With Few Details, Lucasfilm Signals ‘Star Wars’ Plans for TV

LOS ANGELES - Now that Lucasfilm is moving full steam ahead on a new “Star Wars” trilogy, the company - now owned by Disney â€" is starting to get its TV universe in order. On Monday came word that Lucasfilm has “decided to pursue a new direction in animated programming.”

What is that direction The company gave no details. But it did say that it would no longer supply new episodes of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” to Cartoon Network, a Time Warner-owned channel. Even so, Lucasfilm said that production will continue on “new story arcs” that would appear as “bonus content” … somewhere.

Lucasfilm also said that it was “exploring a whole new ‘Star Wars’ series set in a time period previously untouched in ‘Star Wars’ films or TV programming.” That series will be shown . . . somewhere.

“Stay tuned” is all Lucasfilm said.

The somewhere is likely Disney XD, a cable channel that Disney loosely aims at boys and contains a large amount of animated programmin.. The fledgling channel has done O.K. but not great, and Disney’s $4.06 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm last fall was partly seen as a way to supercharge it.

On Monday Lucasfilm also said that it would delay “Star Wars Detours,” a planned animated comedy series. “‘Detours’ was conceived and produced before we decided to move forward with the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, and in wake of that decision, Lucasfilm has reconsidered,” the company said.

Even Without Intrade, Billions Will Be Bet on 2016 Race

The popular prediction market Intrade, which in November shut down its markets to United States residents after a complaint from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced on Sunday that it was closing down entirely.

I’m less interested in speculating upon the business or legal reasons for Intrade’s shutdown than in pressing a simple point: billions will still be wagered on the outcome of the 2016 elections, with or without Intrade in place.

Some of this is because there are other betting markets and bookmakers who offer odds on the election. Several of these sites are already taking bets on the identity of the 2016 Republican presiential nominee, for instance, along with any number of other races. Most of these sites are not open to Americans. But they tended to perform more rationally than Intrade over the course of the 2012 campaign, with their prices more closely tracking polls, prediction models and news events.

The billions I’m referring to, however, will be wagered somewhere else: Wall Street. Consider what happened to a series of stocks on Nov. 7 of last year, the day after Barack Obama won the election.

Four large banking stocks â€" Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMor! gan Chase and Morgan Stanley - declined by an average of 7 percent on Nov. 7 as investors speculated that another term for Mr. Obama would provide a less favorable regulatory environment than one under Mitt Romney. Collectively, these stocks lost about $24 billion in market value on Nov. 7.

Similarly, a series of coal and oil stocks were off by anywhere from 3 percent to 30 percent on Nov. 7, and lost a collective $18 billion in market value.

A few industries benefited from Mr. Obama’s victory, however. The health care provider H.C.A., which should serve more hospital patients now that Mr. Obama’s health care bill is likely to remain in place, saw its stock rise by 9 percent the day after the election, adding $1.3 billion in market value.

In industries like these, the amount of money changing hands in response to political events far dwarfs anything that took place on Intrade, where trading volumes were measured in millions rather than billions of dollars.

Betting on the electionby means of buying or shorting common stocks can be a tricky endeavor, of course, since it requires investors to subject themselves to other risks associated with owning these stocks that might have little to do with the election outcome.

It might be possible to hedge some of these risks - for instance, if you thought that Mr. Romney was going to win the election, but weren’t especially optimistic about the stock market over all, you could buy up oil and banking stocks while shorting the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. But these would entail some transaction costs and some portfolio risk.

For most traders, however, political outcomes are more of a nuisance. Stock market investors in industries like banking, health care, energy and telecommunications that are heavily subject to the federal regulatory environment essentially can’t avoid betting on election and legislative outcomes, whether they want to or not.

Some of the value in having fully licensed and legal political bet! ting mark! ets that are open to American customers would be in allowing investors to hedge these risks more efficiently. In the meantime, there should be plenty of alternatives to Intrade in 2016.

The Breakfast Meeting: ‘The Bachelor’ Draws Viewers, and Martha Stewart’s Need for Privacy

ABC’s romance reality show “The Bachelor” has experienced a rare resurgence after a downswing that lasted several seasons , Amy Chozick and Bill Carter report. The show, which pairs a hunky man with dozens of heavily made-up women until he picks one as his fiancée, has become the unlikely exception in a television season when almost every other show on ABC and its competitors has declined. The audience has increased to 8.8 million viewers, 3.3 million of whom are 18 to 49 years old, the most attractive group for advertisers. The show is especially popular among women, particularly those in households that make more than $100,000 a year.

The contract dispute between Martha Stewart, J.C. Penney and Macy’s is unquestionably one of the most attention-getting contract law tiffs in recent memory, David Carr writes, but the best thing for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia may be to step away from the spotlight. Her original sin may have been taking a small, growing company public in 1999 â€" Martha Stewart Living now receives the scrutiny of a public company without capital benefits or operational guidance. Her company’s problems are typical of a magazine publisher (ad pages dropped 29 percent last year), and as Martha Stewart Living, inextricably tied to its namesake, transitions to a merchandising enterprise it might be wise to become less visible, possibly by going private once again.

