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Whitman faces a real test as she attempts to pull together a conglomerate beset by growing pains and managerial strife. She is HP’s third CEO in a year and a half. Though HP is the world’s largest information technology company by revenue, the company has had a hard time deciding whether it wanted to grow even bigger or start getting smaller.

“HP has valuation on its side and expectations are low; however, we believe this turnaround story will take time to play out, and the darkening macroeconomic environment is only likely to hinder this cause,” White wrote in a note to clients.

Meanwhile, HP has spent tens of billions of dollars expanding into those more profitable areas of technology services and software. But cracking those businesses means facing entrenched enemies such as IBM Corp. HP faces serious questions about its competitiveness at the high end of those markets.

Revenue fell 3 percent to $32.12 billion, but that beat the $32.05 billion analysts expected.

For the full fiscal year, HP expects to earn at least $4 per share, excluding one-time items. Analysts expected $4.53 per share on that basis.

For the fiscal first quarter, HP expects earnings of 83 cents to 86 cents per share, excluding one-time items. That’s far less than the $1.11 per share analysts expected.

The latest earnings report showed HP’s net income fell 91 percent mostly because of write-downs and charges for Apotheker’s decision to kill off HP’s fledgling tablet and smartphone lines. So staying on track will be a challenge.

The latest quarterly numbers, reported Monday after the market closed, beat Wall Street’s subdued expectations. But the forecast for the 2012 fiscal year left something to be desired. HP’s shares fell.

The company earned $239 million, or 12 cents per share, for the quarter ended Oct. 31. That’s down from $2.54 billion, or $1.10 per share, a year earlier.

The results show a company being pulled in two directions at once. The tensions underline a key challenge for Whitman, who is best known for building eBay Inc. from its startup days into a Silicon Valley icon and now must wrestle with one of technology’s oldest companies amid management dysfunction and economic malaise.

Excluding one-time items, HP earned $1.17 per share, more than the $1.13 analysts expect on average, according to FactSet.

The forecast was lower than most analysts’ targets. HP said it was being “cautious,” citing turmoil in Europe amid the debt crisis there, soft consumer spending and weakening spending by businesses.

SAN FRANCISCO Hewlett-Packard Co.’s first earnings report with Meg Whitman as CEO highlights the troubles she faces in setting a new course for the besieged company.

The profit decline in the latest quarter was caused in large part by $3.3 billion in charges for HP’s earlier decision to kill its tablet and smartphone businesses, as well as other write-downs and acquisition costs. Revenue in three of HP’s biggest divisions personal computers, printers and ink, and servers and networking fell as well.

Apotheker, who succeed Hurd, was ousted in September over his botched handling of key initiatives, particularly the plan to sell or spin off the PC division, which leaked early to the press and which Whitman has reversed.

Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities called the outlook “weak” but said the stock has some appeal in investors because of its previous declines. Indeed, the stock has fallen 40 percent since CEO Mark Hurd was ousted last year in an ethical scandal.

HP’s shares briefly rose in extended trading, after the results were reported. But momentum turned against the company as investors digested the weaker outlook, and the shares fell 28 cents. In regular trading Monday, the stock fell $1.13, or 4 percent, to close at $26.86.

Whitman’s first major decision as CEO was deciding to keep the $40 billion-plus personal computer business, which her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, had wanted to sell or spin off. That business is pulling HP toward the low end of the technology market. PCs notoriously carry thin profit margins, and customers are spending less on them amid challenges from rival technologies, mainly smartphones and tablets. HP sees PCs as an inexpensive way to get its sales hooks into corporations and sell more expensive technology.

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BEIJING (Reuters) China faces what could be its worst year of growth in a decade with policy firepower that developed nations can only dream of.

A record-breaking tax take expected to top 10 trillion yuan ($1.6 trillion) in 2011 gives Beijing fiscal scope to support growth and financial system liquidity, while monetary policy is perfectly poised for easing after a near two-year tightening cycle.

Contrast that with deep deficits across Europe and the United States and the orthodox policies forced upon central banks on both continents in a desperate bid to avoid a slide into economic depression.

It adds up to China having every chance to steer its economy safely from its slowest quarter of growth in 2-1/2 years, and still avoid a hard landing that would reverberate globally.

“There are caveats, but compared to its counterparts, China has plenty of policy flexibility,” Tim Condon, head of Asian economic research at ING in Singapore, told Reuters.

