Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

8:53 p.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.

Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored a commitment to NBCUniversal and its highly profitable cable channels, expanding theme parks and the resurgent NBC broadcast network.

“We always thought it was a strong possibility that we’d some day own 100 percent,” Mr. Roberts said in a telephone interview.

He added that the rapidly changing television business and the growing necessity of owning content as well as the delivery systems sped up the decision. “It’s been a very smooth couple of years, and the content continues to get more valuable with new revenue streams,” he said.

Comcast also said that NBCUniversal would buy the NBC studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Center, as well as the CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Those transactions will cost about $1.4 billion.

Mr. Roberts called the 30 Rockefeller Center offices “iconic” and said it would have been “expensive to replicate” studios elsewhere for the “Today” show, “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and other programs produced there. “We’re proud to be associated with it,” Mr. Roberts said of the building.

With the office space comes naming rights for the building, according to a General Electric spokeswoman. So it is possible that one of New York’s most famous landmarks, with its giant red G.E. sign, could soon be displaying a Comcast sign instead.

When asked about a possible logo swap on the building, owned by Tishman Speyer, Mr. Roberts told CNBC, that is “not something we’re focused on talking about today.” Nevertheless, the sale was visible in a prominent way Tuesday night: the G.E. letters, which have adorned the top of 30 Rock for several decades, were not illuminated for an hour after sunset. But the lights flickered back on later in the evening.

Comcast, with a conservative, low-profile culture, had clashed with the G.E. approach, according to employees and executives in television. Comcast moved NBCUniversal’s executive offices from the 52nd floor to the 51st floor — less opulent space that features smaller executive offices and a cozy communal coffee room instead of General Electric’s lavish executive dining room.

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in early 2011 by acquiring 51 percent of the media company from General Electric. The structure of the deal gave Comcast the option of buying out G.E. in a three-and-a-half to seven-year time frame. In part because of the clash in corporate cultures, television executives said, both sides were eager to accelerate the sale.

Price was also a factor. Mr. Roberts said he believed the stake would have cost more had Comcast waited. Also, he pointed to the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings to be released late Tuesday afternoon, which put it in a strong position to complete the sale.

Comcast reported a near record-breaking year with $20 billion in operating cash flow in the fiscal year 2012. In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Comcast’s cash flow increased 7.3 percent to $5.3 billion. Revenue at NBCUniversal grew 4.8 percent to $6 billion.

“We’ve had two years to make the transition and to make the investments that we believe will continue to take off,” Mr. Roberts said.

The transactions with General Electric will be largely financed with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion of subsidiary senior unsecured notes to be issued to G.E. and a $2 billion in borrowings.

Even with the investment in NBCUniversal, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent to 78 cents a share and buy back $2 billion in stock in 2013.

When it acquired the 51 percent stake two years ago, Comcast committed to paying about $6.5 billion in cash and contributed all of its cable channels, including E! and some regional sports networks, to the newly established NBCUniversal joint venture. Those channels were valued at $7.25 billion.

The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.

Mr. Roberts and Michael J. Angelakis, vice chairman and chief financial officer for the Comcast Corporation, led the negotiations that began last year with Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, and Keith Sharon, the company’s chief financial officer. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and CBRE provided financial and strategic advice.

The sale ends a long relationship between General Electric and NBC that goes back before the founding days of television. In 1926, the Radio Corporation of America created the NBC network. General Electric owned R.C.A. until 1930. It regained control of R.C.A., including NBC, in 1986, in a deal worth $6.4 billion at the time.

In a slide show on the company’s “GE Reports” Web site titled “It’s a Wrap: GE, NBC Part Ways, Together They’ve Changed History,” G.E. said the deal with Comcast “caps a historic, centurylong journey for the two companies that gave birth to modern home entertainment.”

Mr. Immelt has said that NBCUniversal did not mesh with G.E.’s core industrial businesses. That became even more apparent when the company became a minority stakeholder with no control over how the business was run, according to a person briefed on G.E.’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations publicly.

“By adding significant new capital to our balanced capital allocation plan, we can accelerate our share buyback plans while investing in growth in our core businesses,” Mr. Immelt said in a statement. He added: “For nearly 30 years, NBC — and later NBCUniversal — has been a great business for G.E. and our investors.”

