“House of Cards” Episode 10 The Recap: Frank Forgets How to Count and Peter Tumbles

We are now officially headed toward end-of-season recess on “House of Cards” and Ashley Parker and David Carr take a look at episode 10. If you like reading their take on the political and media dimensions of the rest of the season, you can find episode one, two,three, four, five, six,seven , eight or nine here. Spoilers are thicker than plots on “House of Cards,” so consider yourself warned.

Episode 10

Synopsis: Frank Underwood is excoriated by the president for getting the vote count wrong, and realizes that it was his wife, Claire, who sold him short. The Underwoods’ marriage faces a crisis. And Congressman Peter Russo faces a crisis of his own, as he falls off the wagon with some help from Frank’s henchmen.

Parker: Deliciously, early on in this episode, Zoe Barnes is the one who breaks the news to Frank that his wife helped him lose the crucial two votes for Peter Russo’s watershed act.

“This is a juicy story, Francis,” she says, using the full name that only his wife calls him. “Carly will love it. The majority whip’s wife stabs him in the back.”

And so we get yet another glimpse into the marriage/partnership of the Underwoods. When Frank confronts Claire, his accusation seems to get at the crux of their relationship: “We make decisions together,” he says, to which she retorts that it certainly hasn’t felt that way recently. The betrayal seems to bother him less than the fact that they are no longer operating in tandem, making choices together to further their mutual ambitions.

Finally, a frustrated Frank tells Claire a hard truth he thinks she needs to hear: “CWI is important, yes,” he says, referring to the Clean Water Initiative, the foundation she runs, “but it doesn’t come close to what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Which made me wonder: What are they trying to accomplish The season starts with Frank Underwood being passed over for secretary of state, unfairly in his eyes. He vows revenge and to right the wrong, but it quickly becomes clear that secretary of state is no longer what he’s going for. He wants to punish the president, but how, and to what end As the show has progressed, it’s become increasingly unclear to me just what Frank (and Claire) want. What do you think, David Does he have a bigger or more lofty goal than simply amassing power for power’s sake

Carr: I am not in the writer’s head, but I think Frank is gunning for a position from which he can launch an inside job on the president. I felt from the beginning and still feel that the motivating factor in Frank’s life is simple payback, more so than the accumulation of power and favors.

It’s not a very lofty goal and perhaps Claire senses that. Why sacrifice and let hard work go down the drain unless there is something real in play. It’s been odd to watch the last three episodes because we have been led to believe that Frank is the ultimate inside player, someone who is always a few moves ahead of everyone, and sometimes he is. Yet we have also seen him played, time and again. He has been double-crossed by the president, his spouse and, depending on how you keep score, Zoe Barnes.

So does Frank have game or not For a player, he seems to get played a lot. Perhaps that is because he is in the midst of a dangerous game, but his instincts for where the real threats to his plans are seem off to me. The great unraveling of the last few episodes pulled me in, hard, just when I thought I knew where things were headed. And it makes me wonder what he might be willing to do when cornered.

And because I have had my own struggles with addiction, I have to pop off a bit about recovery issues in the series. It’s clear that Peter Russo is a mess, albeit an occasionally charming one, and also that he is just one more game piece on Frank’s chess board. But Doug Stamper Frank’s aide de camp and henchman is first set up as Congressman Russo’s sponsor in recovery and now is greasing the skids so he can go tumbling off the wagon. Without getting into the specifics of any recovery program, that is supposed to be a sacred relationship, and yet when push comes to shove, Doug Stamper is more than happy to all but pour the whiskey down Peter’s throat.

I guess it is of a piece with other plot lines. When real blood is drawn in “House of Cards,” it’s not by enemies or political opponents, but by intimates, people whose proximity and relationship of trust allows them to inflict maximum damage. So keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and by the way, your friends might be your real enemies, I guess.