The release of some 1.2 trillion yuan of fiscal deposits in December signals how roomy China’s policy pockets are.

That injection was the single biggest factor behind a jump in money supply and bank credit in December, according to analysts at China International Capital Corp, China’s biggest investment bank.

Chinese banks extended 640.5 billion yuan in new loans in December, up from 562.2 billion yuan in November, while M2 accelerated to 13.6 percent from November’s 12.7 percent.

CICC reckons the odds of a January cut in the ratio of deposits that commercial banks are required to hold as reserves (RRR) have been dramatically reduced as a consequence.

SYSTEMIC LIQUIDITY

The implications of China’s fiscal strength are crucial for money markets. An outflow of government deposits from the balance sheet of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) can boost systemic liquidity far in excess of an RRR cut.

“It’s getting increasingly important as the size is getting bigger,” Xu Hong, an analyst with Daton Securities in northern Chinese city of Dalian told Reuters.

Government deposits fell 891 billion yuan in the last month of 2010, 954 billion yuan in December 2009, and 1,045 billion yuan in 2008, whereas a mere 350 billion yuan was estimated to have been injected into the system by the 50 basis point cut in RRR to 21 percent announced on Nov 30, 2011.

Economists polled recently by Reuters forecast a further 200 bps of RRR cuts to come in 2012, but the impact of that would far less than the 1.7 trillion yuan of injections implied if the government has turned an estimated 800 billion yuan surplus in 2011 into the 900 billion yuan deficit originally budgeted.

Released fiscal funds are a key factor underlying accommodative liquidity in the interbank market, according to Zhou Binglin, an analyst with Guosen Securities.

“That’s possibly why fund supply is not too tight despite capital outflows for two consecutive months and the absence of central bank liquidity injection,” he wrote in a client note.

China’s foreign exchange reserves, the world’s largest, fell $20.6 billion in the fourth quarter to $3.18 trillion as the trade surplus shrank and capital flows reversed.

That fall reinforced the views of many analysts and investors that a PBOC policy move was imminent, but a closer reading of fiscal deposit data would have been a better guide.

“It’s a key fact to pay attention to, particularly at the end of a year, and it’s role is becoming more visible,” a bond trader in the interbank market, who declined to be identified, said.

CHANGING DYNAMICS

China’s surging tax flows are also changing credit dynamics at the local government level, with regional banks being cajoled into providing loans to pet projects in return for the promise of a share of soaring fiscal deposits.

A notice on the website of the Rugao government in China’s eastern Jiangsu province said that the allocation of fiscal deposits would be linked to the credit offered by banks.

“Many small banks are in desperate need of deposits, and fiscal deposits are too big to miss, for which they have to make concessions,” a regional banker in Zhejiang province said.

Banks need the deposits because monetary policy settings were tightened so sharply over the last two years to fight the inflationary side-effects of massive stimulus that Beijing launched in 2008 to cushion the economy from the impact of the global economic crisis.

Twin bubbles in real estate and local government debt are still being battled by Beijing, and are arguably the only — if significant — policy constraint faced as the world’s second-biggest economy faces another economic slowdown.

It’s certainly a factor preventing the government using well-stocked fiscal coffers for outright economic pump-priming, or allowing explosive growth in still elevated leverage levels.

But relatively speaking, China has plenty of room to move.

“Every country has constraints. China was almost as unconstrained as it could have hoped for in 2008 when the crisis hit. The response to that has reduced the flexibility they have now, but they have far more than their counterparts in the West have,” ING’s Condon said.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

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(Reuters) Veteran rockers Van Halen said on Friday that they will kick off a North American tour with original lead singer David Lee Roth in mid-February, shortly after the release of the band’s first full album with Roth in nearly 30 years.

“A Different Kind of Truth” will be released in the United States on Feb 7 but the first single, “Tattoo,” and its accompanying video, will debut on Jan 10. Roth’s last album with the group was the popular “1984,” released on Dec 31, 1983.

The band will be joined by Kool & The Gang for select dates on the 40-plus city tour, which opens at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky on Feb 18 with over four months of dates through the New Orleans Arena announced so far.

Tickets go on sale on Jan 14.

Van Halen’s relationship with Roth has been a stormy one over the years. Roth left the band in a bitter breakup in 1985, only to rejoin for a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1996, then quickly depart in another bitter split.

He returned to Van Halen for a tour in 2007-2008.

