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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 2008 (92%); BABY BOOMERS (92%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (90%); POLITICS (89%); PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (91%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (90%); ELECTIONS (89%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (78%); INTERNET & WWW (75%); RACE & RACISM (61%); FOUNDATIONS (60%); CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS (90%) Presidential Election of 2008; Election Issues COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (50%) TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (50%); GGEA (LSE) (50%) INDUSTRY: NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (50%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (50%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (50%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (50%) PERSON: BARACK OBAMA (96%); HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (69%); LARRY PAGE (50%) John M Broder; Barack (Sen) Obama GEOGRAPHIC: ILLINOIS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (98%) LOAD-DATE: January 21, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Drawing (Drawing by Robert Grossman) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1205 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Showbiz Exporter Scores Goal BYLINE: By BILL CARTER SECTION: Section B; Column 6; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 7 LENGTH: 1145 words DATELINE: PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 19 Simon Fuller has achieved remarkable success in Britain as an entertainment executive and manager, chiefly in the recording industry. But clearly he has finally found the area of his true business acumen: export. In recent history, at least, it is hard to imagine anyone who has directed a more lucrative shift of British entertainment product to the American market than Mr. Fuller. Not only is he the man behind the transport of a British television show called ''Pop Idol'' to this country, where, as ''American Idol,'' it has become the show business phenomenon of the decade, but in the past month he has also engineered the transfer of David Beckham, the biggest athletic star in Britain, to a team in Los Angeles, with the intent of inspiring no less than a revolution of interest in the sport in the one big country where it so far has failed to flourish. That may seem a grandiose expectation, but who is going to doubt Mr. Fuller right now, with ''American Idol'' once again towering over American television and squashing its home-grown competition? Reached by telephone this week in the Brazilian region of Bahia, where he was vacationing, Mr. Fuller said it was difficult to determine what was the more impressive recent development for his export portfolio: the improbably awe-inspiring ratings for the new season of ''Idol,'' or the five-year deal, worth an estimated $250 million in salary and ancillary income, he landed for Mr. Beckham to join the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team next season. On the one hand, he called this week's ''Idol'' ratings results ''utterly amazing and just ridiculous.'' On the other hand, he declared himself ''totally excited by this very audacious, entrepreneurial deal'' for Mr. Beckham to finish his career by igniting an American passion for soccer. ''Soccer is coming in the U.S.,'' Mr. Fuller, 46, said. ''You can smell it and feel it. It's such a great sport, the dominant sport on the planet. And America is more than ever opening up to it.'' Mr. Beckham, he predicted, will be the final spark the sport needs to captivate the United States. Sports writers, talk show hosts and fans of football, baseball and basketball are likely to dismiss this idea as a fantasy of soccer addicts who don't get the idea that their game is too technical, too low on action and too low-scoring to ever stir the passions of sports enthusiasts here. But Mr. Fuller can simply counter the naysayers by pointing to the initial expectations for a show about people trying out for a singing competition. Memorably, Mr. Fuller, along with the show's now-central celebrity, Simon Cowell, tried to tell American networks they had a hit series back in 2001, only to be dismissed by every network they visited as delusional Britons. Cut to this week and the first two installments of the sixth season of ''American Idol'' on Fox. Defying almost every law of programming, the show managed to eclipse even its own spectacular previous results, bringing in more people in its first two nights -- about 37 million viewers each -- than it ever had before. Peter Liguori, president of entertainment for the Fox network, said, ''He's changing American culture as we speak.'' Referring to Mr. Fuller's delivery of ''Idol'' and Beckham to the States, he added, ''It's a testament to his being