Netflix to get Disney films in TV distribution deal

(Reuters) – Walt Disney gave a much needed boost to Netflix, becoming the first major Hollywood studio to use the video service to bypass premium channels like HBO that traditionally controlled the delivery of movies to TV subscribers.

News of the deal, which enables Netflix to stream Disney‘s first-run movies to its subscribers, boosted Netflix shares by 14 percent.

Liberty Media Corp, whose Starz group now distributes Disney movies on TV, fell almost 5 percent.

Investors saw the Netflix-Disney deal as an important endorsement of the DVD rental and streaming service, which has been struggling with slowing subscriber growth and higher costs for content distribution.

Disney movies will be available for streaming on Netflix starting in 2016, after its current deal with Liberty Media‘s pay-TV channel Starz expires. The deal is for both new Disney movies and library content such as “Dumbo” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

“An exclusive deal with Disney differentiates the Netflix content from Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video,” said Anthony DiClemente, an analyst with Barclays Capital.

But some analysts worried that Netflix paid too much to get Disney‘s movies. Tony Wible, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott, estimated in a report that Netflix paid more than $ 350 million a year for Disney‘s movies and said “we would not be surprised if (Netflix) would need to raise capital”.

By comparison, HBO agreed to pay an estimated $ 200 million annually in its so-called “output,” or movie licensing deal, with 20th Century Fox earlier this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The deal gives Netflix streaming rights to movies from Disney‘s live-action and animation studios, including those from Pixar, Marvel, and the recently acquired Lucasfilm. On October 30, Disney announced a $ 4 billion deal to purchase the famed studio founded by George Lucas, which will now make new episodes in the blockbuster “Star Wars” series.

“This deal brings to our subscribers some of the highest quality, most imaginative family films being made today,” Ted Sarandos, Netflix‘s chief content officer, said in a statement. “It’s a leap forward for Internet television.”

DREAMWORKS EXCLUDED

Movies from Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios are not included in the deal, as that studio distributes its movies through CBS’s Showtime on TV. Disney recently signed a deal to distribute DreamWorks’ films theatrically after the studio’s deal with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures expired.

The deal allows Netflix to stream Disney movies beginning seven to nine months after they appear in theaters, as Starz does now under Disney‘s prior agreement. The deal does not cover DVD rentals of Disney movies.

Disney said in November that it would shut down its own video streaming service, Disney Movies Online, which had failed to catch on with users. A message on the ‘Disney Movies Online’ website said it would shut down on December 31.

Netflix, which started its streaming business with mostly older films, has been moving to add more original programming and produces TV shows such as “Lilyhammer,” which stars “Sopranos” actor Steven Van Zandt as an American gangster who starts a new life in Norway. The company also struck a high-profile deal with actor Kevin Spacey for “House of Cards.”

The Disney pact follows similar deals Netflix has inked for new films with smaller studios, including Relativity Media, The Weinstein company and DreamWorks Animation.

The agreements have saddled Netflix with nearly $ 5 billion in contractual commitments over the next three years for deals its made for streaming content, the company said in a recent quarterly earnings report.

Netflix‘s struggles over the last year, which have included missed subscriber guidance, an ill-fated attempt to split the DVD and streaming operations, and a swooning stock price, recently attracted the attention of billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn.

Icahn disclosed in regulatory filings on October 31 that he had amassed a nearly 10 percent stake in the video company and suggested it should pursue a sale. Netflix responded by adopting a poison pill defense.

Losing Disney’s movies means Starz is left with only Sony Pictures for film content. The pay-TV channel cast the ending of its agreement with Disney as its decision, saying it preferred to use the money for original programming creation.

Liberty Media‘s shares will “rebound,” said Vijay Jayant, an analyst with International Strategy and Investment Group.

“We believe it was Starz‘ decision to remain prudent and walk away from the bidding for Disney content,” ISI said in a report, estimating that it might have cost Starz $ 400 million to keep the movies.

Without that expense, Starz can step up its production of original series such as “Spartacus” and “Magic City,” which ISI said have become more valuable to cable operators anyway.