The band, whose early hits include “Runnin’ with the Devil” and “Dance the Night Away,” was among the leading rock acts of the late 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, when Sammy Hagar replaced Roth as singer.

Michael Anthony was the original bassist, but alongside Hagar he has joined another band, Chickenfoot. Wolfgang Van Halen,Cheap Juicy Couture, Eddie’s son, took over on bass.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; editing by Paul Casciato)

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CHICAGO (Reuters) The World Bank will recommend reforms to China’s domestic financial system as part of broader proposals to help wean the country from a dependence on exports to sustain economic growth, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Saturday.

Those changes could have the benefit of increasing confidence among Chinese authorities that the nation’s economy will not be destabilized by foreign exchange reforms, Zoellick said. U.S. and other international authorities have long urged China to let its yuan currency, also called the renminbi, to float more freely on foreign exchange markets.

“China’s policy on the exchange rate will depend in significant part on whether Chinese officials believe the structure of the economy can adjust to the price signals of changed exchange rates,” Zoellick said.

“The Chinese … recognize that this reform agenda, including a stronger and more flexible financial sector would move hand in hand with the internationalization of the renminbi,” he said.

China’s government realizes that the export-led growth model that has been so successful for the past 30 years will not work in decades ahead,Wholesale Ed hardy, the World Bank chief said at the annual meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations.

The World Bank, in a series of recommendations due to be released in February, will suggest changes including fewer but stronger fiscal institutions that are more transparent and more accountable, Zoellick told the economists’ conference. The bank’s proposals are part of a year-and-a-half collaborative project with the Chinese government.

While Beijing has allowed its yuan currency to float in recent years, critics say Beijing has not permitted it to appreciate enough. The U.S. Treasury last month avoided formally naming China a currency manipulator under law but chided Beijing for not moving quickly enough on reforms.

Some U.S. politicians argue China has gained an unfair edge in global markets by keeping the yuan artificially low to boost exports. Pressure has mounted in Congress for President Barack Obama to take stronger action against China, but the administration has preferred a diplomatic approach.

The bank will recommend China moves away from controls on savings and interest rates that have subsidized state-owned enterprises. It will also urge a move toward market interest rates, deeper capital markets and more financial instruments, all the while accompanied by high standards for disclosure.

Authorities also will be asked to limit the influence of China’s powerful state-owned enterprises, Zoellick said.

“China needs to restrict the roles of the state-owned enterprises, break up monopolies, diversify ownership, and lower entry barrier to private firms,” he said.

China is also trying to strengthen its social safety net, Zoellick added.

The value of the yuan has risen 4 percent against the dollar this year and 7.7 percent since China dropped a firm peg against the greenback in June 2010.

At the heart of the friction between the two countries is a U.S. trade deficit with China that swelled in 2010 to a record $273.1 billion from about $226.9 billion in 2009. The cumulative Jan-Oct deficit with China is on track to top that this year, running at around $245.5 billion.

(Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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CAIRO Just over a year ago, Amira Maurice was attending a New Year’s Eve Mass in the Saints Church in Egypt’s Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria with her parents and fiance, their marriage set for only a few months away. Then the bomb blast ripped through the church.

Now, the 28-year-old pharmacist is in Germany undergoing the latest in a string of surgeries to save her leg and deal with her burns. Her fiance is dead, one of the 21 people killed in the suicide bombing targeting the church.

Another New Year’s has passed since, and there are still no answers in Egypt’s most dramatic anti-Christian attack. The investigation was halted 11 months ago and never picked up again. The only suspects ever detained were released, and it’s not clear they had any role in it. No new suspects have ever been named.

“Nothing. Nothing at all has happened with the investigation,” said Maurice’s father, Nabil Roman. “It is ridiculous.”

Roman suspects that the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, is dragging its feet in going after the case, but he doesn’t know why.

“Something is not clear. All I can say is that God will deal with them,” Roman said.

The attack was soon overshadowed by the massive popular uprising against Hosni Mubarak that began soon after and that eventually led to his Feb. 11 ouster. But the failure to answer who was behind the blast has fueled resentment among Egypt’s Christian minority that the state does little to protect them. This sentiment has bred numerous conspiracy theories.

The failure highlights the deep problems that ailed Egypt’s police forces during Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule and only worsened after his fall.

Police were notorious for doing little investigation of crimes instead, their modus operandi was usually to detain possible suspects and torture them into confessions, rights groups and former police officials say. After the fall of Mubarak’s regime, the police have been in disarray and resisting reform in their ranks.

