By JENNA WORTHAM

Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actu-ally making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New Yorkis slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their am-bition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials fun-neled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell Universi-ty to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generationtechnology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare,in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neigh-borhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Since then, money has poured into the city’s tech sector — not as much asin Silicon Valley, but at a faster clip. Dozens of homegrown tech companies haveattracted millions of users. Start-ups connected with New York’s major in-dustries like media, advertising and commerce are finding particular success.

But no New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbusterwith a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in SiliconValley.

And that has led to some disappointment for people who helped set thecity’s sights so high.

“The hype has definitely died down,” said David Tisch, an investor and a

Despite drawing billions incapital, New York’s tech scene

remains just out of focus.

Still Starting Up

ANNA PARINI

Continued on Page 6

B1N

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Technology

Setbacks to Water PowerExperimental efforts to harnessthe ocean’s waves for electricityprove to be too expensive. 3

Economy

Downside of RecoveryThe rebound from the recessionhas created more low-wage jobsthan better-paying ones. 4

Disruptions

Hype of Fitness BandsDespite slick marketing, manydevices monitoring fitness maynot be all that accurate. 5

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

A Wall Street executive whohelped Goldman Sachs makemore than a billion dollars bet-ting against mortgages nowwants to buy up troubled homeloans.

Donald R. Mullen Jr., whowas the architect of Goldman’strade against the housing mar-ket just before the financial cri-sis, is seeking to raise as muchas $1 billion for a new fund.

In the last two years, the in-vestment firm he founded, Pre-tium Partners, has boughtmore than 8,000 single-familyhomes, which it rents out.

Now, the firm plans to usethe new fund to buy distressedmortgages at a discount andrework them to permit the bor-rowers to remain in theirhomes or, if that fails, forecloseon the properties and operatethem as rentals.

That shift in strategy is asign that some institutional in-vestors — private equity firms,

hedge funds and firms like Pre-tium — that started buyingforeclosed homes after the fi-nancial crisis are now scalingback the pace of their pur-chases. These firms are look-ing for other ways to make

money from the wreckage ofthe housing bust and generatehigher than normal returns fortheir wealthy investors.

The slowdown in such insti-tutional buying reflects a risein home prices in places likeLas Vegas, Phoenix and South-ern California that were hithard by the financial crisis. Italso reflects a dwindling sup-ply of distressed homes beingsold at auction in those areasby banks.

RealtyTrac, a firm that mon-itors housing sales and foreclo-sures, reports that in February,institutional investors account-ed for 5.9 percent of single-family home purchases in theUnited States, down from 8.22percent in January 2013, wheninstitutional buying of homeswas at its most feverish.

Earlier this year, the Black-stone Group, the private equityand investment company thathas bought 44,000 foreclosedhomes since 2012 — more thanany other institutional buyer —sharply scaled back its pur-chases. Today, the company isspending from $35 million to$40 million a week to buyhomes, a considerable sum, butdown from the $140 million aweek it was spending last sum-mer, said a person briefed onBlackstone’s strategy.

Blackstone’s InvitationHomes subsidiary, which reno-vates and rents out the proper-ties, once bought homes inmore than a dozen cities but ismaking most of its acquisitionsnow in just a handful of placeslike Miami, Orlando and Se-attle, said the person, whospoke on the condition he notbe named because he was notauthorized to speak publicly.

One of the places where

Soured Mortgages Attract Institutional Dollars

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Donald R. Mullen Jr. wantsto set up a $1 billion fund tobuy troubled home loans.

Continued on Page 4

For decades, cable television hasbeen an almost magical source ofprofits, in large part because of thebundle, the packaging of channelsthat compels subscribers to buy a lot

of programming theynever watch.

Last week, that bun-dle seemed to be frayingon all fronts.

The threat was mostvisible on Tuesday in the SupremeCourt, but before we get to those au-gust halls, it’s worth rememberingthat the bundle has been a robustgenerator of profits in all manner ofindustries. Every time you order avalue meal at McDonald’s, you areordering a bundle. You, um, benefitby getting a lot of food — a containerof French fries the size of your head— and McDonald’s benefits by sell-ing you more than you really want-ed.

My cable bill is the same way. Idon’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV,but I pay for them as part of a pack-

age that includes the channels I dowant.

The cable industry books that in-efficiency as profit. It is the lucrativelifeblood of the current entertain-ment business. Last year, media an-alysts at Needham & Company esti-mated that $70 billion — half the to-tal revenue in the television uni-verse — would “evaporate” in an un-bundled world, and that all but 20channels would disappear. (It’s alsoimportant to consider that the bun-dle, for all its shortcomings, helpsadd a great deal of diversity to cableofferings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in thecurrent bundling arrangement,which has some powerful backers,but a future where consumers willbe able to assemble an à la cartemenu of entertainment suddenlyseems much closer.

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front ofthe Supreme Court with what once

New Challenges Chip Away At Cable’s Pillar of Profit

Continued on Page 2

DAVIDCARR

THE MEDIA EQUATION

By STANLEY REED and JAMES KANTER

LONDON — European exec-utives, especially in the energyindustry, have been notablywary of increasing the econom-ic tensions with Russia over theUkraine crisis. They see theirbusiness interests as too inter-twined to risk stiffer sanctions.

But few tread a finer linethan Paolo Scaroni, chief execu-tive of the Italian energy giantENI. Despite his long dealingswith Gazprom, Russia’s chiefsupplier of natural gas to Eu-rope, he is willing to risk ran-kling Moscow by trying to helpUkraine.

The executive recently metin Kiev with the Ukrainian en-ergy minister, Yuri Prodan, todiscuss ways to supply moregas from sources other thanGazprom as a way to relax theRussian stranglehold. Besides

being Ukraine’s chief source ofnatural gas, Russia sends gasthrough pipelines in Ukrainethat supply about one-third ofEurope’s imports. ENI is the

leading distributor of that Gaz-prom gas.

Gazprom officials havesought to assure the EuropeanUnion that the company will

not cut off gas in response tothe tensions over Ukraine. ButMr. Scaroni warned that the sit-uation was fragile.

“This is by far the toughesttime for European energy secu-rity that I have seen,” Mr. Sca-roni said. “This issue mightstop the supply of Russian gas.”

In the short term, Mr. Scaronisays, ENI could send spare gasto Ukraine on routes throughneighboring countries like Slo-vakia. On Sunday, Slovakia, aEuropean Union member,yielded to pressure to permitsuch flows.

Major Western oil companieslike BP and Exxon Mobil haveextensive exploration deals inRussia that they fear could bejeopardized if the United Statesand European Union imposestiffer penalties on VladimirPutin’s government. But ENI,

For a European Energy Chief, a Difficult Alliance

SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

ENI, an Italian energy firm, is a partner with the Russian gassupplier Gazprom on a pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.

Continued on Page 3

By BRIAN X. CHEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions ofAmericans use smartphones fortasks like hailing a taxi or checkingin for a flight. But for buying some-thing in a store? That mostly re-mains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.

For years now, the promise of aso-called mobile wallet — in whichpaying in person can be as simpleas hitting a button on a phone —has led to a host of American start-ups trying to cash in.

Those companies, though, havefaced nearly as many hurdles asthey have competitors, includingthe most basic ones: Many peopleare not aware of the new paymentsystems, others are confused by themany choices, and some see nobenefit in the mobile option over us-ing cash or credit cards.

The hurdles have left all the pay-

ment companies scrambling to findthe code for a profitable businessmodel. And now, a feeling is grow-ing that mobile payments systemswill not replace traditional wallets,at least anytime soon.

