Sagging NFL TV ratings leave owners scrambling for answers

Jarrett Bell , USA TODAY Sports
HOUSTON — It’s an election year, silly.

That wasn’t the entire company line, but the impact of the dramatic presidential election cycle was certainly a prevailing sentiment as NFL owners gathered Tuesday for their quarterly meeting and assessed the league's unusual and precipitous dip in TV ratings.

Assuming the results aren’t, well, rigged, NFL games — the undisputed king of U.S. sports viewing — were down 11% for the first six weeks of the season when compared to a similar point last year.
Blame it on Hillary vs. Donald? Or a sign of deeper problems for the NFL?

Bill Belichick rants against NFL tablets: 'I'm done'

“It’s a very muddied water right now because you’ve got obviously the debates going on and you have the Donald Trump show,” Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank told USA TODAY Sports. 

“That’s a lot of commotion right now. It’s pretty hard to figure out right now what’s real and what’s not.”

The first debate, which ran opposite of a Falcons-New Orleans Saints Monday Night Football matchup in late September, drew a record 84 million viewers. The second debate, coinciding with a New York Giants-Green Bay Packers Sunday night prime-time clash, had 69 million viewers.

“Obviously, the debates have had a big impact,” Houston Texans owner Robert McNair told USA TODAY Sports.

But the debates represent just the biggest of several suspected factors. Tom Brady served four games in Deflategate jail. Peyton Manning retired. The younger generation is increasingly watching games or clips streamed to mobile devices. Too many penalties. Unappealing prime-time matchups. Too many prime-time matchups.

Then there are the protests. The national anthem protests by players, ignited by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s mission to raise awareness about police brutality and social justice inequalities that victimize African Americans, has been a polarizing debate of its own on the NFL’s grand stage. Though the protests — from players like Kaepernick taking a knee, to players raising a fist, to players and coaches locking arms in unity — end when the games begin, they generate much discussion before and after the contests.

Still, the impact of the protests illustrates the power of the NFL’s reach.

“I think it’s the wrong venue,” Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay told USA TODAY Sports. “It hasn’t been a positive thing. What we all have to be aware of as players, owners, PR people, equipment managers, is when the lights go on we are entertainment. We are being paid to put on a show. There are other places to express yourself.”

Irsay’s view is undoubtedly shared by other owners who frown on the protests drawing attention from their product. Given the intense backlash against Kaepernick, it’s plausible that people have turned away to protest the protests.

“People come to the game because they want to get away from what’s happening in their everyday lives,” McNair said. “When you bring those types of things into the scene, yeah, it will turn some people off. But the main thing we try to do is to say, ‘We recognize your concern. Let’s do something about it.’ "

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It’s striking that the anthem protests, connected to other factors, are viewed as a variable that seemingly runs deeper than other recent crises. The NFL took tremendous PR hits with its domestic violence issues and concerns about the effects of concussions. But those serious issues seemingly didn’t have a major effect on the ratings.

Last year, NFL games represented 63 of the top 100 highest-rated TV shows. And though NFL viewership was up 27% over the previous 25 years, according to league figures, viewership for all prime-time viewing was down 36%, as TV-watching habits have changed.

It is way premature to suggest that the NFL is in trouble of losing its position as the nation’s most popular sport. Although Monday night’s New York Jets-Arizona Cardinals game drew a 6.2 overnight rating that was down 35% from a New York Giants-Philadelphia Eagles Monday nighter the previous year, it still dwarfed the 3.4 rating of the American League Championship Series game between the Cleveland Indians and Toronto Blue Jays. But you can believe that the league is taking the declining numbers seriously.

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What if the lost viewers from this season never come back?

“That should be the NFL’s biggest fear,” consultant Marc Ganis of Sportscorp, Ltd., told USA TODAY Sports, adding that it took years for Major League Baseball to recover after a labor impasse wiped out the playoffs and the World Series in 1994.

“The ratings thing, we can’t ignore,” cautioned Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot.

He knows all about the impact of researching the fan base for clues.