Netflix shares jumped $ 10.6491, or 14 percent, to $ 86.6491. Liberty Media shares fell $ 5.49, or almost 5 percent, to $ 105.56.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by David Gregorio; Editing by Peter Lauria, Tim Dobbyn, David Gregorio and Jeremy Laurence)

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Willis Whitfield, Clean Room Inventor, Dies at 92

The enemy was very small but it was everywhere. World peace, medical advancement, iTunes — all would eventually be threatened.

Half a century ago, as a rapidly changing world sought increasingly smaller mechanical and electrical components and more sanitary hospital conditions, one of the biggest obstacles to progress was air, and the dust and germs it contains.

Stray particles a few microns wide could compromise the integrity of a circuit board of a nuclear weapon. Unchecked bacteria could quickly infect a patient after a seemingly successful operation. Microprocessors, not yet in existence, would have been destroyed by dust. After all, an average cubic foot of air contained three million microscopic particles, and even the best efforts at vacuuming and wiping down a high-tech work space could only reduce the rate to one million.

Then, in 1962, Willis Whitfield invented the clean room.

“People said he was a fraud,” recalled Gilbert V. Herrera, the director of microsystems science and technology at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. “But he turned out to be right.”

Mr. Whitfield, who worked at Sandia from 1954 to 1984, died on Nov. 12 in Albuquerque. He was 92. The cause was prostate cancer, his wife, Belva, said.

His clean rooms blew air in from the ceiling and sucked it out from the floor. Filters scrubbed the air before it entered the room. Gravity helped particles exit. It might not seem like a complicated concept, but no one had tried it before. The process could completely replace the air in the room 10 times a minute.

Particle detectors in Mr. Whitfield’s clean rooms started showing numbers so low — a thousand times lower than other methods — that some people did not believe the readings, or Mr. Whitfield. He was questioned so much that he began understating the efficiency of his method to keep from shocking people.

“I think Whitfield’s wrong,” a scientist from Bell Labs finally said at a conference where Mr. Whitfield spoke. “It’s actually 10 times better than he’s saying.”

Willis James Whitfield was born in Rosedale, Okla., on Dec. 6, 1919. In addition to his wife, his survivors include his sons, James and Joe; a sister, Amy Blackburn; and a brother, Lawrence.

Mr. Whitfield became fascinated with electronics as a young man and received a two-year degree in the field after high school. He served in the Navy late in World War II, working with experimental electronic systems for aircraft. In 1952, he received a bachelor’s degree in physics and math from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex.

By 1954 he was working at Sandia, which was involved in making parts for nuclear weapons and at the time was overseen by the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Whitfield’s duties soon included contamination control. By 1960, he had established his basic idea for the clean room.

“I thought about dust particles,” Mr. Whitfield told Time magazine in 1962. “Where are these rascals generated? Where do they go?”

The clean room was patented through Sandia, and the government shared it freely among manufacturers, hospitals and other industries.

Mr. Whitfield’s original clean room was only about six feet high, built as a small, self-contained unit. Some modern electronic devices, including the iPhone, are now built in China in huge clean rooms in structures that are more than a million square feet. Workers wear protective clothing, and other anticontamination methods have been added, but they still depend on Mr. Whitfield’s approach to suck up dust.

“Relative to these electronics, the particles are just massive boulders that would short out all of your electronics and make them not work,” Mr. Herrera said. “The core technology, just the cleaning part, hasn’t really changed a lot.”

Mrs. Whitfield said she was often been asked if her husband was a particularly fastidious man, and she always noted that he tended not to put his shoes away. He did live in a tidy house, though, and colleagues say he never tired of getting out a flashlight and shining it sideways across his coffee table to illuminate the prevalence of tiny dust particles that most people never notice.

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South Loop residents oppose DePaul arena

The prospect of a DePaul University men's basketball arena being constructed on land just north of McCormick Place is drawing strong opposition from the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, a South Loop residents' organization, according to a letter released Tuesday.
 
