Jackson’s Earning Potential Is at the Heart of a Wrongful-Death Suit

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Michael Jackson, rehearsing two days before he died.

He is one of the top-grossing artists in music. His influence is heard all over the Top 10, his songs have inspired two hit Cirque du Soleil shows, and Jay Z raps about him obsessively as the ultimate symbol of success.

“Michael Jackson One,” an elaborate Cirque du Soleil production inspired by the singer’s music, opened last month in Las Vegas.

Four years after his death, Michael Jackson still rules the music business.

Jackson’s importance to music and his continuing earning potential have been on display in a courtroom in Los Angeles this summer as members of his family battle with the promoter of his final concerts over who was responsible for his death, a question that may be worth more than $1 billion.

The darker part of Jackson’s legacy is also on display: the drug dependence, financial fecklessness, accusations of sexual abuse and the inescapability of his family, which first propelled him to stardom as a child and now continues to live off his fortune.

To judge by the market, that history is largely forgiven, if not forgotten. Forbes estimated that the estate made $145 million last year through a range of music and merchandising deals; the only living musician to come close, according to the magazine, was Dr. Dre with $110 million, mostly from the sale of his company Beats Electronics.

 Cirque du Soleil’s tribute, “Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour,” has sold more than $300 million in tickets since it opened two years ago, and last month an elaborate new Cirque show, “Michael Jackson One,” opened in Las Vegas.

Projects like these keep money pouring into the estate even as Jackson’s album sales have slowed from a peak after his death. Since 2009, the estate is estimated to have earned at least $600 million.

“Time is an elixir,” said Stephen G. Hill, the president of music programming and specials at BET Networks. “We’ve already seen in four years that what is really celebrated about him is his music, and his place among the greatest entertainers of all time.”

The wrongful death suit against the concert promoter A.E.G. Live, brought by Jackson’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine, hinges on the narrow question of whether Jackson or the company was responsible for hiring Dr. Conrad Murray, who administered the anesthetic that killed Jackson in June 2009. Dr. Murray is serving a four-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

Mrs. Jackson, who with Jackson’s three young children is suing A.E.G. Live, gave emotional if sometimes confused testimony last week, as her lawyers’ last witness before the defense began making its case.

 “They watched him waste away,” Mrs. Jackson cried from the stand, encapsulating her lawyers’ argument that A.E.G. Live ignored Jackson’s health and pressured Dr. Murray to do whatever it took to get him on stage.

But the trial, now entering its 14th week, also shows Jackson’s exceptional role in the music industry. As with everything he did, his comeback was planned on a huge and risky scale.

Even though Jackson had not toured widely in more than decade, some $30 million was spent to mount 50 shows in London, with rough plans for a world tour to follow. Hours before his death, the show’s insurers were still seeking details about Jackson’s health, prompted by news reports that he suffered from a variety of illnesses including lupus, cancer and anorexia, according to an e-mail shown in court.

Lawyers at the trial have delved, often in numbing detail, into the minutiae of the music business to try to assess Jackson’s earning potential. Last week, nearly an hour of combative questioning was devoted to the seating capacity of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

 A major question, beyond the culpability of A.E.G. Live in Jackson’s death, is how much money the entertainer might have made had he lived. That amount has been hotly disputed in court. Arthur Erk, an accountant called by the Jacksons, gave a future earnings estimate of $1.5 billion, but his analysis and methodology â€" Mr. Erk said that much of his information came from the Web site Wikipedia â€" were attacked by lawyers for A.E.G. Live.

Like plenty of other artists, Jackson turned to touring by necessity, said Stan Soocher, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, and the editor of the journal Entertainment Law and Finance.

Two Ad Giants in Merger Deal, Chasing Google

For years, the advertising business has been driven by the Madison Avenue mythology of small independent shops coming up with the snappy catchphrase or memorable TV commercial that becomes part of everyday culture.

Maurice Lévy of Publicis, left, and John Wren of Omnicom at a news conference on Sunday in Paris to announce a merger deal.

The announcement on Sunday of the merger of two industry giants, Omnicom and Publicis, to create the largest advertising company in the world, signals that advertising is now firmly in the business of Big Data: collecting and selling the personal information of millions of consumers.

That business is a competitive one, with technology companies like Google and Facebook using their huge repositories of user data to place ads. Between them, Omnicom and Publicis accounted for $22.7 billion in revenue last year, more than the next highest ad firm, WPP. But no ad company comes close to the $55 billion in revenue that Google made last year, largely on the strength of its advertising business.

At the news conference in Paris to announce the merger, the chief executive of Publicis, Maurice Lévy, said the “billions of people” who are now online and providing data to companies offer an opportunity to use advertising technologies to crunch billions of pieces of data “in order to come with a message which is relevant to a very narrow audience.”

