Why Netflix’s future is in “House of Cards,” “Arrested Development” – not Disney

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Netflix hailed as a “game-changer” its landmark deal last week to bring Disney movies to the streaming service. But while that deal may be significant, it pales in importance next to another looming development – the February debut of its original series “House of Cards.”

The economic benefits of the Disney deal, which gives the company streaming rights to much of Disney‘s catalog and straight-to-DVD movies as well as the exclusive rights to the studio’s new movies from 2016 to 2018, won’t be felt for years.

But the rollout of new, made-for-Netflix shows, which moves the company into a game owned by broadcast and cable – and follows a model set by everyone from HBO to AMC – will be a near-term bellwether of the company’s future success, analysts and observers say.

“You don’t identify a movie you watch on TV with a channel, but you definitely identify an original series with a channel,” Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, told TheWrap. “What Netflix is doing with its original series is getting something exclusive that makes you have to go to Netflix if you want to see it. It’s branding.”

They include the long-awaited rebirth of cult favorite “Arrested Development” and original pieces like Eli Roth’s “Hemlock Grove,” Jenji Kohan’s “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” from director David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey.

Like “Lilyhammer,” all episodes of the shows’ first seasons will be released at once, allowing for binge viewing by Netflix subscribers.

The Disney deal is momentous in that it marks the first time a digital pay-TV distributor has earned exclusive rights to a major studio’s new releases. Both analysts and studio executives say Netflix will pay more than $ 300 million a year for those rights, a startling sum for a company that has minimized the importance of films. Netflix has declined to discuss any figures.

Some analysts argue the Disney deal is a positive development, but one that will not move the needle when it comes to attracting new members.

“Netflix customers will like it when Disney movies show up, but not many people will want to sign up for Netflix because they have 15 new movies a year I want to see,” Pachter said.

That’s why Netflix bankrolled “Arrested Development,” a show canceled by Fox in 2006 that still has a small but loyal audience, one that will assuredly watch the new season on Netflix. That’s also why it has invested in so many new shows from established artists like Kohan, who created “Weeds,” and Roth, a successful horror filmmaker.

While the company’s first foray into original programming – Steven Van Zandt’s “Lilyhammer” – didn’t make much of a splash, the new shows debuting next year look far more promising.

It also has committed a reported $ 100 million for two seasons of “House of Cards,” as well as offering complete creative freedom to Fincher and his team.

The money the streaming service spends on its own shows is a pittance compared to what it shells out in licensing deals, but that original content will distinguish Netflix from competitors in broadcast, like HBO, and in digital, like Amazon.

“Everybody is trying to get their brand to the top of people’s minds, and sometimes that requires a substantial expenditure and doing something different, like original production,” Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming at Katz Television Group, told TheWrap.

More than any of its competitors in the streaming-video market, Netflix is attempting to transform itself into a digitized form of HBO, which began by airing studio movies.

HBO later added lower-cost programming, such as stand-up comedy shows, and eventually original series and films. Showtime, Starz and others soon followed.

Because it is not locked into a schedule, Netflix can host an unlimited amount of programming and owns a wealth of information about its subscribers to tailor its offerings to specific viewers and track their success.

Figuring out just what constitutes a “hit,” however, will be difficult. As it has with previous original shows like “Lilyhammer,” Netflix will not release viewing numbers for its upcoming shows. The company stresses that immediate viewing is less important than developing a loyal following over time.

As for the Disney deal, Netflix already had rights to films from that studio and Sony under an agreement with Starz, which in September 2011 opted not to renew its deal.

“They got something they used to have and had to pay a lot more money for it,” Seth Willenson, a library-valuation expert, producer and former studio executive told TheWrap.

So what changed? Exclusivity.

Disney’s new releases will appear on Netflix during the same window when they would have been showing on an HBO or another pay channel. It also means that new rivals, such as Amazon and Hulu Plus, won’t be getting the latest “Avengers” sequel at the same time – or the upcoming series of new “Star Wars” films.

“The argument is that what they are getting now from Disney will only be on Netflix,” Vasily Karasyov, an analyst with Susquehanna told TheWrap. “What they were getting before was only on Starz. It’s more exclusive. They are trying to do what Starz did in the ’90s and buy up rights and put it on the map.”