“What’s going up? Where is the softness? How do you respond to that?” Blank said. “It’s no different from my days running The Home Depot, when we had markets where we didn’t get the response. We had to figure out why aren’t we getting customers in our stores here. It didn’t happen very often, but sometimes it happens.”

Now the NFL is similarly challenged to figure out how to best present its product.

Follow NFL columnist Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell

Eddie Applegate, Actor on 'The Patty Duke Show,' Dies at 81

by Mike Barnes

He portrayed Richard Harrison, the easygoing boyfriend of the Brooklyn-born Patty Lane, on the 1960s ABC sitcom.

Eddie Applegate, who played Richard Harrison, the high school boyfriend of Patty Lane, on The Patty Duke Show, died Monday. He was 81.

Applegate died at a nursing home in Los Angeles after a long illness, his friend, Lizzie Maxwell, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Applegate appeared in 88 of the ABC sitcom's 104 episodes as Richard, who dated the 
Brooklyn-born Patty (Duke). Of course, Duke also played an identical cousin, Cathy Lane, on the series, which aired from 1963-66.

In CBS' 1999 reunion telefilm, The Patty Duke Show: Still Rockin' in Brooklyn Heights, Applegate returned as Harrison; now, he was Patty Lane's ex-husband.

While starring in a Las Vegas stage production of Bye Bye Birdie, Applegate was approached by a producer to appear in the 1963 romantic comedy A Ticklish Affair, starring Shirley Jones, Carolyn Jones, Gig Young and Red Buttons.

A native of Wyncote, Pa., Applegate also appeared on such shows as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Lucy Show, Daktari, Gunsmoke and the short-lived comedy Nancy, created by Sidney Sheldon and featuring Celeste Holm.

More recently, Applegate played a grandfather in the Emma Stone starrer Easy A (2010) and appeared in the crime film Rain From Stars (2013). He also worked as an agent, artist and carpenter.

Survivors include his children Heather and Michael, their respective spouses Eric and Julie and grandchildren Jenna, Zack, Katie, Lauren, Kyle and Mia.

Ratings Scoreboard: Thursday, October 13

Jack Ma, Spielberg Strike Deal to Bring Hollywood to China

 

by Bloomberg News

It’s a casting director’s dream. Jack Ma, China’s richest man, and the highest-grossing Hollywood auteur of all time have struck a deal to work together to produce and finance films for the world’s second-largest movie market.

Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd. is buying a stake in Amblin Partners, the production outfit backed by Steven Spielberg to work together on production, marketing and distribution both globally and in China. It’s the latest in a spree of deals over the past two years intended to help U.S. studios tap what could soon be the world’s largest box office, while hopefully imparting a little of that Hollywood movie-making magic to increasingly ambitious Chinese households.

The agreement with Spielberg’s storied studio marks Alibaba’s and Ma’s most comprehensive production effort to date. The company has been selective so far, preferring to invest in select films such as the latest installment of the “Mission Impossible” franchise, in return for an equity stake and the right to stream it across internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s various online services.

“Among Chinese consumers, there is an increasing demand for premium global content," Ma said in an e-mailed statement. "This collaboration can serve as a cultural bridge and have a positive impact on the next generation of Chinese consumers.”

Board Seat

Alibaba Pictures will also name a representative to sit on the board of Amblin Partners, a content creation company formed by DreamWorks Studios, Participant Media, Reliance Entertainment and Entertainment One. Spielberg is the Chairman of Amblin Partners.

“We intend to make six to nine movies a year, ” Amblin Partners President and Co-Chief Executive Officer Jeff Small said Sunday at a launch of the tie-up in a downtown Beijing skyscraper’s ballroom. The films would be distributed by a network that included Universal Pictures Ltd. China had the “fastest-growing demand in world.”

Ma and Spielberg appeared together at the launch.

“There’s a lot in China that’s becoming more and more known, through media ... and China’s tremendous renaissance,” said Spielberg, who was part of a crew that shot the movie “Empire of the Sun” in Shanghai in the 1980s. He said he wants to “bring more of China to America and more of America to China."