“There was the assumption thatthere was going to be some sort ofspark that ignited the marketplace,and there was going to be a mobilepayments revolution,” said DenéeCarrington, a Forrester analystwho studies the mobile paymentsmarket. But people do not mindpaying with cash or a credit card,she said.

“So this was never going to be arevolution,” she said. “It’s definite-ly more of an evolution.”

Despite the slow uptake of thetechnology by consumers, there isno shortage of ways to pay using a

Few Consumers Are BuyingPremise of Mobile Wallets

Continued on Page 5

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,001,Bs-4C,E1

For decades, cable television has been an almost magical source of profits, in large part because of the bundle, the packaging

of channels that compels subscribers to buy a lot of programming they never watch.

Last week, that bundle seemed to be fray-ing on all fronts.

The threat was most visible on Tuesday in the Supreme Court, but before we get to those

august halls, it’s worth remember-ing that the bundle has been a robust generator of profits in all manner of industries. Every time you order a value meal at McDonald’s, you are or-dering a bundle. You, um, benefit by

getting a lot of food — a container of French fries the size of your head — and McDonald’s benefits by selling you more than you really wanted.

My cable bill is the same way. I don’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV, but I pay for them as part of a package that includes the channels I do want.

The cable industry books that inefficiency as profit. It is the lucrative lifeblood of the cur-rent entertainment business. Last year, media analysts at Needham & Company estimated that $70 billion — half the total revenue in the television universe — would “evaporate” in an unbundled world, and that all but 20 channels would disappear. (It’s also important to consid-er that the bundle, for all its shortcomings, helps add a great deal of diversity to cable offerings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in the current bun-dling arrangement, which has some powerful backers, but a future where consumers will be able to assemble an à la carte menu of entertain-ment suddenly seems much closer.

on Tuesday, Aereo was in front of the Su-preme Court with what once seemed like a pre-posterous notion: that a third party could grab broadcast signals through an array of antennas and serve up the programming over the Internet without paying retransmission fees. I was there,

and you could see the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright law against the techno-logical future. It seemed clear that if they had a bullet that would just kill Aereo and not claim in-novation as collateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. Despite the deep skepticism the justices displayed toward Aereo’s argument, the company might survive simply because it represents digital entrepreneurialism that the court is loath to suppress.

And that had some of the entertainment ex-ecutives in attendance struggling to hide their anxiety. “I’m less comfortable than I was go-ing into the hearing,” said one senior television executive, who preferred to let the lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copyright law and the government are on the broadcasters’ side — but as a concept, Aereo is a smart missile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBo, which over the years has defined cable programming (remember “It’s not TV, it’s HBo”?). The pay channel on Wednesday cut a deal with Amazon to license some of its programs for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular past hits like “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under” and “The Wire,” along with mini-series and original movies, will be available to Prime members, and shows like “Girls” and “Veep” will become available over the course of the multiyear deal.

The arrangement excludes some of HBo’s most popular shows, including the current megahit “Game of Thrones,” but still, quality programming that has long made cable such entertaining catnip — and given oxygen to vari-ous premium bundles — will now be available through another platform.

The Federal Communications Commission was up next. Its announcement late Wednes-day that content providers could be charged extra for enhanced streaming would seem to be something of a firewall for cable. It could

By JENNA WORTHAM

Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actu-ally making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New Yorkis slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their am-bition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials fun-neled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell Universi-ty to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generationtechnology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare,in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neigh-borhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Since then, money has poured into the city’s tech sector — not as much asin Silicon Valley, but at a faster clip. Dozens of homegrown tech companies haveattracted millions of users. Start-ups connected with New York’s major in-dustries like media, advertising and commerce are finding particular success.

But no New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbusterwith a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in SiliconValley.

And that has led to some disappointment for people who helped set thecity’s sights so high.

“The hype has definitely died down,” said David Tisch, an investor and a

Despite drawing billions incapital, New York’s tech scene

remains just out of focus.

Still Starting Up

ANNA PARINI

Continued on Page 6

B1N

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Technology

Setbacks to Water PowerExperimental efforts to harnessthe ocean’s waves for electricityprove to be too expensive. 3

Economy

Downside of RecoveryThe rebound from the recessionhas created more low-wage jobsthan better-paying ones. 4

Disruptions

Hype of Fitness BandsDespite slick marketing, manydevices monitoring fitness maynot be all that accurate. 5

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

A Wall Street executive whohelped Goldman Sachs makemore than a billion dollars bet-ting against mortgages nowwants to buy up troubled homeloans.

Donald R. Mullen Jr., whowas the architect of Goldman’strade against the housing mar-ket just before the financial cri-sis, is seeking to raise as muchas $1 billion for a new fund.

In the last two years, the in-vestment firm he founded, Pre-tium Partners, has boughtmore than 8,000 single-familyhomes, which it rents out.

Now, the firm plans to usethe new fund to buy distressedmortgages at a discount andrework them to permit the bor-rowers to remain in theirhomes or, if that fails, forecloseon the properties and operatethem as rentals.

That shift in strategy is asign that some institutional in-vestors — private equity firms,

hedge funds and firms like Pre-tium — that started buyingforeclosed homes after the fi-nancial crisis are now scalingback the pace of their pur-chases. These firms are look-ing for other ways to make

money from the wreckage ofthe housing bust and generatehigher than normal returns fortheir wealthy investors.

The slowdown in such insti-tutional buying reflects a risein home prices in places likeLas Vegas, Phoenix and South-ern California that were hithard by the financial crisis. Italso reflects a dwindling sup-ply of distressed homes beingsold at auction in those areasby banks.

RealtyTrac, a firm that mon-itors housing sales and foreclo-sures, reports that in February,institutional investors account-ed for 5.9 percent of single-family home purchases in theUnited States, down from 8.22percent in January 2013, wheninstitutional buying of homeswas at its most feverish.

Earlier this year, the Black-stone Group, the private equityand investment company thathas bought 44,000 foreclosedhomes since 2012 — more thanany other institutional buyer —sharply scaled back its pur-chases. Today, the company isspending from $35 million to$40 million a week to buyhomes, a considerable sum, butdown from the $140 million aweek it was spending last sum-mer, said a person briefed onBlackstone’s strategy.

Blackstone’s InvitationHomes subsidiary, which reno-vates and rents out the proper-ties, once bought homes inmore than a dozen cities but ismaking most of its acquisitionsnow in just a handful of placeslike Miami, Orlando and Se-attle, said the person, whospoke on the condition he notbe named because he was notauthorized to speak publicly.

One of the places where

Soured Mortgages Attract Institutional Dollars

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Donald R. Mullen Jr. wantsto set up a $1 billion fund tobuy troubled home loans.

Continued on Page 4

For decades, cable television hasbeen an almost magical source ofprofits, in large part because of thebundle, the packaging of channelsthat compels subscribers to buy a lot

of programming theynever watch.

Last week, that bun-dle seemed to be frayingon all fronts.

The threat was mostvisible on Tuesday in the SupremeCourt, but before we get to those au-gust halls, it’s worth rememberingthat the bundle has been a robustgenerator of profits in all manner ofindustries. Every time you order avalue meal at McDonald’s, you areordering a bundle. You, um, benefitby getting a lot of food — a containerof French fries the size of your head— and McDonald’s benefits by sell-ing you more than you really want-ed.

My cable bill is the same way. Idon’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV,but I pay for them as part of a pack-

age that includes the channels I dowant.