Ashley, I sense we are both somewhat reluctant, but now die-hard fans of the show. Are you enjoying these hard, brutal plot turns

Parker: As a reporter, I’ve learned that hard, brutal plot turns often make the best copy. Covering a coup against House Speaker John A. Boehner at the hands of his disgruntled conservatives, for instance, would be a much better â€" and more exciting â€" story than Mr. Boehner once again managing to barely keep his conference in line. But as a person, I’m oddly squeamish about seeing people brought low, and human vulnerability laid out in all its glistening slickness.

I have a special soft spot for Peter Russo, and keep hoping for him to succeed against the odds. I’m drawn to the fighter in him, the one who does what it takes and keeps on getting up even when it’s a struggle â€" which is why I was so frustrated, and frankly confused, that he so easily succumbed to the girl-and-alcohol set-up. To me, it seems like it would have been the simplest and most obvious thing for him to simply walk away. He has a supportive girlfriend, he has two kids, he has a run for Pennsylvania governor that’s shaping into the real deal â€" in short, he has every personal and professional reason in the world not to fall off the wagon. And yet. And yet.

Then again, I’ve never dealt with addiction. How realistic did that scene seem to you, David

Carr:Peter Russo has everything going for him, everything to fight for, and when someone sets the equivalent of a loaded gun in front of him, he picks it up and puts it in his mouth.

Remember that it is not his addiction to mood altering substances that pulls him up to that room and to the brink of collapse, but the promise of sex. Men, again and again in this story, again and again on your beat, and in real life as it is lived by most, often seem incapable of making the smart play. Peter may be sober when the episode starts, but it is a series of very un-sober choices that puts him back in the ditch.

Washington is the place where Wilbur Mills ended up in the Tidal Basin on the wrong end of a very embarrassing story, but the issue of men not being who they pretend to be is not a Beltway phenomenon, but a human one.

Parker: That may be true, David. But when that human phenomenon occurs inside the Beltway, as we discussed above, it almost always makes for good copy.

Spotify, New to Advertising, Says, ‘I’ve Got the Music in Me’

The category of digital music services is getting as crowded as CBGB was when the Ramones played. So the major competitors in the category are spending large sums on advertising campaigns that are meant to generate awareness, consideration and trial.

The newest entrant in the ad club is Spotify, which plans on Monday to start its first campaign aimed at American music lovers. Appropriately, the initial commercial in the campaign is to make its debut on a music reality competition series, “The Voice,” which is returning on Monday night on NBC for its fourth season.

The budget for the first three months of the Spotify effort in the United States, which is being aimed at consumers ages 18 to 40, is estimated at more than $10 million. The campaign, which also includes online ads in addition to commercials, is being created by Droga5 in New York, the first agency of record for Spotify.

The campaign promotes Spotify, which competes against streaming music services like Rdio, Deezer, Mog and Rhapsody, with the theme “For music.”

(What, you were expecting the ads to say, “Against music”)

The idea is to present Spotify as the champion of music for every moment and mood, whatever the particular genre that gets someone reeling with the feeling or moving and a-grooving. To underline that, the initial commercial, which depicts the fun and energy of a giant concert, has no music whatsoever on the soundtrack.

“It’s been said that the best songs don’t give answers but instead answer questions,” a narrator begins. “So, why Why can a song change the world”

“Because music is a force for good, for change, for whatever,” the narrator continues as on screen a concertgoer is body-surfing above an enormous crowd. “Because we were all conceived to a 4/4 beat. Because music cannot be stopped, cannot be contained.”

“Because music makes us scream ‘Koo koo cachoo’ and mean it,” the narrator concludes. “Because music is worth fighting for. Why Because it’s music.” The commercial ends with the words “Spotify” and “For music” on screen.

The absence of music in the commercial signals that “music is personal; it means something different to everyone,” said Erin Clift, vice president for global marketing and partnerships at the New York office of Spotify.

Globally, Spotify has more than 24 million active users, of whom more than 6 million are paid subscribers. The service began in Sweden and came to this country two years ago.

“Our initial growth was with music enthusiasts,” Ms. Clift said. “We’re looking for that next group ready to experience music in a new way,” she added, which is “a mass, mainstream audience.”