Ma Support

Ma told the launch he’s not personally trying to envision movies of the future, but “my job is using technology to support these guys.”

China has been a focus for Hollywood studios in recent years as the U.S. film market has stagnated. In 2015, China’s box office totaled $6.8 billion, up 49 percent from the previous year, according to consulting firm Artisan Gateway. The North American box office had its biggest year in 2015 at $11.1 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. 

American studios have been looking to Chinese partners for funding and ways to maximize their revenue from a country that limits the number of foreign firms exhibited annually at 34. That aligns with the ambitions of a coterie of local media houses that are in turn trying to hone an ability to reach worldwide audiences, and hasn’t been shy about paying for it.

‘Jurassic World’

Fellow Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co. has been among the most aggressive in its overtures. It bought “Jurassic World” co-producer Legendary Entertainment and has agreed to co-finance and market releases in China for studios including Sony Pictures. Wanda, now said to be eyeing Golden Globes show-runner Dick Clark Productions, also runs the world’s biggest chain of movie theaters after buying AMC Entertainment. Other Chinese players investing in studios include Fosun Group and Huayi Brothers.

But the rapid pace of acquisitions has some in Washington spooked. Lawmakers have called for an overhaul of regulations to give the U.S. greater ability to scrutinize and block Chinese investment in U.S. media, as well as force lobbyists acting for the Chinese to register their interests.

In December, Spielberg brought new life to his production company DreamWorks Studios, renaming it Amblin Partners. The director of “E.T.,” the biggest-grossing director in history, raised $800 million in debt and equity from banks and partners Reliance Group, Participant Media and Entertainment One. As part of the deal, Amblin’s films will be distributed by Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures rather than Walt Disney Co.

Spielberg’s been honored with more than a dozen best-director and best-picture Academy Award nominations, winning for “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” But his latest effort, “The BFG,” failed to recoup its costs at the box office. This weekend in the U.S., Universal Pictures releases the first movie from its pact with Amblin, “The Girl on the Train,” based on the best-selling mystery novel.

— With assistance by Christina Larson, Anousha Sakoui, and Lulu Chen

Actor Gary Sinise to attend 75th Pearl Harbor commemoration

by  Katie Murar

An 11-day event is planned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The theme of the event, which is being organized by the 75th Commemoration of Pearl Harbor Committee, is "Honoring the past, inspiring the future.” It will include concerts, movies and galas to commemorate the remaining survivors of the attack.

A new documentary, "Remember Pearl Harbor," will debut at the Pacific Aviation Museum on Dec. 4. 

Actor Gary Sinise & the Lt. Dan Band are scheduled to perform at Waikiki Beach on Dec. 5 prior to an outdoor showing at the beach of "From Here to Eternity."

The official commemoration will be televised nationally and shown at New York City’s Times Square on Dec. 7.

American Airlines will sponsor a round-trip flight carrying about 120 Pearl Harbor survivors from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Dec. 3.

“Because of American Airlines, the last of the Pearl Harbor survivors and World War II veterans who experienced the emotional awakening on Dec. 7, 1941, have an opportunity to be together at the sacred place where World War II began,” said Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, chair of the committee.

Tony Curtis dies at 85; actor was star of 'Some Like It Hot' and 'Sweet Smell of Success'

by Claudia Luther, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Tony Curtis was a strikingly handsome 23-year-old native New Yorker playing the lead in an off-Broadway production of "Golden Boy" in 1948 when he was spotted by a Universal Pictures talent scout. Sent west for a screen test, he signed a seven-year contract at $75 a week.

"I got into movies so easy it was scary," Curtis told the Denver Post in 1996.

The former Bernie Schwartz went on to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1950s and '60s, one whose early reputation as a "pretty boy" tended to blur recognition of his growth and range as an actor who starred in some of his era's landmark films.

Curtis, who died of cardiopulmonary arrest Wednesday night at his home in Henderson, Nev., at age 85, delivered memorable performances in films such as Billy Wilder's classic comedy "Some Like It Hot" and dramatic roles in "The Defiant Ones" and "Sweet Smell of Success."

