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 no longer illuminated.

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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Prostate Cancer Study Suggests Shorter Treatments

Men with high-risk prostate cancer treated with only 18 months of hormone therapy live just as long as those treated for a more standard 36 months, a new study has found.

If the study results are applied in practice, it could mean much shorter treatment, sparing men months of unpleasant side effects, researchers said Tuesday.

“This may well change the standard of care,” said Dr. Bruce J. Roth, a prostate cancer specialist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Three years of hormonal therapy was almost picked randomly, and there’s nothing magical about that duration.”

Dr. Roth was not involved in the study, but he moderated a news conference for the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, which will take place starting Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and is where the results will be presented.

Hormone therapy is essentially chemical castration, in which drugs are used to block the body’s production of testosterone, which fuels prostate tumor growth.

The side effects, including hot flashes, loss of sexual desire, fatigue and the weakening of bones and muscles, make life “quite miserable,” said Dr. Abdenour Nabid of Sherbrooke University Hospital Center in Sherbrooke, Quebec, who was the lead investigator.

The study involved 630 patients with localized but high-risk prostate cancer who were treated with radiation therapy and hormone therapy. While that description fits only a small portion of the 240,000 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed each year in the United States, the results would still apply to thousands of men, researchers said.

After a median follow-up of about six and a half years, 77.1 percent of the men who received 36 months of therapy were still alive, as were 76.2 percent of the men treated for 18 months.

While slightly more men receiving the longer treatment were alive at five years, the difference was not statistically significant, and for the patients already followed for 10 years, the survival rates were similar. The death rate specifically from prostate cancer was also the same after 10 years.

There were also no statistically significant differences in the rate of biochemical failure — when the P.S.A. marker rises — or in the spread of cancer to the bone, Dr. Nabid said. The difference between the two therapy durations on the quality of the patients’ lives is still being studied.

Dr. David I. Quinn, medical director of the University of Southern California Norris Cancer Hospital, said the results “will change the approach for men who’ve got the worst localized prostate cancer that we see.” He said the results went against some previous studies that suggested that “more is better.”

But Dr. Michael J. Morris, associate professor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said that 630 patients might be too few to draw “a relatively sweeping conclusion.” A study meant to prove that two treatments are equivalent may need to be much larger, he said.

Dr. Matthew R. Smith, professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said it might be “overreaching” to make a conclusion yet because not many trial patients had died. “I think we need longer follow-up,” he said.

Dr. Nabid, the principal investigator, said that patients would be followed for two or three more years but that he was confident the results would hold up.

The trial enrolled patients at 10 hospitals in Quebec from October 2000 to January 2008. The drugs used were bicalutamide and goserelin, sold by AstraZeneca as Casodex and Zoladex, respectively, but now subject to generic competition. AstraZeneca paid for the study.

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Prostate Cancer Study Suggests Shorter Treatments

Men with high-risk prostate cancer treated with only 18 months of hormone therapy live just as long as those treated for a more standard 36 months, a new study has found.

If the study results are applied in practice, it could mean much shorter treatment, sparing men months of unpleasant side effects, researchers said Tuesday.

“This may well change the standard of care,” said Dr. Bruce J. Roth, a prostate cancer specialist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Three years of hormonal therapy was almost picked randomly, and there’s nothing magical about that duration.”

Dr. Roth was not involved in the study, but he moderated a news conference for the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, which will take place starting Thursday in Orlando, Fla., and is where the results will be presented.

Hormone therapy is essentially chemical castration, in which drugs are used to block the body’s production of testosterone, which fuels prostate tumor growth.

The side effects, including hot flashes, loss of sexual desire, fatigue and the weakening of bones and muscles, make life “quite miserable,” said Dr. Abdenour Nabid of Sherbrooke University Hospital Center in Sherbrooke, Quebec, who was the lead investigator.

The study involved 630 patients with localized but high-risk prostate cancer who were treated with radiation therapy and hormone therapy. While that description fits only a small portion of the 240,000 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed each year in the United States, the results would still apply to thousands of men, researchers said.

After a median follow-up of about six and a half years, 77.1 percent of the men who received 36 months of therapy were still alive, as were 76.2 percent of the men treated for 18 months.

While slightly more men receiving the longer treatment were alive at five years, the difference was not statistically significant, and for the patients already followed for 10 years, the survival rates were similar. The death rate specifically from prostate cancer was also the same after 10 years.

There were also no statistically significant differences in the rate of biochemical failure — when the P.S.A. marker rises — or in the spread of cancer to the bone, Dr. Nabid said. The difference between the two therapy durations on the quality of the patients’ lives is still being studied.

