Bits Blog: Grand Theft Auto V Muscles Its Way to Sales Record

Updated, 8:28 p.m. |

Grand Theft Auto V, one of the most anticipated video games of the year, has beaten sales figures posted by previous installments in the violent and controversial adventure game series. The new game generated more than $800 million in sales Tuesday on its first day on store shelves.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the publisher of the game, said those first-day sales were the biggest for the company and the Grand Theft Auto series, which seems to have lost little appeal although the first edition was released 16 years ago.

The last major version of the game, Grand Theft Auto IV, had $310 million in opening day sales in 2008, and more than $500 million in its first week.

The video game industry is undergoing major shifts that pose big challenges to traditional publishers, as opportunities proliferate to play games on mobile devices, many available free or at low cost. But the success of the biggest blockbuster franchises appears secure for now.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the most recent version of the popular combat game series from Activision, earned $1 billion in sales last year after 15 days on the market. The previous installment did the same after 16 days.

New versions of Grand Theft Auto come out less frequently than others, partly because of the meticulousness of Rockstar Games, the development studio responsible for it. Rockstar has a cultlike following for the painstaking research and technical wizardry that go into its games.

Grand Theft Auto, which takes place in a world of thugs, has also become a magnet for criticism of the industry by politicians and others for its brutality.

The new version has received glowing reviews, including from The New York Times, which called it the “best plotted, most playable, character-driven, fictionally coherent entry” in the history of the series.

Advertising: Spot Shares Moments of Better Cruise Memories

Spot Shares Moments of Better Cruise Memories

Carnival asked former passengers to submit photos and videos, via Facebook and Instagram, they had taken on Carnival cruises.

CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES is introducing a new advertising campaign on Monday that it hopes will help it recover from the negative publicity it received when its ship, the Triumph, caught fire last February and stranded passengers and crew in the Gulf of Mexico.

The cruise line has not run any television advertising and only limited digital advertising since the fire, which stranded 4,200 passengers and crew members for five days and became a cause célebrè in the media. In 2010, another of the line’s 24 ships, the Splendor, also caught fire at sea.

Robin Farley, who follows the cruise industry for UBS, said Carnival Cruise Lines “historically has been one of the strongest brands in the cruise sector.” She estimated that the line, one of 10 operated by the Carnival Corporation, represents 30 percent of its parent company’s total capacity and that before the Triumph accident, generated more than 30 percent of its profits. She also said the accident could lead to yield declines of 10 to 11 percent for the line this year.

In recent years, advertising by Carnival, created by the Boston office of Arnold Worldwide, part of Havas, has focused on the “fun” aspects of its cruises. The tagline on some TV spots was “Fun for all, all for fun.”

The new advertising follows a series of actions undertaken by the line after the Triumph accident, including a $300 million program to upgrade emergency power capabilities, fire safety technology and other systems; outreach to travel agents, an important source of business; and a vacation guarantee program that gives dissatisfied passengers a 110 percent refund. Jim Berra, chief marketing officer for Carnival, said additional innovations in dining, entertainment and programs for young passengers will be introduced starting this fall.

“Once the brand perception took a hit post-Triumph, we felt the strongest and most credible voice to convey what a cruise experience is truly like is the voice of the guests,” Mr. Berra said.

Thus, in July the line invited 10 people who are active on Instagram â€" interested in food and family issues, among other topics â€" to take a cruise during which they could shoot photos. These were posted live on a Web site, Carnival.com/momenttracker.

In July, the line also asked former passengers and employees to submit photos and videos, via Facebook and Instagram, they had taken on Carnival cruises; it received more than 31,000 pieces of this content.

More than 500 videos and photos, including some by the Instagram activists who sailed in July, are featured in a new TV spot, which shows individuals walking down a street, in a field and along a boardwalk. All places where they walk are festooned with picture frames, which contain the user-generated imagery.

The voice-over says, “We never forget the moments that matter. We hang them on our walls. We share them with everyone. And hold onto them forever.”

The spot ends with an image of a Carnival cruise ship at sea and the voice-over concluding, “Since the day we first set sail, millions of lasting moments have been made with us. What will yours be?”

A 60-second version of the TV spot will begin running Monday on prime-time network television shows like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Parks and Recreation,” as well as on cable channels like Bravo, TLC and the Food Network. Digital and radio advertising with the same theme as the TV spot will also be created.

