Trying to Turn a Castle Into a Cash Register

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‘Fast & Furious 6\' Opens as Huge Hit

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American Al Jazeera Channel Shifs Focus to U.S. News

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Media Decoder: PBS Demands, and Gets, More Reporting in a Film

PBS Demands, and Gets, More Reporting in a Film

The independent short film “Outlawed in Pakistan” had its United States premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where The Los Angeles Times called it “among the standouts.”

“Outlawed in Pakistan” follows Kainat Soomro, who says she was gang-raped at 13. “Frontline” asked for more information.

On Tuesday, PBS's “Frontline” will broadcast the film, but not quite the same one, after “Frontline's” producers, in an unusual move, asked the filmmakers to return to Pakistan to do additional reporting to answer a number of what they called “serious journalism” questions.

The film, in both versions, examines what happens when Pakistani girls and women pursue legal justice for rape charges. Over several years, it followed Kainat Soomro, who was 13 when she said she had been gang-raped by four men, and the efforts by those accused to clear their names.

Habiba Nosheen, 31, and Hilke Schellmann, 34, both based in New York, said in a telephone interview that, like many independent filmmakers, they used their life savings, family loans and a grant to get the film to the festival circuit. Money was so scarce they could not afford to translate all of their interview footage.

“Frontline” agreed to broadcast the film, but Raney Aronson-Rath, the series' deputy executive producer, said “absolutely not,” when asked if she would have used the original version, which she called a “point of view film.” Instead, “Frontline” gave the filmmakers more money; Ms. Nosheen said the figure was “four times” the film's budget, which she declined to disclose.

In February, the filmmakers returned to Pakistan, with a list of what Ms. Aronson-Rath said, by phone, were 30 or 40 questions from the “Frontline” producers about the legal investigation.

The filmmakers tracked down a new character, a cleric who seemed to back the accused men's defense that Ms. Soomro had married one of them. Later, when the filmmakers translated all their footage, they found a startling quote, in which the man who said he was Ms. Soomro's husband had threatened to kill her.

The extra money was “such an important thing for us; reporting is very expensive,” Ms. Nosheen said. “It was remarkable to us how much of an important and bigger story we could tell by the new information we gathered.”

The new version is “much more nuanced,” Ms. Schellmann added.

“When you do journalism, what emerges is a more powerful portrait for Kainat,” as well giving the men's side its due, Ms. Aronson-Rath said. “It's not that what they did was untrue,” she said of the filmmakers' original version, “it just wasn't the whole story.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: PBS Demands, and Gets, More Reporting in a Film.

Media Decoder: WNET\'s New Advertising Campaign Uses Reality TV as a Punchline

An Ad Campaign at WNET Uses Reality TV as a Punchline

After years of viewers complaining about reality television, a television station is chiming in.

The goal of the campaign, which questions the overall quality of television, is to add members as the channel celebrates its 50th year.

WNET, the PBS station in New York that broadcasts on Channel 13, is to begin an advertising campaign on Monday composed of posters in about 185 subway stations and Twitter feeds. The goal of the campaign, with a budget estimated at $45,000, is to encourage people to join WNET as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Rather than making a typical point - that WNET's shows like “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Masterpiece” and “Sesame Street” are far superior to reality fare - the posters take a cheeky tack by promoting five reality series that do not exist: “Bad Bad Bagboys,” “Bayou Eskimos,” “The Dillionaire,” “Knitting Wars” and “Married to a Mime.”

The make-believe shows are billed as being on make-believe channels like Insight and Arts, The Know Channel and Wonder Network - names that evoke the channels that lace their schedules with reality fare, among them A&E, once Arts & Entertainment; Discovery; and TLC, formerly The Learning Channel.

The payoff comes on the right side of the posters, which point to the fake advertisements and declare: “The fact you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV. Support quality programming. Join us at thirteen.org.”

The intent is to present WNET as “an island in a sea of madness,” said Kellie Specter, senior director for communications and marketing at WNET.

The campaign was created by the New York office of CHI & Partners, part of WPP, which has been working for WNET since September on a pro bono basis.

WNET's pledge drives “talk to people who are already watching,” said Victoria Davies, managing director of CHI & Partners New York. “We wanted to do something outside the channel, something people would enjoy, rather than something aggressive.”

The hope is that passers-by will “look twice” at the posters, she added, in the belief that “all these shows could be shows.”

The Twitter element of the campaign will involve posts from the fake stars of the fake shows: @RonPickles from “The Dillionaire”; @KnitterDaisy from “Knitting Wars”; and @StanTheMime and @MimeWife of “Married to a Mime.”

WNET has about 180,000 members, Ms. Specter said, and the anniversary goal is 50,000 new members. “CHI helped us come up with the goal and is helping us reach the goal,” she added. “We've over 31,000 new members since September.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: An Ad Campaign at WNET Uses Reality TV as a Punchline.

