by 24 percent.

Spokesmen for Time Warner and Meredith de! clined to! comment on the negotiations.

Fate of Four Time Inc. Magazines Are an Issue in Talks With Meredith

What do you do with iconic magazines no one seems to want

That is the question Time Warner is currently grappling with as the company tries to close a deal with Meredith Corporation that would spin off its Time Inc. magazines into a separate company with Meredith’s titles.

On Wednesday, three people briefed on the negotiations who could not discuss private conversations publicly, said Meredith and Time Warner executives could not agree on what to do with four Time Inc. titles: Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated.

Time Warner still wants to complete the deal, but if talks fall through, the media giant could spin off Time Inc. on its own, without a partner, or keep its 21 magazines, the people said.

Time Warner had considered keeping the four news and sports magazines, which executives originally believed have synergies with its CNN cable channel. But the thinking on the magazines, which like the rest of the industry have faced industry-wide downturns in revenue, has change, these people said.

Under the initial deal that has been discussed for weeks, Meredith, which publishes stalwarts like Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, would combine its magazines with Time Inc.’s publications, including InStyle, People and Real Simple, into a separate company. The new company would borrow money to pay a one-time dividend of around $1.75 billion back to Time Warner.

That company would essentially be a women’s magazine publisher focused on strong female-friendly titles like People and Ladies’ Home Journal. Meredith executives have privately said that Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated wouldn’t fit, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. Plus, they are expensive to operate.

Another sticking point in the negotiations is IPC Media, a London-based magazine company owned by Time Inc. that publishes a mix of general interest and upmarket titles like In Style, Country Life and Decanter. ! IPC also includes an advertising business and a news trade and sales distribution company called Marketforce.

Founded by Edwin Thomas in 1902 with the publication of Successful Farming magazine, Meredith, based in Des Moines, Iowa, has always been a folksy domestic company with strong roots in the Midwest. Time Inc.’s international business would make for an odd pairing.

In addition to its 18 magazines, Meredith owns 13 local broadcast television stations including My KSMO TV in Kansas City, Mo., and WGCL 46 in Atlanta, which would remain in the existing Meredith structure.

The Time Inc. domestic titles that are at issue in the negotiations have struggled in recent years because of a tough advertising market and declining newsstand sales. Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated all experienced declines in advertising pages in 2012 compared with 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Time’s advertising page declined by 12.2 percent and Sports Illustrated’s by 5.5 percent. Money’s pages dropped by 5 percent and Fortune experienced a 4 percent decline.

Time and Fortune have experienced overall declines in their circulation in the past five years of about two percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But they have also suffered big declines in newsstand sales. Fortune’s and Time’s newsstand sales fell by 33 percent and 45 percent, respectively, from 2007 to 2012. Sports Illustrated suffered a 46 percent decline in newsstand sales. Money took the biggest hit with an overall circulation decline over the past five years of 7.6 percent and a 50 percent decline in newsstand sales.

Meanwhile, InStyle, a property that is far more desirable to Meredith, has seen its advertising pages grow by 5.4 percent between 2011 and 2012. Its overall circulation rose over the past five years by 4 percent. Its newsstand sales dropped by 24 percent.

Spokesmen for Time Warner and Meredith de! clined to! comment on the negotiations.

Warner Music Owner Bets on Competing Digital Services

Len Blavatnik, the Russian-born billionaire investor who bought the Warner Music Group two years ago, has placed big bets on multiple digital music services as the streaming model grows around the world.

Mr. Blavatnik’s holding company, Access Industries, is one of several parties investing $60 million in Daisy, a planned service by Beats Electronics, the high-end headphone company, Beats announced late Tuesday. The others are Marc Rowan of Apollo Global Management; James Packer, of Australia; and the Texas oil heir Lee M. Bass.

Daisy â€" still only a code name, and not confirmed as the service’s eventual brand name â€" will compete with Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and others by letting users stream millions of songs by subscription. But it is not the only such service backed by Mr. Blavatnik. In October, Access invested $130 million in Deezer, a French company that has said it wants to open in over 100 countries around the world, including the major developed markets like the United States and Western Europe and also throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Beats said that Daisy â€" based on the technology of Mog, a struggling service that Beats bought last year â€" would be spun off as a separate company and introduced by the end of the year. But it has given few details about how Daisy would be distinguished from others in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported early Wednesday that Jimmy Iovine, one of the founders of Beats, had met with top Apple executives over a “potential partnership” involving Beats. A spokeswoman for Beats declined to comment on the report.

Reinventing Radio: Clear Channel Communications continues to add to its series of historic royalty deals with record companies covering Internet and terrestrial radio.

The company, which operates more than 800 radio stations, announced on Wednesday that it had made a deal with Entertainment One, an independent label and distributor, to “share revenue from digital and terrestrial radio.” The deal with Entertainment One, also known as eOne, follows others with influential independent record companies like Big Machine, the label behind Taylor Swift, and Glassnote, whose acts include the bands Mumford & Sons and Phoenix.