A survey of 700 neighbors of the site, conducted by the community group, found more than 70 percent oppose construction of a Blue Demons arena there, Tina Feldstein, president of the organization, stated in the letter.
 
An arena would not fit within the residential and historic character of the area and could put two landmark structures, the Harriet F. Rees House and the American Book Co. building, at risk, the letter stated. It would also add to traffic congestion and potential rowdiness in an area already overburdened when conventions are in progress at McCormick Place or major events, including Chicago Bears games, are taking place at Soldier Field, Feldstein said in an interview.
 
"We're not against vibrant development, which hotel and retail would bring," Feldstein said. And the group would support an arena at an alternate site on the Near South Side, she said.
 
The letter was written in support of an alternate plan for the so-called "Olde Prairie" blocks, which is being put forward in bankruptcy court by developers Pam Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk. Their plan calls for hotel and retail development on property directly north of the McCormick Place administrative offices and West Building on Cermak Road.
 
If they lose control of the property, it is expected to go up for auction, making it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties to make a run at it.
 
DePaul is weighing several sites, including property near McCormick Place and the United Center on the Near West Side. As well, the Allstate Arena in Rosemont is fighting to retain the team.
 
The neighborhood's opposition adds to resistance by Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes McCormick Place.
 "That is not a place to put an arena -- far away from the school," he said. "I think there are traffic issues related, and it would be a bad deal for taxpayers in these economic times."

Fioretti noted such a project likely would require public subsidy.
 
The Olde Prairie blocks have not been officially designated as a potential site for a DePaul arena, but Fioretti said it is his understanding that they are being seriously considered.
 
Jim Reilly, chief executive officer of the exposition authority, known as McPier, has publicly acknowledged that there have been talks with DePaul. A spokeswoman on Tuesday said it would be premature to comment further at this point.

A DePaul spokesperson could not be reached for immediate comment.
 
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he would like DePaul to bring men's basketball back to the city. A spokesman declined comment beyond that.
 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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City, bartender ask court to set aside 'code of silence' verdict

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration asked a federal judge Monday to set aside a jury verdict in the infamous videotaped beating of a female bartender by an off-duty Chicago police officer — essentially agreeing to pay the woman $850,000 now in return for erasing the jury's finding that a police "code of silence" protected the cop.

The unusual request is an attempt to prevent last month's damaging verdict from being cited by lawyers in other lawsuits against the Police Department. The former bartender filed the motion jointly with the city; she stands to quickly collect the jury award she won without risking the chance of losing on appeal or having the trial judge reduce the amount.

It will be up to U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve to weigh the interests of the parties involved in the lawsuit against the interest of the public in having the record of the jury's verdict stand. City lawyers said they plan to appear before the judge Monday.

The city battled Karolina Obrycka's lawsuit for five years, arguing that former Officer Anthony Abbate's attack on her, which was caught on security video and eventually went viral on the Internet, was the action of an off-duty officer and not the responsibility of the Chicago Police Department.

As part of her case against the city, Obrycka's lawyers argued that a pattern and practice of covering up police corruption and misconduct exists in the department. Moreover, she argued, Abbate behaved with a sense of impunity because he believed fellow officers would protect him. The jury agreed in its Nov. 13 verdict.

Although the city argued in Monday's court papers that the jury's verdict was "ambiguous" and tied to the peculiar circumstances of the Abbate case, lawyers also wrote that they want the verdict removed from the record because it could influence other lawsuits against the Police Department, of which there are many.

In a statement, Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton said the city reached out to Obrycka after the administration determined it didn't want to appeal the verdict.

"From the city's perspective, vacating the judgment eliminates the risk that the judgment will be misused in a way that hinders the city's ability to defend itself in future cases," Patton said.

The city also argued in the motion that the misconduct in the Abbate case happened several years ago and things are different now. The old Office of Professional Standards, which investigated the Abbate case, was renamed and reconfigured in the wake of the scandal. Also, city lawyers noted that there is a new mayor as well as a different police superintendent.

