SFX Shares Fall Sharply For Second Straight Day

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SFX's Robert Sillerman

SFX Entertainment is having a tough second week as a public company. Shares of the EDM-focused music promotion and media company fell as much as 11.7% to $8.95 on Thursday before rebounding slightly and closing down 7.8% at $9.50. A day earlier, as news that a U.S. debt default would be averted pushed equity markets higher, SFX fell as much as 12.7% to $10.16 and closed under $11 for the first time.

After a successful IPO, market enthusiasm in the company has slipped. The losses on Wednesday and Thursday eroded nearly $163 million of market value. SFX's current $797 million valuation is 24.1% below the $1.05 billion valuation of its IPO. In contrast, shares of Live Nation, the publicly traded company most comparable to SFX, are up 2.9% since SFX's IPO.

PHOTOS: Viva Residencies: 19 Music Superstars Who Rocked Las Vegas

SFX shares have broken through three psychological barriers: the $13 IPO price, the $11 that marked the low end of the IPO pricing range, and the $10 threshold below which SFX shares are valued in the single digits. Albert Fried & Company analyst Rich Tullo spotted trouble when SFX was trading below the IPO price as soon as it hit the Nasdaq. "Given that the stock is trading below $13, it's going to be hard to get back to the IPO price," Tullo told Billboard.

SFX's IPO was a success. The IPO underwriters were able to sell 20 million shares at $13 for a gross of $260 million and a net, after underwriting discounts and commissions, of $242 million. Demand from the institutional investors that bought into the IPO drove up the price and shares offered. The company decided to increase the number of shares sold to 20 million from an initial estimate of 16.7 million shares. The $13 IPO price was the high mark of the $11 to $13 range set before the IPO.

STORY: Robert Sillerman's SFX Entertainment Files for IPO

A lack of information currently guides changes in the stock price. Analysts from firms involved in SFX's IPO are prohibited from issuing research on the stock until after the SEC-mandated quiet period ends. (Banks have been waiting 25 days after an IPO to issue research.) No other analysts are covering SFX yet. More information -- beyond what SFX revealed in its IPO filing -- and quarterly earnings statements will eventually provide the market with guidance.

As its share price wanders, SFX will continue building a business around what it calls "significant and growing scale" with its live events. “My job is to do the best possible job to bring this music and cultural phenomenon to as broad [an audience] as effectively as possible -- the stock price will take care of itself," chairman and CEO Robert Sillerman told Billboard last week.

This story first appeared on billboard.biz.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/music/~3/HeQTnKqGP0w/story01.htm
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Joan Ganz Cooney, Co-Founder Of Sesame Workshop

Jessica Harris speaks with television producer Joan Ganz Cooney, co-founder of Sesame Workshop, a non-profit organization that develops children's shows intended to help children everywhere reach their highest potential. After, she talks with Stephen McDonnell, founder of Applegate Farms, a natural organic meat company.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/17/236306448/joan-ganz-cooney-co-founder-of-sesame-workshop?ft=1&f=
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Hulu Names Fox's Mike Hopkins As CEO

Hulu has announced that Mike Hopkins, a board member at Hulu and president of Fox Networks Group, is the company’s new CEO. Hopkins had previously been reported as the likely candidate for the role.

It’s been a bumpy year for the online TV site. Then-CEO Jason Kilar left in March and was replaced by acting CEO Andy Forssell who now, according to Hulu, is leaving the company.

Then there were rumors that the media companies that own Hulu (21st Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, and NBC Universal) were looking to sell, though they eventually invested another $750 million instead.

In an email to the company, which was also posted on the Hulu blog, Hopkins acknowledged that things have been rough, but he wrote:

The fact is, through all the recent uncertainty not only have you kept this business together, but you’ve continued to deliver on every key performance metric. In fact, you are delivering one of the strongest years Hulu has ever seen: We expect revenues to be close to a billion dollars this year, and Hulu Plus subscribers continue to climb.

With the foundation you have built, the significant capital infusion of three quarters of a billion dollars, and our partners aligned and fully supportive of what we need to get it done, the sky is the limit for Hulu. I am looking forward to working with you all.

What does Hulu need to “get it done,” and what will it mean for Hulu users? It’s hard to say at this point, but when I brought this up with TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler, he pointed out that Fox programming on Hulu, such as American Dad, requires a subscription to, say, DISH Network (or another supported pay-TV service) access — otherwise you wait a week. So perhaps we’ll see Hulu adopting this policy with other content providers.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/feg-1kwNJIk/
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Failure Is Underrated

Community colleges and traditional four-year universities should not be evaluated on the same terms.