The cable industry books that in-efficiency as profit. It is the lucrativelifeblood of the current entertain-ment business. Last year, media an-alysts at Needham & Company esti-mated that $70 billion — half the to-tal revenue in the television uni-verse — would “evaporate” in an un-bundled world, and that all but 20channels would disappear. (It’s alsoimportant to consider that the bun-dle, for all its shortcomings, helpsadd a great deal of diversity to cableofferings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in thecurrent bundling arrangement,which has some powerful backers,but a future where consumers willbe able to assemble an à la cartemenu of entertainment suddenlyseems much closer.

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front ofthe Supreme Court with what once

New Challenges Chip Away At Cable’s Pillar of Profit

Continued on Page 2

DAVIDCARR

THE MEDIA EQUATION

By STANLEY REED and JAMES KANTER

LONDON — European exec-utives, especially in the energyindustry, have been notablywary of increasing the econom-ic tensions with Russia over theUkraine crisis. They see theirbusiness interests as too inter-twined to risk stiffer sanctions.

But few tread a finer linethan Paolo Scaroni, chief execu-tive of the Italian energy giantENI. Despite his long dealingswith Gazprom, Russia’s chiefsupplier of natural gas to Eu-rope, he is willing to risk ran-kling Moscow by trying to helpUkraine.

The executive recently metin Kiev with the Ukrainian en-ergy minister, Yuri Prodan, todiscuss ways to supply moregas from sources other thanGazprom as a way to relax theRussian stranglehold. Besides

being Ukraine’s chief source ofnatural gas, Russia sends gasthrough pipelines in Ukrainethat supply about one-third ofEurope’s imports. ENI is the

leading distributor of that Gaz-prom gas.

Gazprom officials havesought to assure the EuropeanUnion that the company will

not cut off gas in response tothe tensions over Ukraine. ButMr. Scaroni warned that the sit-uation was fragile.

“This is by far the toughesttime for European energy secu-rity that I have seen,” Mr. Sca-roni said. “This issue mightstop the supply of Russian gas.”

In the short term, Mr. Scaronisays, ENI could send spare gasto Ukraine on routes throughneighboring countries like Slo-vakia. On Sunday, Slovakia, aEuropean Union member,yielded to pressure to permitsuch flows.

Major Western oil companieslike BP and Exxon Mobil haveextensive exploration deals inRussia that they fear could bejeopardized if the United Statesand European Union imposestiffer penalties on VladimirPutin’s government. But ENI,

For a European Energy Chief, a Difficult Alliance

SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

ENI, an Italian energy firm, is a partner with the Russian gassupplier Gazprom on a pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.

Continued on Page 3

By BRIAN X. CHEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions ofAmericans use smartphones fortasks like hailing a taxi or checkingin for a flight. But for buying some-thing in a store? That mostly re-mains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.

For years now, the promise of aso-called mobile wallet — in whichpaying in person can be as simpleas hitting a button on a phone —has led to a host of American start-ups trying to cash in.

Those companies, though, havefaced nearly as many hurdles asthey have competitors, includingthe most basic ones: Many peopleare not aware of the new paymentsystems, others are confused by themany choices, and some see nobenefit in the mobile option over us-ing cash or credit cards.

The hurdles have left all the pay-

ment companies scrambling to findthe code for a profitable businessmodel. And now, a feeling is grow-ing that mobile payments systemswill not replace traditional wallets,at least anytime soon.

“There was the assumption thatthere was going to be some sort ofspark that ignited the marketplace,and there was going to be a mobilepayments revolution,” said DenéeCarrington, a Forrester analystwho studies the mobile paymentsmarket. But people do not mindpaying with cash or a credit card,she said.

“So this was never going to be arevolution,” she said. “It’s definite-ly more of an evolution.”

Despite the slow uptake of thetechnology by consumers, there isno shortage of ways to pay using a

Few Consumers Are BuyingPremise of Mobile Wallets

Continued on Page 5

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,001,Bs-4C,E1

By JENNA WORTHAM

Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actu-ally making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New Yorkis slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their am-bition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials fun-neled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell Universi-ty to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generationtechnology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare,in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neigh-borhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Since then, money has poured into the city’s tech sector — not as much asin Silicon Valley, but at a faster clip. Dozens of homegrown tech companies haveattracted millions of users. Start-ups connected with New York’s major in-dustries like media, advertising and commerce are finding particular success.

But no New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbusterwith a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in SiliconValley.

And that has led to some disappointment for people who helped set thecity’s sights so high.

“The hype has definitely died down,” said David Tisch, an investor and a

Despite drawing billions incapital, New York’s tech scene

remains just out of focus.

Still Starting Up

ANNA PARINI

Continued on Page 6

B1N

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Technology

Setbacks to Water PowerExperimental efforts to harnessthe ocean’s waves for electricityprove to be too expensive. 3

Economy

Downside of RecoveryThe rebound from the recessionhas created more low-wage jobsthan better-paying ones. 4

Disruptions

Hype of Fitness BandsDespite slick marketing, manydevices monitoring fitness maynot be all that accurate. 5

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

A Wall Street executive whohelped Goldman Sachs makemore than a billion dollars bet-ting against mortgages nowwants to buy up troubled homeloans.

Donald R. Mullen Jr., whowas the architect of Goldman’strade against the housing mar-ket just before the financial cri-sis, is seeking to raise as muchas $1 billion for a new fund.

In the last two years, the in-vestment firm he founded, Pre-tium Partners, has boughtmore than 8,000 single-familyhomes, which it rents out.

Now, the firm plans to usethe new fund to buy distressedmortgages at a discount andrework them to permit the bor-rowers to remain in theirhomes or, if that fails, forecloseon the properties and operatethem as rentals.

That shift in strategy is asign that some institutional in-vestors — private equity firms,

hedge funds and firms like Pre-tium — that started buyingforeclosed homes after the fi-nancial crisis are now scalingback the pace of their pur-chases. These firms are look-ing for other ways to make

money from the wreckage ofthe housing bust and generatehigher than normal returns fortheir wealthy investors.

The slowdown in such insti-tutional buying reflects a risein home prices in places likeLas Vegas, Phoenix and South-ern California that were hithard by the financial crisis. Italso reflects a dwindling sup-ply of distressed homes beingsold at auction in those areasby banks.

RealtyTrac, a firm that mon-itors housing sales and foreclo-sures, reports that in February,institutional investors account-ed for 5.9 percent of single-family home purchases in theUnited States, down from 8.22percent in January 2013, wheninstitutional buying of homeswas at its most feverish.

Earlier this year, the Black-stone Group, the private equityand investment company thathas bought 44,000 foreclosedhomes since 2012 — more thanany other institutional buyer —sharply scaled back its pur-chases. Today, the company isspending from $35 million to$40 million a week to buyhomes, a considerable sum, butdown from the $140 million aweek it was spending last sum-mer, said a person briefed onBlackstone’s strategy.

Blackstone’s InvitationHomes subsidiary, which reno-vates and rents out the proper-ties, once bought homes inmore than a dozen cities but ismaking most of its acquisitionsnow in just a handful of placeslike Miami, Orlando and Se-attle, said the person, whospoke on the condition he notbe named because he was notauthorized to speak publicly.

One of the places where

Soured Mortgages Attract Institutional Dollars

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Donald R. Mullen Jr. wantsto set up a $1 billion fund tobuy troubled home loans.

Continued on Page 4

For decades, cable television hasbeen an almost magical source ofprofits, in large part because of thebundle, the packaging of channelsthat compels subscribers to buy a lot

of programming theynever watch.