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North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test

Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

South Korean army soldiers patroled along a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak Pavilion, near the demilitarized zone of Panmunjom, in Paju, South Korea, on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — North Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third, long-threatened nuclear test, according to the official KCNA news service, posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

The KCNA said it used a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously” and that the test “did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment.”

The test led to a crescendo of international condemnation Tuesday, with President Obama calling it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the international community” against North Korea. Russia, Britain, South Korea and the United Nations similarly swiftly condemned the blast. The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. New York time to take up the matter.

Preliminary estimates by South Korea suggested the test was much more powerful than the previous two conducted by the North.

Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for South Korea’s Defense Ministry, said Tuesday’s blast generated an explosive yield of between six and seven kilotons, far greater than the yield of less than one kiloton detected in the North’s 2006 test and an estimated yield of two to six kilotons in its 2009 test. But it appeared less powerful than the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima in 1945, which had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons.

The test is the first under the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, and an open act of defiance to the Chinese, who urged the young leader not to risk open confrontation by setting off the weapon. In a statement issued several hours after the blast, China expressed its “staunch opposition” to the test but called for “all parties concerned to respond calmly.” And it was unclear how China would act at the United Nations Security Council as it convenes Tuesday.

The nuclear test came the same day President Obama is to use his State of the Union address to call for drastically reducing nuclear arms around the world, potentially bringing the number of deployed American weapons to roughly 1,000 from the current 1,700.

Even before Pyongyang conducted Tuesday’s test, the Obama administration had already threatened to take additional action to penalize the North through the United Nations. But the fact is that there are few sanctions left to apply against the most unpredictable country in Asia. The only penalty that would truly hurt the North would be a cutoff of oil and other aid from China. And until now, despite issuing warnings, the Chinese have feared instability and chaos in the North more than its growing nuclear and missile capability, and the Chinese leadership has refused to participate in sanctions.

Mr. Kim, believed to be about 29, appears to be betting that even a third test would not change the Chinese calculus.

The test set off a scramble among Washington’s Asian allies to assess what the North Koreans had done.

The United States sent aloft aircraft equipped with delicate sensors that may, depending on the winds, be able to determine whether it was a plutonium or uranium weapon. The Japanese defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, said Japan had ordered the dispatch of an Air Self-Defense Force jet to monitor for radioactivity in Japanese airspace.

Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told Parliament that the country was considering “its own actions, including sanctions, to resolve this and other issues.”

But the threat may be largely empty, because trade is limited and the United States and its allies have refrained from a naval blockade of North Korea or other steps that could revive open conflict, which has been avoided on the Korean Peninsula since an armistice was declared 60 years ago.

It may take days or weeks to determine independently if the test, was successful. American officials will also be looking for signs of whether the North, for the first time, conducted a test of a uranium weapon, based on a uranium enrichment capability it has been pursuing for a decade. The past two tests used plutonium, reprocessed from one of the country’s now-defunct nuclear reactors. While the country has only enough plutonium for a half-dozen or so bombs, it can produce enriched uranium well into the future.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea. Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, and Chris Buckley and Gerry Mullany contributed from Hong Kong.

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Jayhawks back to winning ways with rout of K-State

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Bill Self was the first to acknowledge that folks around Kansas had grown spoiled.

It's only natural when one of the marquee programs in college basketball, one built upon iconic names such as James Naismith and Phog Allen, rattles off eight consecutive conference championships and throws in another national title along the way.

So when the Jayhawks scuffled to three straight losses, including an embarrassing defeat at TCU, it seemed as if the world was collapsing around the walls of Allen Fieldhouse.

"I think we just got spoiled, just like everyone around here does, that this can't happen to us," Self said matter-of-factly, "and we just let it happen."

On Monday night, they finally put an end to it.

Ben McLemore scored 30 points on his 20th birthday, Jeff Withey dominated in the paint and the No. 14 Jayhawks routed No. 10 Kansas State 83-62 to forge a tie for first place in the Big 12 between the bitter in-state rivals.

"I think it'll help us down the road, which is obviously the most important," Self said of the morass, which in reality had extended all the way back to the start of conference play. "We still control our own destiny, even though it will be difficult, without question."

One thing the Jayhawks (20-4, 8-3) have to their advantage is two wins over the Wildcats (19-5, 8-3), who had used a four-game winning streak to take over first place.