An Interior Ministry official told The Associated Press that the delay in investigating the church bombing is because of the turmoil after Mubarak’s ouster and the inability of police to arrest and interrogate people like before. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

Egypt’s feared security forces long had near unlimited power to arrest people under emergency laws. The laws are still in place, but police have become more hesitant to use them in some cases for fear of eventual retribution.

Joseph Malak, the chief lawyer for families who lost relatives in the attack, said he’s been pressing the chief prosecutor’s office for months to proceed with an investigation, but prosecutors are legally bound to wait for the Interior Ministry to hand over its initial findings, which it never has. This, he says, has left the case in limbo.

He said he does not know why the case is still with the police.

Prominent human rights activist Hossam Bahgat said the Interior Ministry “has been and remains broken.”

“It is not just abuse and corruption, but also inefficiency,” said Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Under Mubarak, police had more of a role in monitoring opponents and preserving the regime than investigating crime, and that “had a detrimental effect,Wholesale Juicy Couture jackets,” he said.

He pointed out that no suspects were ever tried in two of Egypt’s previous most prominent terror attacks suicide bombings in two Sinai resorts, Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and Dahab in 2006. In the 2004 bombing of another resort, Taba, three men were sentenced to death, but Bahgat said it was “abundantly clear” they had confessed under torture.

The investigation into the church bombing appears to have been marred by the same methods. One man detained over the attack died in custody after witnesses said he was tortured. Police say his death is being investigated.

Police arrested around 40 men in the wake of the Saints Church bombing, all of whom had been previously detained in 2006 for alleged ties to militants in Iraq, though none were charged at the time and none were subsequently charged in the church bombing. Most belonged to the ultraconservative Islamic Salafi movement.

The men were all released in April when the military, which took power after Mubarak’s fall, released political prisoners.

Several of those detained told AP they were tortured during detention, saying they were doused in gasoline, given electric shocks and beaten repeatedly, including on their genitals.

“We were arrested for being arrested before. We had done nothing wrong, but that never mattered under Mubarak,” said one of the former suspects, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation has not been formally closed.

He said he was among those tortured, and he denied any of those detained was involved in the attack. “We want this case solved more than anyone because it’s our right to know who did this and who tried to blame us for it,” he said.

Ahmed Amin, a lawyer who was detained in connection with the attack, said the police told the detainees to fabricate scenarios of how the attack was planned. “The officers interrogating us told us we either accept this case nicely or they will force it on us,” he told the AP.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, Mubarak blamed foreign terrorists and Alexandria’s governor accused al-Qaida, pointing to threats against Christians by the terror network’s branch in Iraq. Officials then said a Palestinian militant group based in the Gaza Strip, the Army of Islam, was behind the attack, though they also said they were looking at possible involvement by Egyptian extremists inspired by al-Qaida.

Last weekend, several hundred protesters most of them Coptic Christians held a vigil outside Cairo’s main courthouse to remember the victims of the attack. Some held posters demanding the resignation of the attorney general and others demanded Habib el-Adly, the interior minister at the time, be investigated as a suspect.

After Mubarak’s fall, some speculated that el-Adly organized the bombing to bolster Mubarak’s claims that he was needed to keep stability. No evidence has ever been put forward, and the rights activist Bahgat said the scenario was unlikely.

Roman is among those who suspects el-Adly had a role and he feels justice has been served, in its own way, with the ongoing trial of Mubarak and el-Adly on charges of complicity in the killing of over 800 protesters in last year’s revolt.

“God got us our justice and more when the revolt happened on Jan. 25 and all these men went to jail,” he said. “God stood with us.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) Yahoo Inc named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its chief executive on Wednesday, hoping the well-regarded Internet technology and e-commerce expert will replicate his success at eBay Inc and turn around the struggling company.

Thompson, credited with driving growth at eBay’s online payments division PayPal, joins Yahoo during a period of turmoil, as the company plows ahead with a strategic review in which discussions have included the possibility of being sold, taken private or broken up.

Yahoo shares finished Wednesday’s regular trading session down 3 percent at $15.78, as Wall Street assessed how Thompson’s hiring would affect the hopes of some investors that Yahoo would be sold or spin off its Asian assets, as well as how Thompson’s background fits in with Yahoo’s core online media business.

“It’s a positive outcome, but not as positive as a sale of the company,” said Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.

“The risk element is that his background was in payments. And this is not a payment company; it’s a marketing, technology company,” he said.