To help achieve that, the campaign depicts Spotify as “the company that gives consumers music for every one of those moments” in life that it makes a difference, Ms. Clift says, seeking to reach potential users on an emotional level.

Subsequent commercials in the campaign also try to make emotional connections through playing up the importance of music while, again, not actually playing any particular song.

In one spot, featuring a man on his daily commute who is wearing headphones, he muses, “I’m back in the place that made you and I us.” The spot declares that Spotify is “for all the songs that remind you of her.”

In another spot, young men and women dancing at a party are having so much fun that they “don’t care that it’s a Tuesday or whose apartment it is.” Spotify, according to the spot, is “for always being able to find a new beat.”

An ad intended to appear online, on display and video networks like AOL, Buzz Media and Videology, echoes the dance commercial, showing two shirtless young men and a young woman performing awkward dance steps. “Because music doesn’t judge,” the headline reads.

Below, the text reads: “Find all the songs you need to get weird. And all the rest.”

Another online ad is centered on a photograph of a young couple about to engage in what looks as if it will be a wet, sloppy kiss. “Because mixtapes still work,” the headline reads.

Below, the text reads: “Find all the songs you need to seal the deal. And all the rest.”

David Droga, creative chairman at Droga5, said the campaign, like music, is “not judgmental.”

“We’re bringing it back to the essence of what makes music great,” he added, offering a “visceral” take on how “it’s bigger than all of us.”

“It’s more than files and devices and platforms,” Mr. Droga said. “It’s about the music.” He called Spotify “a mission brand” and the campaign’s goal is “to get across their values,” he said.

There are plans for additional ads, according to Mr. Droga, in that “this is the start of a much bigger integrated campaign.”

The media planning and buying part of the campaign is being handled by the Starcom division of the Starcom MediaVest Group, which is owned by the Publicis Groupe.

Spotify has “a dual challenge, building a brand and building a business,” said Lisa Weinstein, president for global digital, data and analytics at the Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago, who is involved in the campaign because of the digital focus of Spotify’s business.

That means Spotify needs to be concerned about consumers at the top of the marketing funnel, she added, referring to the brand image aspects of the campaign, as well as those “lower down the funnel” who are considering becoming paying subscribers.

Spotify has enjoyed “a high growth rate,” Ms. Weinstein said, “but there is still a tremendous opportunity” to grow further by taking advantage of earned media â€" social platforms like Twitter â€" and owned media like spotify.com as well as the paid media in which the campaign will appear.

Spotify is the most recent digital or e-commerce marketer to start advertising in traditional media to reach mainstream consumers. Others include Fab.com, Rdio, Viggle and Warby Parker.

New to Advertising, Says, ‘I’ve Got the Music in Me’

Evaluating the Odds for Florida Gulf Coast and the Rest of the Final 16 Teams

The story of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament is Florida Gulf Coast University, which on Sunday became the first No. 15 seed ever to reach the Round of 16, despite having become a full Division I member only last season. Just how unlikely was its accomplishment Does the team have a chance of advancing much further And what about the other teams in the Round of 16

In fact, we have been updating our tournament odds after almost every game. The first week of the tournament has been consequential for teams beyond Florida Gulf Coast. Louisville, a modest front-runner to win the tournament before it began, has become a clearer one now. Florida and Syracuse have also seen their chances improve considerably. Other teams like Indiana, however, have actually seen their odds decline.

There are two major factors that account for the shift in the odds from game to game. One is that our system adjusts its estimate of each team’s strength based on its margin of victory in games so far. A team that wins but does so by an underwhelming margin against a subpar opponent, as Gonzaga did in its first game against Southern University, can be a good candidate to be upset later on (as Gonzaga was by Wichita State). A team that wins in dominating fashion may be adjusting well to the contours of tournament play, by contrast.

The other major factor is what has happened to the opponents that a team is most likely to face: have upsets helped clear out its draw, or instead, is a team running headlong into a series of tough opponents (Injuries, which our projections account for, can be a third factor, but they have not played a major role in the tournament so far this year.)