The business of advertising and marketing is being transformed by technology as advertising agencies collect data and target ads to individual consumers. Television remains the single biggest beneficiary of ad spending in the United States, with a total of $66.35 billion in 2013, according to estimates from eMarketer. But advertising online ($42 billion in 2013), including mobile devices at $7.7 billion, is growing at a much faster rate.

While advertising agencies often work hand in hand with Google, Facebook and Twitter, those same companies can also work directly with companies like General Motors and Coca-Cola, including sharing data. Traditional advertising agencies â€" the middlemen between the firms and the platforms like television networks, radio stations and online publishers â€" are under pressure to deliver more value for their customers, or be cut out of the equation.

“Industrywide, you’re seeing more and more brands taking in pieces of what they used to pay an agency to do in-house and then spend that with other companies,” said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of digital marketing at Adobe Systems.

David Kenny, a former Publicis executive who now runs the Weather Company, which includes The Weather Channel and weather.com, said that platforms like his are now working directly with companies to develop advertising campaigns, especially on mobile devices, essentially bypassing ad agencies.

At the same time, new competitors in the digital advertising space have emerged over the last few years, including Accenture, Sapient and Deloitte, consultancies that have built up their marketing and data divisions to include many of the services once provided exclusively by ad agencies.

“We see the lines have been blurred between the various functions and the various players,” said Mr. Levy in an interview after the announcement of the merger on Sunday. “In this world you have to partner and you have to compete with a lot of players.”

John Wren, the chief executive of Omnicom, who joined Mr. Levy for the interview added: “Our industry is not limited to a handful of people. There are new people coming over the line to what was traditional advertising every single day.”

Darren Herman, the chief digital media officer at the Media Kitchen, an agency owned by MDC Partners, a smaller advertising holding company in New York, said the merger was not a reaction to competition within the advertising industry but rather a move to fortify against the likes of IBM, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle. “Fighting that fight is potentially a losing battle,” Mr. Herman wrote in an e-mail.

For consumers, the merger is another signal that the business of marketing is becoming more personalized, often based on information that consumers may not even be aware they are sharing, including Web habits, social media activity and credit card histories. As advertisers collect and combine this data consumers can expect to see advertising that is targeted more specifically at them.

Vindu Goel and Quentin Hardy contributed reporting.

Bloomberg Media Recruits a New Chief From the Atlantic

Justin B. Smith, whose digital strategy swiftly transformed The Atlantic, one of the statelier media vessels around, is about to get a bigger boat.

Justin B. Smith, as president of Atlantic Media, developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media.

On Monday, Bloomberg will announce that Mr. Smith, the president of Atlantic Media, will be named chief executive of the Bloomberg Media Group. He will report to Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg. Andrew Lack, who managed the media division for five years, will become chairman.

After joining The Atlantic in 2007, Mr. Smith developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media who was able to reconfigure a 156-year-old magazine into a genuine multiplatform property.

In a letter to the staff about Mr. Smith’s departure, David Bradley, the owner of Atlantic Media, credited Mr. Smith with bringing the company to profitability for the first time under his ownership; doubling revenue; and creating a number of successful digital start-ups, including The Atlantic Wire and Quartz.

His quick results at the Atlantic Media Company drew the attention of executives at Bloomberg, who began talking to him at the end of last year.

“We know that every part of media is being disrupted by technology, and we need someone who understands that,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “Justin can drive things forward here because he has an incredibly digital sensibility with a unique understanding of the confluence of journalism and multiple platforms.”

The move will give Mr. Smith significant scale and a connection with Bloomberg’s lucrative terminal business, which produces revenue that allows the company to invest aggressively in media properties. The company has had success in moving from a linear television business to a more diverse model of video distribution, while the acquisition of Businessweek gave Bloomberg an editorial cachet it historically lacked.

Even with those successes, the media division has long been treated as a marketing amenity for subscribers to the terminal business. Despite its recent growth, the media division has struggled to gain a consumer base for its properties, which include television, print, radio, mobile, events and digital media.

The company was heavily criticized several months ago after revelations that some of its reporters had used the Bloomberg terminals to gain access to data about its users, prompting Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, to begin an investigation into the practice.

The company’s assets â€" its success, its size and a hard-driving business culture â€" might make bringing about change difficult. But Mr. Smith said the fit was a natural one.

“If you look at the entrepreneurial roots of this company and its history of market disruption and innovation, I think it is the best positioned media company there is,” he said. The theory that large companies cannot innovate, he said, “has not been historically true at Bloomberg.” He added, “This is a company where you can take big risks with longer horizons.”