Thompson, a former Visa payments software platform designer, joins the company four months after the firing of previous CEO Carol Bartz as the one-time Web powerhouse Yahoo struggles to compete with newer heavyweights Google Inc and Facebook.

“I’m from Boston, we’re the underdogs since the beginning of time. Hopefully that spirit has held through. I like doing complicated, very difficult, very challenging things,” Thompson said in an interview.

Thompson, who takes over on January 9, will also join Yahoo’s board. He ran eBay’s PayPal since early 2008, and was previously its chief technology officer. Under his leadership, Yahoo said PayPal increased its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users. PayPal processed $29 billion in payments in the third quarter of 2011.

EBay’s shares fell 3.8 percent as analysts said the online retailer would miss the respected Internet executive.

EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe told staff in an internal memo that Thompson’s move was a “shock.”

“Scott informed me Tuesday afternoon, saying that despite his passion for PayPal, this was an opportunity he felt he had to take,” Donahoe said.

At PayPal,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, Thompson was known as a leader who was not afraid to make bold strategic bets. He came up with the idea of taking PayPal beyond its online stronghold and into the physical world by allowing PayPal payments in retail stores — an opportunity analysts believe could prove much bigger than its existing business.

That kind of strategic risk-taking could be particularly useful at Yahoo. The Sunnyvale, California-based company, whose services include mail, search, news and photo-sharing, was a Web pioneer that grew rapidly in the 1990s. But in recent years, Yahoo has struggled to maintain its relevance and advertising revenue in the face of competition from rivals Google and Facebook.

“They really need that push to the next level,” said Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds, which includes the Jacob Internet Fund and counts Yahoo as one of its largest positions.

“Ideally what they would do is rather than just follow where today’s Internet leaders are moving, try to really be on that front edge,” he said, citing Yahoo’s need be better positioned in mobile, social networking and other fast-growing technology trends.

During a conference call on Wednesday, Thompson cited mobile as a key area that he expected to focus on at Yahoo, and he said he viewed the company’s treasure trove data about its users as one of Yahoo’s key assets. But he said it was too early to comment on his overall vision for the company.

NOT GOING PRIVATE

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock told analysts on the joint conference call with Thompson that Yahoo has no intention of being taken private.

“If you want to look at it in a practical way, if you and I were to sit down tomorrow and say let’s take this Company private, I think we have one hell of a challenge on our hands to do that,” said Bostock.

The decision to appoint a new CEO is not expected to impact the strategic review, which includes Yahoo’s ongoing dialogue with both China’s Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate to slash its stakes in the two companies, sources close to the matter said.

Under the “cash rich split” plan being discussed, Yahoo would effectively transfer most of its 40 percent slice of Alibaba back to the Chinese company and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp in return for cash and assets.

A preliminary term sheet has been drawn up that broadly outlines the deal concept, said one of the sources.

“Everyone seems to be in agreement over it,” the source said.

The question is whether a definitive agreement can be signed between the parties ahead of March 25 deadline when activist shareholders can submit director nominees to Yahoo’s board and waging a proxy battle.

Alibaba has also hired a Washington lobbying firm in a sign that the Chinese e-commerce company would be willing to make a bid for all of Yahoo in the event that talks to unwind their Asian partnership fail.

“If they can successfully complete the Asian asset transactions, in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo shareholders, I think it will buy them some time and they’ll have a chance to build for growth,” said Jacob, of the Jacob Funds.

In 2008, Yahoo rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp worth about $44 billion. Its share price was subsequently pummeled during the global financial crisis and its current market value is about $20 billion.

Co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down in late 2008 after being severely criticized by investors for his handling of the bid. The company cut thousands of jobs and later agreed to an advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.

RALLYING THE TROOPS

One of Thompson’s first orders of business at Yahoo may be to try to rebuild morale inside the nearly 14,000-person company, which has been beset by layoffs, management reorganizations and a revolving door of executive departures.

The company cannot compete with hot Web companies such as Facebook and Twitter when it comes to luring the most sought-after engineers and many of the staffers within the company have tired of the seemingly endless reorganizations and lost their competitive drive, said one Yahoo employee, speaking anonymously.

“There are fundamental cultural issues, there are people who are not motivated to do big things,” the Yahoo employee said.

Thompson, 54, who speaks in a thick Boston accent, is described as calm under pressure and adept at energizing his team.

