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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Boss: Trek Bicycle’s Chief, on Lessons of the Night Shift

My father, Dick, was a runner and a biker. He started the company that I now run, the Trek Bicycle Corporation, in 1975, along with the owner of a bike shop in the area.

My high school was so small that there were only six students on the varsity basketball team. I was the sixth. I like to say I was the assistant coach because I spent so much time on the bench with our coach, Eric Walter. The passion that he had for the game and for playing one’s best was a huge influence.

I attended Boston University because it was the only school that accepted me out of the four to which I applied. The summer after my sophomore year, I worked the night shift in a plastics factory. The company made those candy cane-shaped plastic containers that are filled with candy and sold around the holidays. My job was to remove the red plastic tops from the molds. Returning home at 7 a.m. after my first night, I ran into my father drinking coffee before leaving for work. He asked me how I liked the job, and I told him it was horrible and I wasn’t going back. He turned to me and said, “You’re going back tonight, you’re going to work there for the summer, and you’ll enjoy it.”

That summer provided one of the best lessons of my life. I learned about hard work and making lemonade out of lemons. It may not have been the best job, but I made it a great one. I’d see how many tops I could remove each night, write down the number and try to beat it the next night. I brought business magazines to read during breaks.

After graduating in 1984 with a business degree, I joined Trek as a sales representative. My territory covered Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and parts of several other states. I drove my red Chevy Cavalier station wagon 60,000 miles a year. My boss once told me that the best sales reps drive on Sunday to be ready for Monday meetings, so I would do that.

Trek was not doing well at the time, and I heard complaints about quality and customer service on my stops. It was the greatest education ever; you don’t find out a lot when things are going well or if you sit in an office all day. I learned the value of happy customers.

I changed our operations so that if an order hadn’t shipped by 3 p.m. the day it arrived, the office staff would leave their desks and help the warehouse get the order out the door. I also instituted a process in which credits were issued within 24 hours.

After that, my dad put me in charge of sales and marketing. I was 24, so it was a big leap of faith on his part. In 1997, he made me president and C.E.O. of the company.

We had a run of three bad years, so we retooled the company, improved our products and focused on our international segment. We also instituted Kaizen, the continuous-improvement system, which made a big difference in our operations.

 My dad was very fit, but he died in 2008 shortly after heart surgery. He and I were best friends and had talked many times about me taking his place. Everyone at the company was prepared for it, too. But he left some big shoes to fill. His spirit lives on in everything we do.

Seth Meyers to Succeed Fallon on ‘Late Night’

Mr. Meyers, the longtime head writer on “Saturday Night Live” and host of its “Weekend Update” segment, will succeed Jimmy Fallon, who is moving up one hour to take over NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

NBC made the appointment, which had been widely expected, one day before Mr. Meyers was to be introduced to advertisers at NBC’s presentation of its new programming lineup at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

The assignment will keep Mr. Meyers under the production leadership of Lorne Michaels, who will continue to serve as executive producer of “Late Night” as well as serving in the same position on Mr. Fallon’s “Tonight Show” as it moves to New York.

In an interview before taking the stage on Saturday’s edition of “SNL,” Mr. Meyers said: “Working at ‘SNL’ requires 100 percent of your mental capacity — on easy weeks. And so I had not really spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do next. Obviously I can’t quit Lorne. So this seems like a pretty good deal that I have an opportunity to keep working with him.”

Both hosts are expected to start their new shows around the time of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics from Russia next February. Mr. Meyers will stay on “SNL” through the fall season before he starts his preparation — most likely in January — to take over on “Late Night.”

Mr. Michaels said: “The thing that’s staggering to me is that since 1982 there have been only three hosts, and Seth will be the fourth. And when you look at the company, it’s all pretty good company.”

Mr. Meyers will be the next in a line that includes David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Mr. Fallon.

“I am aware of the history,” Mr. Meyers said. “Each chapter of my life has sort of been spent enjoying each of the guys who had the job. Letterman was sort of my first introduction to late-night television. And Conan was all through college and postcollege years. Jimmy, obviously, I think, does it as well as anyone could ever do it.”

The decision was announced by Robert Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment, who called Mr. Meyers “one of the brightest, most insightful comedy writers and performers of his generation.”

Mr. Michaels said there was “complete agreement” at NBC on the choice of Mr. Meyers. “The only name that kept coming up was Seth.”

No decisions have been made yet about whether the format of the show will change in any substantial way, Mr. Meyers said — not even whether there will be a house band.

“I don’t want to make any broad pronouncements about how the show is going to be, whether it’s going to be the same or different,” Mr. Meyers said. “But I have to draw on my background in improvisational comedy and sketch comedy and stand-up comedy and try to find some mix of that.”

One move Mr. Michaels is making to smooth the transition is keeping Michael Shoemaker as the day-to-day producer of “Late Night” as he has been under Mr. Fallon. “He and Seth are friends,” Mr. Michaels said. “He comes from ‘SNL.’ We will make sure that the show has all the people on it who are the best people we can put on the field.”