smart and recognizing what's in the zeitgeist.'' Fox's competitors could only shake their heads at the ''Idol'' season premiere, undone anew by the dashing of their hopes that this might be the year when the ''Idol'' phenomenon gave evidence of cracking. Mr. Fuller, who still maintains an executive producer credit on the show, said he had several theories as to why more people turned up to watch. First, he said, ''you have to remember that America is a big country,'' with plenty of people left to reach even when the biggest shows accumulate audiences. New viewers were drawn to the show this year, Mr. Fuller speculated, because events underscored how much impact the show had had on the music business. Among the events he cited were Grammy Award victories for Kelly Clarkson, the first ''Idol'' winner; soaring sales for new albums by other ''Idol'' contestants, including Carrie Underwood, who was a winner, and Chris Daughtry, who wasn't; and the recent attention around the movie ''Dreamgirls'' and the critically praised performance by Jennifer Hudson, another ''Idol'' loser. ''It doesn't matter anymore if you win on the show,'' Mr. Fuller said, noting that Mr. Daughtry's new album has been outselling the album released by last year's winner, Taylor Hicks. He predicted the album would soon pass Justin Timberlake's as the nation's top-seller, reaching at least three million in total sales. ''You can finish fourth, like Chris did, or fifth or sixth, like Jennifer did, and you can still make hits,'' he said. Mr. Fuller pointed out that music fans from many genres were now being exposed to ''Idol'' performers. ''You have Carrie, who is selling millions of albums to country fans,'' he said. ''You have Kelly, who is a mainstream pop artist. And you have Chris, who is the first real rock artist we've broken on the show. There there's Jennifer, who's winning every award for 'Dreamgirls.' I just think the music is getting out everywhere, and subliminally that has helped.'' Mr. Fuller, the chief executive of 19 Entertainment, who is based in Britain, has management deals with the ''Idol'' performers through his company. He said he was ''both a partner and a manager'' to Mr. Beckham, whom he first met through his management of Mr. Beckham's wife, Victoria, one of the Spice Girls, the singing group Mr. Fuller managed. Always a big fan of soccer, Mr. Fuller was involved in the deal in 1999 that took Mr. Beckham to Real Madrid, perhaps Europe's most famous soccer team. He said that with Mr. Beckham's Real deal ending, and the player now 31, it was time to contemplate the last big move of his athletic career. ''We were looking for a move that would take David beyond soccer,'' Mr. Fuller said. ''David has been a phenomenal figure since he was 17. We knew he would still have value after soccer.'' The options included a new big financial deal with Real Madrid, or perhaps an even bigger financial deal to move him to a team in Italy. ''I just thought: Big deal -- what's the point?'' Mr. Fuller said. But when the opportunity to make the move to the United States came up, enthusiasm was immediate for both Mr. Beckham and Mr. Fuller. ''It was the challenge,'' Mr. Fuller said. ''Just imagine if he was part of something that made soccer truly a legitimate sport in America.'' He said Mr. Beckham, who he said has always been smart about his career, got the idea at once. ''If you are at the top of your profession,'' Mr. Fuller said, ''you can make the easy choice or you can say, 'I'm going to go for it.' ''
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1206 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final A Producer for All Seasons (Also Juggles) BYLINE: By STEPHEN HOLDEN SECTION: Section E; PT1; Column 2; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1516 words A HUNGRY producer shivering in the snow outside a theater, handing out flyers to his latest event, is a far less glamorous image than that of a flamboyant impresario, flanked by chorus girls, holding court in a cloud of cigar smoke. But on many nights, rain or shine, outside a Broadway theater is where you'll find Scott Siegel, a producer, writer, critic and aspiring show business entrepreneur, leafleting one of four events he puts on each year at Town Hall. On Jan. 29 one of his most ambitious enterprises, the 2007 Nightlife Awards, an annual show honoring the best in local cabaret, comedy and jazz (in clubs, not concert halls) will be held there. These still little-known awards, now in their third year, bring together one of the strongest lineups of local nightclub talent to gather in one room. As Mr. Siegel observed recently, ''One-night events don't get press coverage, which makes it hard to sell 1,500 seats.'' Diminutive, soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, Mr. Siegel, wearing his signature bolo tie, is the quintessential scuffling, do-it-yourself-on-a shoestring producer working just below New