Photo by Digital Vision/Thinkstock

This week I spoke to about 500 presidents, faculty, and administrators at the National Association of Community Colleges and Entrepreneurship in Charlotte, N.C. They wanted to talk about the changing landscape of higher education: decreased public funding, increased demand, private sector speculation. In many ways, those changes came first for the community college system. Conceived during the height of the middle-class expansion in the 1960s, the community college sector represented an ambitious public investment in universal college access. Today, powerful entities like the Gates Foundation envision community colleges as ground zero for cheaply, efficiently retraining America’s workforce.

Managing dropouts and completions is key to that vision, because community colleges are notorious—somewhat unfairly so—for their dropout rates. As Jon Marcus wrote in the Hechinger Report in August, though the U.S. Department of Education puts the official community college graduation rate at 18 percent, that number rises to around 40 percent if you count the 1 in 4 community college students who transfers to a four-year institution and graduates. Without context, these statistics undermine the community college mission.

Putting aside famous dropouts like Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg, to drop out of college is seen as evidence of failure, of untapped human capital, of structural inequality. But failure is actually one of the greatest strengths of our higher education system. In no other country can a student fail so often, so spectacularly, with such a low penalty. Especially for nontraditional students, failure may be underrated.

What a lot of community college students are doing is what education researchers call “swirling.” As Jeffrey Selingo recently wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, more and more students “attend multiple institutions—sometimes at the same time—extend the time to graduation by taking off time between semesters, mix learning experiences like co-op programs or internships with traditional courses, and sign up for classes from alternative providers such as Coursera or edX.” While Selingo focuses on traditional co-eds who swirl as a lifestyle choice, there is another group for whom swirling is a necessity of life. The demographic future of higher education is older, browner, and full of students who are also parents, workers, and caretakers. They are exactly the kinds of underserved students that community colleges were designed to accommodate, while also serving the workforce needs of local communities. When these students swirl in and out of higher education, it’s often because of the conditions that made them community college students to begin with. A parent’s child care needs may change. A worker retraining for a new field gets a job before they finish a program. A poor student takes on some extra shifts to make ends meet.  

For a lot of reasons, we really want people to graduate these days. Degrees are an easy-to-agree-upon metric for researchers. They bring greater economic returns than just some college without a degree. When Barack Obama proposed regaining the mantle of the world’s most educated population, he talked about certificates and degrees and not learning. A good school, by definition, would get students to graduation.

One of my fellow speakers at the NACCE event pointed toward the complexity of this conflation. Accepting NACCE’s Lifetime Achievement award, venture capitalist and philanthropist Gururaj Deshpande of MIT pointed out that community colleges are unique to the United States. In India, Deshpande said, the focus is on high-stakes tests that unilaterally consign students either to the educated class or the working class. The system “had so narrowly focused learning on testing,” he said, “that memorization had replaced learning.” In other nations, entrance exams are the single point of entry to higher ed, so students work really hard—for example, in South Korea, where hagwons—private cram schools—make up a billion-dollar industry and one top tutor makes $4 million a year, as Amanda Ripley reported in the Wall Street Journal.

When you’ve only got one shot at college, there’s a lot of motivation for you to get it right. In the U.S. we’ve got lots of shots. Nation-to-nation comparisons of lazy U.S. students to hardworking students in East Asia often obscure this difference. In the U.S., you can fail out of high school, take the GED, dabble in a few community college classes, eventually transfer to a state university, graduate, and go on to get a medical degree or a Ph.D. It’s not the normal course for drop-outs, sure, but it is possible. And it’s the possibility—represented by a network of accessible, affordable community colleges that serve students who can’t move or stop life to go to a traditional college straight through—that has made ours a pretty good system. When one can fail, and failure does not doom one’s life chances, we all benefit. When we consider that inequality is largely a generational transfer from poor parents to their children, more opportunities for the vulnerable to take a risk on education can only be a good thing.