Last week, that bun-dle seemed to be frayingon all fronts.

The threat was mostvisible on Tuesday in the SupremeCourt, but before we get to those au-gust halls, it’s worth rememberingthat the bundle has been a robustgenerator of profits in all manner ofindustries. Every time you order avalue meal at McDonald’s, you areordering a bundle. You, um, benefitby getting a lot of food — a containerof French fries the size of your head— and McDonald’s benefits by sell-ing you more than you really want-ed.

My cable bill is the same way. Idon’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV,but I pay for them as part of a pack-

age that includes the channels I dowant.

The cable industry books that in-efficiency as profit. It is the lucrativelifeblood of the current entertain-ment business. Last year, media an-alysts at Needham & Company esti-mated that $70 billion — half the to-tal revenue in the television uni-verse — would “evaporate” in an un-bundled world, and that all but 20channels would disappear. (It’s alsoimportant to consider that the bun-dle, for all its shortcomings, helpsadd a great deal of diversity to cableofferings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in thecurrent bundling arrangement,which has some powerful backers,but a future where consumers willbe able to assemble an à la cartemenu of entertainment suddenlyseems much closer.

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front ofthe Supreme Court with what once

New Challenges Chip Away At Cable’s Pillar of Profit

Continued on Page 2

DAVIDCARR

THE MEDIA EQUATION

By STANLEY REED and JAMES KANTER

LONDON — European exec-utives, especially in the energyindustry, have been notablywary of increasing the econom-ic tensions with Russia over theUkraine crisis. They see theirbusiness interests as too inter-twined to risk stiffer sanctions.

But few tread a finer linethan Paolo Scaroni, chief execu-tive of the Italian energy giantENI. Despite his long dealingswith Gazprom, Russia’s chiefsupplier of natural gas to Eu-rope, he is willing to risk ran-kling Moscow by trying to helpUkraine.

The executive recently metin Kiev with the Ukrainian en-ergy minister, Yuri Prodan, todiscuss ways to supply moregas from sources other thanGazprom as a way to relax theRussian stranglehold. Besides

being Ukraine’s chief source ofnatural gas, Russia sends gasthrough pipelines in Ukrainethat supply about one-third ofEurope’s imports. ENI is the

leading distributor of that Gaz-prom gas.

Gazprom officials havesought to assure the EuropeanUnion that the company will

not cut off gas in response tothe tensions over Ukraine. ButMr. Scaroni warned that the sit-uation was fragile.

“This is by far the toughesttime for European energy secu-rity that I have seen,” Mr. Sca-roni said. “This issue mightstop the supply of Russian gas.”

In the short term, Mr. Scaronisays, ENI could send spare gasto Ukraine on routes throughneighboring countries like Slo-vakia. On Sunday, Slovakia, aEuropean Union member,yielded to pressure to permitsuch flows.

Major Western oil companieslike BP and Exxon Mobil haveextensive exploration deals inRussia that they fear could bejeopardized if the United Statesand European Union imposestiffer penalties on VladimirPutin’s government. But ENI,

For a European Energy Chief, a Difficult Alliance

SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

ENI, an Italian energy firm, is a partner with the Russian gassupplier Gazprom on a pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.

Continued on Page 3

By BRIAN X. CHEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions ofAmericans use smartphones fortasks like hailing a taxi or checkingin for a flight. But for buying some-thing in a store? That mostly re-mains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.

For years now, the promise of aso-called mobile wallet — in whichpaying in person can be as simpleas hitting a button on a phone —has led to a host of American start-ups trying to cash in.

Those companies, though, havefaced nearly as many hurdles asthey have competitors, includingthe most basic ones: Many peopleare not aware of the new paymentsystems, others are confused by themany choices, and some see nobenefit in the mobile option over us-ing cash or credit cards.

The hurdles have left all the pay-

ment companies scrambling to findthe code for a profitable businessmodel. And now, a feeling is grow-ing that mobile payments systemswill not replace traditional wallets,at least anytime soon.

“There was the assumption thatthere was going to be some sort ofspark that ignited the marketplace,and there was going to be a mobilepayments revolution,” said DenéeCarrington, a Forrester analystwho studies the mobile paymentsmarket. But people do not mindpaying with cash or a credit card,she said.

“So this was never going to be arevolution,” she said. “It’s definite-ly more of an evolution.”

Despite the slow uptake of thetechnology by consumers, there isno shortage of ways to pay using a

Few Consumers Are BuyingPremise of Mobile Wallets

Continued on Page 5

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,001,Bs-4C,E1

By JENNA WORTHAM

Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actu-ally making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New Yorkis slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their am-bition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials fun-neled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell Universi-ty to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generationtechnology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare,in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neigh-borhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Since then, money has poured into the city’s tech sector — not as much asin Silicon Valley, but at a faster clip. Dozens of homegrown tech companies haveattracted millions of users. Start-ups connected with New York’s major in-dustries like media, advertising and commerce are finding particular success.

But no New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbusterwith a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in SiliconValley.

And that has led to some disappointment for people who helped set thecity’s sights so high.

“The hype has definitely died down,” said David Tisch, an investor and a

Despite drawing billions incapital, New York’s tech scene

remains just out of focus.

Still Starting Up

ANNA PARINI

Continued on Page 6

B1N

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Technology

Setbacks to Water PowerExperimental efforts to harnessthe ocean’s waves for electricityprove to be too expensive. 3

Economy

Downside of RecoveryThe rebound from the recessionhas created more low-wage jobsthan better-paying ones. 4

Disruptions

Hype of Fitness BandsDespite slick marketing, manydevices monitoring fitness maynot be all that accurate. 5

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

A Wall Street executive whohelped Goldman Sachs makemore than a billion dollars bet-ting against mortgages nowwants to buy up troubled homeloans.

Donald R. Mullen Jr., whowas the architect of Goldman’strade against the housing mar-ket just before the financial cri-sis, is seeking to raise as muchas $1 billion for a new fund.

In the last two years, the in-vestment firm he founded, Pre-tium Partners, has boughtmore than 8,000 single-familyhomes, which it rents out.

Now, the firm plans to usethe new fund to buy distressedmortgages at a discount andrework them to permit the bor-rowers to remain in theirhomes or, if that fails, forecloseon the properties and operatethem as rentals.

That shift in strategy is asign that some institutional in-vestors — private equity firms,

hedge funds and firms like Pre-tium — that started buyingforeclosed homes after the fi-nancial crisis are now scalingback the pace of their pur-chases. These firms are look-ing for other ways to make

money from the wreckage ofthe housing bust and generatehigher than normal returns fortheir wealthy investors.

The slowdown in such insti-tutional buying reflects a risein home prices in places likeLas Vegas, Phoenix and South-ern California that were hithard by the financial crisis. Italso reflects a dwindling sup-ply of distressed homes beingsold at auction in those areasby banks.

RealtyTrac, a firm that mon-itors housing sales and foreclo-sures, reports that in February,institutional investors account-ed for 5.9 percent of single-family home purchases in theUnited States, down from 8.22percent in January 2013, wheninstitutional buying of homeswas at its most feverish.

Earlier this year, the Black-stone Group, the private equityand investment company thathas bought 44,000 foreclosedhomes since 2012 — more thanany other institutional buyer —sharply scaled back its pur-chases. Today, the company isspending from $35 million to$40 million a week to buyhomes, a considerable sum, butdown from the $140 million aweek it was spending last sum-mer, said a person briefed onBlackstone’s strategy.