While the city's effort to erase the jury's verdict would not strike down the record of testimony in the trial, it does pose some risks to the public good, experts said.

"By allowing the kind of agreed-upon whitewash of the jury verdict, it tends to increase the possibility of future bad conduct," said Richard Zitrin, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, who has testified before Congress about secret settlements in police misconduct cases.

"The problem is that the lawyer representing the plaintiff has a duty to do what's right for the plaintiff, and that duty does not include a duty to do what's right for the public as a whole."

Obrycka's lawyer, Terry Ekl, did not respond to calls for comment Monday. City officials also did not immediately answer questions about the move.

In the memorandum filed Monday, the city cited some legal precedents supporting the move to vacate the jury verdict. But federal courts have not always agreed with such motions when public misconduct issues are involved.

In a 2000 case in Virginia, after a federal jury found for a plaintiff in a police excessive force lawsuit, both sides filed a motion to vacate the verdict in favor of a settlement. In that case, the judge wrote, "the public's interest in judicial economy, finality of judgment and the integrity of the courts outweighs the parties' interest in having the verdict vacated."

Lawyer Christopher Smith, who has represented several plaintiffs in lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department, said claims of a pattern and practice of coverups are allowed into cases rarely and on narrow terms.

Applying the precedent from the Abbate verdict to other lawsuits is challenging, he said. However, given the circumstances of the case — the fact that Abbate was off-duty and in a bar — the verdict made a strong statement.

Because the jury decided that the department covered up for a drunken off-duty cop attacking somebody in a bar, the case shows "it's so well-known to officers that no matter what we do, we know we're going to get backed up," Smith said. "No matter how far away (the alleged behavior) was from a police action, there's always a police influence if there's a code of silence."

dheinzmann@tribune.com

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$120 tablet that runs both Android and Linux to launch in early 2013

For anyone who has ever used his or her Android tablet and wished that it could double as a desktop-style device, PengPod has a product just for you. Ars Technica reports that the new PengPod tablet, which runs both Android and Linux, has met its crowd-sourced fundraising goals and will so on sale in January for $ 120 a 7-inch model and $ 185 for a 10-inch model. According to Ars, the tablet will be able to “dual-boot Android 4.0 and a version of Linux with the touch-friendly KDE Plasma Active interface.” Overall, the tablet received funding of nearly $ 73,000, or around 49% more than the $ 49,000 that the company had been seeking.

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Katt Williams Arrested After Alleged Bar Rampage

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Katt Williams didn’t have much to laugh about this weekend after the comedian was arrested in Seattle, following an incident at a bar during which Williams allegedly attacked a woman with a cigarette, according to the Seattle Police Department.

According to police Williams – born Micah Williams – “exchanged words” with other customers at the World Sports Grille in the city’s South Lake Union area Sunday afternoon and “brandished a pool cue” at the bar’s manager.

At one point, police say, Williams – who was in town to perform at the Paramount Theatre – followed a family outside of the bar and flicked a lit cigarette into their car, striking a woman just below the eye. He also threw a rock at the car, according to police.

Police showed up at the establishment just before 2:30 in the afternoon and, after a struggle to get Williams into the patrol car, transported him to the West Precinct. Williams was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault, harassment and obstruction, police said.

A representative for Williams has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.

According to TMZ, he has been released on bail.

The bar incident wasn’t Williams’ only brush with police this weekend. According to the Seattle Police Department, after the 41-year-old comedian’s show Friday night, three fans claimed Williams attacked them when they tried to take a picture with him after the show. Williams’ denied the allegation, saying that the fans had forced their way into his dressing room, and no arrests were made.

Williams told police after the Friday night incident that he planned to cancel Saturday’s show and leave town, but apparently didn’t.

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With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane Sandy, Others Pick Up Slack

A month after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, unexpectedly shutting down several hospitals, one Upper East Side medical center had so many more emergency room patients than usual that it was parking them in its lobby.

White and blue plastic screens had been set up between the front door and the elevator banks in the East 68th Street building of that hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. The screens shielded 10 gurneys and an improvised nursing station from the view of people obliviously walking in and out of the soaring, light-filled atrium.

