Archive for December 12th, 2007

ROME — Claiming Italian TV viewers are getting too many commercial breaks with their shows, the European Commission has taken legal action against the country in a move being blasted by Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset, which could be hurt by stricter rules.“Broadcasters need advertising and advertisers need broadcasters; but we must also have effective consumer protection. What we actually need is responsible advertising,” said EU media commissioner Viviane Reding in a missive initiating an infringement procedure against the Italian government.

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AS THE YEAR WINDS DOWN, the press releases dry up a bit and the new topics are few and far between, but one of the interesting tidbits of news this month is that the Hollywood writers’ strike continues on. As many of you know, the writers’ strike is a bitter dispute between the studios and the Hollywood screen and TV writers, and the dispute is over a very valid point; digital distribution royalties. I side with the writers on this ever important issue as they merely want to be compensated fairly for their work in the future as we enter into the digital economy and the Internet becomes a more important distribution vehicle, but the studios want to retain the strong royalty shares they maintain on traditional broadcast rights. What I find most interesting is that the effect of the strike may actually be even more impactful in a positive manner on the writers than the actual negotiations themselves!

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Even with the approach of the holiday season, the WGA strike won’t start slowing down until next week.Final day of WGA picketing at studio lots in Los Angeles is expected to be Monday, although the Writers Guild of America hasn’t officially confirmed those plans. Picketing would presumably resume during the first week in January.

With the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers still seething at each other, the biz has been turning its attention to the prospect that the AMPTP will start talks with the Directors Guild; the DGA may shed some light on scheduling once it holds its directors council meeting today. The DGA talks, expected to launch early next month, will face the same challenge that derailed the WGA negotiations: how to compensate creative talent for new-media work.

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AS PART OF ITS CAMPAIGN touting the telematics and in-vehicle entertainment technology for the new Ford Sync, the automaker will launch widgets on AOL next week. The widgets, launched earlier this year with client Warner Brothers, serve up advertising and can be distributed virally, said Peter Kim, president of Pasadena, Calif.-based Interpolls, the developer of the program.

Consumers will want to grab the widgets for their personal pages because they offer a rich-media experience, including a free song download, Kim said. The music and youth focus are central to Ford’s efforts to pitch Sync to Ford Focus buyers.

“It’s viral–it’s more of an enhancement to rich media ad formats,” Kim said. “Consumers can grab it, place it on their page and show other users the product. Rich media provides multiple goals and objectives through a single execution.”

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LONDON — Levels of TV viewing remain high despite phenomena like social networking, according to U.K. regulator Ofcom’s latest international communications market report.Japanese and U.S. auds spend the most time watching TV — both averaging 4.5 hours a day in 2006 compared with 3.5 hours a day in the U.K.

The Swedes were the lightest TV viewers, consuming 2.5 hours a day.

The U.S. leads the take-up of high-definition TV with 10% of homes capable of viewing HDTV in 2006.

In Japan, the figure was 6%, but in Blighty it was only 1%. However, growth of multichannel TV was highest in the U.K., where it rose faster than anywhere else in Europe.

Similarly in the U.K. TV industry revenue per person was ahead of all other European countries — at $330.

This, however, was behind the U.S. — at $472 per head the highest in the world.

The study also put the U.K. slightly ahead of the U.S. for the first time in terms of broadband take-up. Over half of all households were connected in 2006.

In Blighty adults spend more time on social networking sites than their European neighbors; four in 10 U.K. adults say they regularly visit the sites.

These users spend an average of 5.3 hours each month on them returning an average 23 times in the month.

In the U.K. and the U.S., women use the Internet more often than men. Read the rest of this entry »

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MADRID — Pedro Almodovar’s next film will be “Los abrazos rotos,” a “four-way tale of amour-fou, shot in the style of ‘50s American film noir at its most hard-boiled,” in Almodovar’s words, and toplining Penelope Cruz, Blanca Portillo and Lluis Homar.“Abrazos” will go into pre-production in the New Year. Almodovar aims to shoot in spring, capturing the season’s light. The film will partly shoot in Madrid.

El Deseo, the Madrid production house owned by Pedro and producer brother Agustin Almodovar, will 100% produce the film. Budget will come in around $15 million.

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LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 (UPI) — Fans and writers, looking for an end to the Writers Guild of America strike, sent more than 500,000 pencils to Hollywood’s TV networks and movie studios.

The thousands of pencils included the message “Go back to the table.”

The Alliance of Motion Piction and Television Producers broke off talks with the striking WGA last week and no new negotiating sessions have been scheduled.

More than 200 fans and writers met Tuesday in Burbank, Calif., and packed the pencils into baskets, which were delivered to NBC Chief Executive Officer Jeff Zucker, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger and to Universal Studios for GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt, the WGA said in a statement on its Web site.

“Pencils 2 Media Moguls” was organized by UnitedHollywood.com, a Web site manned by WGA supporters.

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TUESDAY’S USA TODAY ARTICLE ON AT&T “flinging open” its network (effective immediately) is a sign of the wireless times. The article/announcement/PR coup follows recent news from Verizon Wireless that it would both open its wireless network to “any app, any device” and that it would embrace Google’s Android platform. Google couldn’t have hoped for more frenzied carrier responses to Android and the Open Handset Alliance.

Whatever the validity of AT&T’s claims in USA Today, the Verizon announcement remains the more interesting and potentially transformative of the two. While the pundits are right to be cynical –predicting that this is either a ploy to conjure some goodwill before next month’s 700 MHz auction, to gain an edge for the lonely CDMA standard or to simply dupe the market–Verizon’s announcement is on record. They will have to do something to demonstrably change the way they do business and open the gates to their prized network.

From a marketer’s perspective, there are three major implications and opportunities:

1. Verizon will need to become an endorser brand.

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Five years ago, John Landgraf, president-general manager of FX Network, asked a random TV viewer if he watched FX regularly. “Isn’t that a rerun network?” the viewer replied. Mr. Landgraf then asked if he’d heard of the drama “The Shield,” and the viewer said he thought it aired on CBS.

A new FX branding campaign, launching next Tuesday during “Nip/Tuck,” will hopefully clear up for devoted and casual viewers alike what the FX brand stands for five years after its initial hits “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck” paved the way for its edgy, risk-taking approach on ad-supported cable.

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The FCC has released its agenda for its December 18 meeting - and it promises to be one of the most important,and potentially most contentious, in recent memory.  On the agenda is the Commission’s long awaited decision on the Chairman’s broadcast multiple ownership plan relaxing broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rules (see our summary here).  Also, the FCC will consider a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Localism issues (pending issues summarized here) following the conclusion of its nationwide hearings on the topic, as well as an Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on initiatives to encourage broadcast ownership by minorities and other new entrants (summary here).  For cable companies, the Commission has scheduled a proposed order on national ownership limits.  And, in addition to all these issues on ownership matters, the FCC will also consider revising its sponsorship identification rules to determine if new rules need to be adopted to cover “embedded advertising“, i.e. product placement in broadcast programs.  All told, these rules could result in fundamental changes in the media landscape.

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