Dr. David I. Quinn, medical director of the University of Southern California Norris Cancer Hospital, said the results “will change the approach for men who’ve got the worst localized prostate cancer that we see.” He said the results went against some previous studies that suggested that “more is better.”

But Dr. Michael J. Morris, associate professor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said that 630 patients might be too few to draw “a relatively sweeping conclusion.” A study meant to prove that two treatments are equivalent may need to be much larger, he said.

Dr. Matthew R. Smith, professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said it might be “overreaching” to make a conclusion yet because not many trial patients had died. “I think we need longer follow-up,” he said.

Dr. Nabid, the principal investigator, said that patients would be followed for two or three more years but that he was confident the results would hold up.

The trial enrolled patients at 10 hospitals in Quebec from October 2000 to January 2008. The drugs used were bicalutamide and goserelin, sold by AstraZeneca as Casodex and Zoladex, respectively, but now subject to generic competition. AstraZeneca paid for the study.

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Advertising: Small Rival Music Service Takes Aim at Pandora

ONE of advertising’s great (or at least most amusing) traditions is the challenger attack ad, in which a field’s No. 2 (or No. 3) player tries to distinguish itself by taking aim at the leader. When artfully done it can have a great effect, as in Avis’s long-running “We try harder” campaign against Hertz, or Samsung’s recent ads mocking the obedience of iPhone fans.

The latest example is in digital music services, with Pandora as the Goliath and its much smaller competitor Slacker in the role of David with the 30-second sling.

In an online-only spot that will start running Wednesday, a young woman at a coffee shop vexes everyone in earshot when she opens a blue “Pandora’s box” — labeled “P,” like Pandora’s app icon — and unleashes a singularly annoying song.

“It plays that over and over again,” the woman complains to a friend, who blames Pandora’s “small music library” for the repetition. With Slacker helpfully loaded on her phone, the friend points out that Slacker has 10 times as many songs, and other features, too.

Like Pandora, Slacker offers free, ad-supported Internet radio and has two tiers of premium service. Listeners can eliminate ads for a $4 monthly subscription, and $10 a month also adds features that — like Spotify and other “on-demand” services — let users play any song they choose.

Since its founding in 2006, however, Slacker has struggled to stand out. With four million monthly users, 560,000 of them paying, its audience is a fraction of Pandora’s, which is more than 65 million a month; Clear Channel Communications has nearly 50 million online listeners through its station sites and iHeartRadio app.

To promote itself among such formidable competition — and to introduce a revamped version of its site — Slacker wants to show that it tries harder.

“We had to be very honest with where we were in the marketplace,” said Craig Rechenmacher, Slacker’s chief marketing officer. “We had to be disruptive in the marketplace, and we needed something that targets our competitors and the holes in their service.”

Slacker will spend $5.5 million on media placements this year, Mr. Rechenmacher said. In addition to the video spot, by Liquid Advertising, the campaign will include display ads by the agency Questus, and they will run on music and pop-culture sites like YouTube, Vevo, Brooklyn Vegan and College Humor.

The ads show off what Slacker says is its human touch, with playlists created by music experts and stations featuring D.J.’s and commentators. Pandora caters to listeners’ tastes through a secret algorithm that analyzes each song’s musical “genome.” (Others, like Songza, have grown quickly through expert programming, but Pandora is the field’s leader by far.)

“When we did research on our core users, what they love the most, what came back was the idea that it felt like somebody was home,” said Jack Isquith, Slacker’s senior vice president of strategic development. “There was someone who loves music at the controls.”

The campaign is also evidence of a slow change in the marketing of digital music services, many of which have avoided advertising in favor of online word-of-mouth (and, of course, lots of free music). Pandora, for example, is often featured in commercials by its partners, like car companies, but has made none of its own.

“It costs a lot of money to build a brand if you didn’t hit it luckily through viral channels, like Pandora did,” said David Hyman, the former chief executive of the music service Mog, which was sold last year to Beats Electronics.

The biggest force in promoting digital music over the years, music executives say, was Apple’s iTunes and iPod commercials. Rhapsody, too, has run dozens of television ads, including a memorable one with Jay-Z in 2009.

For the most part the recent wave of streaming services has not been heavily advertised, but that is changing as the field grows more competitive. Last year, Rdio, a subscription service, did a multimillion-dollar campaign that included billboards in Times Square. Spotify, which has grown quickly but has not fully penetrated the mainstream market, recently hired its first agency of record, Droga5 — the former agency of Rhapsody.