Before joining Atlantic Media, Mr. Smith opened the American edition of the British newsmagazine The Week in 2001. Before that, he was head of corporate strategy for The Economist in London, Hong Kong and New York. He also founded Breaking Media, a collection of Web sites that includes Above the Law, Dealbreaker and Fashionista.

Mr. Smith has no experience in the television business and said he would work closely with Mr. Lack in that area. He said he was interested in creating new products, including ones aimed at the global market, while bringing additional digital muscle to Bloomberg’s existing businesses.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, met Mr. Smith at one of Atlantic Media’s conferences and they became friends.

“How many people have really managed to be successful in digital media?” Mr. Schmidt said in a phone call. “Everyone has tried and few have been successful. Justin is one of them. He is moving very fast, but this is the next logical step. It’s a serious gain for Bloomberg.”

Bloomberg Media Recruits a New Chief From the Atlantic

Justin B. Smith, whose digital strategy swiftly transformed The Atlantic, one of the statelier media vessels around, is about to get a bigger boat.

Justin B. Smith, as president of Atlantic Media, developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media.

On Monday, Bloomberg will announce that Mr. Smith, the president of Atlantic Media, will be named chief executive of the Bloomberg Media Group. He will report to Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg. Andrew Lack, who managed the media division for five years, will become chairman.

After joining The Atlantic in 2007, Mr. Smith developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media who was able to reconfigure a 156-year-old magazine into a genuine multiplatform property.

In a letter to the staff about Mr. Smith’s departure, David Bradley, the owner of Atlantic Media, credited Mr. Smith with bringing the company to profitability for the first time under his ownership; doubling revenue; and creating a number of successful digital start-ups, including The Atlantic Wire and Quartz.

His quick results at the Atlantic Media Company drew the attention of executives at Bloomberg, who began talking to him at the end of last year.

“We know that every part of media is being disrupted by technology, and we need someone who understands that,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “Justin can drive things forward here because he has an incredibly digital sensibility with a unique understanding of the confluence of journalism and multiple platforms.”

The move will give Mr. Smith significant scale and a connection with Bloomberg’s lucrative terminal business, which produces revenue that allows the company to invest aggressively in media properties. The company has had success in moving from a linear television business to a more diverse model of video distribution, while the acquisition of Businessweek gave Bloomberg an editorial cachet it historically lacked.

Even with those successes, the media division has long been treated as a marketing amenity for subscribers to the terminal business. Despite its recent growth, the media division has struggled to gain a consumer base for its properties, which include television, print, radio, mobile, events and digital media.

The company was heavily criticized several months ago after revelations that some of its reporters had used the Bloomberg terminals to gain access to data about its users, prompting Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, to begin an investigation into the practice.

The company’s assets â€" its success, its size and a hard-driving business culture â€" might make bringing about change difficult. But Mr. Smith said the fit was a natural one.

“If you look at the entrepreneurial roots of this company and its history of market disruption and innovation, I think it is the best positioned media company there is,” he said. The theory that large companies cannot innovate, he said, “has not been historically true at Bloomberg.” He added, “This is a company where you can take big risks with longer horizons.”

Before joining Atlantic Media, Mr. Smith opened the American edition of the British newsmagazine The Week in 2001. Before that, he was head of corporate strategy for The Economist in London, Hong Kong and New York. He also founded Breaking Media, a collection of Web sites that includes Above the Law, Dealbreaker and Fashionista.

Mr. Smith has no experience in the television business and said he would work closely with Mr. Lack in that area. He said he was interested in creating new products, including ones aimed at the global market, while bringing additional digital muscle to Bloomberg’s existing businesses.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, met Mr. Smith at one of Atlantic Media’s conferences and they became friends.

“How many people have really managed to be successful in digital media?” Mr. Schmidt said in a phone call. “Everyone has tried and few have been successful. Justin is one of them. He is moving very fast, but this is the next logical step. It’s a serious gain for Bloomberg.”

The Media Equation: VCR’s Past Is Guiding Television’s Future

VCR’s Past Is Guiding Television’s Future

The last few weeks have been a rugged legal stretch for incumbent television companies.

Chet Kanojia, founder and chief executive of Aereo, which allows users to record and play back broadcast TV over the Internet.

First, an appeals court declined to rehear a case in which broadcasters sought to close down Aereo, a company that allows users to record and play back broadcast television over the Internet. And then last week, another appeals court declined to stop Dish Network, the satellite television company, from selling a service called Hopper, which lets viewers automatically skip ads.

The cases are far from settled, but the stakes could not be bigger. Broadcast television as we know it now stands on two legs: advertising and retransmission fees from cable providers. With Hopper skipping ads and Aereo allowing for distribution over the Internet without payment, profits might go dark.

