Archive for November 19th, 2007

A USER-INITIATED IN-TEXT VIDEO ADVERTISING campaign during the month prior to the launch of the new season of Bravo’s “Project Runway” proved to be a huge success, with a viewer audience that was 40% higher this year than last, according to Nielsen Ratings.

Some 872,000 viewers tuned in to see the show’s season premiere last Wednesday–up from 621,000 who watched in 2006, Bravo reports.

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Strike Could Affect 2008-2009 Season, Too

If the current writers’ strike is not settled by mid-January, it would threaten not only this season’s production schedule but development for next fall’s as well, analysts said over the weekend. Jack Myers, president of Myers Publishing and creator of the MediaVillage website, told the New York Post that if the strike persists into the new year, “the traditional timetable for network concept development, script writing and pilot production will unravel.” John Rash of ad agency Campbell Mithun, echoed the warning, telling the newspaper, “A multi-month strike could truncate not just the current television season but at a minimum significantly delay the next.” Meanwhile, several analysts have observed that both sides will be entering the great unknown when they resume negotiations. “The writers and the producers are in the same boat,” David W. Rips of the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche told today’s (Monday) Los Angeles Times “Writers want to know what their percentage of residuals should be, but they don’t know what the total market size is or the profitability of that market. And the producers are in the exact same position.” Indeed, some technical experts have pointed out that the issue of downloaded or “streamed” TV shows may become moot as larger hard drives become available that will soon make it possible for TV viewers to record automatically virtually weeks of programs on every channel they watch for viewing whenever they wish.

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After Thanksgiving Table, the Negotiating Table

Striking members of the Writers Guild of America and members of Hollywood’s movie and TV studios announced over the weekend that they had agreed to resume formal talks after the Thanksgiving holiday. The Wall Street Journal gave credit to Bryan Lourd, co-chairman of the Creative Artists Agency, for acting as mediator in bringing the two sides back to the negotiating table. Jonathan Handel, a former guild lawyer who has been critical of the current WGA negotiators, told Bloomberg News, “I hope it’s the beginning of the triumph of sense. … They’ve shown a basic difficulty to even talk civilly.” In a message to members posted on the WGA site, WGA West President Patric Verrone said, “Returning to the bargaining table is only a start. … Our work is not done until we achieve a good contract and that is by no means assured.” For his part, Nick Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, said, “The AMPTP is prepared to negotiate if the Writers Guild seriously expects that a deal can be made.”

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Life for a freethinking bee isn’t easy. Discipline and order define the life of every bee in the hive. And as the Bee Movie’s star Barry B. Benson discovers after graduating from college, he and his fellow bees are all expected to follow the same career path for the rest of their lives. Honex, which manufactures honey, is one of the fake brands that dominate the hive’s brandscape which include fake media brands such as Hive Today and BeNN. Read the rest of this entry »

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NEW YORK MySpace is joining the search for a new business model for the music industry by enlisting the help of advertising.

Next March, fans of punk band Pennywise can go to stores to buy the group’s ninth album. Or they can go to the MySpace profile of Textango, a mobile music distributor, and add it as a friend, which will allow them to download the entire album for free.

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There are a couple of things writers should keep in mind as they continue to strike for their share of new media revenues. Some studies say that online media content is accelerating America’s ever-expanding appetite for TV. The battle for audiences, whether online or on the television, isn’t exactly a “zero-sum” game. The Web is still a long way away from replacing the traditional television set.

Right now, the ability to watch TV on a cell phone, say, only reinforces a viewer’s relationship to his or her favorite program. People still prefer to watch their shows on a television–and why not, time-shifting devices make it easy to watch programs without ads. For now, Web-based programming is a handy second option. Video sharing sites also serve the two-fold purpose of enabling users to relive their favorite moments, while helping TV programs attract new viewers.

The writer’s strike may galvanize traditional media companies into improving their online offerings. If no new scripts are coming in, it’s more incentive to them to look for new writers willing to create programming on the Web for less. The networks aren’t likely to waste this critical opportunity for development. The same goes for advertisers: They may shift even more spending to the Web than they already have…

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WITH THE WRITERS GUILD OF America strike dragging on into its third week, NBC has apparently come up with a contingency plan: Come January, the network will start running the new Web show “Quarterlife” on TV. The show, created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of “thirtysomething” fame, debuted last week on MySpace.

The show is touted for bringing TV-like production values to the Web, but three years ago ABC passed on the series. Of course, the strike has obviously given TV execs reason to rethink what shows are ready for prime time.

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LONDON — Digital services outfit Arts Alliance Media has signed a multi-million dollar virtual print fee pact with Gallic exhib Circuit George Raymond, which will see 400 digital screens rolled out across France.Move reps the first time AAM has struck a VPF deal with an exhibitor and marks an acceleration of the digital revolution in Europe.

VPF is a means of financing the conversion of theaters to digital. Both distrib and exhib contribute over time toward the cost of digital projection equipment, which is paid for up front by the service provider. The VPF model has proved its worth in North America, with more than 3,700 digital screens installed to date. Read the rest of this entry »

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