Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

8:53 p.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.

Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored a commitment to NBCUniversal and its highly profitable cable channels, expanding theme parks and the resurgent NBC broadcast network.

“We always thought it was a strong possibility that we’d some day own 100 percent,” Mr. Roberts said in a telephone interview.

He added that the rapidly changing television business and the growing necessity of owning content as well as the delivery systems sped up the decision. “It’s been a very smooth couple of years, and the content continues to get more valuable with new revenue streams,” he said.

Comcast also said that NBCUniversal would buy the NBC studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Center, as well as the CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Those transactions will cost about $1.4 billion.

Mr. Roberts called the 30 Rockefeller Center offices “iconic” and said it would have been “expensive to replicate” studios elsewhere for the “Today” show, “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and other programs produced there. “We’re proud to be associated with it,” Mr. Roberts said of the building.

With the office space comes naming rights for the building, according to a General Electric spokeswoman. So it is possible that one of New York’s most famous landmarks, with its giant red G.E. sign, could soon be displaying a Comcast sign instead.

When asked about a possible logo swap on the building, owned by Tishman Speyer, Mr. Roberts told CNBC, that is “not something we’re focused on talking about today.” Nevertheless, the sale was visible in a prominent way Tuesday night: the G.E. letters, which have adorned the top of 30 Rock for several decades, were not illuminated for an hour after sunset. But the lights flickered back on later in the evening.

Comcast, with a conservative, low-profile culture, had clashed with the G.E. approach, according to employees and executives in television. Comcast moved NBCUniversal’s executive offices from the 52nd floor to the 51st floor — less opulent space that features smaller executive offices and a cozy communal coffee room instead of General Electric’s lavish executive dining room.

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in early 2011 by acquiring 51 percent of the media company from General Electric. The structure of the deal gave Comcast the option of buying out G.E. in a three-and-a-half to seven-year time frame. In part because of the clash in corporate cultures, television executives said, both sides were eager to accelerate the sale.

Price was also a factor. Mr. Roberts said he believed the stake would have cost more had Comcast waited. Also, he pointed to the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings to be released late Tuesday afternoon, which put it in a strong position to complete the sale.

Comcast reported a near record-breaking year with $20 billion in operating cash flow in the fiscal year 2012. In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Comcast’s cash flow increased 7.3 percent to $5.3 billion. Revenue at NBCUniversal grew 4.8 percent to $6 billion.

“We’ve had two years to make the transition and to make the investments that we believe will continue to take off,” Mr. Roberts said.

The transactions with General Electric will be largely financed with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion of subsidiary senior unsecured notes to be issued to G.E. and a $2 billion in borrowings.

Even with the investment in NBCUniversal, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent to 78 cents a share and buy back $2 billion in stock in 2013.

When it acquired the 51 percent stake two years ago, Comcast committed to paying about $6.5 billion in cash and contributed all of its cable channels, including E! and some regional sports networks, to the newly established NBCUniversal joint venture. Those channels were valued at $7.25 billion.

The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.

Mr. Roberts and Michael J. Angelakis, vice chairman and chief financial officer for the Comcast Corporation, led the negotiations that began last year with Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, and Keith Sharon, the company’s chief financial officer. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and CBRE provided financial and strategic advice.

The sale ends a long relationship between General Electric and NBC that goes back before the founding days of television. In 1926, the Radio Corporation of America created the NBC network. General Electric owned R.C.A. until 1930. It regained control of R.C.A., including NBC, in 1986, in a deal worth $6.4 billion at the time.

In a slide show on the company’s “GE Reports” Web site titled “It’s a Wrap: GE, NBC Part Ways, Together They’ve Changed History,” G.E. said the deal with Comcast “caps a historic, centurylong journey for the two companies that gave birth to modern home entertainment.”

Mr. Immelt has said that NBCUniversal did not mesh with G.E.’s core industrial businesses. That became even more apparent when the company became a minority stakeholder with no control over how the business was run, according to a person briefed on G.E.’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations publicly.