James Mellow, a hairdresser in Davis, Calif., recently told me how upset he was to hear that City College of San Francisco was facing closure. Back when Mellow was a couch-surfing young man in an expensive city, SFCC “was the kind of place you went to plug into a community or do something useful with your time while you looked for work,” he said. “Tuition was so cheap that it was more expensive not to take a class than to enroll.” Those are the kinds of daily risk calculations that need to tilt in favor of college enrollment. But betting on an expensive for-profit college is significantly riskier if the opportunity loads up so much debt that it effectively prevents you from ever re-enrolling in college—then you only have one shot. Similarly, a narrow focus on degree completions stifles the mission of community colleges to provide more access points for students who too often have to choose between managing their life and continuous enrollment. We need to recalculate the price we put on failure, and acknowledge that the freedom to drop out—and drop in—is one of our system’s most significant attributes.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/counter_narrative/2013/10/college_dropout_rates_failure_to_complete_a_degree_can_mean_that_the_system.html
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MediaFire's Derek Labian: Cloud Storage Is an Everyday Need

"As business operations become more global in nature, collaboration and sharing will become an essential element for enterprise customers," explained MediaFire CEO Derek Labian. "For consumers, cloud-based storage solutions are quickly becoming competitive with localized storage options, and often, the advantages of having a reliable cloud storage solution outweigh the cost savings of localized backup."

Security and privacy concerns may be far outweighed for many users by the convenience and appeal of the cloud, but users need to view cloud access as more than just another storage utility on the desktop.

That's according to Derek Labian, CEO of cloud storage service MediaFire. Instead, cloud users need to focus on cloud performance and application functionality, Labian suggests.

MediaFire's Derek Labian

MediaFire's founders are committed to using open source software extensively both for development and within the company's Web applications for media playback. For example, JPlayer drives MediaFire's new media player.

In this interview, LinuxInsider and Labian, who oversees MediaFire's strategic planning and engineering direction, discuss the continuing changes in cloud storage technology and the challenges arising beyond the next cloud technology horizon.

LinuxInsider: What are the big misconceptions that companies and individual users have about cloud storage?

Derek Labian: Everyday users need cloud storage, but they don't know it. Cloud storage is often only depicted as a utility, but it can be much more than that. If cloud storage providers want to really connect with consumers, they have to make their services fun to use.

Security is another huge issue that needs to be addressed. With consumer concerns over cloud storage at an all-time high from concerns around PRISM, it is incredibly important that the industry as a whole works together to address user privacy.

LI: How can a cloud storage provider make its services fun to use?

Labian: That is an ongoing process. What we are trying to do is put out a set of tools that makes using the cloud more of a lifestyle service -- tools that can help you aggregate your media together automatically and help you work with it, use it in native formats and get away from the cost of the files. The underlying technology is still very similar among cloud source providers and all those other competing technologies. The difference is how we present the cloud to the users, organize it and how we allow you to work with it.

LI: In light of the recent disclosures involving PRISM, what are the most pressing security concerns facing users of cloud storage?

Labian: I would say that in general all the cloud technologies have the same concerns, whether it is email or storage or any other cloud-based service, because security issues are becoming more and more prevalent. Basically a week does not go by that we do not see instances where somebody was hacked, but I don't think these individual cases are going to slow down the growth of the industry. It is just too appealing. Cloud storage is just too convenient for us, and it enhances our lives too much to let it slow our usage down. So the technology will continue to improve and evolve, and I think those concerns won't be concerns going forward.

LI: How are large storage strategies changing to handle the run towards cloud storage?

Labian: As business operations become more global in nature, collaboration and sharing will become an essential element for enterprise customers. For consumers, cloud-based storage solutions are quickly becoming competitive with localized storage options, and often, the advantages of having a reliable cloud storage solution outweigh the cost savings of localized backup.

LI: What price-performance requirements should cloud storage adopters have at the top of their list?

Labian: Consumers are less focused on storage as a performance metric and more focused on accessibility and features that let them use online storage effectively. While storage numbers are a great selling point, cloud-based services need to offer users more than just storage. Instead, cloud storage adopters need to look at network performance, platform flexibility and functionality as the main features that matter when it comes to selecting a cloud storage provider. For Linux users, having a reliable desktop client is a plus.

LI: Do you see the focus on cloud storage changing the landscape for converged infrastructure and shared services?

Labian: Cloud storage is a piece of the puzzle, as Steve Jobs would say. It is a tool, not a product. As such, cloud storage integration is going to be an underlying layer powering new products as well as revising how we use shared services and think of infrastructure.

LI: What trends do you see on the horizon for cloud storage?