But the legal cases also seem to defy a kind of common-sense logic: how can insurgents use programming created by someone else to their own ends without sharing revenue?

The answer could get very complicated, very fast, but let’s try to make it simple. The dawn of consumer-controlled television began with the clunky, whirring Sony Betamax in the 1970s. Networks and program providers didn’t like consumers making copies of their movies and TV shows, but a landmark Supreme Court case in 1977 held that taping and time-shifting on the part of viewers was “legitimate fair use.”

Everything we have seen since extends from that decision to let consumers into the driver’s seat. It helps to think of the digital video recorder as more of a capability than a device. Both Aereo, which uses antennas to record broadcast television, and Hopper, which records prime-time programming, can be considered DVRs in the cloud, and the cord going to each home happens to be very long (Aereo over the Internet) or comes via satellite signal (Dish).

In each instance, the courts have more or less held, the customers are doing the programming and recording, and as such, have the right to do so even if they are doing so remotely through a third party.

If a revolution is under way, it is happening in increments. The VCR in the corner gave way to the DVR on the set-top box, and now some of the recording lives in the cloud and is pulled down to a variety of devices, including televisions, tablets, computers and phones.

That new paradigm was affirmed in a more recent case that began in March 2006, when Cablevision announced that it would allow subscribers not only to record whatever they wanted, but to do so remotely on hard drives centrally maintained by the company. Despite the Betamax precedent, the television and movie industry promptly sued Cablevision, claiming that the cable company â€" not the consumer â€" was making the actual copy.

A district court in New York agreed, so Cablevision appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007. Consumer control took a big leap forward the next year, when the court decided in favor of Cablevision, ruling that the people pushing the buttons were the ones making the copies and that the playback of those recordings was not a public performance that infringed on copyright.

“We are in a transition period, migrating toward a world where you are going to get the content you want without commercials,” said Jonathan Band, a lawyer and advocate for consumer choice. “But the truth of the matter is that you are still going to have to pay. The only thing really being argued is who gets the money.”

To his point, Fox has sued Dish, asserting that the Hopper ad-skipping service violates copyrights and breaches contracts, not to mention that the service takes direct aim at its business model.

CBS, NBC and ABC have also been pushing back in a variety of ways. Last Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California denied an appeal from Fox over a federal judge’s decision last fall not to grant an injunction against the Hopper technology.

The judge writing the opinion, Sidney R. Thomas, held that the copies being made met the “fair use” standard set by the Betamax case. The opinion also pointed out that although Fox owned the copyright on the programs, it had no such claim on the commercials, so skipping them did not constitute infringement.

E-mail:carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

Link by Link: Historians Seek a Delay in Posting Dissertations

Historians Seek a Delay in Posting Dissertations

FIRST came years of being a foot messenger in New York City and working in data entry. Then, frustrated with his life, and feeling the responsibility of providing for a child, Michael D. Hattem entered the Borough of Manhattan Community College â€" the only college that would admit him, he says, as a high school dropout with a G.E.D. He succeeded at community college, and, in 2011, graduated from City College.

Michael D. Hattem, a doctoral student in history at Yale, backs an effort to let Ph.D’s keep dissertations offline for six years. 

Today, Mr. Hattem, 38, is a graduate student at Yale working on a dissertation in American history that “explores the role of competing historical memories of 17th-century Britain in shaping late colonial political culture.”

He told his exceptional story to help explain why he came to the defense of the American Historical Association last week when it issued a statement calling on universities to allow newly minted Ph.D’s to “embargo” their dissertations for up to six years â€" that is, keep them from being circulated online.

Though policies vary from university to university, the practice increasingly is to require that dissertations be filed electronically upon acceptance and to provide them to anyone with access to a university’s online collection.

The statement, which appeared to come out of the blue, caused more than a few double-takes. Don’t historians want their research to be immediately shared, stimulating arguments and, ideally, new research that either refutes or reinforces those arguments? And why would someone work years to produce a dissertation and then insist that it not be seen for as many as six more years? Academics almost by definition are delayed-gratification specialists, but still.

“Ideally, I would want all of our work freely available,” Mr. Hattem said in a telephone interview, “but we have to deal with the way things are.”

And the way things are, he said, is that university presses are known to be skeptical about agreeing to publish a book when the Ph.D dissertation it is based on is readily available online.

“If you want tenure at a university, you have to publish a book,” he said. “It’s professional currency.”

This term, “embargo” â€" so common in how journalism doles out information in the digital age â€" perhaps is evidence that some academics are learning from journalists: readers simply have less interest in old news, even old news about the British colonies.