In general - and with my apologies to those of you who had Gonzaga in your bracket - the teams that were well regarded by our model before the tournament started have survived intact, if sometimes bruised. The 11 teams that the model initially assigned the best chances of winning the tournament were Louisville (a 23.8 percent chance), Indiana (18.4 percent), Florida (13.2 percent), Kansas (7.9 percent), Duke (6.0 percent), Gonzaga (5.6 percent), Ohio State (5.4 percent), Michigan (2.5 percent), Michigan State (2.3 percent), Miami (1.8 percent) and Syracuse (1.8 percent). Only Gonzaga has lost among that group. (Georgetown â€" 0.9 percent â€" and New Mexico â€" 0.7 percent â€" also endured major upsets based on their seeding lines, but they were teams that statistical methods weren’t sold on to begin with.) With some important exceptions, more teams are now facing their nightmare draws than their dream ones. What follows are quick profiles of the 16 remaining teams and how their chances have changed fro our initial estimates.

Louisville (up to 32.4 percent from 23.8 percent) Three of the four No. 1 seeds survived into the tournament’s second week, but only Louisville looked dominant in doing so, winning its first two games by a combined 57 points. Louisville also caught a break with its Round of 16 opponent, Oregon â€" which may well have been underseeded as a No. 12 but which nevertheless offers a much more favorable matchup than No. 4-seeded St. Louis might have (especially in a game played in Indianapolis).

Louisville wouldn’t be so fortunate in its potential Round of 8 matchup: either Duke or Michigan State will be very tough. But should Louisville win that game, it will play the champion from the depleted West bracket in the national semifinal. (Not much of a bonus if that opponent is Ohio State, but Louisville has two chances for the Buckeyes to lose.) Between their strong play so far and the favorable contingencies in their draw, the Cardinals have emerged as a true tournament favorite.

Indiana (down to 10.9 percent from 18.4 percent) This is a big decline for Indiana â€" the model estimates that its chances of winning the national title have dropped by 60 percent. One factor is Indiana’s close call on Sunday against Temple, a team that the computer ratings did not regard as very strong. But perhaps more important, the rest of the top seeds in the East Region have won out. The immediate problem is Indiana’s matchup Thursday against Syracuse, a team that our formula liked to begin with and which has played very well so far. That game will take place at the Verizon Center in Washington, an arena that Syracuse will find familiar from its Big East matchups against rival Georgetown. Indiana’s Round of 8 matchup might actually be easier by comparison, especially if Marquette upsets Miami.

Florida (up to 21.3 percent from 13.2 percent) The Gators are this year’s flash point in the debate between stat geeks and traditionalists. The traditionalists look at Florida’s 0-6 record in single-digit games and see it as an inability to close out in the clutch. “Statheads” like me attribute it to bad luck instead, and conclude that Florida is underrated as a result.

So far, the theories about how Florida might perform in close games haven’t been tested, since it won its first two games in dominant fashion. (The FiveThirtyEight model, of course, regards the blowout wins as yet more evidence that Florida is a very strong team.)

Florida will play Florida Gulf Coast in Arlington, Tex., on Friday. We’ll contemplate Florida Gulf Coast’s chances later on, but even if one takes an optimistic view toward the team, that counts as an awfully favorable matchup for Florida relative to the alternatives - and another reason that Florida has leapfrogged Indiana in our rankings.

Kansas (down to 4.5 percent from 7.9 percent) The decline in Kansas’ winning odds might seem a bit punitive, but the Jayhawks played three underwhelming halves of basketball before finally turning it on against North Carolina late on Sunday. Kansas will have much less margin for error against No. 4 seed Michigan, its opponent on Friday, and then in a potential matchup against Florida over the weekend, two teams that are well regarded by the model. (Our model establishes Kansas as only a 55 percent favorite against Michigan, and has the team as a slight underdog to Florida.) In fact, it didn’t help Kansas that the No. 2 seed, Georgetown, was eliminated from its region, since that only helped to clear a path for Florida.