“Harlem Shake’s” astounding viral success has attracted the attention of former reggaetón artist Hector Delgado and Philadelphia rapper Jayson Muson, whose work was prominently sampled in the song without permission, James C. McKi! nley Jr. writes. Both Mr. Delgado and Mr. Muson are seeking compensation from Mad Decent Records, the label that released the Baauer hit. Small labels like Mad Decent often rely on producers to clear their samples, especially in electronic dance music, because they do not have legal departments. The tale of this unexpected sensation highlights the free-for-all nature of underground dance music and the power of the Internet to create a No. 1 hit outside the major-label system.

A new ad campaign by Degree deodorant, which divided into men’s and women’s versions in 2005, will aim to persuade both sexes of Degree’s efficacy by showing how well it works for athletes of both sexes trying sports they don’t play professionally, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The campaign, by Davie Brown Entertainment, will feature athletes like Knicks star Carmelo Anthony in the boxing ring and lympic track star Lolo Jones racing in a bobsled with the tagline “Do:More.” Degree had taken divergent approaches to advertise the two lines, with commercials for the men’s line emphasizing Degree’s ability to withstand high-impact sports like mountain biking and those for the women’s line focusing on how Degree does not stain clothing as women work and socialize.

Awesomeness TV, a YouTube-based channel for teenagers, is an early example of how YouTube can create new media crossovers, Brooks Barnes writes. The channel had not introduced its MTV-style programs last year at this time, but it now has an audience of over 400,000 and 80.6 million video views, and on Friday an Awesomeness movie will be released in AMC theaters. The movie, “Mindless Behavior: All Around the World,” is a concert film and documentary about the boy band Mindless Behavior â€" i! t will ru! n in 120 theaters where social network data indicates the band is the most popular.

Harvard secretly searched the e-mail accounts of its staff members last fall to find who leaked news of its recent cheating scandal to the media, Richard Pérez-Peña reports. The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, who were not told that their accounts had been breached until a few days ago. Last August Harvard publicly revealed that “nearly half” of the students in a large government course had worked together or plagiarized for a take-home final exam in the spring of 2012. No deans were disciplined after the searches, but faculty members interviewed said they expected anger from the news.

The Breakfast Meeting: ‘The Bachelor’ Draws Viewers, and Martha Stewart’s Need for Privacy

ABC’s romance reality show “The Bachelor” has experienced a rare resurgence after a downswing that lasted several seasons , Amy Chozick and Bill Carter report. The show, which pairs a hunky man with dozens of heavily made-up women until he picks one as his fiancée, has become the unlikely exception in a television season when almost every other show on ABC and its competitors has declined. The audience has increased to 8.8 million viewers, 3.3 million of whom are 18 to 49 years old, the most attractive group for advertisers. The show is especially popular among women, particularly those in households that make more than $100,000 a year.

The contract dispute between Martha Stewart, J.C. Penney and Macy’s is unquestionably one of the most attention-getting contract law tiffs in recent memory, David Carr writes, but the best thing for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia may be to step away from the spotlight. Her original sin may have been taking a small, growing company public in 1999 â€" Martha Stewart Living now receives the scrutiny of a public company without capital benefits or operational guidance. Her company’s problems are typical of a magazine publisher (ad pages dropped 29 percent last year), and as Martha Stewart Living, inextricably tied to its namesake, transitions to a merchandising enterprise it might be wise to become less visible, possibly by going private once again.

“Harlem Shake’s” astounding viral success has attracted the attention of former reggaetón artist Hector Delgado and Philadelphia rapper Jayson Muson, whose work was prominently sampled in the song without permission, James C. McKi! nley Jr. writes. Both Mr. Delgado and Mr. Muson are seeking compensation from Mad Decent Records, the label that released the Baauer hit. Small labels like Mad Decent often rely on producers to clear their samples, especially in electronic dance music, because they do not have legal departments. The tale of this unexpected sensation highlights the free-for-all nature of underground dance music and the power of the Internet to create a No. 1 hit outside the major-label system.

A new ad campaign by Degree deodorant, which divided into men’s and women’s versions in 2005, will aim to persuade both sexes of Degree’s efficacy by showing how well it works for athletes of both sexes trying sports they don’t play professionally, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The campaign, by Davie Brown Entertainment, will feature athletes like Knicks star Carmelo Anthony in the boxing ring and lympic track star Lolo Jones racing in a bobsled with the tagline “Do:More.” Degree had taken divergent approaches to advertise the two lines, with commercials for the men’s line emphasizing Degree’s ability to withstand high-impact sports like mountain biking and those for the women’s line focusing on how Degree does not stain clothing as women work and socialize.

Awesomeness TV, a YouTube-based channel for teenagers, is an early example of how YouTube can create new media crossovers, Brooks Barnes writes. The channel had not introduced its MTV-style programs last year at this time, but it now has an audience of over 400,000 and 80.6 million video views, and on Friday an Awesomeness movie will be released in AMC theaters. The movie, “Mindless Behavior: All Around the World,” is a concert film and documentary about the boy band Mindless Behavior â€" i! t will ru! n in 120 theaters where social network data indicates the band is the most popular.

Harvard secretly searched the e-mail accounts of its staff members last fall to find who leaked news of its recent cheating scandal to the media, Richard Pérez-Peña reports. The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, who were not told that their accounts had been breached until a few days ago. Last August Harvard publicly revealed that “nearly half” of the students in a large government course had worked together or plagiarized for a take-home final exam in the spring of 2012. No deans were disciplined after the searches, but faculty members interviewed said they expected anger from the news.