“By adding significant new capital to our balanced capital allocation plan, we can accelerate our share buyback plans while investing in growth in our core businesses,” Mr. Immelt said in a statement. He added: “For nearly 30 years, NBC — and later NBCUniversal — has been a great business for G.E. and our investors.”

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Pope Benedict faced worldwide challenges

In announcing his decision to resign the papacy, Benedict XVI said Monday that he no longer had the energy to confront the global challenges facing the massive Roman Catholic Church.

Those challenges have only multiplied during his eight-year reign, which he had pledged as a mission to return the troubled church to its traditional core, to "purify" worship and revitalize the faith.

If that meant church membership was to shrink, he often said, then that was the price to be paid. During Benedict's tenure, the church has continued to grow in parts of the world, especially in Africa and Asia, despite threats and competition from Islam or evangelical sectors. Yet numerous followers have also turned their backs on an institution they find, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, morally hypocritical and implicated in evil.

His primary focus has been Europe, although he made significant trips to Brazil, Mexico and Cuba — his last transatlantic voyage nearly a year ago and one that, according to one report, convinced him he was too old to continue on the throne of St. Peter. In Latin America especially, the Catholic Church has lost ground to Pentecostal and other Protestant groups.

From his first official Mass as pope, Benedict vowed to unify Catholics and close divisions. But his hard-line orthodoxy, while appealing to traditionalists, alienated others and drove wedges ever deeper.

Among a liberal generation — especially in the Americas, home to nearly half the world's Catholics — that was raised on the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, the church under Benedict often seemed far out of step with modern times.

"He catered to the concerns of the right and moved to bring in the far right" in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to heal those schisms, Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, visiting scholar in the theology department of Boston College, said in a telephone interview.

"He showed no sensitivity to the so-called Vatican II Catholics … in terms of the internal affairs of the church: more participation, accountability of bishops and so forth. That was a major flaw."

Where the church has emerged especially strong under Benedict is in its intellectual discourse, elevated by a professorial pope who dedicated considerable time and energy to a series of highly regarded encyclicals and three books on the life of Jesus. He also encouraged more formality, reviving the old Latin Mass (although the Vatican had to adjust one prayer that called for the conversion of Jews).

Benedict "turned the church definitively toward the New Evangelization — the evangelical Catholicism of the future," papal biographer George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said via email, referring to the promotion of Catholic teachings in the modern world.

But in a crisis that dogged Benedict's papacy, today's church continues to reel under its most serious scandal in centuries: the sexual abuse of parishioners, primarily children, by members of the clergy, and persistent efforts to conceal the truth.

Benedict, like most of the church leadership, failed to grasp the gravity of the problem and acted slowly to weed out and punish abusers. Recent revelations indicated that in the 1970s he protected at least one priest alleged to have assaulted a child, and as head of the office that enforces doctrine, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he would have been familiar with widespread allegations.

As pope, Benedict took a number of actions, including meeting with victims and ordering guidelines to hold priests accountable. But victims and their advocates contend that much more needs to be done and argue that the church has yet to adequately atone.

Many American Catholics were also dismayed by Benedict's decision to crack down on the organization that oversees the leading U.S. orders of nuns, which the Vatican accused of straying from orthodox doctrine, and to censure liberal female theologians.

"That has done so much to alienate women and harm the future of the church," Christiansen said.

Despite growth in Africa and Asia, the Vatican hierarchy remains dominated by Europeans who have kept a tight hold on major theological decisions. Europeans also dominate the College of Cardinals, all of whose members have been appointed by either Benedict or John Paul II, and are likely to have the greatest say in choosing Benedict's successor.

But the leadership under Benedict has not been impervious to the problems of the Third World. One encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, contained demands for economic reform to alleviate poverty, a stand that many Catholics found enormously progressive.

Still, the developing world was also the scene of some of Benedict's numerous gaffes that complicated the church's mission. In Brazil in 2007, he seemed to suggest that the Spanish conquest of indigenous populations was what they wanted all along; en route to Africa in 2009, he suggested that the use of condoms exacerbates the spread of AIDS. At one time or another, he managed to offend both Jews and Muslims — the latter with deadly consequence, including attacks on churches in Muslim areas and the slaying of an Italian nun in Somalia.