And in 1959, he received an Academy Award nomination for best actor in "The Defiant Ones," the convict-escape film in which he was chained to costar Sidney Poitier.

He also lived like a movie star and was married five times, most notably to actress Janet Leigh, a union that produced another movie star, Jamie Lee Curtis.

"My father leaves behind a legacy of great performances in movies and in his paintings and assemblages," Jamie Lee Curtis said in a statement. "He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him and a wife and in-laws who were devoted to him. He also leaves behind fans all over the world."

Describing Curtis' death as "a personal loss for me," actor Kirk Douglas said in a statement Thursday: 

"Tony and I were two Jewish kids from poverty-level families who could not believe our luck in making it as big Hollywood stars.... I did three movies with him, and he was a much better actor than people realize: Look at 'Some Like It Hot' or 'The Defiant Ones.'"

Poitier told The Times Thursday: "Tony Curtis loved life and life loved him. That's as I found him throughout the shoot and across all the years that followed.

"I think he left a mark as a presence and a person. And I'm sure that many males around the world saw him as kind of like a model for themselves. He was young and he was handsome and he was full of life. And he was available to people. But that was a part of the man's nature."

Curtis failed to receive an Oscar nomination for another strong role, one that he felt sure would finally win him an Academy Award: Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler. That 1968 film of the same name provided Curtis with the last of his major roles.

"After that, the pictures that I got were not particularly intriguing," he told the Seattle Times in 2000, "but I had lots of child-support payments."

For many film fans, Curtis' most memorable role was in "Some Like It Hot," the 1959 film in which he and Jack Lemmon played small-time jazz musicians who witnessed the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago and, pursued by gangsters, posed as women to escape with an all-female jazz band bound for Miami.

In 2000, the American Film Institute named "Some Like It Hot" the best comedy of the 20th century.

"I feel that he's the great farceur of his generation," said former Times movie reviewer Kevin Thomas, citing Curtis' many comedy roles. But, Thomas said, "he developed tremendous range" as an actor.

Curtis made more than 60 feature and TV films after "The Boston Strangler," including "The Mirror Crack'd" in 1980 with Angela Lansbury and a string of forgettable movies, such as "Lobster Man From Mars" and "The Mummy Lives."

He also frequently appeared on television shows and talk shows. Regardless of the role, "Tony always gave his absolute, total best," Thomas said.

Starting out in 1949 as a contract player at Universal, Curtis broke out as a leading Hollywood actor in 1952 with "Son of Ali Baba."

The actor made the well-regarded "Houdini" in 1953 and from 1956 to 1959 starred in a string of critical and popular hits: "Trapeze," "Mister Cory," "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Vikings," "Kings Go Forth," "The Defiant Ones," "The Perfect Furlough," "Some Like It Hot" and "Operation Petticoat."

His characters varied, with swashbuckling heroes as well as a smarmy press agent, and showed, when the role called for it, genuine comic talent.

And his costars were the biggest names in Hollywood: Burt Lancaster, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Poitier, Lemmon, Natalie Wood and — in "The Vikings," "Houdini" and other films — his first wife, Janet Leigh.

In his later years, Curtis was mainly reduced to being a celebrity without serious portfolio and this, combined with his early teen-idol image and a raft of mediocre films he did while under studio contract, left him with a reputation that was lighter than many of his earlier roles would otherwise inspire.

But Thomas noted: "He was just as terrific an actor at the end as he was at the height of his career."

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, in New York City, the oldest son of Jewish Hungarian immigrants. His father was a tailor, and his mother raised their three boys. But the family was marked by tragedy: One of Curtis' brothers was hit by a truck and died at 9, while the other suffered from schizophrenia and was in and out of institutions throughout his life.

Curtis' early life was a series of struggles — he said he was constantly taunted for being young, Jewish and handsome. He grew up defending himself on whatever turf his parents lived on at the time: the East 80s in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan's Lexington Avenue.

At 17, he enlisted in the Navy, serving in the Pacific during World War II. After leaving the service, he used the GI Bill for acting classes at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.