Duke (unchanged at 6.0 percent) This is the rare case in which a team’s path might get easier the further it goes in the tournament. First, the good news for Duke fans: The Blue Devils should be plenty dangerous if they reach the Final Four in Atlanta, with the model giving them one-in-three odds of winning the tournament if they do. The problem is that their next two potential opponents, Michigan State and Louisville, have played very well, and both would have something of a “home region” advantage with the games to be played in Indianapolis.

Ohio State (up to 6.8 percent from 5.4 percent) The model sees one big negative for Ohio State: its close and somewhat fortunate win against Iowa State on Sunday. However, this is outweighed by the improvement in its draw with No. 1-seeded Gonzaga having been eliminated from the West Region.

The Buckeyes will also play No. 6 seed Arizona rather than No. 3 New Mexico on Thursday, but that isn’t as much of a blessing: Arizona may well have been the better team, and the game will be played in Los Angeles. Ohio State hasn’t traveled farther west than Lincoln, Neb., to play a game all season, so this could be a de facto road game for Aaron Craft and his teammates.

Michigan (up to 3.8 percent from 2.5 percent) Michigan could easily enough have been a No. 1 seed had it played better down the stretch, and it was probably underseeded as a No. 4 even with the losses that it took. In general, however, we’ve found that late-season performance doesn’t tell you that much more than early-season performance when it comes to tournament play - and Michigan’s slump has not extended into the postseason. It was a break for the Wolverines to play in Auburn Hills, Mich., but their domination of a tough Virginia Commonwealth team on Saturday was nevertheless impressive, and they should be thought of as the equivalent of a strong No. 2 seed right now.

Michigan State (up to 3.5 percent from 2.3 percent) Michigan and Michigan State have both had some strong eras as basketball programs, but this is the first time that the teams have appeared in the Round of 16 together. Their situations are quite parallel now in that both are very strong teams that face very difficult draws in their next two games. Michigan State will also have to monitor the status of point guard Keith Appling, who left Saturday’s game against Memphis after aggravating a shoulder injury.

Miami (up to 2.4 percent from 1.8 percent) Miami is something of the opposite case from its intrastate rival Florida; statistically based rankings liked the Hurricanes much less than human polls did. Their four-point win against Illinois on Sunday represents something of an equivocal data point: does Miami deserve praise for toughing out the win, or suspicion for struggling at times against a No. 7 seed and benefiting from some favorable officiating decisions It should be favored against Marquette on Thursday, but either Indiana or Syracuse would put the Hurricanes to the test.

Syracuse (up to 4.8 percent from 1.8 percent) Syracuse’s 47-point win against Montana on Thursday was the largest ever by a team not seeded No. 1 or No. 2 (beating, as it happened, a record that Virginia Commonwealth had set less than an hour earlier). That is, of course, an impressive accomplishment to a model like ours that weighs margin of victory, so Syracuse’s chances of winning the tournament have more than doubled as a result. As with Michigan, this is a case in which late-season performance did not prove all that much: if the Orange are back in the early-season form that saw them start the season 18-1 and beat Louisville, they will make a very tough opponent for Indiana.

Marquette (down to 0.5 percent from 0.6 percent). Marquette’s draw against Davidson and Butler was tougher than it might look from the seeding, but it won the games by just three points combined â€" and the Golden Eagles are in the East Region, where the other top seeds have survived. Thus, Marquette’s chances of winning the tournament have not improved at all according to the model - instead, the team has been jumped by several others that began with worse seeds.

Arizona (up to 1.8 percent from 0.6 percent) One of those teams is Arizona, which the computer rankings now regard as tantamount to a No. 4 seed (rather than its nominal No. 6) after easy victories against Belmont and Harvard. Ohio State, Arizona’s opponent on Thursday, is a huge obstacle, but the game will be played in Los Angeles, and if the Wildcats win it, they should be favored against either Wichita State or La Salle in the regional final.

Wichita State (up to 1.2 percent from 0.1 percent) Wichita State has had as favorable a tournament as any team in the country so far. Its win against No. 1-seeded Gonzaga on Saturday got lots of attention, but the team also crushed No. 8-seeded Pittsburgh in its first game, a team that the computer rankings regarded highly. As their reward, the Shockers will face an overachieving La Salle team in the Round of 16. Their next game, against Ohio State or Arizona, would be much tougher, but Wichita State’s chances of reaching the Final Four are up to 24 percent â€" improved from just 1.3 percent before the tournament began.