Rodney McGruder had 20 points and Angel Rodriguez added 17 for the Wildcats on Monday night, but they never seemed to be in the game despite entering the Phog as the higher-ranked team for the first time since Feb. 20, 1982.

The Jayhawks used two big runs in the first half to take a 47-29 lead at the break, and then thwarted every rally that the veteran Wildcats tried to muster down the stretch.

The result has become predictable: Kansas won for the 11th time in the last 12 games between the rivals, and for the 46th time in their last 49 meetings, prompting the student section to chant "This is our state!" once again in the closing minutes.

"Last week is over. We're going to learn from that," Withey said. "We met so many times and we talked about that so many times, and it's not going to happen again."

Most of the Jayhawks' struggles the past two weeks have centered on their offense, which had produced just 13 points in the first half in that loss to TCU last Wednesday night.

That wasn't much of a problem against the Wildcats.

McLemore, Kansas' star freshman, was 9 of 13 from the field and 6 of 10 from 3. Withey had 17 points, 10 boards and five blocked shots. Kevin Young had 13 points and Travis Releford 10.

Even backup guard Naadir Tharpe got into the act with seven points, eight assists and only one turnover, putting an exclamation mark on the quintessential get-right kind of game for Kansas.

"In the game of basketball, or any sport, it's not always who you're playing but when you're playing them," Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said. "They had a very tough week. They probably hung their head for a while. They got their head up. It's always a good remedy to come home."

Young got the Jayhawks off to a fast start with a dunk off a nifty feed from Tharpe, one of six assists he had in the first half. Withey was the recipient of Young's feed on the next trip, and McLemore's 3-pointer from the wing forced the Wildcats to call time out.

It didn't do much to ebb the tide.

Kansas used a 14-3 run to gain control, and then a 12-3 charge fueled by Tharpe and McLemore to take a 40-19 lead with 3:26 remaining in the first half.

Kansas ended up shooting 58.6 percent from the field, and 5 of 10 from beyond the arc, in building a 47-29 halftime advantage. It was the most points the offensively troubled Jayhawks had scored in a half since putting up 53 in the first half against American on Dec. 29.

"We just played as a team," McLemore said. "Went out there and gave it our all. It started on the defensive end. We got some stops and created on the offensive end."

Kansas State drew within 58-43 with 14:04 left, but Withey snuffed out the comeback.

The reigning Big 12 defensive player of the year swatted away a shot by McGruder and, moments later, threw down a massive dunk over Jordan Henriquez — a fellow 7-footer — before finishing off the three-point play. Withey then rejected McGruder at the other end, and Travis Releford had the putback that restored the Jayhawks' 20-point lead at 63-43 with 11:59 to go.

The Jayhawks put the game on cruise control down the stretch, giving Weber — who once followed Self as the man in charge at Illinois — his third loss in three tries against Kansas, and the Wildcats their sixth straight defeat in Lawrence.

Talk about things getting back to normal.

"First of all, losing three in a row is not — I understand it's not forgivable. It's a terrible, terrible deal. But what we're going through is what 99 percent of teams in America go through," Self said. "There's only 1 percent that doesn't go through this kind of stretch. And we're spoiled because it's been a long time since we went through one of these stretches."

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Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

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Bits: Where the Singles Are: A Dating Guide by ZIP Code

At Trulia, a residential real estate Web site, the analysts are constantly crunching data — home and apartment listings, prices, school ratings, crime rates and other numbers.

With Valentine’s Day coming this week, Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist and head of analytics, decided to sift through household, gender, city and neighborhood data in America. If you’re looking for someone single of the opposite sex, where are your chances best and worst, statistically speaking?

He posted his findings on the Trulia Trends site on Monday.

According to Trulia’s analysis, men living alone most outnumber women living alone in Las Vegas; Honolulu; Palm Bay, Fla.; Gary, Ind.; and San Jose, Calif.

Women most outnumber men in Bethesda, Md.; Washington; Boston; New York; and Raleigh, N.C.

At the broader metropolitan level, Mr. Kolko said in an interview, labor markets are typically the determining factor. Men outnumber women in regions that have a higher proportion of technology, manufacturing and construction jobs. Women outnumber men most in places with more professional services jobs and in bigger cities.