In an attempt to repair any lasting damage to the church's image, he apologized to both groups and, in 2006, made a historic trip to Turkey, where he prayed in a mosque.

The missteps and scandals — the most recent involving a butler who leaked secrets that exposed vicious backbiting and politicking within the Vatican — have often seemed a distraction to the church's work and to Benedict's legacy.

"He promoted the Gospel and taught us to reflect profoundly on theology and to better understand our faith," Father Raul Vera, bishop of the Mexican city of Saltillo, said in an interview. "Unfortunately, we are facing a world with tremendous challenges, and as we try to confront those ... we are left with a weakened church."

wilkinson@latimes.com

Wilkinson, now stationed in Mexico City, served as The Times' Rome bureau chief from 2003 to 2008, covering the last papal transition.

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Jennifer Aniston joins Owen Wilson in “She’s Funny That Way”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jennifer Aniston is joining Owen Wilson in Peter Bogdanovich‘s comedy “She’s Funny That Way,” Red Granite Pictures announced in Berlin.

She will play a therapist with a mother in rehab for alcoholism in the Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach-produced the film following a married Broadway director (Wilson) who falls for a prostitute-turned-actress, then helps advance her career.

Jason Schwartzman, Cybil Shepherd, Eugene Levy, Kathryn Hahn and Brie Larson co-star in the comedy (also known as “Squirrels to Nuts”) written by Bogdanovich and Louise Stratten.

Red Granite International, the foreign sales arm of LA-based Red Granite Pictures, will handle international sales of the film. They announced the casting on Sunday.

Production is scheduled to start in New York City in June.

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Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

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On the Road: Squeezing Frequent Fliers Is a Likely Merger Outcome

Given the likelihood of a merger of American Airlines and US Airways, the question that frequent fliers always ask is timely again, in light of previous mergers in recent years between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, United and Continental Airlines, and Southwest Airlines and AirTran Airways.

First, some good news from Brian Kelly, the proprietor of ThePointsGuy.com, a Web site popular with frequent fliers concerned about mileage award benefits. After a merger, “all of your US Air lifetime miles and all of your American Airlines lifetime miles will combine,” he said. “So that’s a benefit. If you’ve got a small amount of US Air miles and a decent amount of American miles, all of a sudden you’re going to have this one new combined balance.”

Indications are that the far larger and more popular American Airlines AAdvantage mileage program will prevail in a combined airline. So elite-status qualifying miles on US Airways will also shift into AAdvantage, which is another potential advantage, he said. Since US Air has four ranks of elite status and American has only three, it’s also likely that US Air members will find an easier path to bonuses and standard upgrades when their elite-status mileage moves to AAdvantage.

“AAdvantage was the first frequent-flier program, and they have a great team running it,” Mr. Kelly said. “I really hope they won’t dismantle that and try to go with the US Air Dividend Miles program, because that program is not nearly as good.”

Of course, airline mergers are aimed at reducing costs and improving efficiency — not customer convenience. One result of the mergers has been a reduction in airline service, especially in midsize and smaller markets. That means fewer seats available for mileage award tickets and more elite-status customers competing for fewer upgrades.

Today, American and the much smaller US Airways have a combined 6,500 daily flights. But experience from past mergers, as well as the current trends in reducing airline capacity, suggest that a combined airline will have fewer daily flights.

On the other hand, there are not a large number of markets in which American and US Air directly compete for originating passengers (rather than connecting ones). And let’s not overlook international routes, which is where the major airlines have been concentrating in recent years.

While airlines are now significantly cutting capacity on trans-Atlantic routes, demand for flights to Asia is growing, along with demand for Latin America. It is generally assumed that a combined airline, still flying under the American name, would maintain American’s current membership in the Oneworld global alliance. Members of the US Airways frequent-flier program would then have new access to award tickets and elite benefits on the vast route network of American and its 11 Oneworld partners, including British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas.