Pete Johnson, co-executive creative director of the Boston office of Arnold Worldwide, said the new campaign’s theme was chosen because “we wanted to have a more emotive message,” to let viewers “see Carnival as a place where they can experience deep moments with family, friends and loved ones. We wanted to tell the story from cruisers’ point of view, to be as authentic as possible.”

Mr. Berra said the campaign is aimed at “outgoing, engaged, optimistic individuals,” as well as at “decision-making moms.”

Disney Shuffles Schedule Over Delays to ‘Good Dinosaur’

Walt Disney Studios on Wednesday announced a flurry of movie release date changes prompted by delays on “The Good Dinosaur” from Pixar, a movie originally scheduled to arrive in theaters in May.

The upshot: For the first time in nine years, the Walt Disney Company will not release its annual Pixar movie.

Pixar has been performing triage on “The Good Dinosaur” since removing its director last month. The film, about dinosaurs who become farmers, will now be released in November 2015.

That sent a line of dominoes falling on Disney’s release schedule. “Maleficent,” a live-action film about the evil sorcerer from “Sleeping Beauty,” will move from July 2014 to May â€" the old “Good Dinosaur” date. And “Finding Dory” will move from November 2015 to June 2016.

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‘Salinger’ to Add Details on Relationships With Young Women

LOS ANGELES â€" “Salinger,” Shane Salerno’s documentary about the secret life of J. D. Salinger, is set to reveal some more secrets.

The Weinstein Company on Wednesday said that it planned to release a “special edition” of the film on Sept. 20, with additional material about the author and “his complex relationships with young women.”

The film, which opened in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 6, included some details of Salinger’s relationships with young women, including an account of his long-running involvement with Jean Miller, whom he met when she was 14 and he was 30.

But the documentary drew some criticism for failing to tell more about his attraction to and correspondence with teenage girls. Notably, Joyce Maynard, who had a relationship with the author when she was in her teens, wrote that the film underplayed the emotional damage to herself and others.

On Wednesday, Weinstein also said it had agreed to develop a dramatic film about Salinger, focusing on the period between his service in World War II and the publication of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

The script is to be written by Mr. Salerno, Weinstein said.

Court Gives a Victory to Pandora Over Licensing Streaming Music

Pandora Media won a battle in its continuing war with the music industry over royalties when a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which represents thousands of members, cannot prevent Pandora from licensing all the songs in its catalog.

The ruling, by Judge Denise L. Cote of United States District Court in Manhattan, is a blow to music publishers, who have tried to get the best royalty rates for digital music by limiting the extent that performing rights societies like Ascap and Broadcast Music Incorporated represent their songs. The ruling could also hurt the societies themselves if they are perceived as preventing the publishers from getting higher rates.

Two years ago, the industry’s biggest publishers began withdrawing digital rights to their music from Ascap and BMI, forcing companies like Pandora to negotiate directly for a license to stream the music.

Sony/ATV, the world’s largest publisher, has said it received a 25 percent higher rate by licensing its songs to Pandora directly.

Pandora argued in a motion for summary judgment that allowing publishers to withdraw their digital rights violated Ascap’s longtime consent decree, which says that the organization must license its songs to any service that asks. The judge agreed, saying that Ascap must make all the songs in its catalog available to Pandora through 2015, when its current licensing terms with Internet radio provider expire. If Ascap licenses a song for some purposes, the judge ruled, it must for others - like streaming â€" as well.

“ 'All’ means all,” Judge Cote wrote in her decision. The ruling precedes a larger rate-setting trial between Pandora and Ascap, which will begin on Dec. 4.

In a statement, Christopher Harrison, Pandora’s assistant general counsel, said, “We hope this will put an end to the attempt by certain Ascap-member publishers to unfairly and selectively withhold their catalogs from Pandora.”

John LoFrumento, Ascap’s chief executive, said he looked forward to the trial. “The court’s decision to grant summary judgment on this matter has no impact on our fundamental position in this case that songwriters deserve fair pay for their work, an issue that the court has not yet decided.”

The larger effect of the ruling is unclear. On Wednesday, a spokesman for Sony/ATV said he expected that the terms of the deal would not change because of Judge Cote’s ruling.

BMI, which like Ascap represents a huge portion of the music available in the United States, operates under its own consent decree, and is governed by a different federal rate court. BMI sued Pandora in June over rates, a few days after Pandora said it would buy a small radio station in South Dakota to qualify for rates enjoyed by terrestrial broadcasters. Ascap has also asked the Federal Communications Commission to block that sale.