“It’s like a World War II ward,” Teri Daniels, who had been waiting a day and a half with a relative who needed to be admitted, said last week.

Since the storm, a number of New York City hospitals have been scrambling to deal with a sharp increase in patients, forcing them to add shifts of doctors and nurses on overtime, to convert offices and lobbies to use for patients’ care, and even, in one case, to go to a local furniture store to buy extra beds.

At Beth Israel Medical Center, 11 blocks south of the Bellevue Hospital Center emergency room, which was shuttered because of storm damage, the average number of visits to the E.R. per day has risen to record levels. Visits have increased by 24 percent this November compared with last, and the numbers show no sign of dropping. Hospital admissions have risen 12 percent compared with last November.

Most of the rise in volume is from patients who had never been to Beth Israel before. An emergency room doctor at the hospital described treating one patient who said he had been born at Bellevue and had never before gone anywhere else.

Emergency room visits have gone up 25 percent at NewYork-Presybterian/Weill Cornell, which in Bellevue’s absence is the closest high-level trauma center — treating stab wounds, gun wounds, people hit by cars and the like — in Manhattan from 68th Street south. Stretchers holding patients have been lined up like train cars around the nursing station and double-parked in front of stretcher bays.

In Brooklyn, some patients in Maimonides Medical Center’s emergency room who need to be admitted are waiting two or three days for a bed upstairs, instead of four or five hours. Almost every one of the additional 1,100 emergency patients this November compared with last November came from four ZIP codes affected by the storm and served by Coney Island Hospital, a public hospital that was closed because of storm damage.

The number of psychiatric emergency patients from those same ZIP codes has tripled, in a surge that began three days before the hurricane, perhaps fueled by anxiety, as well as by displacement from flooded adult homes or programs at Coney Island Hospital, doctors said.

The Maimonides psychiatric emergency room bought five captain’s beds — which do not have railings that can be used for suicide attempts — at a local furniture store, to accommodate extra patients. The regular emergency room had to buy 27 new stretchers after the hurricane, “and we probably need a few more,” the department’s chief, Dr. John Marshall, said.

The emergency room and inpatient operations of four hospitals remain closed because of flooding and storm damage. Besides Bellevue and Coney Island, NYU Langone Medical Center and the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, both near Bellevue on the East Side of Manhattan, are closed.

While the surge in traffic to other hospitals has been a burden, it has also been a boon, bringing more revenue.

On the Upper East Side, the storm has helped Lenox Hill Hospital, which has a history of financial problems. It took two or three wards that had been turned into offices and converted them back to space for patients. Emergency room visits are up 10 percent, and surgery has been expanded to seven days a week from five.

“We usually operate at slightly over 300 beds, and now we’re at well over 550,” Carleigh Gustafson, director of emergency nursing, said.

Conversely, administrators at the shuttered hospitals, especially NYU Langone, a major teaching center, worry that their patients and doctors are being raided, with some never to return.

NYU’s salaried doctors are being paid through January, on the condition that they do not take another job. But at the same time, they need a place to practice, so NYU administrators have been arranging for them to work as far away as New Jersey until the hospital reopens. Lenox Hill alone has taken on close to 300 NYU doctors, about 600 nurses, and about 150 doctors in training, fellows and medical students.

Obstetricians and surgeons from the closed hospitals have been particularly disadvantaged, since they are dependent on hospitals to treat their patients. Many displaced surgeons have been reduced to treating only the most desperately ill, and operating on nights and weekends, when hospitals tend to be least well staffed.

“I think there’s no question that a lot of people have postponed anything that they can postpone that is elective,” said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, senior vice president at NYU.

In mid-November, Dr. Michael L. Brodman, chairman of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, sent out a memo saying his department had taken on 26 NYU physicians, as well as nurses and residents, but “clearly, that is too much for us to handle long term.”

Since then, 15 of the physicians have gone to New York Downtown Hospital, while Mount Sinai has retained 11 doctors and 26 nurses.

