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Following its decision to break off discussions with the Writers Guild of America for the time being, the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers is now seeking early talks with the Directors Guild of America in hopes that a favorable settlement with the DGA would set the framework for a deal with the Screen Actors Guild and force the WGA into line as well, published reports observed. “Once one of these organizations does a deal, the others tend to fall into place,” one studio executive told today’s (Tuesday) London Financial Times. “It will put more pressure on the writers.” Meanwhile, the WGA and the AMPTP continued to fire verbal rounds at one another on Monday. In what Daily Variety described as an “incendiary” statement, WGA East President Michael Winship said of the studio negotiators “They lie. And then they lie again. And then they lie some more.” For its part the AMPTP maintained that the WGA’s claim that the talks broke down over new-media issues was untrue. The cause, it said, was “the desire of the WGA’s organizers to increase their own power and prestige by expanding the jurisdiction of the union over reality television and animation writers.”
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The Super Bowl is known best as a gridiron contest between NFL greats. But it is fast emerging as a battleground between two of the marketing world’s greatest rivals: Coke and Pepsi.
After making a splash last February by returning to the pigskin classic after an eight-year hiatus, Coca-Cola is mulling another appearance, according to a person familiar with the situation. Super Bowl XLII takes place Feb. 3 in Phoenix and is set to air on News Corp.’s Fox network.Full Story
Continuing its drive to syndicate its TV programming fare on as many websites as possible, NBC has struck a deal with Flash memory maker SanDisk to put its shows on the company’s new online Fanfare download platform. The agreement covers current programs running on NBC, USA Network, SCI FI Channel, Bravo, as well as shows from NBCU’s library. NBCU’s programming will be available on the SanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK) site starting next month. The deal follows recent distribution agreements with Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Amazon, (NSDQ: AMZN) and adds to download-to-own options available on the NBC Direct site, and the streaming option viewers are offered on the NBC/News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) JV Hulu and NBC.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Mobile technology in Asia is several years ahead of the U.S. market. Sensing an opportunity, Asian telecom and technology firms are stepping in, believing that mobile data services is about to explode in the U.S. just as it has in places like Japan, China and South Korea.
Among them are Japan-based carriers DoCoMo and KDDI. The former has a painful past in the U.S. market. Three years ago, DoCoMo was forced to sell its 16 percent stake in AT&T Wireless for a loss of $3.3 billion. Nevertheless, the Japanese telecom believes that the time is right to strike in the U.S; it’s particularly interested in somehow partnering with Google to build a mobile network in the U.S., should the search giant win next month’s spectrum auction. Elsewhere, South Korea’s SK Telecom has dumped millions into the mobile virtual network operator Helio with disappointing results thus far. SK is banking on open wireless networks becoming the norm in the U.S., which would significantly bring down the cost of licensing network space from larger carriers.
But most Asian firms feel the area with the most potential for growth is the mobile Web and mobile Web-based services. Full Story
Negotiations have broken off for the time being at least, but it’s still important to understand what’s at issue. There are now several recent proposals that have been publicly disclosed, as I had hoped would be the case (see WGA Strike - Confusion Reigns). What deal points are on the table and how far apart are the parties? I’ve written a very detailed memo, which includes references to supporting documents. A caveat - the studios have not described their proposal in detail, whereas the Guild has described both parties’ proposals in detail; so, the description of the studios’ proposal is based on the Guild’s description.
LONDON — Disney-owned U.S. cable web ESPN is sizing up a bid for the U.K. rights to English Premier League soccer.Any move in this direction would put the broadcaster in director competition with U.K. paybox BSkyB.
The British satcaster, controlled by News Corp., last year agreed a three-year deal worth $2.6 billion for the lion’s share of the live soccer rights.
But in an interview with the Financial Times, ESPN prexy George Bodenheim said the Premier League was a “fabulous property…we are absolutely interested in it.”
Product placement on European television could bring in revenues of €150m (£107m) by 2010, production and distribution company FremantleMedia has said.
The European Parliament approved plans to allow limited product placement on TV in the EU at the end of last month, although it will be up to individual countries to decide whether it is implemented.
Christian Schneider-Sickert, the director of operations and strategy at FremantleMedia - which works with major brands on some of its hit US shows such as American Idol - said he did not think product placement would become as prevalent in Europe as in the US.
According to Mercedes Benz, there really ‘aint no mountain high enough’ to stop them promoting the G-Wagon off-roader…
Mercedes were looking for a way to re-affirm their rugged utility vehicle as a go-anywhere, do-anything machine; the upshot is that they ignored TV and the internet, instead choosing Germany’s highest mountains as the platform for their new campaign.
At the top of each mountain is what’s known as a summit book, in which triumphant climbers can sign their name and add comments about their ascent. What Mercedes did was to send an all-terrain creative team to the top of these peaks with specially-constructed books complete with elaborate illustrations and text immortalising the G-Wagon.
Obviously, the very nature of this campaign means that the catchment will be limited. However, like anything note-worthy it has inevitably received coverage on the web (although for reference, the Contagious team did scale actual mountains to bring you this story).
Products placed by advertisers in “emotionally engaging” TV programs enjoy a recognition rate by 43% more viewers, a new survey shows.
The research, by The Nielsen Company (parent of Brandweek), is contained in the new issue of Nielsen’s Consumer Insight, which integrates and connects information collected across the company.
In the study, Nielsen asked participants to rank their overall program enjoyment for specific TV programming. The results were then weighted on a scale of 0-10, with a 7-10 score being termed “highly enjoyable.”