But US Airways belongs to the bigger Star Alliance, whose 27 member airlines include United Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Air China and Air Canada. So a merger would make it challenging for frequent fliers to sort out widely varying mileage award rules, including various fees, for alliances and partnerships.

It takes a while for a merger to become operational. “It would take at least a year, probably closer to 18 months, for full integration,” Mr. Kelly said. So there is plenty of time to use existing miles or, conversely, add to existing accounts in anticipation of the combination. Consider, for example, a US Airways MasterCard promotion that has a sign-up bonus of 40,000 miles, and offers additional double miles on US Airways purchases, Mr. Kelly noted. Those award miles would ultimately transfer to the new airline.

A merger entails “a lot of technical issues,” Mr. Kelly said, adding that while the Delta-Northwest merger went fairly smoothly for frequent-flier members, the more recent United-Continental merger still hasn’t fully smoothed out wrinkles in combining two frequent-flier programs.

Along with Mr. Kelly’s Web site, incidentally, there’s good information and a lively discussion of various airline frequent-flier mileage programs on the mileage forums at FlyerTalk.com. As mileage programs merge, rules for award tickets and fees and various elite-status upgrades and bonuses are in flux, and keeping track of the details, while a real chore, can be useful.

I always maintain that the best value in your frequent-flier miles is award tickets for international travel. With an American-US Air merger and the machinations over alliance partner policies, that will require even more attention to detail.

“American in the last year has really scaled back on the amount of advance award availability on their own flights,” Mr. Kelly said, but with greater availability on international flights like those operated by its partner British Airways (which might include a fee of up to $350 one way). US Airways also has “a lot of partner award availability, but not as much on their own flights,” he said.

“After they sit down and work out all of their synergies, the bottom line will be that international capacity and award availability will be cut,” Mr. Kelly said. “I don’t see award availability improving.”

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Venice program gives the homeless a place to keep belongings

Bone-chilling fog swirled along Venice Beach one recent afternoon when Robert and Nani Valencia and Ana Maria Reyes stopped by the long, metal storage container beside the sand.

After they showed IDs and claim checks, a volunteer wheeled out two blue recycling bins in which the three recent arrivals from Texas had stashed their suitcases. They pulled out toiletries, sweaters and blankets and stuffed them into reusable grocery bags.

"It makes us feel a lot better to store our things here," said Nani Valencia, 37. "When you have all your [suitcases] with you, people treat you like you have rabies."

With bags in hand, she, her husband and his 64-year-old mother joined dozens of others waiting for a bus to take them to a shelter. The three would rest, eat dinner and have a shower that night at the West Los Angeles National Guard Armory on Federal Avenue; most of their meager possessions would remain locked up at the beach.

In the wake of court rulings that bar cities from randomly seizing and destroying homeless people's property, communities such as Venice are seeking long-term storage options to keep their streets and alleys clean.

"We're not going to let [homeless people] keep items on the beach anymore," said Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Venice. "We're going to bag and tag [them]. We want to make it inconvenient but within the law."

Contributing to the problem was a rule governing use of the city's Westside winter shelter.

Homeless individuals who choose to sleep at the shelter are allowed to take with them only the items they can carry on their laps. And some were reluctant to leave their possessions for fear they would be stolen or seized. That meant many of the shelter's 160 beds went unused.

Rosendahl and a local social services agency — Venice Community Housing Corp. — launched a pilot program late last month called Check-in Storage. The initiative allows individuals to store personal belongings in the container for a week at a time and retrieve them between 3 and 5 p.m. daily. (The program is slated to end March 1, when the shelter closes.)

To publicize the service, volunteers and social service agencies distributed bright orange fliers: "If your stuff will fit into a big trash can," they read, "bring it to our storage container." The flier noted that the program would not accept medicine, identification, weapons or "anything illegal."

The storage option, said Steve Clare, executive director of Venice Community Housing, is modeled on successful programs in downtown L.A.'s skid row and cities including San Francisco, San Diego and Costa Mesa.