For its campaign, Slacker wanted to focus on how digital services serve consumers. In the coffee shop video, the patrons align with the demographics of the service — 18 to 44 years old, and slightly more females than males, said Will Akerlof, the chief executive of Liquid Advertising — and visibly express their reactions to the music playing.

To find a sufficiently irritating soundtrack, the agency looked at a 2007 Rolling Stone magazine feature, “The 20 Most Annoying Songs,” Mr. Akerlof said, and recorded a techno-pop version of the folk song “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” in the style of Rednex’s version from the mid-1990s (No. 13 on the list).

That lighthearted approach, with a focus on the consumer, has been missing from many digital-music ads, Mr. Isquith said.

“The approaches of many of the people in the space has been, ‘Hey, we’re standing next to big stars,’ or, ‘Hey, we’ve got the slickest, most cutting-edge tech product,’ but that’s not why people use it,” he said.

“Our ads,” Mr. Isquith added, “are meant to say that this is a great listener experience that will delight you.”

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India Ink: Silicon Valley and Immigrant Groups Find Common Cause

SAN FRANCISCO — What do computer programmers and illegal immigrants have to do with each other?

When it comes to the sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that Congress is considering this year, the answer is everything.

Silicon Valley executives, who have long pressed the government to provide more visas for foreign-born math and science brains, are joining forces with an array of immigration groups seeking comprehensive changes in the law. And as momentum builds in Washington for a broad revamping, the tech industry has more hope than ever that it will finally achieve its goal: the expanded access to visas that it says is critical to its own continued growth and that of the economy as a whole.

Signs of the industry’s stepped-up engagement on the issue are visible everywhere. Prominent executives met with President Obama last week. Start-up founders who rarely abandon their computers have flown across the country to meet with lawmakers.

This Tuesday, the Technology CEO Council, an advocacy organization representing companies like Dell, Intel and Motorola, had meetings on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Steve Case, a founder of AOL, is scheduled to testify at the first Senate hearing this year on immigration legislation, alongside the head of the deportation agents’ union and the leader of a Latino civil rights group.

“The odds of high-skilled passing without comprehensive is close to zero, and the odds of comprehensive passing without high-skilled passing is close to zero,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington.

The push comes as a clutch of powerful Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a long-elusive agreement on some basic principles of a “comprehensive” revamping of immigration law. Separately, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in late January focuses directly on the visa issue.

The industry’s argument for more so-called high-skilled visas has already persuaded the president.

“Real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy,” Mr. Obama said in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.

In a speech in Las Vegas in January in which he introduced his own blueprint for overhauling immigration law, Mr. Obama embraced the idea that granting more visas was essential to maintaining innovation and job growth. He talked about foreigners studying at American universities, figuring out how to turn their ideas into businesses.

In part, the new alliance between the tech industry and immigration groups was born out of the 2012 elections and the rising influence of Hispanic voters.

“The world has changed since the election,” said Peter J. Muller, director of government relations at Intel, pointing out that the defeat of many Republican candidates had led to a softening of the party’s position on broad changes to immigration law. “There is a focus on comprehensive. We’re thrilled by it.”

“At this point,” he added, “our best hope for immigration reform lies with comprehensive reform.”

Mr. Case, the AOL co-founder, who now runs an investment fund, echoed that sentiment after meeting with the president last Tuesday.

“I look forward to doing whatever I can to help pass comprehensive immigration reform in the months ahead,” he said, “and ensure it includes strong provisions regarding high-skilled immigration, so we are positioned to win the global battle for talent.”

That sort of sentiment delights immigrants’ rights advocates who have banged their heads against the wall for years to rally a majority of Congress around their agenda.

“The stars are aligning here,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “You’ve got the politics of immigration reform changing. You’ve got tech leaders leaning in not just for high-skilled but for broader immigration reform.”

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who is co-sponsoring the bill to increase the number of visas available for highly skilled immigrants, said the cooperation went both ways.

“All the talk about the STEM field — science, technology, engineering, mathematics — has awakened even those who aren’t all that interested in the high-tech world,” he said.

While the growing momentum has surprised many in Washington, comprehensive change is still not a sure thing, especially in the Republican-controlled House.

Mr. Hatch said he would push forward with his measure even if the broader efforts foundered. But his Democratic co-sponsor, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, said she would press for the bill to be part of the comprehensive package.

Last year, technology executives had a taste of what could happen with stand-alone legislation.