Oregon (up to 0.06 percent from 0.01 percent) Those who complained that Oregon was underseeded have plenty of evidence in the form of wins against No. 5-seeded Oklahoma State and No. 4-seeded St. Louis. However, the Ducks’ punishment from the bracket makers is not over, as they’ll have to travel across the country to face the No. 1 overall seed, Louisville; the model gives them only about a 5 percent chance of winning that game.

La Salle (up to 0.10 percent from 0.01 percent) It’s tempting to draw parallels between La Salle and Virginia Commonwealth in 2011. Like the Commodores that year, this year’s Explorers were a controversial choice for the bracket that soon quieted all the talk by starting to win every game that it played.

But how likely is it that La Salle can replicate Virginia Commonwealth’s streak by winning five straight games (including a play-in game) en route to a Final Four appearance The model gives the team only about a 5 percent chance, largely because Ohio State looms over the Explorers should they make it past Wichita State.

Florida Gulf Coast (up to 0.02 percent from 0.001 percent) It took Florida Gulf Coast about 48 hours to go from the butt of jokes to one of the most memorable tournament stories in history. But just how unlikely was it for the team to have reached the Round of 16

Our model gave Florida Gulf Coast roughly a 3.3 percent chance of reaching the Round of 16 before the tournament began. That’s a low figure, but higher than that of the other three No. 15 seeds, whose chances ranged between 1.1 percent (Albany) and 2.6 percent (Pacific). It’s also slightly higher than that of La Salle, which was given a 2.7 percent chance, partly because it had to win three rather than two games to get there.

This is not meant to cast aspersions on Florida Gulf Coast. On the contrary, it reflects the fact that it was reasonably dangerous for a No. 15 seed; Ken Pomeroy’s ratings regard the team as having played the 14th-toughest nonconference schedule in the country, and it came up with a big win in one of those games, against Miami. (The team also lost games to the likes of Maine, Lipscomb and East Tennessee State; nobody should be suggesting that it ought to have been a No. 1 seed.) It also helped Florida Gulf Coast to have a relatively favorable draw, facing Georgetown, which our model regarded as the worst of the No. 2 seeds this year.

Even though these were unusually good circumstances for a No. 15 seed, it is probably somewhat unlucky that no No. 15 seed has made it to the Round of 16 before. If you assume that a typical No. 15 seed has a 2 percent chance of making it to the Round of 16, the chances that not one of them would do so before this year (there had been 112 previous opportunities since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985) were only about 10 percent.

By the same logic, No. 16 seeds as a group are probably somewhat unlucky to have never won a tournament game. Our model typically gives a No. 16 seed something like a 2 percent chance of beating a No. 1 â€" about the same as a No. 15 seed’s winning two games and reaching the Round of 16. Any given No. 16 seed would have to be incredibly lucky to pull it off. But there have been 116 matchups between No. 1 and No. 16 seeds in the tournament’s history; with so many chances, the probability is that one or more of those teams would have punched their lottery ticket by now.

The point is simply that the tournament offers lots and lots of opportunities for highly improbable things to happen, so some of them happen in almost every tournament.

Suppose, however, that we limit our consideration of unlikely events to a team’s advancing to a certain stage of the tournament despite facing the longest odds initially. By this definition, the most unlikely event in the tournament’s history was perhaps Virginia Commonwealth’s run to the Final Four in 2011; in an article in 2011, I estimated that the odds of that were about 820-to-1 against.

To beat Virginia Commonwealth’s mark, Florida Gulf Coast will have to reach the Final Four itself; our model put the odds of this as about 2000-to-1 against before the tournament began.

The odds that Florida Gulf Coast will reach the Final Four are much shorter now that the team has won its first two games, of course, but the model still puts the team at about 130-to-1 against, partly because it now has a very tough draw and will have to face Florida, and then either Kansas or Michigan.