That led to some work in the Borscht Belt in the Catskills and later to Yiddish theater in Chicago. He ended up back in New York doing "Golden Boy" at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Then it was on to Hollywood.

He changed his first name to Anthony and his last to Curtis — an Anglicized version of a Hungarian family name, Kertész. But before long, he was known simply as Tony Curtis.

One of the first things Curtis did on arriving in Hollywood was to learn to drive and then buy a convertible.

"Those days were great," he told the Daily Telegraph of London in 2001 about his early years in Hollywood. "The top down, the car door open.

"At these parties thrown by the studio, there'd always be a brand-new sweetie for me. I was the king of the hill then. And I didn't leave a skirt unmoved."

He reveled in his pretty-boy image and was regularly mobbed by teenage fans.

His acting career got its first boost with a bit part as a gigolo in the 1949 movie "Criss Cross," in which he had a brief dancing scene with the star, Yvonne De Carlo, that brought in a rash of fan letters. Soon Curtis had a bigger role in "City Across the River."

He made standard studio fare for many years for Universal, finally getting better roles when he linked up with powerhouse agent Lew Wasserman. After that, he starred with Lancaster in two well-regarded films, "Sweet Smell of Success" and "Trapeze."

In "Sweet Smell of Success," he played slimy publicist Sidney Falco to Lancaster's evil and all-powerful gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker.

"Curtis makes Sidney's naked ambition so tangible, you can almost feel his clammy palms, and it's Curtis' unsentimental, caffeinated study in amorality that gives 'Sweet Smell' its potent, bitter aftertaste," Entertainment Weekly said in a 2002 listing of the 100 best performances that were not nominated for an Oscar.

Ernest Lehman, the noted screenwriter who wrote the story on which the movie was based, said in 2001 that he viewed Curtis' performance in "Sweet Smell" as "one of the best performances by a male actor in the movies. Still gets me."

In 1959, Curtis starred in two of his best films, "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like It Hot."

In the latter, director Wilder gave Curtis credit for one of the film's funniest scenes, aboard a yacht. 

The actor's character, Josephine, reverts to being Joe and pretends to be a wealthy playboy to woo Sugar Kane (Monroe), the sultry singer in the women's jazz band.

In an interview for Curtis' 1993 autobiography, Wilder said he told Curtis that after his character had stolen the yachtsman's clothes to romance Monroe, he had to talk differently, "not the English of a Brooklyn musician."

Curtis offered to do Cary Grant, which he had learned from repeatedly watching "Gunga Din," the only movie aboard ship for a time while he was in the Navy.

"And it was a huge, wonderful plus for the picture," Wilder said. "I did not know he could do such a perfect imitation."

In 1960, Curtis starred with Douglas in the swashbuckling "Spartacus," a box-office hit that was also notable for the bathtub scene that didn't appear in the original but was restored in the 1991 re-release.

In the scene, Laurence Olivier, playing a Roman general, tries to seduce Curtis, the young slave, in dialogue alluding to one's preference for oysters or snails. (Because the original scene had not been properly recorded, Anthony Hopkins dubbed the dialogue for Olivier, who died in 1989. "I did me," Curtis said of the restoration.)

Also during the '60s, Curtis played multiple roles in "The Great Impostor," and he had to choose between the love of the Cossacks and the love of his life in "Taras Bulba." He played a neurotic orderly in "Captain Newman, M.D.," was the white-suited daredevil in "The Great Race" and a killer in "The Boston Strangler."

Unlike many who rose to his heights only to decry having to live their lives in a fishbowl, Curtis enjoyed fame and its accoutrements.

Writing in his 1993 autobiography, Curtis said he was able to handle the adulation of fans because, "I'd had that all my life, even before I got into movies; in school, in the neighborhoods where I lived, always a lot of furor. Everybody liked the way I looked, including myself."
 
Norman Jewison, who directed Curtis in the 1962 film "40 Pounds of Trouble," said that Curtis' simple belief that the camera loved him "gave his work a distinctive quality."