At the UBS conference last week in New York, Chief Creative Officer Ted Sarandos teased the possibility of pursuing exclusive deals with more studios as well.

This new attraction to movies represents a change of tune for the Los Altos, Calif.-based company. After all, Netflix has been publicly dismissive in recent months of film’s importance to its service, stressing its viewers’ penchant for binge-watching television shows, like AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.”

About 60 percent of Netflix viewing time is spent on TV, a number that has only grown in recent years. Exclusivity increasingly motivates its decision-making on the TV side as well, which is one reason it allowed its deal with A&E Networks to expire in September, taking shows like “Storage Wars” and “Hoarders” off Netflix.

And nothing is more exclusive than content you fund yourself.

“It wants content unique to its platform,” Karasyov said. “No one says, ‘Come to my website because we have the same stuff everyone else does.’”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

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DealBook: Live Blog: DealBook's Post-Election Conference

The fiscal cliff in the United States, the European debt crisis and the slowdown in China’s economy have all weighed on deal-making. The 2012 election results were supposed to provide some clarity to our fiscal future, but the outcome of the much-debated tax increases and budget cuts remains uncertain. Our inaugural conference, “DealBook: Opportunities for Tomorrow,” will explore the challenges and the possibilities in this environment.

Writers and editors at The New York Times will interview leaders and chief executives from Wall Street to Silicon Valley in a day-long conference at the Times Center in New York. Whether you’re attending in person or watching our video feed above, you can read up-to-minute analysis from our live blog of the day’s events and take part in the conversation on Twitter with the hash tag #DBconf.

The official conference web site includes biographies of the speakers and an agenda for the day’s events.

For the best viewing experience, readers who want to watch the embedded video below should turn off auto-refresh.

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'Right-to-work' measure passes in Michigan Legislature

Controversial "right-to-work" legislation covering public-sector employees passed the Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

The House passed the bill, 58 to 51, as union opponents of the measure booed inside the Capitol and an estimated 12,000 people rallied outside. The state's Senate approved the bill last week.

The House is now scheduled to vote on a right-to-work bill for private-sector employees, which would cover Michigan's auto industry. If that measure passes, Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, meaning unions cannot require members to pay dues as a condition of employment.

Michigan is the fourth state in the Midwest to become embroiled in labor controversy since 2010, when a slate of Republican governors were swept into statehouses across the nation. The speed with which the right-to-work measure are being passed worries some labor experts, who say that it was once unimaginable that Michigan, where 17.5% of the workforce is unionized, would become a right-to-work state.

"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, will mean a lot."

But even as the Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied protesters on the steps of Lansing City Hall, labor leaders were hurriedly seeking ways to reverse the legislation down the road.

Michigan can't go the way of Ohio, where a referendum last year reversed legislation that would have restricted collective bargaining. Michigan's right-to-work legislation is attached to an appropriations bill, meaning it can't be reversed by referendum. Also, it may be too risky to wait and go the way of Wisconsin, where litigation continues after a judge struck down parts of a collective bargaining law.

However, in Michigan, there is an option of a "statutory initiative," which would be permitted if opponents of the bills can collect enough signatures to equal 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, union leaders say. A so-called veto referendum could be triggered by collecting signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast.

A statutory initiative would allow voters to cast a ballot on right-to-work legisation in November 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder, who has said he would support the legislation, will be up for reelection.

"There are multiple options for a referendum," a senior labor leader said Tuesday. "All options are on the table. This fight is far from over."

It’s unclear whether unions are promoting a referendum now to warn Snyder of the repercussions that signing the legislation would have.

Democrats including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell met with Snyder on Monday to urge him to veto the legislation. The governor promised to "seriously" consider their concerns, but Democrats remained worried that he would sign the bills.

“The governor has a choice: He can put this on the ballot, and let the voters make the determination, or he can jam it through a lame-duck session,” Dingell said Monday.

Snyder, a businessman before he became governor, was elected in 2010 by a landslide, beating his opponent by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But only 35.5% of respondents said they thought he was doing an "excellent" or "good" job in a Michigan State University survey this fall, and that figure could fall as the controversy continues.