‘Bots\' That Siphon Off Tickets Frustrate Concert Promoters

Concert Industry Struggles With ‘Bots' That Siphon Off Tickets

Nadav Neuhaus for The New York Times

Darlene Schild of Lincroft, N.J., tried but failed to buy Justin Bieber tickets on her iPhone app for her daughter, Abby.

As the summer concert season approaches, music fans and the concert industry that serves them have a common enemy in New York. And in Russia. And in India.

Ticketmaster hired John Carnahan, an expert on machine learning, from Yahoo in late 2011 to lead its anti-bot effort.

That enemy is the bot.

“Bots,” computer programs used by scalpers, are a hidden part of a miserable ritual that plays out online nearly every week in which tickets to hot shows seem to vanish instantly.

Long a mere nuisance to the live music industry, these cheap and widely available programs are now perhaps its most reviled foe, frustrating fans and feeding a multibillion-dollar secondary market for tickets.

According to Ticketmaster, bots have been used to buy more than 60 percent of the most desirable tickets for some shows; in a recent lawsuit, the company accused one group of scalpers of using bots to request up to 200,000 tickets a day.

Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, have stepped up efforts to combat bots, in part to improve the ticket-buying experience for concertgoers, but also to burnish the company's reputation with consumers. The result has been a game of cat and mouse between the company and the bots.

“As with hackers, you can solve it today, and they're rewriting code tomorrow,” said Michael Rapino, Live Nation's chief executive. “Thus the arms race.”

In late 2011, Ticketmaster hired John Carnahan, an expert on machine learning who fought online advertising frauds at Yahoo, to lead its anti-bot effort.

By monitoring the behavior of each visitor to Ticketmaster's site, the company can determine the likelihood of a customer being human or a machine. For example, a human may click a series of buttons at a range of speeds and in different spots on a screen, but bots can give themselves away by rapidly clicking on precisely the same spot each time.

A screen on Mr. Carnahan's desk in Los Angeles shows Ticketmaster's incoming traffic, with a rainbow of colors at the bottom and splotches of red on top representing suspicious activity. On a recent Thursday afternoon, the screen showed that the red visitors were making 600 times more ticket requests than those the system identified as being most likely human.

Bots are not kicked off the system, but rather “speedbumped” - slowed down, sent to the end of the line or given some other means of interference, to allow a regular customer through.

“We're not trying to stop anybody from buying tickets,” Mr. Carnahan said. “We're just trying to make sure that a fan can buy the tickets.”

Ticketing bots are often inexpensive and programmed in countries beyond easy reach of American law enforcement. Rob Rachwald of the computer security company FireEye, which is not working with Ticketmaster, points out that one site - available in English and Russian - charges just $13.90 for the keys to 10,000 Captchas, those squiggly lines that test whether a potential customer is human.

In January, Ticketmaster replaced most of its old Captchas with newer and more sophisticated versions. The company is also introducing a system for mobile devices that aims to eliminate Captcha-style tests altogether.

Live Nation will not say how many of the 148 million tickets it sells each year are bought using bots, and in many cases it may not know. Few ever admit to using the programs; official groups like the National Association of Ticket Brokers, which represents many of the biggest resellers, condemn them and say they support anti-bot measures. But people at nearly every level of the concert business blame bots for wreaking all kinds of economic havoc.

“There are sold-out shows in reserved-seat houses in New York City where we will have 20 percent no-show, and that 20 percent will be down in the front of the house,” said Jim Glancy of The Bowery Presents, an independent concert promoter in New York. “It's speculators who bought a bunch of seats and didn't get the price they wanted.”

Concert promoters, artist managers and ticketing services say that bots are now an ever-present force, not only during the high-traffic moments when a big show officially goes on sale, but also at the odd moments when a promoter releases a few dozen extra seats with no announcement.

Darlene Schild, of Lincroft, N.J., may well have experienced the reach of bots firsthand recently when she tried to buy Justin Bieber tickets as an 11th birthday present for her daughter. Like any well-trained concertgoer, she fired up Ticketmaster's iPhone app just as the tickets went on sale, but after 15 fruitless minutes she gave up.

“The first thing that crossed my mind was that some ticket-buying service bought them all,” Ms. Schild said. “Or someone could dial quicker than me. Some technology - something.”

Last month, Ticketmaster sued 21 people in federal court, accusing them of fraud, copyright infringement and other offenses in using bots to search for millions of tickets over the last two years.

The legal status of bots is unclear. They are banned in a handful of states, but those laws have proved largely ineffectual, and enforcement at the federal level has also been a disappointment to the concert business.

Three years ago, four men connected with a company called Wiseguy Tickets were indicted on conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges, for apparently using bots to get tickets to Bruce Springsteen, Hannah Montana and other concerts.