York's pop-culture radar. He is often joined on the sidewalk by his wife and collaborator, Barbara, with whom he writes theater and cabaret columns and reviews for two Web sites: theatermania.com and talkinbroadway.com. An ebullient woman aswirl in colorful layers of bargain-basement clothes and zany hats, Barbara Siegel also happens to be chairwoman of the Drama Desk nominating committee. Both are voting members of the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Broadcast Film Critics Association. Watching them schmooze from table to table at cabaret openings, you might be tempted to dismiss the Siegels as eccentric hangers-on or freeloaders, and some people in cabaret circles do. But that would be a mistake. Married for more than two decades, the couple, who met when Ms. Siegel was deputy director of the New York City Urban Corps, a local version of the Peace Corps, can usually be seen on the town seven nights a week at the theater and in nightclubs. Often they attend as many as three events a day. What distinguishes the Nightlife Awards is that the winners, chosen by New York critics and announced in advance, don't give acceptance speeches; they perform. At last year's event, Brian Stokes Mitchell, chosen outstanding cabaret male vocalist in a major engagement, brought down the house singing an un-amplified ''This Nearly Was Mine.'' This year John Pizzarelli, the pop-jazz crooner, guitarist and wit, was voted outstanding cabaret male vocalist (for an engagement at Feinstein's at the Regency), and his wife, Jessica Molaskey, with whom he often performs, was voted best female vocalist in a major engagement (at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel). Although each is an exceptional talent, in tandem, the ''Nick and Nora of cabaret,'' as they have been called, are a powerhouse jazz and musical-comedy duo whose sophisticated repartee is mercifully free of nagging married-couples shtick. Christine Ebersole, currently starring in ''Grey Gardens,'' and the pianist and arranger Billy Stritch were chosen outstanding cabaret performance by a duo in a major engagement (at the Metropolitan Room at Gotham). In her cabaret shows Ms. Ebersole is as charismatic as she is in the musical, which earned her rave reviews. Freddy Cole and Paula West were chosen best male and female jazz vocalists, and a lifetime achievement award will be given to the pop-jazz coloratura Maureen McGovern. In jazz, the keyboardist Cedar Walton was chosen best jazz soloist, and Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Band best jazz combo. Demetri Martin and Sarah Silverman won for stand-up comedy. Five other awards also recognize performances in smaller cabarets, including piano bars. Most of these performers have signed on to appear at the awards show. Asked if he had thought of adding a rock category to the awards, Mr. Siegel said he was leery because it might alienate the show's core Broadway and cabaret audience, but he allowed that additional rock and world-music categories might help the awards gain television exposure and possibly live coverage. The embrace of television would be a major breakthrough for a producer whose events are characterized by a rare combination of quality and economy. ''Today's equivalent of 'The Ed Sullivan Show' without the spinning plates,'' is how Mr. Siegel, who is an unabashed show business nostalgist, describes the Nightlife Awards. The best known of his projects, which he produces with Town Hall, is Broadway by the Year, his efficient, low-budget answer to City Center's Encores Series. Each of its four annual concerts is an anthology of theater songs, famous and obscure, from a particular Broadway musical season, performed by Broadway stars like Marc Kudisch, Nancy Anderson and Brent Barrett. Mr. Siegel, who writes the amusing historical commentary, serves as its affable, low-key M.C. Typical of his remarks, on the year 1930: ''The night 'Girl Crazy' opened, George Gershwin reportedly told Ethel Merman, 'Never but never go near a singing teacher.' She had stopped the show as she would every night holding the 'I' in 'I Got Rhythm' for 16 measures. There were those who said she could hold a note longer than Chase Manhattan.'' This season, which begins Feb. 26, will look back to 1928, and later in the year, 1938, 1959 and 1964. ''Barbara and I see these extraordinarily talented people who don't usually get the opportunity to show the range of what they can do for a large audience,'' he said. ''And because you can't get this music on the radio anymore, the options for hearing it are also limited.'' When he presented the idea of Broadway by the Year to Town Hall, he was asked to produce it for them. ''I warned them that I'd never produced anything in my life,'' he said. ''Not even a puppet show in my parents' backyard.'' Since its 2002 inception after two successful trial concerts the previous years, the series now has 900 subscribers. It