Blackstone’s InvitationHomes subsidiary, which reno-vates and rents out the proper-ties, once bought homes inmore than a dozen cities but ismaking most of its acquisitionsnow in just a handful of placeslike Miami, Orlando and Se-attle, said the person, whospoke on the condition he notbe named because he was notauthorized to speak publicly.

One of the places where

Soured Mortgages Attract Institutional Dollars

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Donald R. Mullen Jr. wantsto set up a $1 billion fund tobuy troubled home loans.

Continued on Page 4

For decades, cable television hasbeen an almost magical source ofprofits, in large part because of thebundle, the packaging of channelsthat compels subscribers to buy a lot

of programming theynever watch.

Last week, that bun-dle seemed to be frayingon all fronts.

The threat was mostvisible on Tuesday in the SupremeCourt, but before we get to those au-gust halls, it’s worth rememberingthat the bundle has been a robustgenerator of profits in all manner ofindustries. Every time you order avalue meal at McDonald’s, you areordering a bundle. You, um, benefitby getting a lot of food — a containerof French fries the size of your head— and McDonald’s benefits by sell-ing you more than you really want-ed.

My cable bill is the same way. Idon’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV,but I pay for them as part of a pack-

age that includes the channels I dowant.

The cable industry books that in-efficiency as profit. It is the lucrativelifeblood of the current entertain-ment business. Last year, media an-alysts at Needham & Company esti-mated that $70 billion — half the to-tal revenue in the television uni-verse — would “evaporate” in an un-bundled world, and that all but 20channels would disappear. (It’s alsoimportant to consider that the bun-dle, for all its shortcomings, helpsadd a great deal of diversity to cableofferings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in thecurrent bundling arrangement,which has some powerful backers,but a future where consumers willbe able to assemble an à la cartemenu of entertainment suddenlyseems much closer.

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front ofthe Supreme Court with what once

New Challenges Chip Away At Cable’s Pillar of Profit

Continued on Page 2

DAVIDCARR

THE MEDIA EQUATION

By STANLEY REED and JAMES KANTER

LONDON — European exec-utives, especially in the energyindustry, have been notablywary of increasing the econom-ic tensions with Russia over theUkraine crisis. They see theirbusiness interests as too inter-twined to risk stiffer sanctions.

But few tread a finer linethan Paolo Scaroni, chief execu-tive of the Italian energy giantENI. Despite his long dealingswith Gazprom, Russia’s chiefsupplier of natural gas to Eu-rope, he is willing to risk ran-kling Moscow by trying to helpUkraine.

The executive recently metin Kiev with the Ukrainian en-ergy minister, Yuri Prodan, todiscuss ways to supply moregas from sources other thanGazprom as a way to relax theRussian stranglehold. Besides

being Ukraine’s chief source ofnatural gas, Russia sends gasthrough pipelines in Ukrainethat supply about one-third ofEurope’s imports. ENI is the

leading distributor of that Gaz-prom gas.

Gazprom officials havesought to assure the EuropeanUnion that the company will

not cut off gas in response tothe tensions over Ukraine. ButMr. Scaroni warned that the sit-uation was fragile.

“This is by far the toughesttime for European energy secu-rity that I have seen,” Mr. Sca-roni said. “This issue mightstop the supply of Russian gas.”

In the short term, Mr. Scaronisays, ENI could send spare gasto Ukraine on routes throughneighboring countries like Slo-vakia. On Sunday, Slovakia, aEuropean Union member,yielded to pressure to permitsuch flows.

Major Western oil companieslike BP and Exxon Mobil haveextensive exploration deals inRussia that they fear could bejeopardized if the United Statesand European Union imposestiffer penalties on VladimirPutin’s government. But ENI,

For a European Energy Chief, a Difficult Alliance

SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

ENI, an Italian energy firm, is a partner with the Russian gassupplier Gazprom on a pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.

Continued on Page 3

By BRIAN X. CHEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions ofAmericans use smartphones fortasks like hailing a taxi or checkingin for a flight. But for buying some-thing in a store? That mostly re-mains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.

For years now, the promise of aso-called mobile wallet — in whichpaying in person can be as simpleas hitting a button on a phone —has led to a host of American start-ups trying to cash in.

Those companies, though, havefaced nearly as many hurdles asthey have competitors, includingthe most basic ones: Many peopleare not aware of the new paymentsystems, others are confused by themany choices, and some see nobenefit in the mobile option over us-ing cash or credit cards.

The hurdles have left all the pay-

ment companies scrambling to findthe code for a profitable businessmodel. And now, a feeling is grow-ing that mobile payments systemswill not replace traditional wallets,at least anytime soon.

“There was the assumption thatthere was going to be some sort ofspark that ignited the marketplace,and there was going to be a mobilepayments revolution,” said DenéeCarrington, a Forrester analystwho studies the mobile paymentsmarket. But people do not mindpaying with cash or a credit card,she said.

“So this was never going to be arevolution,” she said. “It’s definite-ly more of an evolution.”

Despite the slow uptake of thetechnology by consumers, there isno shortage of ways to pay using a

Few Consumers Are BuyingPremise of Mobile Wallets

Continued on Page 5

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,001,Bs-4C,E1

By JENNA WORTHAM

Predicting that your city will be the next Silicon Valley is simple. But actu-ally making it the next Silicon Valley is something else entirely — as New Yorkis slowly finding out.

A few years ago, officials and executives in New York proclaimed their am-bition: to build the city into a powerful hotbed for tech innovation. Officials fun-neled money into start-up incubators and approved a bid from Cornell Universi-ty to transform Roosevelt Island into a two-million-square-foot, next-generationtechnology campus to rival Stanford’s. Social media darlings like Foursquare,in downtown Manhattan, and the crafts retailer Etsy, in the Dumbo neigh-borhood of Brooklyn, were hailed as surefire breakouts.

Since then, money has poured into the city’s tech sector — not as much asin Silicon Valley, but at a faster clip. Dozens of homegrown tech companies haveattracted millions of users. Start-ups connected with New York’s major in-dustries like media, advertising and commerce are finding particular success.

But no New York start-up has been a breakout hit, the sort of blockbusterwith a multibillion-dollar valuation that has become so commonplace in SiliconValley.

And that has led to some disappointment for people who helped set thecity’s sights so high.

“The hype has definitely died down,” said David Tisch, an investor and a

Despite drawing billions incapital, New York’s tech scene

remains just out of focus.

Still Starting Up

ANNA PARINI

Continued on Page 6

B1N

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Technology

Setbacks to Water PowerExperimental efforts to harnessthe ocean’s waves for electricityprove to be too expensive. 3

Economy

Downside of RecoveryThe rebound from the recessionhas created more low-wage jobsthan better-paying ones. 4

Disruptions

Hype of Fitness BandsDespite slick marketing, manydevices monitoring fitness maynot be all that accurate. 5

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

A Wall Street executive whohelped Goldman Sachs makemore than a billion dollars bet-ting against mortgages nowwants to buy up troubled homeloans.

Donald R. Mullen Jr., whowas the architect of Goldman’strade against the housing mar-ket just before the financial cri-sis, is seeking to raise as muchas $1 billion for a new fund.

In the last two years, the in-vestment firm he founded, Pre-tium Partners, has boughtmore than 8,000 single-familyhomes, which it rents out.

Now, the firm plans to usethe new fund to buy distressedmortgages at a discount andrework them to permit the bor-rowers to remain in theirhomes or, if that fails, forecloseon the properties and operatethem as rentals.