The historical association, which is based in Washington and has 14,000 members, including high school teachers, government historians and university professors, was inspired to act, officials said, because of simmering concerns that institutions were moving to require that students’ work be shared freely.

“I have heard from junior scholars, newly minted Ph.D’s, I have heard from my colleagues who are mentors to these younger scholars, from university press acquisition editors, who say ‘we are very happy you released this statement,’ ” said Jacqueline Jones, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who is the vice president of the professional division at the historical association.

Critics of the embargo argue that knowledge should circulate freely on the Internet. In this case, they say that if incentives in academic hiring discourage such sharing, then the American Historical Association should agitate to change those incentives, not promote the idea of embargoes.

“The idea of locking up ideas for six years is not right,” said Heather Joseph, the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which favors open research. “The thing that bothered us the most is that it was a one-dimensional response to a multidimensional issue, and a missed opportunity.”

The association has tried to frame the issue as giving scholars a choice, while also noting that it has pressed for greater inclusion of digital-based scholarship. Questions and answers published in response to criticism tried to lower the stakes.

“Is the A.H.A. recommending that students embargo their dissertations?” was the first question, and “No” was the first answer, with the explainer, “The A.H.A. is recommending that universities adopt flexible policies that will allow newly minted Ph.D’s to decide for themselves whether or not to embargo their dissertations.”

Advertising: Air Force Asks Students to Solve Real-World Problems

Air Force Asks Students to Solve Real-World Problems

Senior Airman Michael Charles/U.S. Air Force

Mathew Harrington, an Air Force senior airman, working on an oscilloscope at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

THE Air Force, as part of its recruitment efforts, is approaching young people for help in solving real-world technological problems using a collaborative online platform.

The initiative, which will be introduced on Thursday, will create a digital program called the Air Force Collaboratory, in which young people will be challenged to develop technologies for search-and-rescue operations in collapsed structures; to create software code for a quadrotor, a type of unmanned, aerial vehicle; and to determine where to place the newest GPS satellite.

The Air Force hopes the program will attract students in so-called STEM subjects â€" science, technology, engineering and mathematics â€" to work with its airmen on developing solutions for the three challenges, and, ideally, consider enlisting.

The initiative â€" which the Air Force will promote through digital advertising, social media and partnerships with groups like Discovery Education â€" is the latest recruiting effort created for the Air Force by GSD&M, an agency based in Austin, Tex., that is part of the Omnicom Group.

GSD&M has been the Air Force’s agency since 2001, developing campaigns to help it attract the over 28,000 recruits it needs annually; the agency said its work had helped the Air Force meet its recruiting goals each year.

GSD&M’s recruiting strategy for the Air Force â€" which has always sought tech-savvy candidates â€" previously featured an “Airman Challenge” online video game. A separate campaign included television spots whose theme was, “It’s not science fiction.”

Col. Marcus Johnson, chief of the strategic marketing division of the Air Force Recruiting Service, said the Air Force focused on “going after the best and brightest young men and women, with an emphasis on the STEM subjects. Whether they’re in high school or college, those topics translate into what we do in the Air Force.”

He said the collaboratory program was meant to appeal to men and women ages 16 to 24, including high school students still determining their future plans.

Ryan Carroll, a creative director at GSD&M, said the Air Force was “very much like the Apples and Googles of the world in recognizing the huge need for scientists and engineers. They reach out to kids at an early age and show them the amazing things they can do with science and technology.” He pointed to initiatives like the Google Science Fair, an online, annual, global science competition for teenagers, as an example.

Similarly, the collaboratory program aims to “inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians, and to show them all the amazing, science-related things the Air Force does,” Mr. Carroll said. The program will also allow students to “participate and solve real problems the Air Force solves every day,” he added.

Young people will be able to learn more about the initiative’s challenges at the Web site airforce.com/collaboratory, which will act as a forum. Challenge participants will be able to use custom-built tools to share ideas and work with airmen and other experts to develop solutions.

Not surprisingly, digital media will primarily be used to promote the program. Custom editorial content is being developed for the STEM hub of Good.com, a global community of “pragmatic idealists,” while custom videos are being filmed for DNews, an online video series from Discovery Communications; the videos will feature the DNews hosts Trace Dominguez and Anthony Carboni. The technology network Technorati is asking bloggers to create custom posts on the collaboratory and related subjects, while the Air Force will pay to place videos on Web sites like YouTube, Blip and Machinima. In addition, the Air Force will promote the initiative on Facebook and Twitter.

Digital banner advertising will run on the Web sites of Scientific American, Popular Science and The Verge. One set of ads depicts an Air Force helicopter approaching a scene of destruction after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that has trapped dozens of survivors. The copy reads, “Your idea could save them. The Air Force Collaboratory. Search and rescue 2.0 is now open. Start collaborating.”