The connections to “Saturday Night Live” on NBC’s late-night lineup will never have been more pervasive. Mr. Fallon was a performer on the show and anchored the “Weekend Update” segment, like Mr. Meyers.

The “Late Night” show will remain in New York even with “Tonight” moving back to the city. With “SNL,” all three shows will be housed in studios in NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. That will keep them all close to Mr. Michaels, who will now be in charge of all of NBC’s important late-night franchises.

“It’s all in the same building,” he said. “ ‘Saturday Night Live’ will be more than the majority of my time, as it always has been. Both other shows will be run by people who know what they’re doing, and who I obviously believe in; and we all have a shorthand.”

Mr. Meyers said one thing he would like to bring with him from his “Update” segments is what he called “a two-shot with talented, funny people.” These are his interviews with comedy guests who stop by the anchor desk. “A company of writer-performer hybrids who can come on and do stuff on the show,” was how he described the idea. “We’re in the very early stages of thinking about all this, but that’s very interesting to me.”

Though his selection had seemed all but inevitable, given his skills and his association with Mr. Michaels, Mr. Meyers said he found the idea of separating from “SNL” a bit difficult to embrace.

“It always seemed like a logical next move,” Mr. Meyers said. “It was just competing with the very emotional idea of leaving a place I have been for a very long time. But if you are going to do that, it seems like you might as well just move a hallway or two.”

‘Saturday Night Live’ Archives Moving to Yahoo

But it’s reality now, as the owner of the “S.N.L.” archive, Broadway Video, tries to wring a profit out of the old episodes. On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it had acquired the exclusive rights to classic clips from 1975 through 2012, effective in September. The clips will be removed from Hulu and NBC.com, where they currently reside, and be shown instead on Yahoo, which wants to share in the buzz the show creates.

The deal between Broadway Video and Yahoo highlights the jockeying among companies that want to have a library of online videos to call their own. A dizzying number of online video producers are pitching their programs to advertisers this month, ahead of the traditional television upfront sessions in May. While these Web programs’ quantity and quality are increasing quickly, there are doubts about whether the advertising dollars are.

“On one hand, digital video advertising is growing fast and its prominence is increasing,” said Clark Fredricksen of the research firm eMarketer. “On the other, compared to television, online video is an incredibly competitive market, where you have more companies fighting over far less.” Mr. Fredricksen’s company estimates that $4.1 billion will be spent on online video ads this year, in contrast to $66.4 billion on television ads.

“There are a handful of major conglomerates who split revenues from the huge TV-ad pie,” Mr. Fredricksen said, “while the digital video world features hundreds of companies fighting, comparatively, for scraps from the TV table.”

Attaching, barnaclelike, to television might be a way to stand out from the crowd. Yahoo, which is trying for a turnaround under its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, has content-sharing relationships with many major media companies, but its video hub, Yahoo Screen, has lagged rivals like Google, which owns YouTube.

Erin McPherson, a Yahoo vice president who oversees the company’s video business, said the company jumped at the “S.N.L.” opportunity. She said the “S.N.L.” clips would be “widely distributed” across Yahoo, suggesting a strategy that will go beyond the current Yahoo Screen site.

“Rather than competing with Hulu, Netflix or any other platform, we see this as a step toward adding scale and breadth to the great content we are already offering users,” Ms. McPherson said.

Yahoo and Broadway Video declined to comment on terms, but people with knowledge of the arrangement said access to the “S.N.L.” library had cost upward of $10 million a year in the past.

Hulu, the online video Web site owned by Comcast, The News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, enjoyed an immediate bump in traffic when it added “SNL” to its collection. These days, however, Hulu — which its owners are considering selling — is concentrating on other content. It will promote several of its forthcoming original series at an event for advertisers next week.

Under the deal announced on Wednesday, Hulu will still stream clips and full episodes from the current television season. Yahoo will be able to do that, too. But Yahoo will have the old “S.N.L.” clips all to itself, giving it something special to show off — although only for one year. The deal will be up for renegotiation at that point.

Jack Sullivan, chief executive of Broadway Video, said the deal would let “S.N.L.” increase its distribution internationally, since the clips of classic episodes have generally only been accessible in North America in the past.

For a company like Yahoo, “having TV-like offerings is really important,” said Mike Vorhaus, president of the digital media consulting firm Magid Advisors. That’s because online video ads have partly taken the place of Web display ads, sometimes called banner ads, in advertisers’ budgets; as Mr. Vorhaus put it, “You can only take so much banner money away before there’s no banner money left at all.”

“Now they kind of have to pursue TV money,” he added.

Along the way they’re becoming more like TV. Earlier this year, a sendup of dating reality shows created by Yahoo, “Burning Love,” was deemed worthy of running on the cable channel E! as well. Sony, another company that will be presenting to advertisers next week, was recognized for treating Jerry Seinfeld’s experimental Web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” like a TV series when it ordered a 24-episode second season.