That shift in strategy is asign that some institutional in-vestors — private equity firms,

hedge funds and firms like Pre-tium — that started buyingforeclosed homes after the fi-nancial crisis are now scalingback the pace of their pur-chases. These firms are look-ing for other ways to make

money from the wreckage ofthe housing bust and generatehigher than normal returns fortheir wealthy investors.

The slowdown in such insti-tutional buying reflects a risein home prices in places likeLas Vegas, Phoenix and South-ern California that were hithard by the financial crisis. Italso reflects a dwindling sup-ply of distressed homes beingsold at auction in those areasby banks.

RealtyTrac, a firm that mon-itors housing sales and foreclo-sures, reports that in February,institutional investors account-ed for 5.9 percent of single-family home purchases in theUnited States, down from 8.22percent in January 2013, wheninstitutional buying of homeswas at its most feverish.

Earlier this year, the Black-stone Group, the private equityand investment company thathas bought 44,000 foreclosedhomes since 2012 — more thanany other institutional buyer —sharply scaled back its pur-chases. Today, the company isspending from $35 million to$40 million a week to buyhomes, a considerable sum, butdown from the $140 million aweek it was spending last sum-mer, said a person briefed onBlackstone’s strategy.

Blackstone’s InvitationHomes subsidiary, which reno-vates and rents out the proper-ties, once bought homes inmore than a dozen cities but ismaking most of its acquisitionsnow in just a handful of placeslike Miami, Orlando and Se-attle, said the person, whospoke on the condition he notbe named because he was notauthorized to speak publicly.

One of the places where

Soured Mortgages Attract Institutional Dollars

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Donald R. Mullen Jr. wantsto set up a $1 billion fund tobuy troubled home loans.

Continued on Page 4

For decades, cable television hasbeen an almost magical source ofprofits, in large part because of thebundle, the packaging of channelsthat compels subscribers to buy a lot

of programming theynever watch.

Last week, that bun-dle seemed to be frayingon all fronts.

The threat was mostvisible on Tuesday in the SupremeCourt, but before we get to those au-gust halls, it’s worth rememberingthat the bundle has been a robustgenerator of profits in all manner ofindustries. Every time you order avalue meal at McDonald’s, you areordering a bundle. You, um, benefitby getting a lot of food — a containerof French fries the size of your head— and McDonald’s benefits by sell-ing you more than you really want-ed.

My cable bill is the same way. Idon’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV,but I pay for them as part of a pack-

age that includes the channels I dowant.

The cable industry books that in-efficiency as profit. It is the lucrativelifeblood of the current entertain-ment business. Last year, media an-alysts at Needham & Company esti-mated that $70 billion — half the to-tal revenue in the television uni-verse — would “evaporate” in an un-bundled world, and that all but 20channels would disappear. (It’s alsoimportant to consider that the bun-dle, for all its shortcomings, helpsadd a great deal of diversity to cableofferings.)

Clearly, much is at stake in thecurrent bundling arrangement,which has some powerful backers,but a future where consumers willbe able to assemble an à la cartemenu of entertainment suddenlyseems much closer.

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front ofthe Supreme Court with what once

New Challenges Chip Away At Cable’s Pillar of Profit

Continued on Page 2

DAVIDCARR

THE MEDIA EQUATION

By STANLEY REED and JAMES KANTER

LONDON — European exec-utives, especially in the energyindustry, have been notablywary of increasing the econom-ic tensions with Russia over theUkraine crisis. They see theirbusiness interests as too inter-twined to risk stiffer sanctions.

But few tread a finer linethan Paolo Scaroni, chief execu-tive of the Italian energy giantENI. Despite his long dealingswith Gazprom, Russia’s chiefsupplier of natural gas to Eu-rope, he is willing to risk ran-kling Moscow by trying to helpUkraine.

The executive recently metin Kiev with the Ukrainian en-ergy minister, Yuri Prodan, todiscuss ways to supply moregas from sources other thanGazprom as a way to relax theRussian stranglehold. Besides

being Ukraine’s chief source ofnatural gas, Russia sends gasthrough pipelines in Ukrainethat supply about one-third ofEurope’s imports. ENI is the

leading distributor of that Gaz-prom gas.

Gazprom officials havesought to assure the EuropeanUnion that the company will

not cut off gas in response tothe tensions over Ukraine. ButMr. Scaroni warned that the sit-uation was fragile.

“This is by far the toughesttime for European energy secu-rity that I have seen,” Mr. Sca-roni said. “This issue mightstop the supply of Russian gas.”

In the short term, Mr. Scaronisays, ENI could send spare gasto Ukraine on routes throughneighboring countries like Slo-vakia. On Sunday, Slovakia, aEuropean Union member,yielded to pressure to permitsuch flows.

Major Western oil companieslike BP and Exxon Mobil haveextensive exploration deals inRussia that they fear could bejeopardized if the United Statesand European Union imposestiffer penalties on VladimirPutin’s government. But ENI,

For a European Energy Chief, a Difficult Alliance

SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERS

ENI, an Italian energy firm, is a partner with the Russian gassupplier Gazprom on a pipeline that would bypass Ukraine.

Continued on Page 3

By BRIAN X. CHEN

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions ofAmericans use smartphones fortasks like hailing a taxi or checkingin for a flight. But for buying some-thing in a store? That mostly re-mains a tech entrepreneur’s dream.

For years now, the promise of aso-called mobile wallet — in whichpaying in person can be as simpleas hitting a button on a phone —has led to a host of American start-ups trying to cash in.

Those companies, though, havefaced nearly as many hurdles asthey have competitors, includingthe most basic ones: Many peopleare not aware of the new paymentsystems, others are confused by themany choices, and some see nobenefit in the mobile option over us-ing cash or credit cards.

The hurdles have left all the pay-

ment companies scrambling to findthe code for a profitable businessmodel. And now, a feeling is grow-ing that mobile payments systemswill not replace traditional wallets,at least anytime soon.

“There was the assumption thatthere was going to be some sort ofspark that ignited the marketplace,and there was going to be a mobilepayments revolution,” said DenéeCarrington, a Forrester analystwho studies the mobile paymentsmarket. But people do not mindpaying with cash or a credit card,she said.

“So this was never going to be arevolution,” she said. “It’s definite-ly more of an evolution.”

Despite the slow uptake of thetechnology by consumers, there isno shortage of ways to pay using a

Few Consumers Are BuyingPremise of Mobile Wallets

Continued on Page 5

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,001,Bs-4C,E1

mean that costs will rise for streaming outfits like Apple, Hulu and Netflix — costs that will be passed onto the consumer — but it will also mean a more stable platform for viewing on the Internet.

Cable’s more reliable performance has served as a deterrent for cord-cutting — I’ve never seen a “buffering” notice watching Show-time — and if over-the-web programmers are forced to spend and upgrade, the viewing expe-rience could become more reliable, more cable-like, if you will. The bundles that are assembled in that streaming ecosystem would be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing out that if Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable goes through, the giant new company will be the king of all bundlers, able to use market power and technological innovation to protect the business model. But a merger that has been viewed as

inevitable seemed slightly less so after Netf-lix came out forcefully against it. In a letter to investors that was really aimed at regulators, Netflix said the merger would give Comcast “anticompetitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momentum, look for oth-er players to come off the sidelines. That may be good for competition, but bad for the bundle.