Labian: We see the cloud storage model evolving into five key trends. One, cloud storage is going to eventually become completely seamless. Two, online storage is going to move towards becoming more of a service offering: Users have a ton of content, but managing it all is a pain. Three, storage becomes individualized; "This is my data; my data goes with me wherever I go." Four, we will move away from the concept of "files" and towards working with media as media, as in photos, videos, audio and documents. Five, content discovery will become a huge growth opportunity.

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Jack M. Germain has been writing about computer technology since the early days of the Apple II and the PC. He still has his original IBM PC-Jr and a few other legacy DOS and Windows boxes. He left shareware programs behind for the open source world of the Linux desktop. He runs several versions of Windows and Linux OSes and often cannot decide whether to grab his tablet, netbook or Android smartphone instead of using his desktop or laptop gear.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/79179.html
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20th Century Fox Marketing Co-Chief Oren Aviv to Exit

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Oren Aviv

Another Hollywood studio is seeing a major shakeup as co-marketing chief Oren Aviv exits 20th Century Fox.
 
Sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter Aviv is leaving the top post after just a little over two years on the job. He ran the domestic marketing department with co-marketing president Tony Sella, whom insiders say is staying put.

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It wasn't immediately clear whether Aviv will be replaced.

Aviv worked at Disney before joining Fox in January 2011. Some within the studio have been dissatisfied with the domestic marketing operation in the aftermath of numerous box office disappointments, including Runner Runner, Turbo, Epic and The Internship. Conversely, the international side of the marketing division is well regarded across Hollywood.

Aviv's departure comes one year after Tom Rothman exited as co-chairman of Fox, leaving Jim Gianopulos in sole charge of the studio. Gianopulos was reluctant to make any abrupt changes but has nonetheless been evaluating the landscape, according to insiders.

Aviv is the latest in a string of marketing heads to be let go after DreamWorks Animation's Anne Globe (DWA has a distribution deal with Fox), Relativity Media's Terry Curtin and Sony's Marc Weinstock.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/film/~3/XTw8QMG9jg4/story01.htm
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TV's Top Showrunners Talk Deleted Scenes, Network Censorship, More

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Liz Meriwether, Dan Harmon, Aaron Sorkin

How I Met Your Mother's Carter Bays is still mourning the loss of Goodwin Games. New Girl's Liz Meriwether is coming clean about the do's and don'ts of "vagina" talk. And Community's reinstalled showrunner Dan Harmon is simply relieved security let him back on the lot.

Below, 13 top showrunners from this year's Power List offer candid responses about scrapped plans, debates in their writers room and the thing they wish they knew before becoming a showrunner.

PHOTOS: Power Showrunners: Inside the Minds Behind 'Walking Dead,' 'Bates Motel,' 'Arrow'

Before I became a showrunner, I wish someone had warned me about …

Beau Willimon (House of Cards): Fraturday -- when a night shoot on Friday night continues until Saturday morning. Think long weekend, but the opposite of that.

Aaron Sorkin (Newsroom): Having to write a second episode after the pilot.

Liz Meriwether (New Girl): All the sleep I would get! It's almost too much sleep!

Christopher Lloyd (Modern Family): Executives and notes. I'm often reminded of a story about Marvin Gaye. In his prime, he was a big strong guy, who fancied himself a decent boxer. One day he met this heavyweight fighter (not a champion, but a contender) and told him he wanted to spar with him. They made the date and Marvin Gaye came in kind of cocky, sure he was going to beat this guy, demanding that the guy not go easy on him, and … the guy kind of beat him up. Afterward, a reporter who had observed the whole thing asked the boxer why he'd done so and he said, "This is what I do all day long. This is all I've ever done. How could he disrespect me like that? This ring is my office."

Dan Harmon (Community): Capitalism.

Mara Brock Akil (The Game): The hair and makeup department! There should be a whole course on how to negotiate that!

Betsy Beers (Grey's Anatomy, Scandal) Keeping up with a network episodic schedule. The pace takes your breath away -- especially when you first start out -- and living at the office becomes the new normal. Oh, and the constant and endless supply of sugary food groups at said office. Beware …

The most memorable debate in our writers room this past year was …

Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy): If the skittish white guy in the alley outside our office was dealing crack or meth.

Carter Bays (How I Met Your Mother): First prize: Did Walt mean what he said on the phone with Skyler or was it all a smokescreen because he knew the cops were listening in? Runner up: Should we do a season nine?

Sorkin: Whether a particular line should reference Bridget Jones or Holly Golightly.