In November the House passed a bill, sponsored by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Republican of Texas, that would have provided 55,000 visas for foreigners graduating from American universities with advanced degrees in STEM fields. Mr. Smith, then the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, brought considerable clout, and the tech industry rallied behind the bill.

But the legislation died in the Senate, because Democrats wanted any technology-specific measure to be part of a broader bargain that would include more visas for family members.

In pressing its case, the industry has used some vivid examples to sway lawmakers, arguing that if skilled workers cannot get visas, tech companies will simply move the jobs overseas.

Facebook was the latest to make this case. It said it had to place nearly 80 engineers in its office in Dublin in 2011 because it could not obtain even temporary work visas to employ them at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Those temporary visas, called H-1B visas, are capped at 60,000 a year and usually run out within a couple of months. The bill proposed by Mr. Hatch and Ms. Klobuchar would more than double that number.

Microsoft has also argued that the visa backlog takes jobs out of the United States, saying it was forced to open a development office in Vancouver.

Hundreds of thousands of foreigners, the largest share from India and China, come to American universities every year to study science and engineering. But it can take so long for them to get permanent residency that many end up returning home. Mr. Hatch said he was keen to see foreign-born graduates of American universities remain in this country rather than work for competitive firms elsewhere.

“China, India — they would love to have these Ph.D.’s return to their countries,” he said. “They see the benefits. Why can’t we?”

There is no dearth of jobs in Silicon Valley. Employment in San Francisco and its southern suburbs grew about 3.6 percent in 2012, twice the growth rate nationally, according to a study released last week by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonpartisan research organization.

But many of those jobs are filled by foreigners. In San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, nearly two-thirds of those employed in science- and engineering-related jobs were born abroad, compared with about one-fourth nationwide, according to the study.

Industry executives hope to employ many more.

“The issue has truly ripened,” said Bruce Mehlman, a veteran Washington lobbyist and executive director of the Technology CEO Council. “Levels of optimism are higher than they’ve been in a while.”

Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.

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DealBook: S.E.C. Nominee Mary Jo White Discloses Law Firm Wealth

It is no secret that the partners at the white-shoe law firms Debevoise & Plimpton and Cravath, Swaine & Moore earn a decent living. The financial disclosure form of Mary Jo White, the Obama administration’s pick to become the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, reveals just how decent.

Ms. White and her husband, John White, have amassed at least $16 million, according to the filing. Ms. White, 65, heads the litigation department at Debevoise; Mr. White, 65, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath.

As part of her disclosures, Ms. White also explained how she would deal with potential conflicts of interest. In a surprise move, she wrote that her husband would convert his partnership at Cravath from equity to nonequity status.

While many large corporate law firms have nonequity partners, meaning they hold the title of partner but have no ownership stake, each of Cravath’s 87 partners has equity in the firm. As a nonequity partner, Mr. White will receive a fixed salary and an annual performance bonus, according to the filing.

Ms. White also said that, for the time she serves as the S.E.C.’s chairwoman, Mr. White would not communicate with the commission on behalf of Cravath or any client in connection with rules proposed by the S.E.C. Such a restriction is not immaterial for Cravath, as Mr. White has vast experience in securities law and deep connections to the S.E.C., having served as the director of the commission’s corporation finance unit from 2006 to 2008.

The disclosure form contained a number of other revelations. Mr. White has investments in three hedge funds, including a vehicle managed by Och-Ziff, a large publicly traded investment firm started by a former Goldman Sachs partner. He will divest his interest in all three funds upon her confirmation, according to the filing.

The couple also owns 40 acres of farmland and unsold crops in Pocahontas County, Iowa, that are valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

As for Ms. White, a former United States attorney in Manhattan, she received more than $2.4 million as a Debevoise partner last year, according to the filing. And she said that she planned to retire as a Debevoise partner upon becoming S.E.C. chairwoman, at which point she would enjoy the benefits of the firm’s lucrative retirement plan. The disclosure says that Ms. White will receive a monthly lifetime retirement payment of $42,500, amounting to $510,000 annually.

However, instead of making a monthly retirement payment for the next four years while she runs the commission, Debevoise will make a lump-sum payment within 60 days of her appointment, the filing disclosed.

The Whites’ net worth is most likely far greater than $16 million, which represents the low number in a range of possible amounts. Government officials are required to disclose their net worth only within broad ranges.

For instance, the Whites own seven different investments — including a Vanguard high yield bond fund and a Vanguard emerging markets fund — worth $1 million to $5 million. At the low end, those seven funds would be worth $7 million; but at the high end, they would be valued at $35 million.