The case hinged on whether the men had committed actual crimes or had merely violated the terms of service on Ticketmaster's site; in the end three of the men were sentenced only to probation and community service (one remained at large).

“They got a slap on the wrist,” Mr. Rapino said. “It wasn't much of an actual deterrent.”

Not everyone is convinced that bots are the primary villain of the everyday concertgoer. The Fan Freedom Project, a nonprofit group financed by StubHub, has pushed for anti-bot laws around the country, and Jon Potter, its president, praised Ticketmaster for filing its lawsuit last month.

But he also criticized the industry practice of “holds,” in which sometimes large blocks of tickets are reserved for sponsors, fan club members and industry contacts, and never go on sale to the general public.

When it comes to the secondary ticket market, Live Nation has a complicated position. As much as it is trying to block bots, it also profits from the ticket resale market through TicketsNow - its own version of StubHub - as well as through deals with major sports groups, like the National Basketball Association. Mr. Rapino sees no contradiction in Live Nation's stance.

“I have no problem if you bought a Justin Timberlake ticket and you decide to go sell that ticket to somebody,” he said. “We would first and foremost want to make sure that the first ticket sold, that the fan has a shot to buy that ticket.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Concert Industry Struggles With ‘Bots' That Siphon Off Tickets.

News Corp. Says It Was Not Told of Subpoena for Reporter's Phone Records

News Corporation said on Sunday that it had no record of being notified by the Justice Department nearly three years ago of a subpoena for the telephone records of a reporter at its Fox News cable channel.

The company's chief legal counsel at the time also said that he had never seen material from the government related to the subpoena.

The Justice Department has signaled that it notified News Corporation on Aug. 27, 2010, that it had seized the phone records of a Fox News reporter - who turned out to be the Washington correspondent James Rosen - after one of his articles had included details of a secret United States report on North Korea.

The seizure was part of the department's case against Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor investigated in connection with the North Korea leak. Mr. Kim has pleaded not guilty to leaking information and is awaiting trial. Fox News has denied that it knew about the subpoena, while Justice Department officials have said they sent notification 90 days after obtaining the records.

A law enforcement official said on Sunday that in the investigation that led to the indictment of Mr. Kim, “the government issued subpoenas for toll records for five phone numbers associated with the media.” This person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, added, “Consistent with Department of Justice policies and procedures, the government provided notification of those subpoenas nearly three years ago by certified mail, facsimile and e-mail.”

A Fox News executive said the channel had never heard of the Justice Department investigation and had no knowledge of New Corporation ever being notified. A News Corporation spokesman said Sunday that the company was looking into the matter of notification. “While we don't take issue with the D.O.J.'s account that they sent a notice to News Corp., we do not have a record of ever having received it,” Nathaniel Brown, the spokesman, said.

Last week, The Washington Post obtained an affidavit that described Mr. Rosen (without naming him) as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” The investigation relates to a 2009 article Mr. Rosen published on FoxNews.com that quoted a source describing missile activity in North Korea.

In e-mail to employees on Thursday, Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, rejected the validity of the investigation. “We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth,” Mr. Ailes said.

Lawrence A. Jacobs, who was News Corporation's chief legal officer until he left in June 2011, said he never saw a notification about the phone records.

“I would have remembered getting a fax from the Justice Department,” Mr. Jacobs said in an interview Sunday. “These are not the kinds of things that happen every day.”

He added, “The first thing I would've done would be to call Roger Ailes.”

News Corporation said it had conducted a thorough search of its legal records, including, Mr. Jacobs said, a scan of his e-mails and other relevant materials, and has found nothing related to the investigation. “The inference that I sat on this and didn't share it with Roger couldn't be further from the truth,” Mr. Jacobs said.

The investigation into Mr. Rosen's phone records and personal e-mail became public only after The Associated Press said two weeks ago that the government had subpoenaed telephone records in a different leak investigation.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, did not comment specifically on the Fox News investigation, but said last week at a news briefing that President Obama “believes, I think, as all of his predecessors believed, that it is imperative that leaks that can jeopardize the lives of American men and women serving overseas should not be tolerated.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: News Corp. Says It Was Not Told of Subpoena for Reporter's Phone Records.

Daily Deals Propel Older E-Books to Popularity

One-Day Deals Making E-Books Brief Best Sellers

 One Sunday this month, the crime thriller “Gone, Baby, Gone,” by Dennis Lehane, sold 23 e-book copies, a typically tiny number for a book that was originally published in 1998 but has faded into obscurity.

Web sites like BookBub track and aggregate retailers' bargain-basement deals on e-books.

The next day, boom: it sold 13,071 copies.

“Gone, Baby, Gone” had been designated as a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon, and hundreds of thousands of readers had received an e-mail notifying them of a 24-hour price cut, to $1.99 from $6.99. The instant bargain lit a fire under a dormant title.