The data sets for many thousands of ZIP codes, Mr. Kolko explained, all came from the 2010 census and were downloaded onto a laptop, then sliced, diced and manipulated using Stata data analysis and statistical software.

The data was massaged a bit. Only people living alone were counted; an earlier survey showed singles prefer to date someone who lives alone. And this time, Mr. Kolko factored out the gay and lesbian population, using the assumption that the share of gay or lesbian singles in neighborhoods would be roughly equal to same-sex couples living in those neighborhoods. (Last year, Mr. Kolko did an analysis of the ZIP code neighborhoods with the highest shares of gays and lesbians.)

Local industries may play a large role in gender populations for cities as a whole. But neighborhoods, Mr. Kolko said, are a more genuine reflection of where people want to live. So for each of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, he calculated the ZIP codes with the highest ratio of men to women, and women to men.

Men, Mr. Kolko observed, tend to settle near downtown or in recently redeveloped neighborhoods like the Waterfront in Boston or Long Island City in New York. Women are more likely to live in residential areas, including the Marina in San Francisco and Queen Anne in Seattle, and neighborhoods that are seen as safe and are more affluent, like the Upper East Side of New York and Upper Connecticut Avenue in Washington.

More women in high-income neighborhoods? Is this another sign of the much-discussed trend of women doing better than men? Mr. Kolko did not push the data that far. “It probably says more about where men and women choose to live in a given city rather than which gender is more successful,” he said.

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India Ink: Message From a Sadhu: Detach From Family to Avoid Sadness

ALLAHABAD, Uttar Pradesh — Do your duty, but stop worrying so much about parents, wife and children.

That was the message of the 60-year-old Hindu mystic Maheshanand Giri from the Shri Panchayati Mahanirvani Akhara as he sat outside of a yellow and red tent set up on the vast grounds of the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad this weekend.

Attachments bring sadness, he said.

“Getting rid of attachments is the first step to salvation,” he said, sitting beside a small wood fire. “If your family is sick, if your father dies, then you will feel sadness.”

The mystics who come to the Kumbh are part of religious orders that were once mercenary armies that terrified parts of northern India centuries ago, according to William Pinch, a professor of history at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

“They are the ghosts of armies past,” Dr. Pinch said in an interview. “And they were often employed as assassins.”

These armies often stole or bought children to fill their ranks, Dr. Pinch said. And the rituals of joining the orders usually involved cutting all ties to family, he said.

“The rituals that they undergo when they join the order are a separation from caste society, which involves a social death,” Dr. Pinch said. “The order becomes your family.”

Ascetics are often thought by Westerners to be peace-loving monks, but Hindu sadhus generally revere Lord Shiva, who could lift mountains with one finger and was known to sever heads. At the Kumbh, the sadhus brandished ceremonial tridents, swords and spears. Some waved around baseball bats, and their celebrations during the procession to the Ganges were decidedly warlike.

But in his tent, Mr. Giri’s message to those who had little appetite for abandoning their family was to take a somewhat more detached view of loved ones.

“With your wife, you should stop having sex after you have your children,” he said. “And with your children, you should do your duty but draw a line in your attachment. If you are too attached, you will not be happy.”

He said he was particularly angry about the proliferation of pornography through cell phones and the Internet. “The government should do something to stop this,” he said.

But a fondness for coffee is allowed, he said, even though some may call it an unhealthy addiction.

“Drinking coffee is your choice. It’s not an attachment,” he said. “It’s O.K. to drink coffee.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from Allahabad.

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Snedeker on the rise with Pebble win

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Everything about Brandt Snedeker moves at warp speed, including his rapid rise into golf's elite.

He talks so fast that he always seems to be a few words short of a complete sentence. He plays fast, giving his hips a quick swivel to set his position before pulling the trigger. Even his putts go into the hole quickly, most of them struck with purpose instead of hope.

But when he reached the 18th tee box at Pebble Beach, he had to wait for the fairway to clear before taking a victory stroll up one of the prettiest closing holes in golf.

And that was OK with him.

"There's not much better place to be on the planet with a three-shot lead on that tee box," Snedeker said Sunday. "It felt pretty special there."

Indeed, Snedeker is in a special place.

