Irving Azoff Starts New Entertainment Business

Since the music executive Irving Azoff resigned as Live Nation Entertainment’s executive chairman at the end of last year, speculation about his next venture has been something of an industry pastime. Would he go into television? Music publishing? Something digital?

The answer is all of the above, and perhaps more.

On Wednesday, Mr. Azoff, 65, announced the creation of Azoff MSG Entertainment, a multifaceted company backed by $175 million from the Madison Square Garden Company, whose executive chairman, James L. Dolan, is one of Mr. Azoff’s longtime supporters.

The company, of which Mr. Azoff will be chairman and chief executive, will include his artist management business, whose clients include the Eagles, Van Halen, Steely Dan and Christina Aguilera; a television and live event division; a 50 percent stake in Digital Brand Architects, which manages bloggers; and a 90 percent interest in a music publishing venture led by Randy Grimmett, a former executive at Ascap, the 99-year-old performing rights organization.

“We want to be a nimble, quick place where people can get answers,” said Mr. Azoff, who got his start as an artist manager in the 1970s and upon his departure from Live Nation did not mince words about his distaste in working for a publicly owned company.

The Madison Square Garden Company â€" which is publicly traded â€" will pay $125 million for a 50 percent stake in Azoff MSG Entertainment, and provide up to $50 million of credit to the company, according to an announcement. Mr. Azoff will also serve as a consultant to the Madison Square Garden Company.

In a joint interview, Mr. Azoff and Mr. Dolan described the mission of the new company as being somewhat loose, saying they see it as a lean, digitally focused company that will address the needs of the evolving music business. They also pointed to Madison Square Garden’s $100 million renovation of the Forum, an arena in Inglewood, Calif., as an example of how their work could benefit the public.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, the music industry has changed dramatically, and not necessarily for the better,” Mr. Dolan said. “I expect that this venture will address that and find new technologies that will help artists, and new business opportunities that we will invest in together.”

They also view the company as “a high-growth vehicle,” as Mr. Dolan put it, that could expand through acquisitions.

Mr. Dolan joined the board of Live Nation in 2011, the year after that company merged with Ticketmaster and Mr. Azoff became its executive chairman. After Mr. Azoff left, Mr. Dolan resigned from the board and his company divested itself of its 3.9 million shares in the company for $44 million. With Live Nation stock on the rise since January, that stake would be worth about $67 million today.

Green Eggs and E-Books? Thank You, Sam-I-Am

Dr. Seuss books, those whimsical, mischievous, irresistibly rhymey stories that have been passed down in print to generations of readers, are finally catching up with digital publishing.

"The Cat in the Hat" will soon be available for download.

The Dr. Seuss canon will be released in e-book format for the first time, beginning later this month, his publisher said on Wednesday, an announcement that could nudge more parents and educators to download picture books for children.

E-book sales have exploded in the last five years in adult trade fiction, with many popular titles, like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” selling far more copies in digital format than in print.

Picture books have lagged far behind. Several publishers said e-books represent only 2 to 5 percent of their total picture book sales, a number that has scarcely moved in the last several years.

But the release of the Dr. Seuss books, still hugely popular after decades in print, could move that number higher. The e-books will be available on color tablets, including the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook HD. The first titles to be released, on Sept. 24, include “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” “There’s a Wocket in My Pocket!” and “The Lorax” (featuring an environmentally conscious character who might be happy about the announcement).

The e-books will be faithful reproductions of the print books in terms of text, illustrations and layout, said Susan Brandt, the president of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization that manages the books and the movies, and the apps and television shows based on them. Enhanced versions with bells and whistles might come later, she said.

Barbara Marcus, the president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books, said she did not envision digital sales of picture books overtaking print, but that the releases would provide an additional option for parents who want the convenience of e-books.

“We see it as a companion to print,” Ms. Marcus said. “We are facing, in a happy way, a transitional moment in picture books. I believe the school market is becoming more interested in digital, and we want to be there.”

Random House is the primary English-language publisher of Dr. Seuss’s books, and Ms. Marcus, who took over as publisher last fall, said one of her first goals was to “ratchet up the Dr. Seuss publishing strategy.”

“When you start to look at how many amazing books there are, and how many amazing properties there are that he wrote and didn’t illustrate, then you start to look at what hasn’t been promoted or touched recently,” she said. “You start to realize that this is a whole wealth of wonderful books and properties, and there’s so much great opportunity.”

The author of the Dr. Seuss books, Theodor Seuss Geisel, died in 1991 at 87. But he held on to the digital rights for his books, Ms. Brandt said.

“He was a genius in many ways, and one of his geniuses was that he held these rights,” she said.

More than 600 million print copies of Dr. Seuss books have sold to date.

Educators and literacy experts have been divided on whether parents should avoid exposing their children to e-books. Junko Yokota, professor emeritus and director of the Center for Teaching Through Children’s Books at National Louis University in Chicago, said that when a picture book is replicated exactly in digital form, there is very little reason to shun the digital version.

“I don’t think it matters,” she said. “They’re both reading experiences. And I don’t think kids who don’t have access to the e-book will be hurt by their lack of access to it.”

It’s the Economy: Hollywood’s Tanking Business Model

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Hercule Poirot to Return in a New Christie Mystery

James Bond novels have carried on long beyond Ian Fleming. Decades after Margaret Mitchell’s death in 1949, “Gone With the Wind” spawned two sequels. In the latest continuation of a beloved literary property, a new Agatha Christie mystery will be released, the publisher said on Tuesday.

William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, said the new novel, written by Sophie Hannah and fully authorized by the Christie estate, will feature one of her most famous characters, the fastidious Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel, it said, is a “diabolically clever murder mystery sure to delight and baffle Christie’s fans, and those who have never read her work.”

Ms. Hannah, a best-selling author of crime fiction, said she hoped to “create a puzzle that will confound and frustrate the incomparable Hercule Poirot for at least a good few chapters.” It is planned for release next September.