One of his signature management styles involves creating different groups, each tasked with achieving the same goal and pitting them against each other, said one PayPal manager who asked to remain anonymous.

“He’s not afraid to experiment,” the person said.

“He’ll build teams that are both going after the same thing,” the person said. The idea is “you guys go after the same thing, whoever does it better wins,” the PayPal manager explained.

Thompson said in an interview that Yahoo was in a strong position with its large user base of more than 700 million people.

“The traffic itself that these sites generate is a very big number, the collection of assets that sit below this core business I think are not well understood and clearly have tremendous opportunity to be leveraged as we look forward to the future.” (Additional reporting by Alistair Barr and Nadia Damouni; editing by Maureen Bavdek, Gunna Dickson, Bernard Orr and Andre Grenon)

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WACO, Texas Federal securities regulators filed suit Tuesday against a Texas-based provider of so-called “life settlements,” accusing it and three top executives of defrauding shareholders by overvaluing the life insurance policies it buys from its customers.

In a statement, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Life Partners Holdings Inc. and its top management lowballed life-expectancy estimates used to price the settlements they pay customers.

With life settlements, policyholders sell their life insurance policies in return for a lump-sum payment. Investors buy the right to collect the policy’s death benefits, but must continue to pay premiums until the original policyholder dies.

The lawsuit the SEC filed in federal court in Waco,Cheap Ed hardy t-shirts, Texas, also names as defendants the company’s founder, chairman and chief executive, Brian Pardo, its president and general counsel, R. Scott Peden, and Chief Financial Officer David Martin.

In its civil complaint, the SEC alleges that Life Partners and its executives engaged in deceptive disclosures and improper accounting to overvalue its assets and exaggerate its revenue stream from brokering life settlements. The SEC also accused Pardo and Peden of insider trading.

“Life Partners duped its shareholders by employing an unqualified medical doctor to assign baseless life-expectancy estimates to the underlying insurance policies,” said Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC’s enforcement division. “This deception misled shareholders into thinking that the company’s revenue model was sustainable when in fact it was illusory.”

Waco-based Life Partners said the lawsuit is “without merit,” and it promised a vigorous defense.

“It is very disappointing that the SEC has chosen to pursue litigation over issues that we believe have no merit and financial presentation issues that we do not believe are material,” Pardo said in a company statement. “We have always done our best to deliver value to our shareholders and to run an honest and transparent company.”

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NEW YORK Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer has more juice than the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but the lingerie-clad runway models trump Santa Claus.

It’s the holiday season, mixing in old and new traditions with typical prime-time television fare. Holiday specials can earn Nielsen ratings company bragging rights, too.

“Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” was the most-watched special of last week, with more than 12 million viewers, with the advantage of being on CBS’ powerful Tuesday night. The Victoria’s Secret special, also on CBS on Tuesday, was second with 10.4 million viewers. The Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center had 9.4 million viewers, one of NBC’s strongest shows for the week. Specials highlighting the Grinch and Santa Claus, both on ABC, each had fewer than 8 million viewers.

The most-watched prime-time show of the week wasn’t really a show. Fox calls it “The OT,” but it’s really just football highlights shown when Sunday’s late afternoon game runs long, and in this case it was a gripping finish between the New York Giants and the unbeaten Green Bay Packers. The Packers beat the Giants 38-35 on a last-second field goal to move to 12-0.

CBS won the post-Thanksgiving week, averaging 9 million viewers (5.6 rating, 9 share) in prime time.

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

Fox had 8.6 million viewers (5.1, 8), NBC had 7.3 million (4.6, 7), ABC had 6.5 million (4.0, 6), the CW had 1.6 million (1.1, 2) and ION Television had 1.2 million (0.8, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.4 million average in prime time (1.7, 3), Telemundo had 1.3 million (0.7, 1), TeleFutura had 630,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 260,000 (0.1, 0) and Azteca had 240,000 (also 0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.7 million viewers (6.4,Replica Juicy Couture Outlet, 12). ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.1 million (5.4, 10), and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.6 million viewers (4.5, 8).

For the week of Nov. 28 to Dec. 4, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “The OT,” Fox, 19.39 million; NFL Football: Detroit at New Orleans, NBC, 18.9 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 14.79 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 13.37 million; “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” CBS, 12.64 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 11.88 million; “Football Night in America,” NBC, 11.21 million; “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 11.052 million; “Survivor: South Pacific,” CBS, 11.047 million; “The X-Factor” (Wednesday), Fox, 11.045 million.