“We are guests in other people’s homes,” Dr. Brotman of NYU said, “and we are guests who have to some degree overstayed their welcome.”

Joanna Walters contributed reporting.

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Public-private group wins bid for delinquent mortgages

A homeowner with a delinquent mortgage speaks with a mortgage specialist at a JPMorgan Chase foreclosure consultation event in New York in 2011. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters File Photo / December 3, 2012)

By Mary Ellen Podmolik




Tribune reporter

5:19 p.m. CST, December 3, 2012

A public-private partnership headed by the Illinois Housing Development Authority has emerged as one of the winning bidders in a September auction of delinquent mortgages held by the Federal Housing Administration.
 
Mortgage Resolution Fund will use $25 million of federal hardest-hit funds awarded to the state to buy 324 delinquent loans on Chicago-area properties. The loans, which were part of a neighborhood stabilization pool have an unpaid principal balance of about $62 million and the properties are valued at $40 million.
 
After the note sale closes, homeowners whose delinquent mortgages are part of the loan pool will be contacted by a new servicer in early 2013 that will offer to write down the principal balance of the loans and set up more affordable repayment terms to eligible homeowners. Those homeowners pay no cost to receive the loan modifications.
 
"We want to help as many borrowers as possible achieve long-term stability so they can stay in their homes without the fear of foreclosure," said Mary Kenney, executive director of the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
 
Separately, Florida-based Bayview Acquisitions LLC submitted a winning bid of about $70 million for 1,430 other Illinois loans in a neighborhood stabilization pool that had an unpaid principal balance of about $269 million and an estimated property value of $155 million. Another 299 delinquent Illinois mortgages were sold as part of other pools.
 
Nationally, the note sale involved about 9,400 distressed loans. Bids were submitted to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in September.
 
HUD said plans to sell another 10,000 to 15,000 distressed loans during the first quarter of 2013, and at least 40,000 during the next year in an effort to remove distressed loans from its portfolio.
 
mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Orange Bowl bid, new coach cap wild weekend for NIU

It was an incredible weekend for the Northern Illinois football program.

A 44-37 double-overtime victory over Kent State in the Mid-American Conference championship game kicked off the exhilaration Friday night at Ford Field in Detroit. That was followed by the announcement on Saturday that Dave Doeren had accepted the coaching position at North Carolina State.

On Sunday came the historic news that the Huskies were bound for Miami on New Year's Day to face Florida State in the Orange Bowl, becoming the first team from the MAC to earn a berth in a BCS bowl game.

"We're 12-1," NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch told ESPN. "We faced tons of adversity this year. We won tons of games. … We definitely deserve to be in there."

Capping things off, the school announced Sunday night the head coaching vacancy had been filled by promoting offensive coordinator Rod Carey.

"It has been crazy; it has been nuts. That's the only way to explain it," said Carey, who agreed to a five-year contract. "But it has been good. All of that has been wonderful … and what a privilege for our kids to go to the Orange Bowl. They were so excited they could barely stand up."

While some college observers vehemently argued that NIU didn't belong in the game, Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher told reporters in Tallahassee that he had no such qualms.

"You don't get in this game unless you're a good football team," Fisher said. "It's easy for talking heads to say that (NIU doesn't belong). They've earned the right to be here, they've earned the right to have this opportunity.

"We know we're going to get an inspired opponent, an opponent that's going to be ready to prove something."

NIU now has its third coach in three years. Jerry Kill left after the 2010 season to take the head coaching job at Minnesota. Doeren was 23-4 in just two seasons on the DeKalb campus. NIU athletic director Jeff Compher is hoping for a smooth transition from Doeren to Carey.

"That's why they did what they did in such a short amount of time," Carey said. "Because I have been here and they want the transition to be as seamless as it can be.

"I don't have any reason today to sit here and say that I want to go somewhere else. Listen, I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and I went to high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Joe Novak (former NIU head coach) was the defensive coordinator at Indiana when I played there. So my ties and my knowing about NIU have gone back a long time. And I have wanted to be at this place for a lot of different times in my career. And I finally got here and now this has happened. I don't know why I would want to go anywhere else."