In September, a federal appeals court ruled in a lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles that seizing and destroying property left temporarily unattended on public sidewalks was unconstitutional. Personal possessions may be removed only if the items pose an immediate threat to public safety or health or constitute criminal evidence, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found.

Even then, the city must notify owners where they can pick up their property.

On the afternoon the Valencias and Reyes retrieved some items, about half of the 25 bins were in use. Also there for safekeeping was a Schwinn bicycle. Its owner, Love Sha Un of Nigeria, came by to check on his $215 purchase and thank the volunteers. Without the storage option, he said, "it might have gone missing."

Not everyone is pleased with the program.

Mark Ryavec, a Venice resident who lobbied against overnight parking by RV dwellers, said the city should have sought a permit from the California Coastal Commission before plopping a storage container at the beach. Marc Saltzberg, vice president of the Venice Neighborhood Council, said the program was implemented without a public process that would have enabled residents and other interested parties to weigh in.

Rosendahl said he hoped to notify street denizens of a new location by the end of February and have a new program up and running by March. He said he was working with the Los Angeles city attorney's office to ensure that any seizures of items would be done legally.

martha.groves@latimes.com

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150 Boom Boxes and the Best Dance Party You've Never Been To

Finding the right place to stage a Decentralized Dance Party is more art than science. Which is why Gary Lachance is standing against a railing near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, looking perplexed. It’s nearly midnight and he’s just beginning what will be an all-night search of the city, looking for locations to flood with revelers for tomorrow night’s mobile bash. He might be tired—he just arrived in California today after a brutal 50-hour RV drive from Houston—but that doesn’t change the fact that he has less than 24 hours to find locations and plan a route. The wharf is just one of the possible stops as the party snakes through the city.

The sounds of foghorns and sea lions ripple through the darkness. He stares at the empty wharf, visualizing an ocean of revelers swarming it tomorrow night. His mind brushes past possible logistical snags until it sticks on one in particular. “Too many sea lions,” he says.

As coinventor of what is officially known as Tom and Gary’s Decentralized Dance Party, Lachance has to balance the meticulousness of an urban planner with the conviviality of a good host. Since 2009 he’s held more than 50 semi-spontaneous outdoor throw-downs in major cities, insisting on a leave-no-trace ethos, noise complaints and perturbed marine mammals included. It looks like Pier 39 won’t make the cut after all. Lachance gets back on his bike, as do his ridemates—a group of superpowered partyers who help scout locations in each city and keep the events running smoothly. They’re called the Elite Banana Task Force. And, yes, they wear banana suits. “It’s impossible to have a bad time in a banana suit,” Lachance says.

If you flipped on the local news last year, you may have caught snippets of DDP’s latest exploits. Its goal: to free us from our humdrum nightlife. In Austin, a partygoer dressed in a lab coat leans into the YNN news camera: “I could be spending $30 going to a bar and doing the same-old, same-old,” he says in a hoarse voice. “This is something different. This is something new. And it’s free!” In the video, you can see people carrying daisy-chained boom boxes, their tuner knobs duct-taped into place to ensure that all stay locked to a vacant radio frequency. That’s what lets them groove to the crowd-fueled PA system: volumes cranked, the DDP’s pirate radio broadcasts anything from booty bass to Jimmy Soul’s “If You Wanna Be Happy.”

“Nightclubs are too forced,” says Kyle Del Bonis, who attended a New Year’s Eve DDP in LA. “Most DJs sit around like lumps, unengaged with their audience.” Decentralized Dance Parties attempt to subvert that formula utterly, burning the velvet rope and bringing the inside out. What makes them sustainable for the organizers, though, is how mobile they are. Once DDP arrives in a city—heralded by Twitter and Facebook and with travel costs underwritten via Kickstarter or Indiegogo crowdfunding—the nerve center of the operation can be carried by a single person. A high-powered FM transmitter hooks into an antenna, which in turn is rigged to a backpack. Inside is a vintage disco mixer (held in place with a rubber band), mic receivers, a 12-volt battery, and a separate Ramsey FM transmitter—and a blue slipper “for good luck.”