And Netflix, the ad-free streaming service that so many other companies want to resemble, was praised for commissioning “House of Cards,” the Washington thriller that could have fit right in on HBO or AMC. On Wednesday night, Netflix released a long-term vision statement for investors that summed up why it and so many of its competitors are optimistic about their chances: “While Internet TV is only a very small percent of video viewing today, we think it will grow every year,” it said, citing faster Internet speeds, sales of Internet-connected TV sets, improvements to TV apps and the possibilities for personalized online video ads.

The competition for Internet TV viewing, it concluded, “is just beginning.”

‘Game of Thrones,’ Not ‘Mad Men,’ Had the Bigger Sunday Night

Let’s install webcams in slaughterhouses so we can see how we get our meat.

A look back at Margaret Thatcher’s mutual admiration society with Mikhail Gorbachev in the final years of the Cold War.

Green: Progress in Fight to Keep Night Skies Dark

More than half a century after she wrote those words, it has become harder than ever to see the stars, as cities with their 24-hour lights continue to sprawl. Many children learn about the Milky Way only through books or films, a 2010 Council of Europe report warned.

A combination of economics and preservation efforts is slowing the trend toward excessive lighting in a few areas. A “dark skies” movement, aimed at increasing the public’s appreciation of stargazing, has gained strength in recent years, while cities are rediscovering that turning off streetlights can save money.

“Everywhere, light pollution is an increasing problem,” said Andrej Mohar, an amateur astronomer in Slovenia who has lobbied for lighting regulations there. A 2007 Slovenian law aimed at barring light fixtures from sending light upward has made the night sky above the capital, Ljubljana, about 20 percent darker, he said.

An Arizona-based group called the International Dark-Sky Association has led advocacy efforts worldwide for preserving the night skies.

Since 2006, the group has designated 10 “dark sky” parks globally, as well as another four reserves. The idea is to single out areas that offer excellent stargazing and also work to keep night lighting minimal. One of the latest-certified areas, added in May, is the NamibRand Nature Reserve in Namibia, where the dry air and remote location make for clear skies and good nighttime viewing.

The site is the first dark-sky reserve in Africa — or in any developing country. Before receiving the designation, local officials worked to reduce lighting within the reserve’s bounds. That included requiring vehicles traveling on remote roads at night to dim their headlights if moonlight could be used instead.

Asia has no certified dark-sky areas yet, partly from a lack of awareness there, although that is starting to change, according to Scott Kardel, the managing director for the International Dark-Sky Association.

Three of the dark-sky areas are in Britain. The first, designated in 2009, was the Galloway Forest Park in Scotland. It got “massive media coverage” — far more than expected — which invigorated the movement, said Steve Owens, a dark-sky consultant in Scotland. Since then, Exmoor National Park in England and the Isle of Sark in the Channel Islands have also received dark-sky designations, and representatives of a number of other British parks and communities have expressed interest in applying for the status, Mr. Owens said.

In Britain, the dark-sky cause has been aided by fiscal problems. Local governments, like the Somerset County Council, have begun turning off or dimming some streetlights late at night as a money-saving measure. By doing so, they can also earn credits for greenhouse gas reduction.

However, change can be slow, not least because switching off lights may cause the public to worry about crime and roadway accidents. The Somerset government notes on its Web site that such concerns have not been borne out.

Technology is making some changes easier. The importance of minimizing light pollution is “one of many attributes that we think about” nowadays when designing products, said Cheryl English, the vice president of government and industry relations at Acuity Brands, a lighting company. She is also a member of the International Dark-Sky Association.

However, even though the industry follows light-pollution issues, “if it hurts their sales, of course they’re not going to be very happy with that,” said Terry McGowan, a consultant to the American Lighting Association who also serves on a technical committee of the dark-sky group.

In addition to better fixtures, Mr. McGowan said, a key technological improvement is the rise of so-called smart grid systems, which can turn the lights off when sensors indicate no one is around, saving energy as well as light.

The biggest battle of all, of course, involves getting enough people to care, especially because new fixtures and sensors can be costly. That requires intensive campaigns by observatories and stargazing advocates.

“What keeps me going is I see the effort to raise public awareness succeeding,” said Bill Wren, an astronomer and special assistant to the superintendent at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. Recently, he said, a gas station about 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, from the observatory had planned to use “just awful” globe-style light fixtures. But after discussing their plans with him, they changed to a design that emits half the amount of light.

Last year, despite some concerns from private-property advocates, Texas passed a law that required new subdivisions being built within 57 miles of the McDonald Observatory to minimize the effects of their lighting on the observatory’s operations.

Most dark-sky advocates recognize that they are fighting a tough battle. “Everywhere on our planet is more or less the Wild West” for lighting, Mr. Mohar said, though he argued that Slovenia was an exception.

On the positive side, excessive lighting, unlike many environmental problems, is ultimately reversible, at least in theory.

Light pollution is “not destroying the nighttime sky,” said Ms. English, the Acuity Brands executive. “We can recover it.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 17, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Mr. Gowan’s affiliation with the American Lighting Association. Mr. McGowan serves on a technical committee of the International Dark-Sky Association, not of the American Lighting Association.