With his 10th consecutive round in the 60s, Snedeker finally had a trophy to show for his astounding start to the 2013 season. He knew the opening seven holes were critical, and he made an eagle and three birdies to build a quick lead. He realized a late birdie would give him a cushion, and he fired at the flag on the par-3 17th to 10 feet below the cup and holed the putt. He closed with a 7-under 65 for a two-shot win over Chris Kirk in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

It was the fifth win of his career, and his fourth in the last 22 months. But it's the last six months that have really turned heads.

He captured the $10 million FedEx Cup prize with a win at the Tour Championship, where he held off the likes of Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Luke Donald going into the final round. He played in his first Ryder Cup. He started this year with a third-place at Kapalua, and runner-up finishes in consecutive weeks to Woods and Phil Mickelson, both of whom had big leads going into the final round.

Go back to the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs last August and Snedeker now has six top 3s in his last nine starts. Since missing the cut at the PGA Championship, he has broken par in 33 out of 37 rounds. No wonder he now is No. 4 in the world, the best ranking of his career.

"Just hard to put into words, to have a stretch of golf like I had the last couple of months," Snedeker said. "Something you dream about. Something you think that you can do, but you don't really know until you actually put it together. And I have.

"I'm really enjoying this, and hopefully can parlay this into the best year of my career."

Snedeker set the tournament record at 19-under 267, one shot better than Mickelson (2007) and Mark O'Meara (1997), who each had a 20-under 268 when Poppy Hills (par 72) was part of the rotation. It has been replaced by Monterey Peninsula, which is a par 70.

Chris Kirk closed with a 66 to finish alone in second, though he was never closer than two shots of the lead on the back nine and finished with a birdie. Kirk finished on 269, a score that would have been good enough to win all but four times at Pebble Beach since this tournament began in 1937.

"We've had a lot of tournaments like that on tour this year where somebody has really just kind of blitzed the field," Kirk said. "I felt like I played well enough to win a golf tournament and came up a little bit short."

Snedeker could have said the same thing — except for Woods at Torrey Pines, and Mickelson going obscenely low to win the Phoenix Open.

He wasn't about to take a back seat to anyone at Pebble Beach.

Snedeker started the final round tied with James Hahn, a 31-year-old rookie from the Bay Area, with Kirk one shot behind. He set the tone early with a 4-iron into the par-5 second hole that was on the edge of the left green. It hit the collar and kicked slightly to the right, rolling toward the pin until it settled 4 feet behind the cup.

"Kind of lucky, but it was a good shot, and to end up where it did was a great way to start the day," he said.

Hahn hit his approach high and pure, and it nearly hit Snedeker's ball before stopping 6 feet away. Hahn missed. Snedeker made. It was like that over the front nine.

Snedeker started to pull away with a 3-wood that came off the edge of the green, ran by the cup and stopped 20 feet away for a two-putt birdie. Then, he holed a 15-foot birdie putt on the seventh and was on his way.

Most impressive about Snedeker this week was bouncing back from bogey. He made five bogeys for the entire week, and four times made birdie on the next hole. On Sunday, his lone mistake was knocking an 18-foot birdie off the green and three-putting for bogey at No. 9.

The answer, like everything else about him, was fast and furious.

He knocked in a 25-foot birdie putt on the 10th, and then holed from 15 feet for birdie on the 12th. Right when it looked as though he would make another bogey on the par-3 12th, he made par from just short of 10 feet.

There's a reason Snedeker led the PGA Tour in putting last year, though it's his driving that has vastly improved. Snedeker studied some statistics last year that showed his odds of hitting the green go way up when he starts in the fairway. And once he's on the green, he's tough to beat.

Hahn, who shot 70 and tied for third, was looking forward to learning something from his debut in the final group, and he saw Snedeker put on a clinic.

"I learned that he is a better guy than he is a golfer. The dude is world class," Hahn said. "He's obviously one of the best, if not the best golfer right now, and possibly for the last year. But how he conducts himself as a person on an off the golf course, that's also world class. He deserved to win today. ... I'm sure if you ask him, it was never a doubt that he was going to win the golf tournament."

Snedeker concurred.

"I definitely didn't want to do anything but win today," he said. "I was out there for one purpose and one purpose only, and I was extremely focused all day. I did a great job of staying patient and I did a great job of playing the golf course the way you're supposed to play it."

And the outcome was just what he expected. The way he has been playing, it shouldn't have been any surprise to anyone.