It is not yet clear how many other members of the NIU coaching staff will join Doeren at N.C. State.

"It will be a challenge; I don't know how it will all play out," Carey said. "But I do know that this staff just won back-to-back MAC championships. And as far as I am concerned, it's the finest staff I've worked with. So I would love to coach with all of these guys for a long time."

This year, Carey helped mold an offensive line of five new starters that helped Lynch become one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in the nation. Carey transitioned into the role of offensive coordinator after the first game of the season when Mike Dunbar had to step away from that role while battling a serious illness.

"Mike Dunbar is one of the most high-character people and unbelievable people I have ever been around," Carey said. I have learned more from that man … he and coach Doeren I have learned more from."

fmitchell@tribune.com

Twitter@kicker34

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Obama salutes entertainers taking a Washington bow

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Music legend Led Zeppelin was recognized on Sunday alongside entertainers from stage and screen for their contributions to the arts and American culture at the Kennedy Center Honors, lifetime achievement awards for performing artists.

The eclectic tribute in Washington, alternated between solemn veneration and lighthearted roasting of honorees Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman, wisecracking late-night talk show host David Letterman, blues guitar icon Buddy Guy, ballerina Natalia Makarova and Led Zeppelin.

“I worked with the speechwriters – there is no smooth transition from ballet to Led Zeppelin,” President Barack Obama deadpanned while introducing the honorees in a ceremony in the White House East Room.

Friends, contemporaries and a new generation of artists influenced by the honorees took the stage in tribute.

“Dustin Hoffman is a pain the ass,” actor Robert DeNiro said in introducing Hoffman, the infamously perfectionist star of such celebrated films as “The Graduate” and “Tootsie.”

“And he inspired me to be a bit of a pain in the ass too,” DeNiro said with a big smile.

At a weekend dinner for the winners at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that the performing arts often requires a touch of diplomacy as she toasted Makarova, a dance icon in the former Soviet Union when she defected in 1970.

Tiler Peck of the New York City Ballet, who performed in “Other Dances,” one of Makarova’s signature roles, said she has studied her idol’s technique for years.

“This is a role she created,” Peck said.

Despite the president’s misgivings about his own speech, the performance at the Kennedy Center navigated the transition from refined ballet to gritty blues music when the spotlight turned to Guy, a sharecropper’s son who made his first instrument with wire scrounged from around his family’s home in rural Louisiana.

“He’s one of the most idiosyncratic and passionate blues greats, and there are not many left of that original generation…,” said Bonnie Raitt, who as an 18-year-old blues songstress was often the warm-up act for Guy.

George “Buddy” Guy, 76, was a pioneer in the Chicago blues style that pushed the sound of electrically amped guitar to the forefront of the music.

“You mastered the soul of gut bucket,” actor Morgan Freeman told the Kennedy Center audience. “You made a bridge from roots to rock ‘n roll.”

In a toast on Saturday night, former President Bill Clinton talked of Guy’s impoverished upbringing and how he improvised a guitar from the strands of a porch screen, paint can and his mother’s hair pins.

“In Buddy’s immortal phrase, the blues is ‘Something you play because you have it. And when you play it, you lose it.’”

It was a version of the blues that drifted over the Atlantic to Britain and came back in the finger-rattling rock sound of Led Zeppelin.

Jimmy Page, 68, was the guitar impresario who anchored the compositions with vocalist Robert Plant, 64, howling and screeching out the soul. Bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, 66, rounded out the band with drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980.

The incongruity of the famously hard-partying rock stars sitting in black tie under chandeliers at a White House ceremony was not lost on Obama.

“Of course, these guys also redefined the rock and roll lifestyle,” the president said, to laughter and sheepish looks from the band members.

“So it’s fitting that we’re doing this in a room with windows that are about three inches thick – and Secret Service all around,” Obama said. “So, guys, just settle down.”

The gala will be aired on CBS television on December 26.

(Reporting By Patrick Rucker and Mark Felsenthal)

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