Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

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Doctor who admitted dealing drugs to get his license back

A West Hollywood psychiatrist who pleaded guilty to felony drug dealing after pills he prescribed turned up for sale on Craigslist will be able to get his medical license back in a year under an agreement announced Friday by the Medical Board of California.

The sanction, though harsh by board standards, allows Nathan Kuemmerle, 40, a former methamphetamine user, to treat patients again as soon as next February.

As a result of the criminal charges, Kuemmerle had lost his privilege to prescribe controlled substances and must apply to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration if he wants it restored. Kuemmerle agreed to undergo random drug testing, enroll in a physician ethics class and seek psychological counseling, among other conditions.

Kuemmerle was featured in a Dec. 30 Times report on the state's failure to use its vast prescription drug database to identify reckless prescribing by physicians.

In 2009, Kuemmerle was the state's most prolific prescriber of Adderall, a widely abused stimulant, records show. His prescribing drew scrutiny only after Redondo Beach narcotics detectives arrested a suspected drug dealer peddling Adderall pills on Craigslist. The suspect identified Kuemmerle as the source of the prescriptions.

Two months later, a second suspected drug dealer arrested in Arizona also pointed authorities to Kuemmerle. When drug agents checked the state's prescription drug database, known as CURES, they discovered that in 2009 Kuemmerle prescribed nearly four times as many of the highest-dose Adderall pills as the No. 2 doctor on the list, records show. Additionally, records show, he was the state's No. 2 prescriber of the most highly controlled narcotic painkillers.

Kuemmerle was arrested and pleaded guilty in 2011 to drug dealing and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Federal agents had alleged that Kuemmerle was selling prescriptions to people he had never seen, much less examined, records show. Kuemmerle wrote an average of 15 prescriptions per day for controlled substances over a four-year period, a figure a medical expert described as "remarkably high," records show.

Narcotics detectives said they were amazed that Kuemmerle was able to prescribe so many drugs undetected for so long, even though state authorities had access to a database that collected a record every time a pharmacy dispensed one.

Kuemmerle could not be reached for comment.

The types of drugs Kuemmerle prescribed are fueling an epidemic of overdose deaths that has drawn the attention of drug enforcement agencies, lawmakers and medical authorities. The response has largely focused on illicit sources of prescription drugs, such as pharmacy robberies and teens stealing from home medicine cabinets.

But a Times investigation of more than 3,700 prescription drug deaths in Southern California found that nearly half of the decedents had a doctor's prescription for one or more of the medications that caused or contributed to their deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged states to mine prescription drug monitoring databases to identify and stop reckless prescribers. At least six states do so. California does not.

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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The World's Tweets Light Up the Globe in Stunning Live Visualization

It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page.

The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas. But Ernewein has packaged it all in a subtly interactive visualization that avoids distracting the viewer while still imparting a great amount of information.

Meanwhile, a selection of tweets are projected, along with latest hashtags and mentions, all while tracking total tweets, words, and characters. The length of the two gray lines on the display represent the number of characters and words in each tweet.

Though it’s one of the most beautiful, Tweetping is far from the first to display geotagged tweet information; coders have built sites to display election tweets, adjustable parameter maps, and even 3-D visualizations.

Tweetping even represents Antarctica, but not the ISS. And there’s no pause button; like Twitter itself, Tweetping’s data accrues incessantly; there’s no off switch but the back button.

Nathan Hurst is learning how to make some things, knows how to fix some others, and is already pretty good at breaking everything else. He has written for Outside and Wired, traveled in Africa, and tweets as @NathanBHurst.

Read more by Nathan Hurst

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Why is Beckham sitting on the bench for nothing?

PARIS (AP) — David Beckham has won league championships in three countries on two continents, earns millions of dollars in endorsements and his name is practically synonymous with celebrity itself. He has his own cologne, for goodness sake. So why is he even bothering to sit on the bench for the Paris Saint-Germain football club?

His royal highness of football doesn’t need the money — and he’s said he’ll donate his PSG salary to charity — but he does need to start thinking about life after the game. At 37, Beckham is practically a dinosaur for the sport, and he acknowledged in his welcoming press conference on Thursday that he probably won’t be in the team’s starting lineup.