Pandora, which has more than 70 million regular users, was once the darling of the music world. But over the last year it has become one of industry’s biggest opponents as it pushes for lower royalty rates. Last year, it heavily promoted the Internet Radio Fairness Act, a failed bill in Congress that could have reduced what services like Pandora pay record companies and performing artists.

Pandora’s efforts to reduce costs and increase its advertising revenue have helped push the company’s stock higher; by Wednesday afternoon, shares were up about 2 percent.

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Court Gives a Victory to Pandora Over Licensing Streaming Music

Pandora Media won a battle in its continuing war with the music industry over royalties when a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which represents thousands of members, cannot prevent Pandora from licensing all the songs in its catalog.

The ruling, by Judge Denise L. Cote of United States District Court in Manhattan, is a blow to music publishers, who have tried to get the best royalty rates for digital music by limiting the extent that performing rights societies like Ascap and Broadcast Music Incorporated represent their songs. The ruling could also hurt the societies themselves if they are perceived as preventing the publishers from getting higher rates.

Two years ago, the industry’s biggest publishers began withdrawing digital rights to their music from Ascap and BMI, forcing companies like Pandora to negotiate directly for a license to stream the music.

Sony/ATV, the world’s largest publisher, has said it received a 25 percent higher rate by licensing its songs to Pandora directly.

Pandora argued in a motion for summary judgment that allowing publishers to withdraw their digital rights violated Ascap’s longtime consent decree, which says that the organization must license its songs to any service that asks. The judge agreed, saying that Ascap must make all the songs in its catalog available to Pandora through 2015, when its current licensing terms with Internet radio provider expire. If Ascap licenses a song for some purposes, the judge ruled, it must for others - like streaming â€" as well.

“ 'All’ means all,” Judge Cote wrote in her decision. The ruling precedes a larger rate-setting trial between Pandora and Ascap, which will begin on Dec. 4.

In a statement, Christopher Harrison, Pandora’s assistant general counsel, said, “We hope this will put an end to the attempt by certain Ascap-member publishers to unfairly and selectively withhold their catalogs from Pandora.”

John LoFrumento, Ascap’s chief executive, said he looked forward to the trial. “The court’s decision to grant summary judgment on this matter has no impact on our fundamental position in this case that songwriters deserve fair pay for their work, an issue that the court has not yet decided.”

The larger effect of the ruling is unclear. On Wednesday, a spokesman for Sony/ATV said he expected that the terms of the deal would not change because of Judge Cote’s ruling.

BMI, which like Ascap represents a huge portion of the music available in the United States, operates under its own consent decree, and is governed by a different federal rate court. BMI sued Pandora in June over rates, a few days after Pandora said it would buy a small radio station in South Dakota to qualify for rates enjoyed by terrestrial broadcasters. Ascap has also asked the Federal Communications Commission to block that sale.

Pandora, which has more than 70 million regular users, was once the darling of the music world. But over the last year it has become one of industry’s biggest opponents as it pushes for lower royalty rates. Last year, it heavily promoted the Internet Radio Fairness Act, a failed bill in Congress that could have reduced what services like Pandora pay record companies and performing artists.

Pandora’s efforts to reduce costs and increase its advertising revenue have helped push the company’s stock higher; by Wednesday afternoon, shares were up about 2 percent.

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Live Commercials Coming to ‘Late Night’

For almost four decades now, a late-night NBC show has begun with the words, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night.” Beginning late Thursday night â€" early Friday morning, to be technical â€" another late-night NBC show will revisit a popular concept from long-ago television, live commercials.

In a deal with the Lexus division of Toyota Motor, NBCUniversal, part of Comcast, will run live commercials for the next four weeks during the Thursday night episodes of “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” The commercials will be produced in real time, with the aid of social media, as viewers suggest ideas for the spots that will be performed by improvisational comedy troupes.

The deal, for undisclosed financial terms, is being called “It’s Your Move After Dark,” and will be promoted by NBC on late-night programs Wednesday night.

The deal is emblematic of the efforts that media companies and marketers are making to keep consumers from zipping through, zapping or avoiding traditional peddling tactics like commercials. The idea of live spots, created in real time through viewer suggestions in social media, sounds like something that will pique the curiosity of viewers of late-night TV, particularly younger men and women.

Here is how the deal is supposed to work. During an early commercial break in the “Late Night” episode, viewers will be asked to propose ad concepts through social media platforms like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, using the hashtag #LexusIS. (The live spots are intended to help Lexus introduce the 2014 IS model.)