___

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

___

Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

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LOS ANGELES Oprah Winfrey earned the rare opportunity to convert her media charisma into a monogramed TV channel. Now she’s the one tasked with rescuing OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, after a disappointing first year.

It’s a high-stakes,wholesale Ralph Lauren shoes, potentially ego-shattering challenge that could make the strongest woman or man flinch. But win or lose, Winfrey says she relishes the fight to turn OWN’s fortunes around.

“Yes, some mistakes were made. Who hasn’t made mistakes? The real beauty is you can say, `I learned from that,’” Winfrey said. “I don’t worry about failure. I worry about, `Did I do all I could do?’”

The cable channel, which marks its first year Jan. 1, is trying for a fresh start after executive turnover and missteps that proved OWN lacked a solid foundation on which to build, this despite a Discovery Communications investment of a reported $250 million and counting.

Viewers snubbed the lineup that skimped on programming and, surprisingly, what should have been OWN’s unique weapon of choice: Winfrey herself, whose limited on-air presence will be boosted Sunday with a new weekly series, “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”

OWN has failed to improve on, or in some instances even match, the modest ratings and small audience earned by the low-profile Discovery Health channel it replaced.

“I would absolutely say it is and was not where I want it to be for year one,” Winfrey said. “My focus up until (last) May was doing what I do best, which is `The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and giving that my full attention” until its conclusion.

But Winfrey, who said management team errors in planning and execution could serve as a cautionary tale (“I was never interested in writing a book. … THIS could be a book”), rejects the idea that a single year’s performance will determine OWN’s ultimate fate. Or hers.

“Somebody was talking to me in that kind of saddened, `How are you?’ tone, and I was thinking, `I’m fine,’” said Winfrey, 57, who ruled as the queen of daytime TV until she ended her talk show after 25 years and turned her attention to the channel.

“I realized the reason people have this tone is they’re reading all the press (about OWN), so you see me and wonder if I can still walk. … I am a determined and committed woman. I don’t give up. I’m just getting started,” she said in a recent interview.

One bonus of being Oprah: She has received pep talks from other media movers and shakers.

“Everybody has told me Ted Turner has told me, Barry Diller has told me, Lorne Michaels has told me, David Geffen has told me anybody who’s ever worked with a channel, who’s ever done anything, has said it takes three to five years,” she said, adding, “You have to do the work. … You do not have to pay attention to the criticism.”

Year two for OWN will reflect executive changes made last July, when Winfrey expanded her role at the channel by adding the roles of chief executive and chief creative officer to her position as chairman. Discovery Communications COO Peter Liguori had filled in as interim head after OWN CEO Christina Norman was dismissed in the wake of poor ratings.

Although the channel’s ownership is split evenly between Discovery and Winfrey’s Chicago-based production company, Harpo Inc., it is Discovery’s money that’s on the line.

With more scheduling consistency, movies, original series with and without Winfrey, and “a lot more Oprah in general,” Discovery is “a lot more confident that we’re heading in the right direction,” said company spokesman David Leavy.

Sheri Salata and Erik Logan, two veteran Harpo executives, were brought on board to share the title of OWN president, with Logan moving from Chicago to OWN’s Los Angeles headquarters.

Logan said he clearly understands the hard work in establishing any cable channel, and this one in particular.

“One of the greatest gifts and challenges is to have her name on the door,” Logan said of his top boss. “Everything you do garners a high level of scrutiny and attention. … We don’t run from that.”

The initially slight programming lineup is being beefed up, most notably with “Oprah’s Next Chapter.” The weekly series debuts 9 p.m.-11 p.m. EST Sunday with Winfrey’s visit to the New Hampshire home of Steven Tyler.

“Next Chapter” turns the once studio-bound Winfrey into a globe-trotting interviewer who drops into the home of a Hasidic Jewish family in New York, George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in California and cook Paula Deen’s Georgia estate. There is also a trip with Sean Penn to Haiti, fire-walking with Tony Robbins and a planned India trip with Deepak Chopra.

The injection of Winfrey on-screen, not just in the executive suite, is sorely needed, suggested one industry analyst.

“The biggest mistake they made is, if it’s the Oprah Winfrey Network, where’s Oprah?” said Bill Carroll of media buying firm Katz Media.

He compared OWN’s Winfrey vacuum to programming the Court TV channel without courtroom shows or the Major League Baseball channel without games: “After a while, viewers stop going,” Carroll said.