"I think this will pass, and be signed, and there will be a long struggle with the United Auto Workers and other unions,” said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research. "They’re going to focus their attentions on overturning this. I don’t think the war has even begun."

ALSO:

Obama blasts right-to-work in Michigan

Ohio votes to overturn new collective bargaining law

Protests re-ignite as Michigan right-to-work bill nears final OK

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Water-Activated Seat-Belt Release Could Prevent Drowning Deaths

If it just happened in the movies….

Unfortunately, around 400 U.S. motorists die each year from drowning when their vehicle plunges into water. To help eliminate the chances of being restrained in a submerged car, a new seat belt mechanism has been designed to make sure that occupants can extract themselves quickly and safely when underwater.

The Escape Belt looks like the traditional female latch that plugs into a car’s buckle. When water hits the interior, a salt pill inside the latch dissolves, causing a hammer to release the male section of the belt to free the occupant. It’s the same technology used by airlines in self-inflating life jackets, and while you’ll still need to open the door, popping the seat belt won’t be an issue.

Fijen TMLS, the Dutch manufacturer that created the product, says that the cartridge needs replacement every few years, but that the system is robust enough that it won’t activate from a spilled Fresca. The mechanism costs a little under $40 for each unit and the company is pursuing automotive supplier partnerships to bring it to market.

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FX orders “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – FX has ordered the Middle Eastern drama pilot “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, as well as “Six Feet Under” and “Lost” producer Craig Wright.

The pilot follows an American family drawn into the troubles of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation. The series, written and created by Raff, was developed by Gordon and Wright. The pilot comes from Gordon’s shingle at 20th Century Fox Television, Teakwood Lane.

Gordon, Raff and Wright are executive producers in association with Keshet Broadcasting. If “Tyrant” becomes a series, Wright will serve as showrunner.

“We are thrilled to bring ‘Tyrant’ to FX,” said Nick Grad, FX’s executive vice president of original programming. “The brilliant and wholly original concept just blew us all away. It’s pretty amazing when you read a script and can instantly imagine it becoming one of the best shows on television. We’re grateful to the producers for choosing to bring it to FX and look forward to continuing our partnership with our friends at Fox 21.”

“‘Tyrant’ is exactly the type of project we aim to do at Fox 21 – working with extremely talented writer/creators to create provocative material with big, breakout characters and themes,” said Bert Salke, president of Fox 21. “This script has excited everyone who’s read it and it’s particularly gratifying to be back working with FX, with whom we have had such a successful partnership on the fantastic ‘Sons of Anarchy.’”

Production is tentatively slated to begin in the spring.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Global Update: Hand-Held Device Locates Hot Spots of Lead Contamination

Using a hand-held scanner to map hot spots where the soil is full of lead could protect children in mining towns against brain damage, scientists at Columbia University concluded in a new study.

Touched to the ground, the device, an X-ray fluorescence scanner, can measure the soil’s lead content in less than a minute, said Alexander van Geen, a geochemist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and an author of the study, which is in the current issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. The “XRF guns,” which are often used by scrap-metal sorters, cost between $15,000 and $40,000.

His team tested the scanners in Cerro de Pasco, Peru, a town in the high Andes with mines dating back 1,400 years. Samples as close as 100 yards apart showed widely variable lead levels, so it is possible to find and mark off the areas most dangerous to young children, who get fine lead dust on their hands while playing and then put their fingers in their mouths.

“People assume the contamination is everywhere, and it’s not,” Dr. van Geen said. “It could be in one backyard and not in another.” Or, he said, in an untested playground, schoolyard, or any place where children gather.

The technology could be useful anywhere families live close to mines or smelters, which is common in Latin America and Africa, he said. Lead is a byproduct not just of lead mines, but of mining for gold, silver, copper and other metals.

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Economic Scene: Behind Tax Loopholes, Some Worthy Goals

If there is one idea that everybody seems to agree on while peering over the fiscal cliff, it is that we should close the loopholes that riddle the tax code. It is offered as a painless way to raise money, like fixing a leak or ending some unfair privilege.