The bundle is also taking some worrisome hits from the shift in viewing platforms. More and more people are spending more and more minutes looking at their phones, where the bundle has little presence. A report released last month by the research and consulting firm Millward Brown said that screen time on phones has surpassed screen time in front of the television. Young consumers will spend less time and money on an expensive bundle of programs on big screens as they spend more time on little ones.

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

B2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2014

Investors Watch TwitterFor Further StagnationTwitter is scheduled to release itsfirst-quarter earnings on Tuesday.Its share price has dropped 30percent since its first earnings an-nouncement as a public companylast quarter. Even though Twitterimproved its business last quar-ter, Wall Street is wary of the com-pany’s stagnating user growth.Twitter added just nine millionmonthly active users last quarter,its slowest pace since 2010.

NICOLE PERLROTH

Nokia Plans to AnnounceA New Strategy and ChiefThe Finnish company Nokia plansto lay out its new strategy and an-nounce a new chief executivewhen it reports its first-quarterearnings on Tuesday, days after itsold its cellphone business toMicrosoft for $7.5 billion. Thestrategy is expected to focus onNokia’s mobile infrastructurebusiness. MARK SCOTT

Cuts in Bond BuyingExpected at the FedThe Federal Reserve, which plansto meet on Tuesday and Wednes-day, has left little mystery aboutits short-term plans. After themeetings, it is widely expected toannounce another $10 billion cutin monthly bond purchases, to $45billion. Reinforcements may alsobe on the way for the Fed’s short-handed board. The Senate Bank-ing Committee plans to vote Tues-day on the nominations of StanleyFischer and Lael Brainard, a nec-essary prelude to confirmation bythe full Senate.

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Commerce Dept. to IssueInitial Estimate of GrowthThe Commerce Department willannounce its initial estimate ofeconomic growth in the first quar-ter of 2014 on Wednesday. Theconsensus among economists onWall Street is a growth rate of 1.2percent, but estimates vary wide-ly because of the still-uncertain ef-fect of the unusually harsh winterin many parts of the country.Whatever the number, it is likelyto be significantly less than the 4.1percent growth rate recorded inthe third quarter of 2013 or the 2.6percent increase in the fourthquarter.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Labor DepartmentSet to Report on JobsThe Labor Department on Fridayplans to report data on hiring andthe jobless rate in April. Month-to-month gains in hiring have beenvolatile recently, but most econo-mists expect a fairly robust reporton the job market. The consensuscalls for an increase in payrolls of210,000 and a decline in the unem-ployment rate to 6.6 percent. If theactual payroll gain meets or ex-ceeds that estimate, it will be thebest month for hiring since No-vember 2013.

NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

THE WEEK AHEAD

The Treasury’s schedule of fi-nancing this week includes theregular Monday auction of newthree- and six-month bills andauctions of four-week bills, one-year bills and two-year floatingrate notes on Tuesday.

At the close of the New Yorkcash market on Friday, the rateon the outstanding three-monthbill was 0.02 percent. The rate onthe six-month issue was 0.04 per-cent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.01 percent.

The following tax-exemptfixed-income issues are sched-uled for pricing this week:

MONDAYMinnesota, $109 million of Wayzata school dis-

trict general obligation bonds. Competitive.TUESDAY

Alabama, $56 million of Montgomery Countygeneral obligation bonds. Competitive.

Maryland, $100 million of Water Quality Fi-nancing Administration revenue bonds. Compet-itive.

Pennsylvania, $834 million of debt securities.Competitive.

THURSDAYOhio, $337 million of general obligation bonds.

Competitive.Virginia, $321 million of College Building Au-

thority revenue bonds. Competitive.

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKArizona Board of Regents, $81 million of Ari-

zona State University revenue bonds. MorganStanley.

California, $73 million of San Marcos UnifiedSchool District general obligation bonds. Stifel,Nicolaus & Company.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$290 million of revenue bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

California Educational Facilities Authority,$125 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securi-ties.

California Health Facilities Financing Author-ity, $100 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Carmel, Ind., $55 million of redevelopment au-thority refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.

City of Fredericksburg, Va., $56 million of eco-nomic development authority debt securities.Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

City of Lubbock, Tex., $63 million of debt secu-rities. Raymond James & Associates.

City of Newport News, Va., $106 million of gen-eral obligation and refinancing bonds. RaymondJames & Associates.

Dutchess County, N.Y., $57 million of local de-velopment corporation debt securities. Bank ofAmerica Merrill Lynch.

Michigan Finance Authority, $439 million ofhospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stan-ley.

Texas, $123 million of North East IndependentSchool District refinancing bonds. Citigroup Glo-bal Markets Inc.

Texas, $83 million of Arlington Higher Educa-tion Finance Corporation revenue bonds. RBCCapital Markets.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, Calif.,$150 million of taxable bonds. Goldman, Sachs.

Treasury AuctionsSet for This Week

seemed like a preposterous no-tion: that a third party could grabbroadcast signals through an ar-ray of antennas and serve up theprogramming over the Internetwithout paying retransmissionfees. I was there, and you couldsee the justices struggling to bal-ance current copyright lawagainst the technological future.It seemed clear that if they had abullet that would just kill Aereoand not claim innovation as col-lateral damage, they would.

But it’s not that simple. De-spite the deep skepticism the jus-tices displayed toward Aereo’sargument, the company mightsurvive simply because it repre-sents digital entrepreneurialismthat the court is loath to sup-press.

And that had some of the enter-tainment executives in attend-ance struggling to hide theiranxiety. “I’m less comfortablethan I was going into the hear-ing,” said one senior televisionexecutive, who preferred to letthe lawyers do the talking.

It’s still a long shot — copy-right law and the government are

on the broadcasters’ side — butas a concept, Aereo is a smartmissile aimed at the bundle.

Next came HBO, which overthe years has defined cable pro-gramming (remember “It’s notTV, it’s HBO”?). The pay channelon Wednesday cut a deal withAmazon to license some of itsprograms for streaming on Ama-zon’s Prime service. Popular pasthits like “The Sopranos,” “SixFeet Under” and “The Wire,”along with mini-series and origi-nal movies, will be available toPrime members, and shows like“Girls” and “Veep” will becomeavailable over the course of themultiyear deal.

The arrangement excludessome of HBO’s most popularshows, including the currentmegahit “Game of Thrones,” butstill, quality programming thathas long made cable such enter-taining catnip — and given oxy-gen to various premium bundles— will now be available throughanother platform.

The Federal CommunicationsCommission was up next. Its an-nouncement late Wednesday thatcontent providers could becharged extra for enhancedstreaming would seem to besomething of a firewall for cable.It could mean that costs will risefor streaming outfits like Apple,

Hulu and Netflix — costs that willbe passed onto the consumer —but it will also mean a more sta-ble platform for viewing on theInternet.

Cable’s more reliable perform-ance has served as a deterrentfor cord-cutting — I’ve neverseen a “buffering” notice watch-ing Showtime — and if over-the-web programmers are forced tospend and upgrade, the viewingexperience could become morereliable, more cablelike, if youwill. The bundles that are assem-bled in that streaming ecosystemwould be a much cheaper mix-and-match affair.

It’s also worth pointing outthat if Comcast’s proposed take-over of Time Warner Cable goesthrough, the giant new companywill be the king of all bundlers,able to use market power andtechnological innovation to pro-tect the business model. But amerger that has been viewed asinevitable seemed slightly less soafter Netflix came out forcefullyagainst it. In a letter to investorsthat was really aimed at regula-tors, Netflix said the mergerwould give Comcast “anticom-petitive leverage.”