And all of it is controlled (symbolically) by a Nintendo Power Glove—an old-school videogame peripheral that is as revered by nostalgic ’80s babies as it was ignored in its day. Over the years, the Power Glove has become a symbol of DDP’s abandon. The glove was at a DDP when people skied down subway escalators and when DDP-goers swarmed ferryboats with pogo sticks and trampolines. It was there in February 2011, coaxing 20,000 Canadians out of taverns onto Vancouver’s streets. And it’ll be here tomorrow night when DDP’s San Francisco party—the theme is “strictly business”—hits the streets.

Right now, though, Ryan Stomberg bikes alongside Lachance on Market Street’s sidewalk. A guy named Tom Kuzma was Lachance’s original partner and cofounder. But after they had a falling-out, a different person took over the role of “Tom”—the 27-year-old Stomberg is the third. (Lachance looks to be in his thirties but will give his age only as “18 till I die.”) Stomberg’s orange flannel fanny pack—the JammyPack—plays music continuously amid the gentle hum of the overnight street sweepers. He points northeast. “I don’t think we’re gonna have any problem parading down that block,” he says. Farther east is the contorted Lego-block sculpture and fountain in Justin Herman Plaza, the party’s intended endpoint. Lachance computes all of this, and the Bananas ride on. Thanks in no small part to this type of extensive preparty legwork, DDP has had no difficulty with law enforcement—indeed, officers often end up escorting the crowd along city streets. “Cops expect to find a Jäger-guzzling frat boy leading this,” says Lachance’s friend Kerry Leonard, another Banana. Instead they find a deep-thinking Canadian whose vision of street-level abandon is part of what he calls a “Libertarian mindset” about how the world should be.

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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

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This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

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Media Decoder Blog: NPR Campaign Seeks the Quirky Listener

Are you a sky diving algebra teacher? A Sudoku-playing barista? NPR has a new ad campaign aimed at you.

The pilot campaign, in four cities, is intended to bring new listeners to local public radio stations, and in turn NPR’s national programs, by matching a show to even the quirkiest interests.

The three-month campaign, financed with a $750,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and developed by Baltimore agency Planit, includes billboards, as well as television spots, social media outreach and rail, print and digital ads aimed at adults 25 to 54, with at least some college education. Ads point to a Web site, interestingradio.com, where visitors can take a poll, discover shows and click through to a live stream from a local station.

The ads will run in the Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Indianapolis and Orlando, Fla., markets, chosen because they offer geographic diversity, as well as stations that are strong and growing, said Emma Carrasco, who joined NPR two months ago as chief marketing officer, a new position.

The campaign comes as listenership for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” — NPR’s two top programs and the radio news programs that reach the most people nationwide each week — declined from spring 2011 to spring 2012, the last period for which national ratings are available.

Year-to-year, the cumulative weekday audience for “Morning Edition” declined 5 percent to 12.3 million listeners a week, from 13 million, NPR officials said, citing Arbitron ratings figures, while “All Things Considered” was off 4 percent, to 11.8 million weekly listeners, compared with 12.3 million in spring 2011.

Preliminary fall 2012 estimates showed year-to-year audience increases for those two shows, NPR said, but the figures were for major markets only.

Local public radio stations have undertaken similar efforts in recent years. WQXR’s modest 2011 “Obeythoven” campaign used TV spots to get audiences thinking about New York City classical music radio in a new way. Chicago’s WBEZ this month began a cheeky campaign called “2032 Membership Drive” encouraging audiences to procreate and raise a new generation of listeners.

If NPR’s new ads are deemed successful, NPR will seek additional funds to expand them to more markets, Ms. Carrasco said.

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A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.

She was 96, had heart disease and a history of falls. Now she had pneumonia and the flu. A team of Cedars specialists converged on her case to ensure that a bad situation did not turn worse and that she didn't end up with a lengthy, costly hospital stay.