has had 22 concerts, covering scores composed between 1925 and 1978. It has expanded to include dance numbers, and its backup ensemble, the Ross Patterson Little Big Band, has grown from three to five musicians. It has generated 14 CDs, including two of Broadway Unplugged, a popular annual spinoff initiated in 2004 in which singers perform without a microphone. Two years ago Mr. Siegel and Town Hall thought up the Broadway Cabaret Festival to help fill the hole created when the long-running Cabaret Convention, produced by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, moved from Town Hall to Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Held over three days in October, it consists of three distinct parts. The first night is a tribute to a Broadway composer. The second focuses on younger Broadway performers. (Last October's show reunited Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley from ''Side Show.'') ''Broadway Originals'' on Sunday is a gala at which performers reprise signature songs they introduced onstage years earlier. Before he turned producer, Mr. Siegel, who was born in the Bronx (as was his wife), grew up in Fair Lawn, N.J., and attended Rutgers and the University of Iowa, was a writer of pulp westerns, which he used to turn out at the rate of one every two or three months. Thirty-six of the 47 books he has published were collaborations, the most ambitious being the 400,000-word Encyclopedia of Hollywood, published in 1989 by Facts on File and revised and reissued two years ago. The encyclopedia led Mr. Siegel into movie reviewing, and he did telephone reviews for a syndicated network of radio stations that at one time numbered nearly 100. At the same time he was working as a senior editor for a publishing house. When he quit his job, he became a literary agent for several of its clients, including the best-selling fantasy novelist R. A. Salvatore, whom he still represents. His relationship with Town Hall began a decade ago when he became co-host of a film seminar series that he continues to lead. How does he do it all? ''I spent my junior year of college learning to juggle instead of studying,'' he said. ''And I'm still juggling.'' He is not the least embarrassed about standing in the cold, night after night, handing out leaflets. ''People constantly say they can't believe I'm flyering,'' he said. ''My usual response is that it's a grass-roots organization, and I'm a blade of grass.''
Here is information about the events mentioned in this article. All take place at Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan. Information: (212) 840-2824. The 2007 Nightlife Awards will be on Jan. 29 at 7 p.m. (tickets, $25 and $75). ''The Broadway Musicals of 1928,'' on Feb. 26 at 8 p.m., is the first of four concerts in the Broadway by the Year series; others, devoted to the musicals of 1938, 1959 and 1964, will be on March 26, April 30 and June 18 (tickets, $40, $45 and $50). The Broadway Cabaret Festival will be held on Oct. 19-21, and Broadway Unplugged in November; ticket prices are not yet available.
Scott Siegel at Town Hall, setting for the 2007 Nightlife Awards. (Photo by Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times)(pg. E19) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1207 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Correction Appended Late Edition - Final
Now he trying to become another paragon -- that of savvy investor in troubled companies. And in the coming months he will face his first major test: taking on the Applebee's International restaurant chain in a proxy fight. Mr. Breeden's fledgling advocacy hedge fund, Breeden Partners, which owns a 5.2 percent stake in Applebee's, began its battle last month, when Mr. Breeden nominated four close friends to its board. Hedge funds, the lucrative private investment pools for institutions like endowments and pensions, and for the wealthy, are nearly always managed by former Wall Street traders or money managers. Mr. Breeden -- a Harvard-trained securities lawyer -- has no investing experience. But he is seeking to bring his knowledge of securities laws and corporate governance into investing in underperforming companies. Some in the business are skeptical. ''I guess I wonder, how does a guy with no investment management experience run a hedge fund?'' asked Philip Goldstein of Bulldog Investors, which runs hedge funds similar in style and intent to that of Mr. Breeden. ''You get the guys leaving Goldman Sachs and raising $2 billion, but this is even more astonishing -- he doesn't have a track record.'' Mr. Goldstein added that ''it's kind of like starting at the top -- you'd think you'd want to work at a hedge fund for a while.'' But what Mr. Breeden may lack in investing experience, he makes up for in other ways, according to his friends, who cite his hard-driving nature, his intellect, his attention to detail and his decisiveness, if marred at times