OWN has averaged about 136,000 viewers a day, a drop of 8 percent from what Discovery Health drew in 2010, although it’s up slightly in total viewers in prime time and has seen an 8 percent increase among women ages 25 to 54, part of the channel’s hoped-for demographic.

Popular shows include “The Judds,” which ran for six episodes in April and May; “Our America With Lisa Ling”; and the reality series “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” which attracted a strong African-American audience (prompting media reports that OWN intended to skew toward black viewers, an assertion that Discovery and Winfrey deny. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to turn into the `Roots’ channel,” Winfrey said, wryly.)

Winfrey also is on-air with “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” which draws on her talk-show archives, and “Oprah’s Master Class,” a series of high-achiever biography specials. But, she said, she never “was supposed to carry the channel on my back, and it never was supposed to be about me being on the air as much as possible.” Instead, O magazine, with Winfrey as monthly cover girl and articles reflecting her better-life philosophy, is the intended model.

She attributes the channel’s rough start to a more basic error: The lack of a “library” of programming for the many hours of airtime not filled by original shows, compounded by overconfidence about her market value in general.

“I don’t understand what anybody was thinking. You’re going on the air, you’ve got four shows. What do you think you’re going to do by Tuesday? Did they think people were going to turn on the channel just because it had my name on it?” she said, sounding almost eager to cast doubt on her drawing power.

“People didn’t turn on `The Oprah Winfrey Show’ because my name was on it. It was absolutely topic driven every day,” she said.

Such modest expressions aside, Winfrey’s involvement clearly is key to the channel’s success. She’s glad to make the commitment, she said. As her longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham told her, she’d be bored silly today if she’d taken any lengthy break after ending her daytime show.

Discovery is also in it for “the long term,” said spokesman Leavy, citing the three to five years that other cable channels have needed to develop audience-grabbing hits and firmly establish themselves.

He declined to specify what Discovery has spent so far on the venture, calling media estimates high. But he pointed to long-term advertising contracts with major companies including Procter & Gamble, and hopes of new carriage fees from cable providers that have been airing the channel for free.

Viewership that has been lower than expected, however, has meant “make goods” in ad time for sponsors.

Winfrey, who describes herself as obsessed by ratings for the first time in her career, said she’s giving OWN “everything I’ve got. I’ve spent more energy doing this than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life.”

With good reason. “I walked in today (to OWN’s offices) and felt uplifted to see my name on the door, Oprah Winfrey Network,” she said. “Just to … be able to sit in a room with a team of people presenting you with ideas what a gift that is.”

It has also made OWN her ultimate responsibility.

“Every third week, someone new was in charge, and now she’s in charge. From where I sit, this is going to be her success or her failure,” said analyst Carroll.

Winfrey claims to have an unlikely sounding Plan B if the channel falls short.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to go into organic farming in Maui. And I’m not kidding.”

___

Online:

http://www.oprah.com/own

___

EDITOR’S NOTE Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org.

Tags: wholesale Ralp
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What can Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston all agree on? A beautiful trench coat! The perfect trench can go with everything — jeans, dresses, trousers, bare legs — and is almost appearing like the new little coat dress.

I am always asked what is a chic transition piece to buy that will go over basically everything you own and will never go out of style no matter what. The answer is always a trench coat! I happen to love Isaac Mizrahi Live’s chic and sweet trench, which is a must have for spring. It’s so chic and looks like it fits like a gem. It’s $98.40, which is so much of a better deal than a Burberry trench — which, I love, believe me, but I can’t slap down those funds so easily.

- Machine wash, hang dry

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- Sizes: XS(2-4), S (6-8), M (10-12), L (14-16), XL(18-20), 1X (18W-20W), 2X (22W-24W), 3X (26W-28W)

I do think the gold buttons are something rich and posh that separates this particular style, while still staying chic and with the plan. It’s a wonderful 24/7 piece that can be paired with trousers and a blouse, jeans and tee and over a little black dress. A jacket for every occasion and every season? Yes! It’s sized from an XS to a 3X — love that! And if khaki ain’t your thing, it also comes in Kelly green, bright azalea, black and a carrot color. Lined with very fun polka dots, this is something that will work this spring, rain or shine.

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

PRODUCT DETAILS

- Goldtone logo buttons, contrast polka-dot lining, adjustable belt, front pockets, back vent and flap

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Tags: Christian Dior
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