Archive for July 1st, 2007

Zeal Television will refocus its business on music programming and branded entertainment following the sale of its distribution arm to rights owner Digital Rights Group (DRG).

The company is also scaling down its UK production activities, with a shift towards licensing its existing titles, such as Channel 4 series Bring Back…, to other indie producers.

“We want to grow this business substantially,” said Zeal chief executive Peter Christiansen, who added that the sale of Zeal Entertainment represented a good return on investment for shareholders.

“It will give Zeal’s shareholders a very solid current and future return on investment and is great for the distribution business which needs capital and scale to grow,” he said.

Zeal has been ramping up its music distribution business in recent months, and was last week appointed by Malcolm Gerrie’s Whizzkid Entertainment as distributor for George Michael: The Road to Wembley, which aired on C4 last Saturday (June 9).

Zeal has already sold the two-hour concert special to Fox-owned My Network TV in the US, as well as SBS in Holland, Zee TV in India, MCM in France, Canale 5 in Italy and SVT in Sweden. My Network TV will air the concert later this summer to coincide with the launch of Michael’s US Tour.

Zeal’s Miami-based branded content unit, meanwhile, is currently in production with The Nissan Rematch, a football reality series to air this summer on Fox Sports in the US, and also produces weekly chart show Pepsi Musica for Spanish network Univision.

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DALLAS —  Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen of its stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

It is all part of a campaign to hype next month’s opening of “The Simpsons Movie,” the big-screen debut for the long-running television cartoon series, which loves to lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent. Read the rest of this entry »

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As Tuesday’s opening of the “Transformers” movie approaches, loyal fans are ready.

Brian Kelly, 35, owner of Detroit Comics in Ferndale, grew up watching the cartoons and collecting the toys.

Theus Weathers, 7, of Detroit is growing up with Transformers. Why does he like them? “They’re robots,” he says with a happy shout. Read the rest of this entry »

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