Flash sales like that one have taken hold in the book business, a concept popularized by the designer fashion site Gilt.com. Consumers accustomed to snapping up instant deals for items like vintage glassware on One Kings Lane or baby clothes on Zulily are now buying books the same way - and helping older books soar from the backlist to the best-seller list.

“It's the Groupon of books,” said Dominique Raccah, the publisher of Sourcebooks. “For the consumer, it's new, it's interesting. It's a deal and there isn't much risk. And it works.”

Finding a book used to mean scouring the shelves at a bookstore, asking a bookseller for guidance or relying on recommendations from friends.

But bookstores are dwindling, leaving publishers with a deep worry about the future of the business: with fewer brick-and-mortar options, how will readers discover books?

One-day discounts are part of the answer. Promotions like the Kindle Daily Deal from Amazon and the Nook Daily Find from Barnes & Noble have produced extraordinary sales bumps for e-books, the kind that usually happen as a result of glowing book reviews or an author's prominent television appearances.

Web sites like BookBub.com, founded last year, track and aggregate bargain-basement deals on e-books, alerting consumers about temporary discounts from retailers like Amazon, Apple, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

“It makes it almost irresistible,” said Liz Perl, Simon & Schuster's senior vice president for marketing. “We're lowering the bar for you to sample somebody new.”

E-books are especially ripe for price experimentation. Without the list price stamped on the flap like their print counterparts, e-books have freed publishers to mix up prices and change them frequently. Some newly released e-books cost $14.99, others $9.99 and still others $1.99.

Consumers are flocking to flash sales, said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon's vice president for Kindle content, because the deals whittle down the vast number of choices for reading and other forms of entertainment.

“In a world of abundance and lots of choice, how do we help people cut through?” Mr. Grandinetti said. “People are looking for ways to offer their authors a megaphone, and we're looking to build more megaphones.”

Mr. Grandinetti said one book, “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die,” was selling, on average, less than one e-book a day on Amazon. After it was listed as a Kindle Daily Deal last year, it sold 10,000 copies in less than 24 hours.

Some titles have tripled that number: on a single day in December, nearly 30,000 people snapped up digital copies of “Under the Dome,” by Stephen King, a novel originally published in 2009 by Scribner. For publishers and authors, having a book chosen by a retailer as a daily deal can be like winning the lottery, an instant windfall of sales and exposure.

In February, a crime novel by the little-known author Lorena McCourtney, released by the Christian publishing imprint Revell, was selected as a Nook Daily Find. The sales from that promotion alone were enough to propel it onto The New York Times best-seller list.

At HarperCollins, executives said they have seen books designated as daily deals go from 11 copies sold in one day, to 11,000 copies the next.

Not all of them take off, though. One publisher said some books fizzle out quickly, attracting only several hundred downloads in a day. Another publisher said he is hesitant to discount that steeply, fearing that consumers will eventually resist paying more than a few dollars for a book.

But part of the allure of flash sales is what can happen afterward: a ripple effect that increases sales on an author's other work.

If one book in a series is offered in a one-day promotion, readers who liked it will often buy others in the series.

“We've found that one of the key opportunities with it is the halo effect,” said David Steinberger, the chief executive of Perseus Books Group. “It's hard for it to be highly successful economically at these very low prices, even if the volume goes up for a single day. But if you create awareness for the book, it can make a lot of sense for the author.”

The book that is discounted often sells at a higher level after the daily deal than it did before, even though it has returned to the regular price.

“Food Inc.,” the companion book to the documentary film, sold hundreds of copies each month before a one-day promotion on Amazon. On the day of the promotion, it sold thousands of copies; afterward, the book sold steadily at twice the level before the promotion, Mr. Steinberger said.

Tim Lavalli, a writer in Berkeley, Calif., said he reads at least two books a week, receiving almost all his recommendations from BookBub or Ereader News Today, another daily-deal aggregator.

It takes little time - and hardly any money - to download e-books when they are on sale, Mr. Lavalli said, making it easier to give up on a book if it does not keep his interest.

“You can read the first few chapters and say, this guy can't write,” he said. “Then you throw it away.”

Jim Hilt, the vice president for e-books at Barnes & Noble's Nook unit, said sales generally peak on Wednesday and Thursday, when customers start planning for the weekend and thinking about which books they are going to read.

“Those are really good days to get the right piece of content in front of someone,” he said.

Ms. McCourtney, based in southern Oregon, said she was shocked to learn from her publisher in February that her most recent book, “Dying to Read,” was a best seller.

Ms. McCourtney, who has published 42 novels, said it was a career first.

“I had never made The New York Times best-seller list before, so I was delighted,” she said. “It certainly felt good.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: One-Day Deals Making E-Books Brief Best Sellers.