US companies hustle to reopen after Sandy

Late night blues

Some large media companies in New York struggled with power outages at their offices on Tuesday.

Viacom's offices for its Comedy Central, TV Land and Spike TV networks in Lower Manhattan near the Hudson River had no electricity or phone service on Tuesday and employees stayed home, a spokesman said.

Comedy Central's hit late night shows "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report", which have Manhattan studios, canceled tapings on Monday and Tuesday.

Media companies in Midtown Manhattan, above power outages, fared better.

At HBO, which is owned by Time Warner Inc, a spokesman said the New York-based shows "Girls" and "Boardwalk Empire" had already wrapped production so they were unaffected by the storm. New York staff who had electricity were working from home on Tuesday "doing what needs to be done to keep the network running," he said.

A spokeswoman for NBC Universal, which is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, said news operations had been working around the clock, and its Chief Executive Steve Burke was in the office on Monday and Tuesday. She said most employees had been working from home, but they would start trickling back to the office in the next few days.

Staff at news magazine "The Week" hauled their own computers and servers down five flights of stairs on Tuesday morning to set up a temporary office in a hotel conference room across the street so they could meet their printing deadline.

US telephone companies struggled to provide services on Tuesday as flooding, power outages and even snow crippled their networks. The Federal Communications Commission estimated that about 25 percent of wireless broadcast towers were out on Tuesday and that outages could worsen before getting better.

Verizon Communications spent the day trying to pump water from central offices that house critical equipment for home phone, Internet and television services.

The lobby of Verizon's Corporate headquarters in Manhattan is shown underwater Oct 29, 2012 in this handout photo supplied by Verizon in New York Tuesday. [Photo/Agencies]

Drugmakers seek alternatives

Drugmakers, heavily concentrated in New York and New Jersey, were laid low by the storm. Novartis AG said all of its offices in the area were closed on Tuesday, as did insulin maker Novo Nordisk.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc said it had implemented a continuity plan to ensure medicines would be distributed, especially given the numerous airport closures. The company also said there was sufficient inventory in the supply chain to avoid serious disruptions.

Relatively high amounts of pharmaceuticals move by air, since drugs are light and high-value items, meaning companies lik