Instead, Beckham may be beginning to put in place a plan for life after the final whistle. Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist who writes about sports and media culture at Staffordshire University, said that prolonged exposure is always useful to celebrities building empires. In that way, the deal with PSG does double work: It keeps his name in lights for longer and also garners extra attention for the charitable contribution.

“When he does stop playing, which is going to be quite soon, his overall brand appeal will inevitably decline because we will inevitably forget about this guy,” he said. “I think he’s probably thinking, I want to stay in the shop window for a bit longer.”

But Cashmore also cautioned against being too cynical in assessing Beckham’s motives: “The guy is an athlete. He wants to do what he loves to do.”

Bruno Satin, an independent players’ agent who was with IMG for a decade, also said that the move to PSG — even if it’s to sit on the bench — is a step up for Beckham.

“For him, to be on the PSG team, it’s a higher level than being on the Los Angeles Galaxy,” he said. “For the world of football, for real football, the Los Angeles Galaxy is nothing on the map of football.”

Some wondered if Beckham was trying to avoid the notoriously sticky fingers of the French state with his plans to donate his salary.

But Sandra Hodzic, a tax lawyer with Salans, said the deduction an individual can take on such contributions is limited. Instead, it would be smarter for PSG to directly donate the salary — and take a big tax break in the process.

Doing so would have an added benefit for the club: UEFA, the governing body for European football, mandate that clubs break even. The donation could allow PSG to essentially write off Beckham’s entire salary — a huge help for a team notorious for mega-contracts.

Beckham, meanwhile, would be better off trying to avoid becoming a French tax resident at all. So far, Hodzic said, he is making all the right moves: His family is staying in London, he plans to live only part-time in the country for less than six months, and his primary source of income —whether or not he donates his salary — isn’t being earned in France.

Beckham’s agent did not return calls for comment on specifics of the contract.

Still, the charitable contribution has raised the question about what Beckham is getting out of the deal. For one, he likely is still getting a cut of rights to his image. Jerseys with his name on them were already selling out at the PSG store on the Champs-Elysees on Friday.

Cashmore, who wrote a book called “Beckham,” calls him a “marketing phenomenon” and estimates that about 70 percent of Beckham’s income comes from endorsement deals — with Adidas, for instance. That makes salary almost irrelevant — especially for a man estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth 160 million pounds ($ 253 million).

But the football feeds the endorsements, Cashmore says.

“It makes an awful lot of business sense to perpetuate, to prolong his active competitive football career,” he said, especially with a team that’s doing fairly well this year. “It makes an awful lot of sense for him to showcase himself because it will generate more income from his various other sponsorship and licensing activities.”

But certainly this move, as any at this late-stage in his playing career, is being made with an eye on what will come next. Cashmore said that when Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy, there was an understanding that he would eventually become an ambassador for American soccer. That plan clearly fell by the wayside — perhaps because Major League Soccer decided it was just too expensive to keep on the star after his presence on American soil failed to generate more interest in the game.

It’s possible, Cashmore said, that Beckham is looking for a similar deal after his stint at PSG, which is Qatari owned. The tiny, wealthy nation is hosting the World Cup in 2022, and Beckham’s contract with PSG will establish a relationship with it; from there, a role as, say, an ambassador for the tournament would seem more natural.

“For his after-career conversion, it’s important to have links with major actors in the world of sports,” said Satin. And Qatar is certainly one. It has poured money into PSG, drawing major names like striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It also funds the satellite network Al Jazeera, which could provide Beckham with a platform. And then there’s the World Cup.

In the end, though, Satin said the clue to Beckham’s thinking may be as simple as the eternal draw of Paris.

“PSG has become a glamorous club, a pretty nice club in a beautiful city,” said Bruno Satin, an agent. “It’s just two hours on the Eurostar (train) from London.”

____

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris contributed to this report from London.

____

Follow Sarah DiLorenzo at http://www.twitter.com/sdilorenzo

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Media Decoder Blog: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits

8:30 p.m. | Updated

The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority.