Then, during the last commercial break of the episode, members of one of four improv troupes â€" Fun Young Guys, Magnet Theater Touring Company, MB’s Dream and Stone Cold Fox â€" will perform a spot based on or inspired by the audience’s submissions. The performances will come from under the Brooklyn Bridge rather than the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center.

NBCUniversal executives say there will be two commercials created during each of the next four Thursday nights/Friday mornings, one when the episode of “Late Night” appears in the Eastern time zone and one when the episode is shown in the Western time zone. The actual episodes will be taped, as “Late Night” typically is; the spots will be live islands in a sea of taped television.

Live commercials were once mainstays of TV, especially during NBC programs like “Today” and “Tonight.” Marketers like Polaroid and Timex took advantage of the spots unfolding in real time to offer viewers dramatic demonstrations of photographs developing “instantly” or how a watch could take a licking and keep on ticking.

In one vintage Polaroid spot, the NBC variety show host Perry Como seems to anticipate by decades the arms-out gesture of cellphone camera users when he simulates taking a photograph of himself â€" a “selfie” â€" with the actor Don Ameche, the Polaroid spokesman.

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Another Promising Night for Fox and Its Early Start to TV Season

On its second night of jump-starting the new television season a week before its network competition, the Fox network again got some positive results.

A new comedy, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” got some promising ratings; another, “Dads,” fared well enough to hold out some hope, and one returned comedy, “New Girl,” showed some renewed strength.

Only one comedy, “The Mindy Project,” generated disappointing numbers, probably disappointing as much to critics as to Fox executives because “Mindy” had been widely extolled before its second-season premiere. The premiere also featured a guest appearance by James Franco.

Even so, Fox will probably take the overall performance on a Tuesday night, where it struggled badly last season. Probably the best news was the strong showing for “Brooklyn,” another favorite of critics, which drew six million viewers and a solid 2.5 rating among the group Fox sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

The other new series, “Dads,” which had been excoriated by critics for what they charged was racially insensitive humor, managed a 2.1 in that 18-49 group and 5.6 million viewers, both respectable numbers for a newcomer. “New Girl” returned with 5.6 million viewers and the best 18-49 rating of the night, a 2.9. Both numbers were up slightly from the show’s premiere episode a year ago.

“The Mindy Project” however, showed what may be a worrisome falloff from “New Girl,” dropping to just under four million viewers and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 group. Fox, which is also offering projections of how its shows will fare when delayed viewing is counted, offered some hope for “Mindy,” suggesting it could eventually reach more than six million viewers and climb to a 2.7 rating among those younger adult viewers.

That would still be a sizable falloff from “New Girl,” which Fox thinks could get as high as more than 10.5 million viewers and perhaps a 4.7 rating in the 18-49 category.

Another Promising Night for Fox and Its Early Start to TV Season

On its second night of jump-starting the new television season a week before its network competition, the Fox network again got some positive results.

A new comedy, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” got some promising ratings; another, “Dads,” fared well enough to hold out some hope, and one returned comedy, “New Girl,” showed some renewed strength.

Only one comedy, “The Mindy Project,” generated disappointing numbers, probably disappointing as much to critics as to Fox executives because “Mindy” had been widely extolled before its second-season premiere. The premiere also featured a guest appearance by James Franco.

Even so, Fox will probably take the overall performance on a Tuesday night, where it struggled badly last season. Probably the best news was the strong showing for “Brooklyn,” another favorite of critics, which drew six million viewers and a solid 2.5 rating among the group Fox sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

The other new series, “Dads,” which had been excoriated by critics for what they charged was racially insensitive humor, managed a 2.1 in that 18-49 group and 5.6 million viewers, both respectable numbers for a newcomer. “New Girl” returned with 5.6 million viewers and the best 18-49 rating of the night, a 2.9. Both numbers were up slightly from the show’s premiere episode a year ago.

“The Mindy Project” however, showed what may be a worrisome falloff from “New Girl,” dropping to just under four million viewers and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 group. Fox, which is also offering projections of how its shows will fare when delayed viewing is counted, offered some hope for “Mindy,” suggesting it could eventually reach more than six million viewers and climb to a 2.7 rating among those younger adult viewers.

That would still be a sizable falloff from “New Girl,” which Fox thinks could get as high as more than 10.5 million viewers and perhaps a 4.7 rating in the 18-49 category.