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Well: Getting the Right Addiction Treatment

“Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs.

As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity.

“My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview.

He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free.

“Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.”

Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent.

“Be wary of any program that claims a 100 percent success rate,” Mr. Moyers warned. “There is no such thing.”

“Treatment works to make recovery possible. But recovery is also possible without treatment,” Mr. Moyers said. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What I needed and what worked for me isn’t necessarily what you or your loved one require.”

As with many smokers who must make multiple attempts to quit before finally overcoming an addiction to nicotine, people hooked on alcohol or drugs often must try and try again.

Nor does treatment have as good a chance at succeeding if it is forced upon a person who is not ready to recover. “Treatment does work, but only if the person wants it to,” Mr. Moyers said.

Routes to Success

For those who need a structured program, Mr. Moyers described what to consider to maximize the chances of overcoming addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Most important is to get a thorough assessment before deciding where to go for help. Do you or your loved one meet the criteria for substance dependence? Are there “co-occurring mental illnesses, traumatic or physical disabilities, socioeconomic influences, cultural issues, or family dynamics” that may be complicating the addiction and that can sabotage treatment success?

While most reputable treatment centers do a full assessment before admitting someone, it is important to know if the center or clinic provides the services of professionals who can address any underlying issues revealed by the assessment. For example, if needed, is a psychiatrist or other medical doctor available who could provide therapy and prescribe medication?

Is there a social worker on staff to address challenging family, occupational or other living problems? If a recovering addict goes home to the same problems that precipitated the dependence on alcohol or drugs, the chances of remaining sober or drug-free are greatly reduced.

Is there a program for family members who can participate with the addict in learning the essentials of recovery and how to prepare for the return home once treatment ends?

Finally, does the program offer aftercare and follow-up services? Addiction is now recognized to be a chronic illness that lurks indefinitely within an addict in recovery. As with other chronic ailments, like diabetes or hypertension, lasting control requires hard work and diligence. One slip need not result in a return to abuse, and a good program will help addicts who have completed treatment cope effectively with future challenges to their recovery.

How Families Can Help

“Addiction is a family illness,” Mr. Moyers wrote. Families suffer when someone they love descends into the purgatory of addiction. But contrary to the belief that families should cut off contact with addicts and allow them to reach “rock-bottom” before they can begin recovery, Mr. Moyers said that the bottom is sometimes death.

“It is a dangerous, though popular, misconception that a sick addict can only quit using and start to get well when he ‘hits bottom,’ that is, reaches a point at which he is desperate enough to willingly accept help,” Mr. Moyers wrote.

Rather, he urged families to remain engaged, to keep open the lines of communication and regularly remind the addict of their love and willingness to help if and when help is wanted. But, he added, families must also set firm boundaries — no money, no car, nothing that can be quickly converted into the substance of abuse.

Whether or not the addict ever gets well, Mr. Moyers said, “families have to take care of themselves. They can’t let the addict walk over their lives.”

Sometimes families or friends of an addict decide to do an intervention, confronting the addict with what they see happening and urging the person to seek help, often providing possible therapeutic contacts.

“An intervention can be the key that interrupts the process and enables the addict to recognize the extent of their illness and the need to take responsibility for their behavior,”Mr. Moyers said.

But for an intervention to work, Mr. Moyers said, “the sick person should not be belittled or demeaned.” He also cautioned families to “avoid threats.” He noted that the mind of “the desperate, fearful addict” is subsumed by drugs and alcohol that strip it of logic, empathy and understanding. It “can’t process your threat any better than it can a tearful, emotional plea.”

Resource Network

Mr. Moyer’s book lists nearly two dozen sources of help for addicts and their families. Among them:

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services www.aa.org;

Narcotics Anonymous World Services www.na.org;

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration treatment finder www.samhsa.gov/treatment/;

Al-Anon Family Groups www.Al-anon.alateen.org;

Nar-Anon Family Groups www.nar-anon.org;

Co-Dependents Anonymous World Fellowship www.coda.org.

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This is the second of two articles on addiction treatment. The first can be found here.

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Media Decoder Blog: NPR Campaign Seeks the Quirky Listener

Are you a sky diving algebra teacher? A Sudoku-playing barista? NPR has a new ad campaign aimed at you.

The pilot campaign, in four cities, is intended to bring new listeners to local public radio stations, and in turn NPR’s national programs, by matching a show to even the quirkiest interests.