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a brief telephone interview on Friday that she would “cast a wide net” while searching for a successor to Mr. Capus. In the interim, the leaders of the news division will report directly to her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel became Mr. Capus’s boss last July when Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, consolidated all of NBC’s news units — NBC News, the cable news channels MSNBC and CNBC, and its stake in the Weather Channel — under a new umbrella, the NBCUniversal News Group. Mr. Burke asked Ms. Fili-Krushel, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to run it, while keeping Mr. Capus and the heads of the other units in place.

Ms. Fili-Krushel worked early in her career at HBO and Lifetime. A veteran of the Walt Disney Company, where she helped program ABC, and  Time Warner, where she was an administrator, she is by her own admission not a journalist.  But now she is, by default, the highest-ranking woman in the American television news industry — not just at the moment, but in the history of the medium. The heads of the news divisions at ABC and CBS are men, as are the heads of the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Ms. Fili-Krushel has kept a low public profile, but has been a forceful presence behind the scenes, recently moving from her office on the 51st floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, near Mr. Burke’s, to a new one on the third floor, where NBC News is based. On Friday, she said she had spent her first six months “learning, listening and getting to know the players here.” She called the News Group an “unbelievably strong organization.”

Though Mr. Capus’s exit saddened many at NBC News on Friday, it came as little surprise. He had previously reported directly to Mr. Burke, but after the restructuring he reported to Ms. Fili-Krushel, and he made no secret of his unhappiness with the change. His contract had a clause that allowed him to leave in the event that he no longer reported to Mr. Burke, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement at NBC, and he decided to exercise that right after months of contemplation. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by the network to speak publicly.

Mr. Capus told Ms. Fili-Krushel of his intent to leave last Friday. It is likely that he would have left sooner, but a series of major news stories kept him busy late last year — including Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election and the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Capus also oversaw the network’s response to the kidnapping of Richard Engel and an NBC News crew in Syria last month.

“It has been a privilege to have spent two decades here, but it is now time to head in a new direction,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff members on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Capus guided NBC through a revolutionary time in news-gathering and distribution. He maintained the news division’s profitability, managed tensions between NBC News and its increasingly liberal cable channel MSNBC, and fostered new business ventures like an in-house production company and an annual education summit. Last year, he unwound an old deal with Microsoft to give the news division complete control over its Web site, now named NBCNews.com, for the first time.

Ms. Fili-Krushel wrote in a separate e-mail to staff members that “NBC News is America’s leading source of television news and Steve has been a big part of that success.”

NBC News is the producer of the most popular evening newscast in the country. But its single biggest source of profits, the morning show “Today,” fell to second place last year, behind ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the first time since the 1990s. The decline caused widespread anxiety inside the news division and speculation that Mr. Capus would be relieved of his duties.

Inside NBC, both Mr. Capus and the executive producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, received much of the blame for the botched removal of Ann Curry from “Today” last June, which worsened the show’s already tenuous position in the ratings. Ms. Fili-Krushel was put in charge just a few weeks later.

Mr. Bell was replaced at “Today” last fall and is now the executive producer for NBC Olympics. Savannah Guthrie is now the co-host of “Today,” and Ms. Curry is a national and international correspondent for the network, but is rarely seen. Mr. Capus’s exit was seen by some at the network as the last shoe that had to drop.

In his e-mail to staff members, Mr. Capus called it an “extremely difficult decision to walk away,” noting that he started at NBC as a producer 20 years ago this month. He did not make any mention of what he would do next. “Journalism is, indeed, a noble calling, and I have much I hope to accomplish in the next phase of my career,” he wrote.

“Today” continues to lose to ABC’s “Good Morning America” among total viewers, but lately it has won a few weeks in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet.

“NBC Nightly News” has more successfully fended off ABC’s “World News,” despite an aggressive push by ABC. Mr. Capus said, “NBC News has grown in all key metrics — from ratings and reputation to profitability.”

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Former N.Y. Mayor Ed Koch dies at 88

NEW YORK—

Former Mayor Ed Koch, the combative, acid-tongued politician who rescued the city from near-financial ruin during a three-term City Hall run in which he embodied New York chutzpah for the rest of the world, died Friday. He was 88.