The Air Force also is working with Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications, on an outreach program for high school science and math teachers.

Colonel Johnson said that although the collaboratory would run through November, new challenges could be created after that. In addition, he said the Web site would carry no overt recruiting messages, nor would the Air Force actively recruit challenge participants, since the initiative was meant to raise interest in the Air Force and possibly encourage participants to seek out more information about opportunities there.

The budget for the campaign is $3.7 million.

Diane H. Mazur, a former Air Force officer, professor emeritus of law at the University of Florida and author of “A More Perfect Military: How the Constitution Can Make Our Military Stronger,” said that although the collaboratory concept was “good, it’s not sophisticated to the degree it needs to be to attract the people they think they want to get.” She added, “This is a good direction if you do it well.”

David R. Segal, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who specializes in military sociology, said that while recruiting high school students to “work in military laboratories on military problems” was not new, “what seems new is having interns work online with Air Force scientists.”

“I think they will certainly recruit a good number of high school students interested in science, engineering, technology and math to work on the problems identified. That part is easy,” he said. “Recruiting the same people then to come into the Air Force as enlisted men and women might be more difficult. They are likely to want to go to college.”

As a result, he said, the collaboratory would probably be more successful recruiting Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps students than airmen.

Advertising: Air Force Asks Students to Solve Real-World Problems

Air Force Asks Students to Solve Real-World Problems

Senior Airman Michael Charles/U.S. Air Force

Mathew Harrington, an Air Force senior airman, working on an oscilloscope at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

THE Air Force, as part of its recruitment efforts, is approaching young people for help in solving real-world technological problems using a collaborative online platform.

The initiative, which will be introduced on Thursday, will create a digital program called the Air Force Collaboratory, in which young people will be challenged to develop technologies for search-and-rescue operations in collapsed structures; to create software code for a quadrotor, a type of unmanned, aerial vehicle; and to determine where to place the newest GPS satellite.

The Air Force hopes the program will attract students in so-called STEM subjects â€" science, technology, engineering and mathematics â€" to work with its airmen on developing solutions for the three challenges, and, ideally, consider enlisting.

The initiative â€" which the Air Force will promote through digital advertising, social media and partnerships with groups like Discovery Education â€" is the latest recruiting effort created for the Air Force by GSD&M, an agency based in Austin, Tex., that is part of the Omnicom Group.

GSD&M has been the Air Force’s agency since 2001, developing campaigns to help it attract the over 28,000 recruits it needs annually; the agency said its work had helped the Air Force meet its recruiting goals each year.

GSD&M’s recruiting strategy for the Air Force â€" which has always sought tech-savvy candidates â€" previously featured an “Airman Challenge” online video game. A separate campaign included television spots whose theme was, “It’s not science fiction.”

Col. Marcus Johnson, chief of the strategic marketing division of the Air Force Recruiting Service, said the Air Force focused on “going after the best and brightest young men and women, with an emphasis on the STEM subjects. Whether they’re in high school or college, those topics translate into what we do in the Air Force.”

He said the collaboratory program was meant to appeal to men and women ages 16 to 24, including high school students still determining their future plans.

Ryan Carroll, a creative director at GSD&M, said the Air Force was “very much like the Apples and Googles of the world in recognizing the huge need for scientists and engineers. They reach out to kids at an early age and show them the amazing things they can do with science and technology.” He pointed to initiatives like the Google Science Fair, an online, annual, global science competition for teenagers, as an example.

Similarly, the collaboratory program aims to “inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians, and to show them all the amazing, science-related things the Air Force does,” Mr. Carroll said. The program will also allow students to “participate and solve real problems the Air Force solves every day,” he added.

Young people will be able to learn more about the initiative’s challenges at the Web site airforce.com/collaboratory, which will act as a forum. Challenge participants will be able to use custom-built tools to share ideas and work with airmen and other experts to develop solutions.

Not surprisingly, digital media will primarily be used to promote the program. Custom editorial content is being developed for the STEM hub of Good.com, a global community of “pragmatic idealists,” while custom videos are being filmed for DNews, an online video series from Discovery Communications; the videos will feature the DNews hosts Trace Dominguez and Anthony Carboni. The technology network Technorati is asking bloggers to create custom posts on the collaboratory and related subjects, while the Air Force will pay to place videos on Web sites like YouTube, Blip and Machinima. In addition, the Air Force will promote the initiative on Facebook and Twitter.

Digital banner advertising will run on the Web sites of Scientific American, Popular Science and The Verge. One set of ads depicts an Air Force helicopter approaching a scene of destruction after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that has trapped dozens of survivors. The copy reads, “Your idea could save them. The Air Force Collaboratory. Search and rescue 2.0 is now open. Start collaborating.”