In those deals, Clear Channel has made the move â€" unprecedented in American radio â€" of offering record companies a royalty whenever their music is played, either on the air or on Clear Channel’s Web sites and apps like iHeartRadio. In the United States, radio statons are required to pay royalties only to songwriters and music publishers, not to record companies. These deals can help Clear Channel limit its exposure to rising licensing costs for online music, which have become a headache for Internet radio services like Pandora.

Big Machine has also been a driving force for these licensing deals. In addition to its deal with Clear Channel, it has made similar arrangements with the broadcasters Entercom and Beasley, which together have about 150 stations.

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

WGBH to Partner on Children’s Pilot for Amazon

One of the biggest suppliers of programming for PBS, WGBH, is the latest to climb aboard Amazon’s television pilot process.

Amazon’s production arm said Wednesday that it had ordered a children’s pilot called “Sara Solves It,” which was co-developed by WGBH (the powerhouse public television station in Boston) and Out of the Blue Enterprises, a production company co-founded by Angela Santomero, whose credits include Nickelodeon’s long-running series “Blue’s Clues.”

“Sara Solves It” is the sixth children’s pilot commissioned by Amazon, which is entering the original television space for the first time. Once the pilot episodes are completed, they will be posted on Amazon’s streaming video service, called Prime Instant Video; viewer feedback will play a role in Amazon’s decisions about which become series, and which get shelved.

WBGH and Ms. Santomero’s willigness to sell their show idea to Amazon attests to Amazon’s willingness to invest in original content. Carol Greenwald, the senior executive producer of children’s programs for WGBH, said in a statement, “We are excited to be part of Amazon Studios’ innovative approach of getting high-quality programming directly into the hands of parents and children.”

The new pilot announcement comes at a time of intense rivalry between Amazon and a much bigger streaming video service, Netflix.

Last month, Netflix announced its first step into original children’s programming in cooperati! on with DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks is making a cartoon series called “Turbo: F.A.S.T.” for the service, based on its forthcoming film “Turbo.” The film comes out in July; the Netflix series is scheduled to come online in December.

The two streaming services are also competing with programming for adults. Netflix has five original dramas and comedy series premiering this year, and Amazon has a set of comedy pilots in production.

Amazon has publicly identified six such pilots, and there are two others that have not formally announced by the company. The pilot episodes, at least of the six, are expected to be posted online sometime this spring.

The First Strike in the Roger Ailes Book Wars

The Roger Ailes book wars have begun.

On Wednesday Vanity Fair’s Web site published an excerpt from the first of two â€" or maybe three â€" books about Mr. Ailes and the network he runs, the Fox News Channel.

The excerpt, from the book “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets, revealed little about Fox, but included a number of pointed one-liners uttered by Mr. Ailes, whose conservative politics appeal to many Fox viewers but infuriate his critics.

Mr. Chafets’s book will be published on March 19. It precedes another book about Mr. Ailes, tentatively titled “The Loudest Voice in the Room: Fox News and the Making of America,” by Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine.

Of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Ailes is quoted in the excerpt saying: “I have a soft spot for Joe Biden. I like him. But he’s dumb as an ashtray.” Of Newt Gingrich, a former Fox News analyst and Republican residential candidate, Mr. Ailes said, “He’s a sore loser and if he had won he would have been a sore winner.” He proceeded to use an obscenity to describe Mr. Gingrich.

It is Mr. Ailes’s comment about President Obama that may garner the most attention. Mr. Ailes has been sharply critical of Mr. Obama in the past; last month he was quoted as saying “The president likes to divide people into groups. He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other.”

In the book excerpt in Vanity Fair, Mr. Ailes is shown reacting to a remark during the presidential campaign by a Democratic strategist, Hilary Rosen, who said that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.” Mr. Ailes responded, “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public mon! ey. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week How often does he play basketball and golf I wish I had that kind of time.” Mr. Ailes added, “He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that.”

The author of the book, Zev Chafets, said that when Mr. Ailes noticed his arched eyebrows, Mr. Ailes added, “I didn’t come up with that. Obama said that, to Barbara Walters.”

This is the type of quote that gets partisans on both sides riled up. Mr. Obama brought up laziness when Ms. Walters asked him in a 2011 interview on ABC, “What’s the trait you most deplore in yourself and the trait you most deplore in others”

When he said laziness, she sounded surprised. He explained, “There is a â€" deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me.” He chalked it up to his boyhood in sunny Hawaii.

He added, “But when I’m mad at myself, it’s because Iâ™m saying to myself, ‘You know what, you could be doing better; push harder.’ And when I â€" nothing frustrates me more than when people aren’t doing their jobs.” Mr. Obama then said, to answer the other half of Ms. Walters’ question, that the trait he most dislikes in other people is cruelty. “I can’t stand cruel people,” he said. “And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else just to make themselves feel important, it really gets me mad.”

Mr. Ailes is also quoted in the excerpt on the subject of MSNBC, which has emerged as a less-highly-rated liberal counterweight to Fox News. Mr. Ailes said he warned NBC in the mid-1990s not to name the channel MSNBC because “M.S. is a damn disease.” At the time Mr. Ailes was the head of America’s Talking, the NBC cable channel that was effectively replaced by MSNBC in 1996. He left NBC to create Fox News.