But there is a problem with this consensus. Many of the things the government promotes with loopholes are truly valuable to lots of Americans. Tax credits and deductions may be murky and convoluted, and perhaps are not the best way to achieve government objectives. But that doesn’t mean they serve no purpose at all.

Consider education. The federal government has helped Americans pay for college since World War II. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty featured the Higher Education Act, which included grants and loans for low-income families. Jimmy Carter’s Middle Income Student Assistance Act vastly increased federal aid by granting access to the middle class.

Right after winning re-election to a second term, Bill Clinton set out to surpass these efforts and provide access to at least two years of higher education to all Americans. Rather than offering federal spending as the Democrats who preceded him did, President Clinton mainly offered tax breaks for higher education: $40 billion worth of them over five years, tucked into the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act.

It was a strategy for the times. Three years earlier, Republicans had taken control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. “Republicans would vote for any tax reduction that came along without questioning it much,” said Michael Graetz, an expert on taxation at Columbia Law School who worked in the administration of George H. W. Bush. “Democrats found that the only way they could get the kind of spending they wanted was in the form of tax benefits.”

Through the hall of mirrors that is government budgeting, President Clinton’s tax breaks for higher education accomplished two conflicting goals. They amounted to the biggest expansion in federal money for higher education since the G.I. bill. At the same time, they made the government look smaller.

Today, the political tide has turned decidedly against tax breaks. Last week, House Speaker John A. Boehner may have put President Clinton’s higher-education benefits on the chopping block. In exchange for less spending on federal entitlements, he said Republicans could drop their vow of “no new revenues” and let the government raise $800 billion over 10 years by cutting or paring tax breaks.

Though the offer to raise money by closing loopholes has a bipartisan pedigree — based on a plan proposed last year by the Democrat Erskine Bowles and the Republican Alan Simpson, the chairmen of President Obama’s deficit commission — it relies on rhetorical sleight of hand. If tax breaks are equivalent to government spending, eliminating them is equivalent to spending cuts. Mr. Boehner’s offer to do away with tax breaks in exchange for cutting entitlements raises no new revenue. It amounts to cutting spending twice.

Loopholes make up a huge chunk of our government. Known as tax expenditures in the arcane lexicon of budget experts, they have grown a lot since the early 1990s — a consequence of our increasing demand for government programs coupled with our resistance to raising taxes. Last year they added up to more than 7 percent of the nation’s economic output, a sizable figure considering that all federal taxes took some 15 percent of the economy.

Many breaks do the same job as taxing and spending. One of them, for instance, allows employers to pay for employees’ health insurance tax-free. As an alternative, the government might collect the revenue and offer health plans to workers. Rather than offer a mortgage interest deduction, the government could offer grants to help Americans buy homes. A subsidy for the poor could replace the earned-income tax credit.

According to Eric Toder and Donald Marron of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, including all the spendinglike exclusions as regular items in the budget increases the size of the federal government by about 4 percent of our gross domestic product. That’s about $600 billion in “hidden” spending through the tax code last year alone.

We may want to trim or eliminate certain tax breaks for specific reasons — because they are poorly targeted or inefficient. The exclusion for employer-provided health insurance — which will cost the government $1 trillion over the next five years, according to the Tax Policy Center — is pretty inefficient as a tool to deliver health care.

It leaves out not only the unemployed, but also 42 percent of working Americans, whose companies don’t provide coverage despite the subsidy. By encouraging unlimited spending on health by high earners, the tax break contributes to making the United States one of the most costly health care systems in the world.

Most federal tax breaks benefit primarily higher-income Americans, who face higher tax rates and therefore get a bigger break from deductions. Rather than strengthen middle-class homeownership, the deduction for mortgage interest mainly helps the affluent buy bigger homes than they otherwise would, leading to higher home prices. Critics argue that the tax break for charitable donations is often merely a subsidy for church donations and college football stadiums.

And some breaks aimed carefully to help low-income and middle-income Americans — like the earned-income tax credit — can pack some unhelpful incentives too. Even President Clinton’s tax breaks for higher education fell short of the goal. They eased the financial burden of college, for sure, but participation was much smaller than the administration had anticipated. A report by the Congressional Research Service found that the program did very little to increase enrollment.