The Air Force also is working with Discovery Education, a division of Discovery Communications, on an outreach program for high school science and math teachers.

Colonel Johnson said that although the collaboratory would run through November, new challenges could be created after that. In addition, he said the Web site would carry no overt recruiting messages, nor would the Air Force actively recruit challenge participants, since the initiative was meant to raise interest in the Air Force and possibly encourage participants to seek out more information about opportunities there.

The budget for the campaign is $3.7 million.

Diane H. Mazur, a former Air Force officer, professor emeritus of law at the University of Florida and author of “A More Perfect Military: How the Constitution Can Make Our Military Stronger,” said that although the collaboratory concept was “good, it’s not sophisticated to the degree it needs to be to attract the people they think they want to get.” She added, “This is a good direction if you do it well.”

David R. Segal, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who specializes in military sociology, said that while recruiting high school students to “work in military laboratories on military problems” was not new, “what seems new is having interns work online with Air Force scientists.”

“I think they will certainly recruit a good number of high school students interested in science, engineering, technology and math to work on the problems identified. That part is easy,” he said. “Recruiting the same people then to come into the Air Force as enlisted men and women might be more difficult. They are likely to want to go to college.”

As a result, he said, the collaboratory would probably be more successful recruiting Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps students than airmen.

Media Decoder: Outcry Against a Tooth Fairy Web Site

Outcry Against a Tooth Fairy Web Site

LOS ANGELES â€" The Real Tooth Fairies have encountered a pair of fangs.

The advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood typically goes after the likes of Disney and McDonald’s, but the organization’s newest crusade centers on an unusually tiny company: TheRealToothFairies.com. Aimed at girls 5 to 10 years old, the site sells themed merchandise (lost tooth organizer, $12.99) and offers games meant to promote kind behavior. For a fee, users can enter a role-playing world.

In a July 16 news release and Huffington Post column, the director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Susan Linn, harshly criticized the Web company for what she termed its “sexualized” fairies, whom she found to be “largely preoccupied with appearance, shopping, boyfriends â€" and leg hair!”

Ms. Linn argued that exploiting a childhood institution was particularly crass. But what made her really angry was an investor video she discovered in the recesses of the Web. Prepared by the start-up for nonpublic use, the video discusses revenue opportunities associated with lost teeth, emphasizing the number of baby teeth that girls lose annually, about 200 million. “And biology guarantees that will never stop,” a voice says.

TheRealToothFairies.com had YouTube remove the video, and hoped to move on. The site’s founder, Marilyn Bollinger, a North Carolina social worker and children’s book author, did not want to discuss the video when reached by telephone. “Our focus is on the positive,” she said. “We have such a sweet, sweet brand. We hear from parents that we’re making a lot of happy memories.”

But moving on can be difficult in the Internet age.

Last week, Ms. Linn kept up the attack on Twitter and Facebook, nudging bloggers and the news media to pay attention. She noted, for instance, that a shorter version of the video appears on the investment site Gust.com.

Her campaign might seem akin to shooting a flea with a cannon. Ms. Linn conceded that it was unusual for her organization to go after a start-up, but she said that the site was focused on growth, and that the stature of the people involved with it required her to take the site seriously. Ms. Bollinger’s husband, Howard, a former Hasbro executive, is chief financial officer, and Paul Yanover, a former Disney executive and now president of the movie ticket-selling site Fandango.com, appeared in the video.

A spokesman for Mr. Yanover, however, said his involvement was limited to a brief consulting role and that he no longer had anything to do with the site.

Advertising Giants Announce $35.1 Billion Merger

Two leading advertising companies, Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe, announced a merger on Sunday that would create the world’s biggest family of agenices, with a stock market value of $35.1 billion and 130,000 employees.

The combination of Publicis, based in Paris, and Omnicom, based in New York, would supplant the advertising industry leader, WPP of London. While although Omnicom is slightly bigger than Publicis, the deal is designed as a merger of equals, combining companies that had total revenue of $22.7 billion last year.

In the early going at least, the combined company would have co-chief executives: John Wren of Omnicom and Maurice Lévy of Publicis.

The marriage, if it passes muster with antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe, and is given the blessing of the French government, would bring under one roof separate networks of ad agencies â€" including BBDO, TBWA and DDB under Omnicom, and Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi under Publicis. Collectively, the conglomerates represent some of the world’s largest brands including AT&T, Visa and Pepsi at Omnicom and McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart at Publicis.

Mr. Levy and Mr. Wren kicked off a heavily attended press briefing by signing the deal under a bright Parisian sun on the roof of the Publicis headquarters on the Champs-Élysées with the Arc de Triomphe looming in the background. "Voila!” Mr. Levy exclaimed with the flourish of their pens.