Koch died at 2 a.m., spokesman George Arzt said. The funeral will be Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

After leaving City Hall in January 1990, Koch battled assorted health problems and heart disease.

The larger-than-life Koch, who breezed through the streets of New York flashing his signature thumbs-up sign, won a national reputation with his feisty style. “How'm I doing?” was his trademark question to constituents, although the answer mattered little to Koch. The mayor always thought he was doing wonderfully.

Bald and bombastic, paunchy and pretentious, the city's 105th mayor was quick with a friendly quip and equally fast with a cutting remark for his political enemies.

“You punch me, I punch back,” Koch once memorably observed. “I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag.”

The mayor dismissed his critics as “wackos,” waged verbal war with developer Donald Trump (”piggy”) and mayoral successor Rudolph Giuliani (”nasty man”), lambasted the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and once reduced the head of the City Council to tears.

“I'm not the type to get ulcers,” he wrote in “Mayor,” his autobiography. “I give them.”

When President George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, Koch, a Democrat, crossed party lines to support him and spoke at the GOP convention. He also endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election efforts at a time when Bloomberg was a Republican. Koch described himself as “a liberal with sanity.”

He was also an outspoken supporter of Israel, willing to criticize anyone, including President Barack Obama, over decisions Koch thought could indicate any wavering of support for that nation.

In a WLIW television program “The Jews of New York,” Koch spoke of his attachment to his faith.

“Jews have always thought that having someone elevated with his head above the grass was not good for the Jews. I never felt that way,” he said. “I believe that you have to stand up.”

Under his watch from 1978-89, the city climbed out of near-financial ruin thanks to Koch's tough fiscal policies and razor-sharp budget cuts, and subway service improved enormously. But homelessness and AIDS soared through the 1980s, and critics charged that City Hall's responses were too little, too late.

Koch said in a 2009 interview with The New York Times that he had few regrets about his time in office but still felt guilt over a decision he made as mayor to close Sydenham Hospital in Harlem. The move saved $9 million, but Koch said in 2009 that it was wrong “because black doctors couldn't get into other hospitals” at the time.

“That was uncaring of me,” he said. “They helped elect me, and then in my zeal to do the right thing, I did something now that I regret.”

Among his favorite moments as mayor was the day in 1980 when, seized by inspiration, he walked down to the Brooklyn Bridge during a rare transit strike and began yelling encouragement to commuters walking to work.

“I began to yell, `Walk over the bridge! Walk over the bridge! We're not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees!' And people began to applaud,” he recalled at a 2012 forum. His success in rallying New Yorkers in the face of the strike was, he said, his biggest personal achievement as mayor.

His mark on the city has been set in steel: The Queensboro Bridge — connecting Manhattan to Queens and celebrated in the Simon and Garfunkel tune “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)” — was renamed in Koch's honor in 2011.

Koch was a champion of gay rights, taking on the Roman Catholic Church and scores of political leaders.

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Creative Freedom Will Push Cord-Cutting More Than Your Media Box

Amazon and Netflix are cribbing from the hands-off approach cable giants like HBO and FX take to creating amazing television, a move that will lead to better shows by tempting writers and producers to create original programming.

Streaming media companies are increasingly focusing on generating original content as they try to draw viewers away from network and cable television. Netflix is leading the way, and its flagship show, House of Cards, premiers today. Not to be outdone, Amazon said Thursday that it is expanding its plans beyond situation comedies to include children’s programming.

To do this, Netflix and others are removing the traditional rules and oversight that can hamper creativity. Forget about the focus groups shaping shows, the suits calling the shots and the advertisers wringing their hands over something “edgy.” Streaming media companies are positioning themselves as the place where writers, directors and producers can do what they want, without fear of micromanaging.

“Netflix offered total creative control of the production.” According Media Rights Capital to CEO and co-founder Modi Wiczyk. “Everybody believed in Netflix.”

This will be key to the success of streaming media’s attempt to be more than the place where you watch the latest movies or catch up on Breaking Bad. The challenge has never been getting into people’s homes — Netflix is available on just about device that can be hooked up to a TV, and Amazon is pursuing similar ubiquity. The challenge is generating programming people will want to watch and cannot get anywhere else.