Just because some tax breaks are inefficient and misdirected does not necessarily mean that the goals they serve are unworthy, however. It only means that there may be more effective ways to achieve government objectives.

For instance, President Obama’s fiscal stimulus made some of President Clinton’s higher-education tax credits refundable, so they could help lower-income Americans who owed no income tax and could not benefit from a tax credit.

Ending the tax break for health insurance provided by employers could make sense, for example, when subsidies are available for everybody to be insured. Tax breaks for individual retirement account contributions could be rolled back in exchange for more generous Social Security benefits for the poor.

It makes sense to have an open debate about the purpose, efficacy and cost of our many tax loopholes. But that is not the same thing as simply looking for loopholes to close. It is a debate about the purpose of government and how best to achieve its goals.

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @portereduardo

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Latin music star Jenni Rivera believed dead in plane crash

Fans of Mexican-American singing star Jenni Rivera held a vigil Sunday night in Lynwood

MEXICO CITY — Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera, the "diva de la banda" whose commanding voice burst through the limits of regional Latin music and made her a cross-border sensation and the queen of a business empire, was believed to have died Sunday when the small jet carrying her and members of her entourage crashed in mountainous terrain.

Rivera, a native of Long Beach, was 43. Mexico's ministry of transportation did not confirm her death outright, but it said that she had been aboard the plane and that no one had survived the crash. Six others, including two pilots, also were on board.

"Everything suggests, with the evidence that's been found, that it was the airplane that the singer Jenni Rivera was traveling in," said Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's secretary of communications and transportation. Of the crash site, Ruiz said: "Everything is destroyed. Nothing is recognizable."

Word of the accident ricocheted around the entertainment industry, with performer after performer expressing shock and grief. Fans gathered outside Rivera's four-acre estate in Encino.

"She was the Diana Ross of Mexican music," said Gustavo Lopez, an executive vice president at Universal Music Latin Entertainment, an umbrella group that includes Rivera's label. Lopez called Rivera "larger than life" and said that based on ticket sales, she was by far the top-grossing female artist in Mexico.

"Remember her with your heart the way she was," her father, Don Pedro Rivera, told reporters in Spanish on Sunday evening. "She never looked back. She was a beautiful person with the whole world."

Rivera had performed a concert in Monterrey, Mexico, on Saturday night — her standard fare of knee-buckling power ballads, pop-infused interpretations of traditional banda music and dizzying rhinestone costume changes.

At a news conference after the show, Rivera appeared happy and tranquil, pausing at one point to take a call on her cellphone that turned out to be a wrong number. She fielded questions about struggles in her personal life, including her recent separation from husband Esteban Loaiza, a professional baseball player.

"I can't focus on the negative," she said in Spanish. "Because that will defeat you. That will destroy you.... The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

Hours later, shortly after 3 a.m., Rivera is believed to have boarded a Learjet 25, which took off under clear skies. The jet headed south, toward Toluca, west of Mexico City; there, Rivera had been scheduled to tape the television show "La Voz" — Mexico's version of "The Voice" — on which she was a judge.

The plane, built in 1969 and registered to a Las Vegas talent management firm, reached 11,000 feet. But 10 minutes and 62 miles into the flight, air traffic controllers lost contact with its pilots, according to Mexican authorities. The jet crashed outside Iturbide, a remote city that straddles one of the few roads bisecting Mexico's Sierra de Arteaga national park.

Wreckage was scattered across several football fields' worth of terrain. An investigation into the cause of the crash was underway, and attempts to identify the remains of the victims had begun.

Rivera, a mother of five and grandmother of two, was believed to have been traveling with her publicist Arturo Rivera, who was not related to her, as well as with her lawyer, hairstylist and makeup artist; reports of their names were not consistent. Their identities were not confirmed by authorities. The pilots were identified as Miguel Perez and Alejandro Torres.

In the world of regional Latin music — norteño, cumbia and ranchera are among the popular niches — Rivera was practically royalty.