Sometime after Mr. Sherman began working on his book, Mr. Ailes agreed to cooperate with Mr. Chafets, whose pr! evious bo! oks include a favorable biography of Rush Limbaugh. Within the television industry, Mr. Chafets’s book is widely seen as an attempt to get out ahead of Mr. Sherman’s book. (Perhaps the better word for it is “prebuttal,” a word political operatives sometimes use).

The publisher of Mr. Chafets’s book, Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Group, told Politico earlier this week that Mr. Ailes “decided to grant our author exclusive interviews for his book, and he told his Fox News colleagues and friends that they were free to talk to Chafets. But Mr. Ailes had no control over the editorial process, which was between us and our author.”

Mr. Sherman’s book, meanwhile, has a May release date, but it is believed to have been delayed. Mr. Sherman wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning that he was struck by the way Mr. Ailes and his oss Rupert Murdoch talk about each other in the excerpt from Mr. Chafets’s book.

Mr. Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, is quoted as saying that he defers to Mr. Ailes: “I have ideas that Roger can accept or not. As long as things are going well. …”

And Mr. Ailes is quoted as saying, “Does Rupert like me I think so, but it doesn’t matter. When I go up to the magic room in the sky every three months, if my numbers are right, I get to live. If not, I’m killed. Our relationship isn’t about love â€" it’s about arithmetic. Survival means hitting your numbers. I’ve met or exceeded mine in 56 straight quarters. The reason is: I treat Rupert’s money like it is mine.”

Mr. Ailes is also said to be working on an autobiography â€" but there’s no release date for it.

The Breakfast Meeting: News Corp. Wants a Place in School, and Upfronts Are Not Just for Spring Anymore

Joel I. Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s schools, will introduce News Corporation’s Amplify, the company’s fledgling education division coupled with a new tablet of the same name, at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Tex., on Wednesday, Amy Chozick reports. The tablet, a 10-inch Android made by Asus, will run Amplify’s curriculum and provide storage for students’ data. It couples a touch screen with education-specific features, like an “eyes on teacher” warning when attention wanders and quizzes that use sad and smiley emoticons so teachers can ascertain whether students grasp new material. It will also have education-based games for students when they’re not in class, including one in which Tom Sawyer battles the Brontë sisters.

Upfronts, the efforts by media companies to woo advertisers, earned that name because they have traditionally taken place before te fall television season, usually in mid-May. But a proliferation of new, hungry media outlets eager to book new deals has led major players like Google, NBCUniversal, Time Warner and Viacom to front-run the upfronts, Stuart Elliott writes. So far this winter channels like Nickelodeon, Oxygen and Style have held events, and on Tuesday the Gannett Company, CMT and Fox Sports Media Group held events. “Every single day of the year, you can be at an upfront, an ‘infront’ or a ‘newfront,’ ” said Wenda Harris Millard, president at MediaLink.

Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, and Jon Favreau, an ex-speechwriter for President Obama, have enthusiastically taken to Twitter after leaving their White House gigs, Mark Landler writes. Each has adopted an open, somewhat irreverent persona they could not take under White House strictures (Mr. Vietor’s Twitter avatar is a photo of himself draped in American flag shorts, shirt and gloves, clutching what appears to be a beer bottle in front of an American flag), and won a good number of followers in the process. Their presence on Twitter allows them to continue supporting President Obama and attacking his critics in an unconventional way, promoting themselves in the process.

Jon Stewart, comedian and host of “The Daily Show,” Comedy Central’s pre-eminent fake news program, is taking a 12-week hiatus to direct a dramatic film to be called “Rosewater,” Brooks Barnes reports. Mr. Stewart adapted the screenplay from the book “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival,” by Maziar Baari and Aimee Molloy. Mr. Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian journalist, was imprisoned for four months in Tehran in 2009, and a comedy segment on “The Daily Show” was used as evidence against him. John Oliver, the show’s “senior British correspondent,” will be the host in Mr. Stewart’s stead.

Marissa Mayer’s announcement last week that she was abolishing Yahoo’s work-at-home policy may have stirred a national debate, but many current and former employees think it was a necessary move, Claire Caine Miller and Nicole Perlroth write. Ms. Mayer, the company’s new chief executive, was not penalizing employees who had to stay home with a sick child, the article says, but was seeking to rein in around 200 workers who worked at home, did little for the company and collected Yahoo paycheck, sometimes while founding start-ups of their own. The move, like providing free foo! d in Yaho! o’s cafeteria, was intended to foster workplace innovation, communication and morale at Yahoo. Another struggling company known for permissive workplace policies, Best Buy, announced on Monday that it would adopt similar rules.

The evaporating number of viewers watching broadcast TV has led to a boom of pilot programs ordered up by the big networks, nearly 100 expected for this fall. They are being cast and shot at a furious pace so that schedules can be announced in May, and a great many of them will be seen by nobody but the people who make them and the programmers who reject them. Mike Hale looks at some of the more promising pitches.