If the merger loses momen-tum, look for other players tocome off the sidelines. That maybe good for competition, but bad

for the bundle. The bundle is also taking some

worrisome hits from the shift inviewing platforms. More andmore people are spending moreand more minutes looking attheir phones, where the bundlehas little presence. A report re-leased last month by the researchand consulting firm MillwardBrown said that screen time onphones has surpassed screentime in front of the television.Young consumers will spend lesstime and money on an expensivebundle of programs on bigscreens as they spend more timeon little ones.

I’m not saying the jig — er,business model — is up, but ifyour platform, your program-ming and your audience are allunder attack, the degree of diffi-culty in selling big packages ofentertainment over cable is in-creasing.

I should point out that when Icalled Laura Martin, a co-writerof the Needham report on theconsequences of an unbundledcable business, she was havingalmost none of it. The HBO saleto Amazon? A back catalog of lit-tle consequence. The Comcastmerger? It makes a lot of senseto her and still seems very likely.(She also noted that subscrip-

tions were up at Comcast.) Shesays it is about time that Netflixand its ilk pay their fair share forcarriage, and she doesn’t buy thenumbers suggesting television islosing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that televisionviewing continued to rise no mat-ter how many screens vied for at-tention, and cable channels weremoving quickly to stay relevantin a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Every-where, we think the TV bundlehas never been stronger,” shesaid.

Other than that, we were incomplete agreement.

Ultimately, it isn’t any onething that will pull apart whathas been a durable generator ofprofits; instead it will be the ac-cretion of options and the chang-ing habits of consumers whowant to choose their program-ming according to their tastes,rather than having it pushed atthem in bulk by a cable company.No less than Steve Jobs once re-minded me that change happensslowly and then it happens all atonce.

I’m looking forward to the daywhen I can buy only what I wantto watch, or eat, without econom-ic penalty. In other words, no, Ido not want fries with that.

HBO to sell programming to Amazon

Aereo argues before the

Supreme Court

F.C.C. to allow paying for faster streaming

Netflix weighs in against

Comcast merger

Americans spending more time on mobile than in front of the TV

Unraveling the BundleThe cable bundle, the collection of networks that consumers buy from cable companies, has been a source of profit and growth for cable and media companies. But recent events suggest this approach to delivering programming is being pulled apart.

New Challenges Chip Away at Cable’s Pillar of ProfitFrom First Business Page

Email: carr@nytimes.com;Twitter: @carr2n

By BREE FENGand SHANSHAN WANG

BEIJING — Chinese regula-tors have ordered streaming vid-eo websites nationwide to takedown four popular Americantelevision series, “The Big BangTheory,” “The Good Wife,”“NCIS” and “The Practice.”

The move precedes new rulesseeking to close a loophole thathas allowed foreign shows toflourish online, even as censorshave limited them on broadcasttelevision.

Unlike previous takedown or-ders, this one was accompaniedby no explanation from the coun-try’s top broadcast regulator, theState Administration of Press,Publication, Radio, Film andTelevision, or Sapprft, employeesof two streaming sites said onSunday. The order was issuedFriday, one employee said.

In recent years, Americanshows like AMC’s “The WalkingDead,” the CW’s “The VampireDiaries” and Netflix’s “House ofCards” have found avid onlineaudiences in China, particularlyamong the growing middle class.With plenty of violence, supersti-tion and scandal — all themesChinese government censorsfrown upon — these shows prob-ably would never have made it toChinese television. But throughthe Internet they have gainedmillions of fans on video websitesthat legally license the shows.

Now, the government has in-dicated in private talks with In-ternet companies that it plans toclose this gap with new rules this

year, company employees say. “Sapprft truly is currently ac-

tively studying a set of plans tospecifically manage importedshows on the Internet,” saidSpenser Wang, director of gov-ernment cooperation at thestreaming site iQiyi.

China’s streaming video indus-try has grown exponentially inrecent years, as more peoplehave eschewed the approvedtelevision menu of family-friend-ly soap operas, revolutionarydramas and costume shows. TheShanghai-based Internet re-search firm iResearch estimatedthat China’s online video revenueincreased 41.9 percent in 2013,reaching 12.81 billion renminbi, or$2 billion.

The online video companiesare exploiting policy loopholes tobroadcast more foreign program-ming than is allowed on film andtelevision. Officially, the govern-ment limits foreign films to 34 ayear and imposes quotas on thenumber of foreign shows on TV.

Yet websites like iQiyi, YoukuTudou and Sohu provide China’s600 million Internet users withlargely free access to nearly allthe latest foreign televisionshows, as well as hundreds offilms and documentaries. Chi-nese viewers can often watchshows the same day they arebroadcast in the United States.The websites feature legal con-tent licensed from American net-works like NBC and CBS.

Domestic dramas and varietyshows are still significantly morepopular than foreign program-ming. But American dramashave grown in popularity, partic-ularly among younger, urban au-

diences. Senior employees at the video

companies were unsure how thefinal regulations would look. Butthey said the new policies couldaffect the number of shows thatwebsites could broadcast, howthe shows would be censored,and cooperation models with for-eign copyright holders.

According to a senior employ-ee at another leading Chinesevideo website, who was not au-thorized to speak publicly, reg-ulators are considering at leasttwo measures, which could sig-nificantly affect their business.

One option is establishing anagency as the intermediary be-tween foreign copyright holdersand Chinese Internet companies.Chinese websites now typicallynegotiate licensing contracts di-rectly with copyright holders.

“Frankly, it’d basically be say-ing, ‘Don’t directly contact for-eign parties anymore,’” the em-ployee said. The person addedthat this was “possibly the least-hoped-for outcome.”

Another possibility is “a uni-fied censorship unit” to decidewhat programs could be broad-cast and the degree of editing.Websites now rely mostly on self-censorship. According to Mr.Wang, most foreign shows are“basically not edited.”

Consider Netflix’s political dra-ma “House of Cards.” Despitetouching on some of the thorniestchallenges confronting UnitedStates-China relations, the showwas not screened in any way bycensors, said Sohu’s chief execu-tive, Charles Zhang. The first epi-sode of Season 2 drew nearly 20million views.

China Halts Streaming of 4 U.S. Shows

Echo Xie contributed research.

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-04-28,B,002,Bs-4C,E1

I’m not saying the jig — er, business model — is up, but if your platform, your programming and your audience are all under attack, the de-gree of difficulty in selling big packages of en-tertainment over cable is increasing.

I should point out that when I called Laura Martin, a co-writer of the Needham report on the consequences of an unbundled cable busi-ness, she was having almost none of it. The HBo sale to Amazon? A back catalog of little consequence. The Comcast merger? It makes a lot of sense to her and still seems very likely. (She also noted that subscriptions were up at Comcast.) She says it is about time that Netflix and its ilk pay their fair share for carriage, and she doesn’t buy the numbers suggesting televi-sion is losing mind share.

Ms. Martin said that television viewing continued to rise no matter how many screens vied for attention, and cable channels were

moving quickly to stay relevant in a smaller-screen environment.

“With the advent of TV Everywhere, we think the TV bundle has never been stronger,” she said.

other than that, we were in complete agree-ment.

Ultimately, it isn’t any one thing that will pull apart what has been a durable generator of profits; instead it will be the accretion of options and the changing habits of consumers who want to choose their programming according to their tastes, rather than having it pushed at them in bulk by a cable company. No less than Steve Jobs once reminded me that change happens slowly and then it happens all at once.

I’m looking forward to the day when I can buy only what I want to watch, or eat, without economic penalty. In other words, no, I do not want fries with that. n