by a divalike attitude. ''If it's a bad idea, Richard will kick it down the toilet and flush,'' said Laurence E. Harris, a lawyer in Washington who is one of four close friends that Mr. Breeden nominated last month to the board of directors at Applebee's, with a view to gaining a say in how the company is run. Mr. Breeden ''knows what to look for,'' Mr. Harris said. ''He's a lot less likely to be fooled than a lot of people who are pure investors, because he understands the mechanics of corporate governance and securities laws.'' Mr. Breeden, 57, declined to comment for this article. He has not only has a new professional life, but a new personal one as well. Last year, Mr. Breeden married a trust administrator of the Bennett Funding Group, which he had overseen as the court-appointed monitor. (He and his first wife, Holly, were divorced in 2005 after 27 years of marriage.) Mr. Breeden is now perhaps the most senior former government official ever to run a hedge fund. Mr. Breeden oversaw the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1989 to 1993. He then ran one of the world's largest accounting firms, Coopers & Lybrand, before establishing his private firm, Richard C. Breeden & Company, in Greenwich, Conn., to advise companies hobbled by ethics and governance problems. In recent years, he has served as the high-profile outside monitor for scandal-plagued firms like WorldCom, which filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and Conrad Black's former company, Hollinger International. It was when he was overseeing the bankruptcy of WorldCom, later MCI, that Mr. Breeden first began thinking about starting a hedge fund, according to friends and associates. Seeing the roles played by the Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and Mark Neporent of the hedge fund Cerberus Capital as investors in MCI, he asked Mr. Harris, ''I'm thinking of starting a hedge fund -- what do you think?'' Mr. Harris, who recalled the conversation, said Mr. Breeden told him, ''The one thing I don't want to do is fail.'' Mr. Breeden's right-hand man at Breeden Partners is his friend Steven J. Quamme, a one-time mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer with whom Mr. Breeden once worked at Baker Botts, the Washington law firm. When asked who was running the hedge fund -- in other words, picking companies in which to invest, Mr. Harris replied, ''I don't think you can actually separate Richard and Steve -- they're joined at the hip.'' Mr. Quamme did not return calls requesting comment. An entrepreneur as well as an investor, Mr. Quamme has picked some winners in his past jobs, including a chain of video stores that was sold to Blockbuster Video early last decade and a chunk of the Einstein Brothers Bagels franchises. Mr. Quamme, whom Mr. Breeden also nominated to serve on the Applebee's board, has also endured some setbacks. His 50 percent stake in Boston Chicken, through Mayfair Partners, an investing partnership that he ran in the mid-1990s, went stale in 1998 when the restaurant and the partnership both filed for bankruptcy. It is, of course, far too early to tell whether Mr. Breeden's knowledge and experience will make his hedge fund, whose philosophy is to invest in American companies with fixable problems in policy and governance, a winner. Some analysts do not see his fund making an impact on Applebee's. ''We do not see a dramatic shift near-term in the company's strategic direction that would lead to the 'value creating' programs proposed by the activist,'' Andrew Barish, an analyst with Banc of America Securities wrote earlier this month. Applebee's declined to comment on Mr. Breeden's proposals. The fund sought to raise $1.25 billion but has so far brought in only around $500 million, including $400 million from Calpers, the California pension fund. The hedge fund earned 7.73 percent in the third quarter of 2006, according to the most recent available data from Calpers. To some, Mr. Breeden's leap into the hedge fund business on the heels of serving as a court-appointed monitor for so many large companies raises questions. ''It's an appearances problem, and it bothers me,'' said Michael Feiner, an ethics professor at Columbia Business School, adding that he thought government officials should be required to wait two years before working at hedge funds or lobbying groups. ''I'm disappointed that he is doing this.'' Mr. Breeden's spokesmen declined to answer questions on whether Breeden Partners would prohibit itself from investing in companies for which Mr. Breeden had served as a court-appointed monitor. And the transparency that Mr. Breeden championed at the troubled companies he has overseen may go by the wayside with his new venture. Like many hedge funds, Breeden Partners has affiliated entities registered in the Cayman Islands, to take advantage of generous offshore tax benefits.
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