Under New Guidelines, Man Booker Prize to Be Open to Americans

In a break from tradition that has already rankled purists, the Man Booker Prize will be open to all novels originally written in English and published in Britain, the administrators of the prize announced on Wednesday. Previously, the prize had been open to novels written by authors from Britain, the other countries in the Commonwealth, and Ireland. The change is planned to begin in 2014.

In a statement, the Booker Prize Foundation said that its members decided that the award, “which for over 40 years has been the touchstone for high quality literary fiction written in English, would enhance its prestige and reputation through expansion.”

Jonathan Taylor, the chairman of the trustees, said in a statement, “'We are excited by the opportunities that extending the Man Booker Prize will bring for readers and writers worldwide. The expanded prize will recognize, celebrate and embrace authors writing in English, whether from Chicago, Sheffield or Shanghai.”

Reuters Ends Plans for Ambitious Direct-to-Reader Service

Two years after Thomson Reuters announced an ambitious effort to reach out to news consumers directly through a program called Next, the company has decided to change direction and work through its Web site, Reuters.com.

Reuters, a venerable news organization with a network of 2,000 journalists across the globe, has worked largely as a news wire service, with its reports and photos appearing in other publications. Next was to be a platform to reach readers directly, but it has been plagued by missed deadlines and cost overruns.

In an e-mail to employees that went out this morning and appeared soon after on The New York Observer’s Web site, the chief executive of Reuters, Andrew Rashbass, said the causes of the decision were cost overruns and the failure to reach international consumers.

“The project as a whole has struggled to meet delivery deadlines and stay within its budget,” he wrote. “Also, it does not capitalize on our strengths.”

Mr. Rashbass, who was hired in May from the Economist Group, added: “Next is a long way from achieving either commercial viability or strategic success. In fact, I believe the existing suite of Reuters.com sites is a better starting point for where we need to go. Therefore I have decided to cancel the Next project and put our efforts into enhancing and improving the existing Reuters.com sites. We will repurpose as much of the Next development work as we can for that.”

The e-mail said that several executives at the company had decided to leave as a result of the decision, including Jim Roberts, executive editor of Reuters Digital, who was hired at the beginning of the year after taking a buyout from The New York Times. Mr. Roberts was not immediately reachable for comment, though he posted to Twitter: “Yes, I’ll be leaving@Reuters, though not right away. & I’m not leaving news. Stay tuned.”

In looking toward the future, Mr. Rashbass said: “We need to make our core strength of international news relevant to local audiences â€" which means, among other things, having local-language sites.”

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, said he was surprised by Reuters’s decision because the preview version of Next had been generating such interest. “There were a lot of really exciting ideas in Reuters’s Next,” he said. “What we saw in the preview was very forward-looking in terms of both content and technology. It generated a fair amount of excitement as a news organization doing something that looked digitally savvy.”

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Filmmaker Susan Lacy Leaves PBS for HBO

One of the most prolific and honored filmmakers in television is moving from PBS to HBO.

Susan Lacy, the creator and executive producer of “American Masters,” the celebrated public television series that has chronicled the lives and careers of scores of icons of American culture, has signed a multiyear deal to produce and direct documentary films for the pay cable channel.

“It was not an easy decision to make,” Ms. Lacy said in a telephone interview. “But this was a wonderful opportunity for me to continue to make films.”

When she created the “American Masters” show in 1986, Ms. Lacy was not even a filmmaker. She was the executive in charge of the series and hired different documentarians to create the show’s distinctive biographies of talents as disparate as Ella Fitzgerald and Edgar Allan Poe, George Balanchine and James Baldwin.

But after supervising the series for more than a decade, and working in the edit room to produce the final products that won 26 Emmy Awards, Ms. Lacy began making films of her own. Among the subjects she has covered for “American Masters”: Rod Serling, Paul Simon, Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein and Joni Mitchell.

HBO has asked her to create a biographical series for its award-winning documentary division, headed by Sheila Nevins.

Ms. Lacy said she was extremely proud of her work for PBS, though there is one aspect of the job she will not miss. Financing was often inadequate for “American Masters” projects and Ms. Lacy found herself “having to find money to supplant the funding for each film,” she said.

Money will not be a problem at HBO, she acknowledged. “And I have to admit that was a big draw in taking this job,” she said.

Among the Emmys that “American Masters” has won, the latest of nine for Outstanding Documentary or Non-Fiction series was for “Inventing David Geffen,” a film Ms. Lacy produced and directed.