As a mathematical aside, you may see even longer odds against Florida Gulf Coast quoted by other statistical systems. The difference is that the FiveThirtyEight model does not assume that the odds of winning any one tournament game are independent of the next one, as the other systems largely do. Instead, the assumption built into the FiveThirtyEight model is that once a team has overperformed its initial rating, its chances of continuing to do so have improved.

The runs made by teams like Virginia Commonwealth and Butler in the past are unlikely by any definition, but sometimes teams really are much stronger than their advance billing. That is most likely the case for Florida Gulf Coast, which has not only won two games but has also looked outstanding in doing so. It will now have to continue its magic against some of the best teams in the tournament.

The Breakfast Meeting: Murdoch Weighs a Newspaper Deal and Steve Harvey Surprises Daytime TV

Rupert Murdoch finds himself in a familiar predicament as he considers a bid for The Los Angeles Times: awaiting rule changes from the government, Amy Chozick reports. Mr. Murdoch has increased his lobbying efforts to revise a media ownership rule that prevents companies from owning both television stations and newspapers in the same local market (News Corporation owns KTTV and KCOP in the Los Angeles area). Mr. Murdoch has given mixed signals about his interest in The Los Angeles Times, which the Tribune Company plans to sell. The resignation last week of the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, could further slow the process. Mr. Genachowski had proposed allowing a rule change to allow a single company to own both a TV station and newspaper in a top-20 market provided the station was not in the top four in audience size.

“Steve Harvey,” a daytime talk show featuring the comedian and sitcom star that debuted in September, has been the surprise hit of daytime TV, Brian Stelter writes. The show has averaged a rating of 0.9 among women ages 25 to 54 and posted a 1.0 rating in February, enough to tie Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show for the first time. The ratings have cemented Mr. Harvey as one of America’s foremost entertainers and drawn comparisons to Oprah, whom Mr. Harvey will interview this April.

NBC’s plan to replace Jay Leno with Jimmy Fallon as host of the “Tonight” show could risk the top spot in the ratings Mr. Leno has enjoyed for the last two decades, one of the few areas the network dominates, Bill Carter writes. Mr. Fallon will almost certainly start the job for a lower salary than Mr. Leno because there is much less profit to go around in late-night television than there once was. He also faces an increasingly fragmented television audience that is leaving late-night shows for diverse options like “The Daily Show” and Cartoon Network or eschewing live television for DVR or the Internet.

Ads are increasingly appropriating social media patois, Stuart Elliott writes. Commercials for brands including Toyota, Snickers Peanut Butter Squared candy and the cosmetics retailer Sephora all crib from the social media lexicon. Such commercials now include mainstream consumers, not just youthful ones, and exemplify a tactic known as borrowed interest by which brands seek to associate themselves with pervasive elements of popular culture.

The government prosecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking secret information to WikiLeaks is a public prosecution in name only, David Carr reports in The Media Equation. Basic information has been withheld throughout the lengthy pretrial hearings, and when the court agreed last month to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents requested by reporters under the Freedom of Information Act the documents contained redactions that were almost comical. The issue makes it hard going for reporters and fits a pattern of what reporters and lawyers say is a sometimes capricious withholding of information by the government.

Buzzmedia, a Los Angeles-based company that runs a handful of pop culture and music blogs, has decided that second-best is a viable way to gain Internet advertising, Ben Sisario writes. Even though Buzzmedia offerings like Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan trail Pitchfork in audience and engagement Buzzmedia draws 41 million people a month, according to comScore, more than some of its main competitors like Gawker Media and Mashable. On Monday the company will rename itself SpinMedia, after Spin Magazine, which it bought last year, another move to attract readers.

Two movies opened with $30 million or more in ticket sales for the first time this year, giving studios hope that a dismal stretch might be behind them, Brooks Barnes reports. An animated caveman comedy, “The Croods,” and a thriller, “Olympus Has Fallen,” both broke the $30 million mark over the weekend, but movie ticket sales are still showing a 13 percent decline from the same period a year ago.