Ms. White also said that she would avoid some matters for a period of time that involve her former clients, a list that includes JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and UBS.

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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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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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Gadgetwise Blog: Speakers With a Big Sound for Big Desks

The British loudspeaker maker KEF, a name well known to audiophiles, has broken out both the high-tech and marketing razzle-dazzle for its desktop X300A speakers.

For starters, it talks about the “Uni-Q driver array,” which joins two speakers in one – a fancy version of a good old coaxial speaker, which puts a woofer for low tones and a tweeter for high tones in the same chassis.

Then it boasts that each speaker has a class AB amplifier, a kind of dual circuit that is used in some higher quality amplifiers and car amps as well. It pumps up to 50 watts to the low frequency speaker and 20 watts to the high.

Neither of these is quite the breakthrough it is made to appear, but you don’t often find either in a speaker built for computers.

The end result is a very solid set of speakers – 16.5  pounds of solid each.

They aren’t for people concerned about desk space. The size of typical bookshelf speakers, they are nearly a foot high, with a roughly 7-by-10-inch footprint.

Nor are they for people concerned about running skeins of cables. Each speaker takes an industrial strength power cord, a USB cable to the computer or player and another cord between the speakers themselves.

With gun-metal-colored cabinets and no grill to obscure (or protect) the speakers, the X300As have a utilitarian look, but alas, not a utilitarian price: They list for $800 a pair.

The price could be excused if the sound were exceptional. Because the speakers can be customized to achieve different sounds, it’s hard to make a blanket assessment. But I’ll try.

After fiddling with the bias and balance controls, the EQ setting and a set of foam stoppers to rein in the bass, I can say the speakers sound very, very good in some cases – “Honky Tonk Woman” was lively, and the cowbell (more cowbell!) was just perfect.

In other cases, they were not as impressive – in the overture for “The Mikado,” the oboes sounded like they had tin cans over them.

But overall, they are a very good pair of speakers if money and desk space are no object.

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North Korea Is Suspected of Conducting 3rd Nuclear Test

Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press

A South Korean watched news reporting about a possible nuclear test conducted by North Korea on a TV screen in Seoul on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — American and South Korean officials reported seismic activity in North Korea on Tuesday that appeared to be evidence of the country’s third, and long-threatened nuclear test and a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

“We believe that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test,” said Kim Min-seok, spokesman of the South Korean Defense Ministry.

The shock appeared to be centered in the same location where the North conducted tests in 2006 and 2009, and the United States Geological Survey said it was only a kilometer underground, all indications consistent with a nuclear blast.

If confirmed, the test would be 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. Just in the past few days a Chinese newspaper that is often reflective of the government’s thinking said the North must “pay a heavy price” if it proceeded with the test.

But past United Nations Security Council sanctions have not deterred the country from accelerating its missile and nuclear programs. And recent actions, including a successful missile test nearly two months ago that reached as far as the Philippines and sent a washing-machine sized satellite into space have dashed hopes that the country’s Swiss-educated new leader might be willing to focus on economic reform rather than pursuing the path taken by his father and grandfather: open defiance of the country’s adversaries.

The Obama administration has already threatened to take additional action to penalize the North if it conducts a test, 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 betting that even a third test would not change the Chinese calculus.

It may take days or weeks to determine if the test, if that is what it proves to be, was successful. But 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 only has enough plutonium for a half-dozen or so bombs, it can produce enriched uranium well into the future.

No country is more interested in the results of the North’s nuclear program, or the Western reaction, than Iran, which is pursuing its own uranium enrichment program. The two countries have long cooperated on missile technology, and many intelligence officials believe they share nuclear knowledge as well, though so far there is no hard evidence. The Iranians are also pursuing uranium enrichment, and one senior American official said two weeks ago that “it’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.” Some believe that the country may have been planning two simultaneous tests, but it could take time to sort out the data.

The timing of the test, if that is what it was, is critical. It comes just as a transition of power is about to take place in South Korea, and the North detested the South’s hard-line outgoing president, Lee Myung-bak. By conducting a test just before he leaves office, the North could be both sending a message and giving his successor, Park Guen-Hye, the chance to restore relations after the breach a test will undoubtedly cause.

Western officials considered the country’s first nuclear test, in 2006, a fizzle, but the next one in 2009 was judged more successful. It may take outside experts days or weeks to determine if the latest blast moved the program to a “higher level,” as Pyongyang recently promised, allowing it to improve, or even expand, an arsenal that intelligence experts say includes enough plutonium for roughly 6 to 10 nuclear bombs.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea.

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