The three-month campaign, financed with a $750,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and developed by Baltimore agency Planit, includes billboards, as well as television spots, social media outreach and rail, print and digital ads aimed at adults 25 to 54, with at least some college education. Ads point to a Web site, interestingradio.com, where visitors can take a poll, discover shows and click through to a live stream from a local station.

The ads will run in the Dallas/Fort Worth, San Diego, Indianapolis and Orlando, Fla., markets, chosen because they offer geographic diversity, as well as stations that are strong and growing, said Emma Carrasco, who joined NPR two months ago as chief marketing officer, a new position.

The campaign comes as listenership for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” — NPR’s two top programs and the radio news programs that reach the most people nationwide each week — declined from spring 2011 to spring 2012, the last period for which national ratings are available.

Year-to-year, the cumulative weekday audience for “Morning Edition” declined 5 percent to 12.3 million listeners a week, from 13 million, NPR officials said, citing Arbitron ratings figures, while “All Things Considered” was off 4 percent, to 11.8 million weekly listeners, compared with 12.3 million in spring 2011.

Preliminary fall 2012 estimates showed year-to-year audience increases for those two shows, NPR said, but the figures were for major markets only.

Local public radio stations have undertaken similar efforts in recent years. WQXR’s modest 2011 “Obeythoven” campaign used TV spots to get audiences thinking about New York City classical music radio in a new way. Chicago’s WBEZ this month began a cheeky campaign called “2032 Membership Drive” encouraging audiences to procreate and raise a new generation of listeners.

If NPR’s new ads are deemed successful, NPR will seek additional funds to expand them to more markets, Ms. Carrasco said.

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IHT Rendezvous: Hungry Enough to Eat a Horse?

LONDON — As new revelations emerged in the great horse meat scandal gripping the European food industry, there was no indication it would dim the enthusiasm of Continental foodies for their favorite equine delicacies.

Aldi, a cut-price supermarket chain, was the latest retailer to take action, announcing late on Friday that it had removed spaghetti bolognese and beef lasagne from stores in Britain and Ireland after samples were found to contain up to 100 percent horse meat.

In France, meanwhile, fraud inspectors were attempting to track down the origin of the meat, supplied by Comigel, a French supplier, but possibly originating from as far afield as Romania.

Government officials in Britain, who were on Saturday meeting food retailers for crisis talks, have assured consumers there is nothing intrinsically unsafe about eating horse meat.

But, as my colleagues Stephen Castle and Douglas Dalby write, “Few things divide British eating habits from those of continental Europe as much as a distaste for consuming horse meat.”

In many parts of Europe, from Iceland to Italy, gourmets will happily tuck into horse and proclaim its superiority over the humble beef steak.

France’s C4N news Web site took a poke at the fastidious British by asking unwitting consumers of the contaminated products: “Well, was it good or not?”

Umberto Bacchi, writing at International Business Times of the joy of horse tartare, said the scandal would baffle food lovers in other parts of the world, from Italy to Japan.

“As my father comes from Parma, I have eaten my share of horse meat from an early age,” Mr. Bacchi told his readers. “My late grandmother’s fried horse meatballs were a huge hit with the family.”

He went on to extol the virtues of horse meat as high in iron and often recommended to pregnant women, children and the anemic.

“Above all else, however, it is tasty and tender, particularly when cooked for a short time. Hence, the preference for rare steaks or tartare preparations.”

In Belgium, discerning diners delight in having their fries cooked in horse fat, while some Austrians swear by the benefits of horse meat in their dumplings.

Despite the taboo on horse meat that exists in the English-speaking world, the more inquisitive Anglo foodies might at least be tempted to try it the next time they venture to the Continent.

But beware. The esoteric tastes of some Europeans don’t stop at horse. A Swiss newspaper revealed in December that many people in Switzerland still regularly eat dogs and cats.

Apparently it’s perfectly legal and the most popular breed of dog for eating is said to be a close relative of the Rottweiler.

“There’s nothing odd about it”, said one Swiss farmer. “Meat is meat.”

Is he right? The meat-eaters among us happily consume cows, sheep or pigs. So what’s wrong with horse, or even dog? Tell us what you think. And, if you’re a culinary adventurist, where would you draw the line?

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