Her father was a noted singer of the Mexican storytelling ballads known as corridos. In the 1980s he launched the record label Cintas Acuario. It began as a swap-meet booth and grew into an influential and taste-making independent outfit, fueling the careers of artists such as the late Chalino Sanchez. Jenni Rivera's four brothers were associated with the music industry; her brother Lupillo, in particular, is a huge star in his own right.

Born on July 2, 1969, Rivera initially showed little inclination to join the family business. She worked for a time in real estate. But after a pregnancy and a divorce, she went to work for her father's record label and found her voice, literally and figuratively.

She released her first studio album in 2003, when she was 34.

Her path had not been easy, but rather than running from it, she wrote it into her music — domestic violence; struggles with weight; raising her children alone, or "sin capitan," without a captain. She was known for marathon live shows that left audiences exhilarated and exhausted; by the fifth hour of one recent performance, she was drinking straight from a tequila bottle and launching into a cover of "I Will Survive."

In a witty and sometimes baffling stew of Spanish and English, she sang about her three husbands, about drug traffickers, in tribute to her father, in tribute to her gynecologist.

She became, in a most unlikely way, a feminist hero among Latin women in Mexico and the United States and a powerful player in a genre of music dominated by men and machismo. Regional Mexican music styles had long been seen as limiting to artists, but Rivera shrugged off the labels and brought traditional-laced music — some of which sounded perilously close to polka — to a massive pop audience.

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What Should We Name NASA's New Mars Rover?

With the monumental success of NASA’s Curiosity rover, the agency recently decided to build a younger sibling for the probe out of spare parts.

During a surprise press conference on Dec. 4, NASA associate administrator of science John Grunsfeld announced plans for the new rover that will launch to Mars in 2020. Some in the scientific community reacted by wondering if NASA was completely addicted to Mars, blind to the fact that there are other planets in the solar system. But most are firmly behind the new rover, with folks already rallying around the idea that it will take the first step in a long-held dream of the planetary science community, a Mars sample-return mission.

The public reaction ranged from excitement (“Awesome, another rover!”) to jaded indifference (“Big whoop, another rover.”). Twitter had a field day coming up with silly names for the as-yet nameless rover, many of which were collected under the hashtag #newmarsrovernames. While NASA will no doubt sponsor a contest for young students to christen the probe, that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun in the meantime.

Here we’ve collected some of the best online responses to NASA’s big announcement. Take a look and vote on which one you think is best below.

Punny Names

Just about everyone and their robot dog suggested a pun, with the number one choice being “Red” as in “Red Rover.” On the other hand, Curiosity is getting a little brother, so what could be more appropriate than Brover? Several folks wanted NASA to embrace the robot’s freedom of sexual expression with the name Bi-Curiosity. And a good number of names played off the idea of curiosity and its feline-murdering ways with The Cat.

Many humorous suggestions centered on the fact that the new rover would be very similar to the old one, with names like Mimicry, Accompany, Supplantation, I’m Curious Too, and the mouthful Revor, Son of Rover, Picker-upper-er of Dirt and Hopefully Other Stuff.

Sarcastic Names

Our favorite online Curiosity doppelganger @SarcasticRover led the charge on curmudgeonly names, writing “How about “Apathy” – young people love that, right?” on Twitter shortly after the announcement.

A great number of the public seemed to favor Redundancy, though Mediocrity, Indifference, and Superfluous made appearances on the internet as well. One Twitter user best summed up these folks, suggesting we call the new rover Meh.

Geeky Names

You can always count on space geeks to be geeky. We got a few mentions of Sagan for the scientist fanboys out there and Serenity for the Joss Whedon acolytes. Stephen Colbert also got a mention with Colbert Rides Again, a possible reference to the man’s namesake treadmill on the International Space Station.

A few people picked up on NASA’s job creator obligations and singular Mars focus, suggesting Job Security and I Should Be On Titan.

Positive Names

Not all suggestions centered on fun and games. The new rover is expected to be just as popular and inspirational as the last and at least one Twitter user threw down a list of beautiful names such as Serendipity, Vitality, Veracity, Agility, Infinity, Audacity, and Tenacity.

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