"He never got uptight, never lost control," Jewison wrote in his 2005 autobiography. "He was always totally cool."

Movies, Curtis once said, gave him "the privilege to be an aristocrat, to be a prince."

Throughout Curtis' life, women loved him, and he loved women. He was married five times, most famously to Leigh, for 11 years beginning in 1951. Theirs was the Hollywood marriage of their era — bigger than Debbie and Eddie and long before Liz and Dick.

In 1984, after family and friends intervened to talk about his drug problem, he admitted himself to the Betty Ford Center at Eisenhower Memorial Center in Rancho Mirage.

Before it was common practice, Curtis cut a deal to earn a percentage of the box office income on his films. He later said he had received income this way from 34 movies, collecting $2.5 million on "Some Like it Hot" alone.

"I'm telling you, I'm lucky to be me," he told the Buffalo News in 1993. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be Tony Curtis, and that's exactly who I am."

Besides his daughter Jamie Lee, Curtis is survived by his wife, Jill; three other daughters, Kelly Curtis, Alexandra Curtis Boyer and Allegra Curtis; a son, Benjamin; and seven grandchildren. A son, Nicholas, died in 1994.

Luther is a former Times staff writer.

Gary Glasberg, 'NCIS' Showrunner, Dies at 50

Getty Images

by Lesley Goldberg

The beloved executive producer on the most watched show in the world passed away in his sleep Wednesday.  
Gary Glasberg, the well-loved showrunner on CBS' NCIS, died suddenly Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 50.


Glasberg, a married father of two, was juggling showrunning duties on both the 14th season of NCIS — the most watched show in the world — and its third-year spinoff, NCIS: New Orleans. In May, he signed a new three-year overall deal with NCIS producers CBS Television Studios that would have kept him at the helm of both shows through 2019.

Under Glasberg's oversight, NCIS finished the 2015-16 broadcast season as the most watched broadcast drama for the seventh straight year. The drama averaged 20.2 million total viewers, with its season 13 finale drawing an impressive 18 million — without DVR. The flagship series, starring Mark Harmon, has already been renewed for next season. What's more, Scott Bakula-led spinoff NCIS: New Orleans ranked as the third-most-watched drama last season with an average of 14.8 million total viewers.


Glasberg joined NCIS in 2009 and took over as showrunner in 2011. He has appeared on THR's annual Power Showrunners list every year since. The news comes a week after both NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans returned for their new seasons on CBS. It's unclear at this time who will take over as showrunner given Glasberg's sudden passing or if production on either show will be impacted.

Glasberg, born in New York City, started his writing career with comic books and animated series including Rugrats and Duckman before turning to dramatic procedurals including Crossing Jordan, The $treet, The Evidence, Bones, Shark and The Mentalist.

Glasberg is survived by his wife of 20 years, TV producer and screenwriter Mimi Schmir (with whom he worked on Shark), and their two sons, Dash and Eli. He is also survived by his father, Edwin Glasberg, and sister Mindy Glasberg. A memorial service is being planned for later in October. The family has requested privacy at this time.

"Gary was our rock, our cheerleader, our team captain. He inspired us with his leadership, his creative instincts and keen insight. NCIS will not be the same without him, and each of us will miss his smiling face and unwavering humor, which lifted us every day," the cast and crew of NCIS said in a statement.

Added CBS Entertainment president Glenn Geller: "Today is an overwhelmingly sad day for NCIS, CBS and anyone who was blessed to spend time with Gary Glasberg. We have lost a cherished friend, gifted creative voice, respected leader and, most memorably, someone whose warmth and kindness was felt by all around him. Our heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to his wife, Mimi, his two sons and all his family and friends."

Said CBS Television Studios president David Stapf: "We are devastated by the passing of our dear friend and colleague Gary Glasberg. He epitomized the word mensch and brought kindness, integrity and class to everything he did. His remarkable talent as a writer and producer was only matched by his ability to connect with people. Gary was a beloved member of our family and we are so honored that he called CBS his home for so many years. Our hearts go out to his wife, Mimi, two sons, his entire family and all those who loved him."