This is one of the reasons Netflix got House of Cards. The show, produced by David Fincher, is based upon the best selling book by Lord Michael Dobbs and a TV series by the BBC. House of Cards will provide Netflix with the kind of credibility usually reserved for the likes of AMC or HBO. It’s also an interesting experiment, because Netflix plans to release the entire season — 13 episodes in all — today.

But the show may have never been made had it not been for the artistic license Netflix gave the production company Media Rights Capital. Dobbs was wary of licensing the story for fear of relinquishing control and seeing his story sullied or sold out by the whims of traditional network or studio executives. But Netflix gave the production company wide latitude to do as it pleased.

“Media Rights Capital ran it fully,” Wiczyk told Wired. “Netflix left Media Rights Capital alone to complete and deliver the show. A huge deal when you think about the fact that this is the most expensive drama on TV.”

Still, it’s a huge gamble to Netflix, even with big names like Fincher — who directed films like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network and Fight Club — and Kevin Spacey involved. Netflix is rumored to have paid about $3.8 million per episode for House of Cards, about twice what television programs typically cost. But Netflix’s bet could pay off — it saw a jump of 2 million subscribers in the fourth quarter.

The show’s launch is so big that Xbox is offering unlocked Netflix access to Xbox live subscribers. Currently only Xbox Live Gold members have access to the streaming app.

Amazon is taking a similar tack in its bid to offer original programming. The company will finance 12 pilots — six comedies, six kids’ shows — and allow viewers to decide what gets picked up. Traditional studios and networks do the same thing, but use small focus groups.

But regardless of how a show is picked to stream, Amazon is keen on letting artists be artist. “We can bring insights into what Amazon customers might respond to, but the best shows will be driven by a passionate, talented creative team and it’s important to know when to get out of the way and let the magic happen,” Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios told Wired via email.

The rush to challenge established networks by offering original content is a good way for companies like Netflix and Amazon to attract more subscribers. But it’s also good for viewers, who may want throw down the shackles of their local cable company. Cord cutting used to mean paying a premium to see first-run shows via iTunes or Amazon 24 hours after they were broadcast, or waiting a year to see them on a streaming service like Netflix.

Viewers will still have to rely upon such methods to see shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Girls, but they’ll soon be able to enjoy content they won’t find anywhere else.

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Singer Randy Travis pleads guilty to DWI, gets probation

DALLAS (Reuters) – Grammy Award-winning country singer Randy Travis on Thursday pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated and was sentenced to two years probation for an incident in which Texas State Troopers found him lying naked near his crashed car.

Travis, 53, was ordered to serve at least 30 days at an in-patient alcohol treatment facility and was not charged for threatening the troopers who arrested him August 7 in Tioga, Texas, about 60 miles north of Dallas.

Travis’ blood alcohol level was more than double the legal limit in Texas when he was arrested, authorities said.

The guilty plea to a Class A misdemeanor in Grayson County Court ends legal troubles Travis faced in connection with several incidents last year, his attorney Larry Friedman said.

“He is ready to put all this behind him and focus on his music and his fans,” Friedman said. “He expects a trouble-free 2013.”

Travis was also fined $ 2,000 and sentenced to 100 hours of community service. Travis will have to serve six months in jail if he fails to complete the probation terms.

Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown called the sentence “appropriate” given Travis’ level of intoxication and behavior during his arrest.

“We are all hopeful that Mr. Travis is on the road to recovery,” Brown said in a statement.

In January, Travis pleaded no contest in a case in which police said he assaulted a man on August 23 in a church parking lot while trying to intervene in a disagreement between a woman, who is now his fiancée, and her estranged husband.

Travis is serving 90 days of deferred adjudication in that case, which means the charges could be dismissed if he successfully completes the requirements, Friedman said.

The singer filed a lawsuit recently in a Collin County District Court against the man he was charged with assaulting, claiming the altercation was an attempt to injure and embarrass him.

Travis, known for such hits as “Forever and Ever, Amen,” was cited in February 2012 for public intoxication and paid a fine, Friedman said.

(Editing by David Bailey and Stacey Joyce)

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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