Frail seniors like Gordon account for a disproportionate share of healthcare expenditures because they are frequently hospitalized and often land in intensive care units or are readmitted soon after being released. Now the federal health reform law is driving sweeping changes in how hospitals treat a rapidly growing number of elderly patients.

The U.S. population is aging quickly: People older than 65 are expected to make up nearly 20% of it by 2030. Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said now is the time to train professionals and test efforts to improve care and lower healthcare costs for elderly patients.

"It's incredibly important that we prepare for being in a society where there are a lot of older people," she said. "We have to do this type of experiment right now."

At Cedars-Sinai, where more than half the patients in the medical and surgical wards are 65 or older, one such effort is dubbed the "frailty project." Within 24 hours, nurses assess elderly patients for their risk of complications such as falls, bed sores and delirium. Then a nurse, social worker, pharmacist and physician assess the most vulnerable patients and make an action plan to help them.

The Cedars project stands out nationally because medical professionals are working together to identify high-risk patients at the front end of their hospitalizations to prevent problems at the back end, said Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"For seniors, it is better care, it is high-quality care and it is peace of mind," he said.

The effort and others like it also have the potential to reduce healthcare costs by cutting preventable medical errors and readmissions, Schultz said. The federal law penalizes hospitals for both.

Gordon, an articulate woman with brightly painted fingernails and a sense of humor, arrived at Cedars-Sinai by ambulance on a Monday.

Soon, nurse Jacquelyn Maxton was at her bedside asking a series of questions to check for problems with sleep, diet and confusion. The answers led to Gordon's designation as a frail patient. The next day, the project team huddled down the hall and addressed her risks one by one. Medical staff would treat the flu and pneumonia while at the same time addressing underlying health issues that could extend Gordon's stay and slow her recovery, both in the hospital and after going home.

To reduce the chance of falls, nurses placed a yellow band on her wrist that read "fall risk" and ensured that she didn't get up on her own. To prevent bed sores, they got her up and moving as often as possible. To cut down on confusion, they reminded Gordon frequently where she was and made sure she got uninterrupted sleep. Medical staff also stopped a few unnecessary medications that Gordon had been prescribed before her admission, including a heavy narcotic and a sleeping pill.

"It is really a holistic approach to the patient, not just to the disease that they are in here for," said Glenn D. Braunstein, the hospital's vice president for clinical innovation.

Previously, nurse Ivy Dimalanta said, she and her colleagues provided similar care but on a much more random basis. Under the project, the care has become standardized.

The healthcare system has not been well designed to address the needs of seniors who may have had a lifetime of health problems, said Mary Naylor, gerontology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As a result, patients sometimes fall through the cracks and return to hospitals again and again.

"That is not good for them and that is not good for society to be using resources in that way," Naylor said.

Using data from related projects, Cedars began a pilot program in 2011 and expanded it last summer. The research is continuing but early results suggest that the interventions are leading to fewer seniors being admitted to the intensive care unit and to shorter hospital stays, said Jeff Borenstein, researcher and lead clinician on the frailty project. "It definitely seems to be going in the right direction," he said.

The hospital is now working with Naylor and the University of Pennsylvania to design a program to help the patients once they go home.

"People who are frail are very vulnerable when they leave the hospital," said Harriet Udin Aronow, a researcher at Cedars. "We want to promote them being safe at home and continuing to recover."

In Gordon's case, she lives alone with the help of her children and a caregiver. The hospital didn't want her experiencing complications that would lengthen the stay, but they also didn't want to discharge her before she was ready. Under the health reform law, hospitals face penalties if patients come back too soon after being released.

Patients and their families often are unaware of the additional attention. Sitting in a chair in front of a vase of pink flowers, Gordon said she knew she would have to do her part to get out of the hospital quickly. "You have to move," she said. "I know you get bed sores if you stay in bed."

Gordon said she was comfortable at the hospital but she wanted to go back to her house as quickly as she could. "There's no place like home," she said.

Two days later, that's where she was.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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