YouTube looks to redefine channels CULVER CITY, Calif. (AP) — YouTube is enlisting Hollywood’s help to reach a generation of viewers more familiar with smartphones than TV remotes. ADVERTISING The online video giant is aiming to create 25 hours of
YouTube looks to redefine channels
CULVER CITY, Calif. (AP) — YouTube is enlisting Hollywood’s help to reach a generation of viewers more familiar with smartphones than TV remotes.
The online video giant is aiming to create 25 hours of programming per day with the help of some of the top names in traditional TV.
The Google-owned site is spreading its wealth among producers, directors, and other filmmakers, using a $100 million pot of seed money it committed last fall. The fund represents YouTube’s largest spending on original content so far.
YouTube believes it is laying groundwork for the future. While the number of traditional TV watchers has leveled off in recent years, more and more people are watching video on mobile phones, tablets and computers, especially the 18- to 34-year-old age demographic that advertisers covet.
The idea is to create 96 additional YouTube channels, which are essentially artists’ home pages, where viewers can see existing video clips and click “subscribe” to be notified when new content goes up.
Well-funded videos by a select roster of stars are likely to be more watchable than the average YouTube fare of cute cats and webcam monologues.
YouTube is betting that a solid stream of good content will attract more revenue from advertisers, bring viewers back frequently and bolster its parent company’s fledgling Web-connected-TV platform, Google TV.
The cash has enticed some of TV’s biggest stars, including “Fast Five” director Justin Lin, who directs episodes of “Community,” “CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker and Nancy Tellem, the former president of CBS entertainment. Zuiker is teaming up on a horror series for YouTube.
School criticized over student fines
CHICAGO (AP) — A sense of order and decorum prevails at Noble Street College Prep as students move quickly through a hallway adorned with banners from dozens of colleges. Everyone wears a school polo shirt neatly tucked into khaki trousers. There’s plenty of chatter but no jostling, no cellphones and no dawdling.
The reason, administrators say, is that students have learned there is a price to pay — literally — for breaking even the smallest rules.
Noble Network of Charter Schools charges students at its 10 Chicago high schools $5 for detentions stemming from infractions that include chewing gum and having untied shoelaces. Last school year it collected almost $190,000 in discipline “fees” from detentions and behavior classes — a policy drawing fire from some parents, advocacy groups and education experts.
Officials at the rapidly expanding network, heralded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a model for the city, say the fees offset the cost of running the detention program and help keep small problems from becoming big ones. Critics say Noble is nickel-and-diming its mostly low-income students over insignificant, made-up infractions that force out kids administrators don’t want.
“We think this just goes over the line … fining someone for having their shoelaces untied (or) a button unbuttoned goes to harassment, not discipline,” said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, which staged protests last week over the policy.
Fairfax crossed ocean in rowboat
RENO, Nev. (AP) — John Fairfax, the first known person to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean, has died at his Las Vegas-area home. He was 74.
The self-described “professional adventurer” died Feb. 8 of an apparent heart attack in Henderson, his wife, Tiffany, said Sunday.
Fairfax gained international attention in 1969 when he became the first person in recorded history to cross the Atlantic alone by rowboat. He dealt with sharks, storms and exhaustion on the six-month, 5,000-mile journey from the Canary Islands to Florida. In 1972, he and his girlfriend, Sylvia Cook, became the first known people to row across the Pacific Ocean. He survived a shark attack and cyclone on the yearlong, 8,000-mile trek from San Francisco to Australia.
Fairfax wrote separate books about his ocean crossings that were both published in the 1970s.
“He was a man of unbelievable strength and courage and confidence in everything he did,” Tiffany Fairfax said. “He thought nature was a worthy challenge, and he loved nature.”
John Fairfax used two different custom-made boats on the ocean journeys, she said, and used the stars to help him navigate. He survived by eating up to eight pounds of fish a day. He had a system to convert ocean water into drinking water.
“On the Pacific, a shark took a big chunk of his arm out” when he was spearing fish, Tiffany Fairfax said. “There you are on the Pacific Ocean and there’s no hospital, and you need to row. He was an amazing … human being.”
Icy roads, power outages in South
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A day after a winter storm dumped several inches of snow on a handful of southern states, crews worked Monday to restore power to tens of thousands of customers as police responded to dozens of accidents on slippery roads. The storm brought as much as 9 inches of snow to some areas on Sunday as it moved from Kentucky and Tennessee to West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The storm system pushed off the coast early Monday.
Despite clearing on major roads and reduced traffic flow because of Presidents Day weekend, state police responded to dozens of accidents Monday morning, including a crash involving a tractor-trailer on Interstate 64.
The Richmond area received 2 to 5 inches of snow. In North Carolina, cars were sliding off the road in the Raleigh area on Monday morning. In one crash, a car slid and struck the cruiser of a police officer who was investigating another accident. The State Highway Patrol reported more than two dozen morning collisions in Wake County alone.