Harmon: Whether to replace departing castmembers with NFL players or just keep grabbing dead people from Breaking Bad.

Bill Lawrence (Cougar Town): Generally, these are about where to order lunch when we're working. No one has nailed this yet.

Craig Thomas (How I Met Your Mother): Whether or not to reveal "The Mother" from our show's title (Side-bar: I've decided to start avoiding the phrase "titular mother," because gross).

STORY: 10 Power Showrunners: A Day in the Life, From Carlton Cuse to Jenji Kohan

The toughest scene I had to write this past year was …

Sutter: Figuring out new and imaginative ways to blow shit up, kill a guy, chase down/run from an enemy. Adding original, organic action to the show gets more difficult every season.

Meriwether: Some reshoot stuff. But a lady never talks about reshoots unless the lady has a drink in her. Half a drink, to be honest.

Matthew Weiner (Mad Men): Don and Ted deciding to merge their companies.

Sorkin: The scene that opened with the season premiere and ended with the season finale.

I can't believe I got away with …

Meriwether: Getting Nick and Jess together. But now I feel like I jinxed it.

Weiner: Bob Benson's shorts.

Harmon: Seasons four, three, one and two in that order.

The moment I wish had made it to air but didn't was …

Meriwether: So many moments. There was one particular joke for Winston in the premiere that we couldn't get away with because of Standards and Practices. Lamorne [Morris] knocked it out of the park. I guess you're not allowed to use the word "in" as it relates to the word "vagina." It turns out almost no prepositions are allowed near that noun.

Beers: There was a wonderful scene from last season in episode 219 -- Olivia Pope, who is starting to undress in her bedroom, remembers Jake Ballard has placed surveillance in there. She proceeds to taunt him through the camera. A terrific performance from Kerry Washington -- and a nice twist at the end when we find out it isn't Jake Ballard who is watching!

Bays: The last six episodes of The Goodwin Games.

Sorkin: The scene in "One Step Too Many" that explained the title of the episode.

STORY: The Hollywood Reporter Names the 50 Power Showrunners of 2013

The episode from this past year that I wish we could do over would be …

Meriwether: The premiere.

Thomas: I'll up the ante on this question and go from "episode" to "series": I wish we could do The Goodwin Games over with the same amazing cast and crew, but on a network that would give it a real shot.

Bays: It's not from this last year, but season seven's "The Burning Beekeeper" will follow me to my grave. One more week of writing, one more week of shooting, one more week of editing, and it could have been something awesome. But that's how it goes when you have a 24 episode season. Sometimes you run out of time.

Sorkin: I've never written anything I wish I couldn't do over.

Weiner: What are you trying to say?

My proudest accomplishment this year was …

Harmon: Convincing security to let me back on the lot.

Lloyd: Finding a way to take two common sitcom stories -- a birth story and a proposal story -- and make them both funny and surprising, and ultimately touching.

Willimon: Remaining sane. Writing and producing 13 hours of story in six months is a form of voluntary insanity. A delicious, rewarding, exhilarating form of insanity, mind you. It takes a special breed of folks to put in 80 hour weeks for half a year. Luckily on our show the inmates get to run the asylum, and between our cast, crew, writers and designers, there's not other asylum I'd rather be committed to.

Thomas: The brief three or four seconds in May/June when Carter and I had two shows on TV (HIMYM and the all-too-short-lived The Goodwin Games.)

Lawrence: Hiring and empowering talented people like Adam Sztykiel (Undateable), Jeff Astrof (Ground Floor), Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker (Surviving Jack) and Blake McCormick (Cougar Town) to run our TV shows. Then I just step in and take credit for all their hard work. Any work they can't do is handled by Jeff Ingold and Randall Winston (my partners). I generally just drink a lot of coffee.

STORY: Power Showrunners: 10 to Watch for 2014

If my writers were to describe my style as a showrunner in five words or less, they might say …

Salim Akil (The Game): Salim -- Loveable asshole.

Sutter: Control. Control. Control. Control. Weepy.

Lloyd: Respectful, respectfully demanding, always late.

Meriwether: "Go back to set, Liz."

Weiner: "You're looking tall today, sir."

Harmon: "Quick, he's sleeping, stab him."

Lawrence: Moderately effective, disorganized chaos.

Bays: Handsome, handsome, handsome, handsome, handsome!

Sorkin: Nobody on our show uses five words or less.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/news/~3/qzc1Efr04l8/tvs-top-showrunners-talk-deleted-648874
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