Shareholders from each of the companies will hold 50 percent of the equity in the new company, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris and included in the S&P 500 and CAC 40.

In a statement Mr. Lévy cited technological advancements in advertising and the rise of so-called Big Data â€" the ability to amass larger volumees of consumer information and make money from it in various ways â€" as reasons for the merger between the two companies.

“The communication and marketing landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years including the exponential development of new media giants, the explosion of Big Data, blurring of the roles of all players and profound changes in consumer behavior,” he said. “This evolution has created both great challenges and tremendous opportunities for clients. John and I have conceived this merger to benefit our clients by bringing together the most comprehensive offering of analog and digital services.”

Mr. Wren said in the same released statement, “Omnicom and Publicis Groupe are reshaping the industry by setting a new standard for supporting clients with integrated messaging across marketing disciplines and geographies.”

Omnicom, which analysts say has focused more on expanding its digital operations organically as opposed to through acquisitions, stands to benefit from the media buying power of the Starcom MediaVest Group, a division of Publicis that is one of the largest media agencies in the world. In April, Starcom signed a multiyear deal with Twitter to combine some of the resources that they both use for measuring and tracking data and advertising. That deal was estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Last year, revenue at Publicis increased nearly 14 percent to $8.8 billion, while revenue at Omnicom increased 2.5 percent to $14.2 billion.

Some analysts and industry players speculated whether the United States Justice Department would approve such a merger or whether the French government would bristle at a company that was not solely run by a French national.

In a report on Saturday, Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group,wrote that antitrust concerns could be eased if the new company positions itself less as a conglomerate of ad agencies and more of a data company competing with businesses like I.B.M. and Facebook. He added that maintaining Mr. Lévy at the helm or ensuring that a board was dominated by French nationals might be enough to assuage the French government.

It was not immediately clear what position President François Hollande’s government was taking on the merger. Publicis is considered a French national champion, and French officials have been active during Mr. Hollande’s tenure about protecting its business icons from foreign dominance.

Earlier this year, France’s industrial renewal minister, Arnaud Montebourg, scuttled a deal by Yahoo to take a 75 percent stake in DailyMotion, an French Web video startup in which the government holds a 27 percent share. Warning Yahoo would “devour” DailyMotion, he insisted that Yahoo reduce its stake to 50 percent, causing Yahoo to walk away.

Because Publicis’s deal with Omnicom is billed as a merger of equals, the government may not raise objections, especially if Mr. Levy â€" who is preparing to retire â€" remains at the helm for a while, or if the new board is dominated by French nationals. Mr. Levy is one of the best connected businessmen in France, and has cultivated relationships with each administration. Calls to the Élysée Palace over the weekend were not returned.

Despite his clout, Mr. Levy, 71, has been a controversial figure to the French public, coming under fire for receiving multimillion-euro pay packages that are among the highest of any French executive. His pay â€" 16 million euros last year â€" was a flashpoint during the 2012 presidential elections, when Mr. Hollande slammed what he called excessive executive pay and called on the rich to pay more taxes.

Liz Alderman reported from Paris.

David ‘Kidd’ Kraddick, Radio and TV Personality, Dies at 53

NEW ORLEANS â€" A publicist who worked with nationally syndicated radio and TV personality David "Kidd" Kraddick says Kraddick has died at a charity golf event in greater New Orleans. He was 53.

Ladd Biro of the public relations firm Champion Management told The Associated Press that Kraddick died Saturday at a tournament organized to raise money for his Kidd's Kids charity.

"He died doing what he loved," Biro says.

No cause of death was immediately given.

Biro says the "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" show is syndicated by YEA Networks and heard on more than 75 radio stations. The show's cast is seen weeknights on nationally syndicated TV show "Dish Nation."

YeaNetworks said in a statement that the show's crew is "heartbroken over the loss of our dear friend and leader."

David ‘Kidd’ Kraddick, Radio and TV Personality, Dies at 53

NEW ORLEANS â€" A publicist who worked with nationally syndicated radio and TV personality David "Kidd" Kraddick says Kraddick has died at a charity golf event in greater New Orleans. He was 53.

Ladd Biro of the public relations firm Champion Management told The Associated Press that Kraddick died Saturday at a tournament organized to raise money for his Kidd's Kids charity.

"He died doing what he loved," Biro says.

No cause of death was immediately given.

Biro says the "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" show is syndicated by YEA Networks and heard on more than 75 radio stations. The show's cast is seen weeknights on nationally syndicated TV show "Dish Nation."

YeaNetworks said in a statement that the show's crew is "heartbroken over the loss of our dear friend and leader."