Archive for December 14th, 2007

Tokyo — Three Tokyo toon houses - Studio 4C, Production I.G. and Madhouse — will animate the six shorts in the “Batman: Gotham Knight” project for Warner Bros. according to a report in “Wizard” magazine. The three studios involved also participated in the “Animatrix” project — nine shorts relating the back story of the “Matrix” pics. The Wachowski brothers supervised the project and Warner Bros. released it on DVD in the US in 2003.

According to “Wizard,” Bruce Timm will helm all six shorts, based on scripts by American writers, most associated with the “Batman” comic and pic franchises. Other sources, however, say that Japanese anime maestro Satoshi Kon will also helm one or more segments.

The stories will expand on the universe of the two Christopher Nolan Batman pics: “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” The animation, however, will be handled entirely by the three Japanese studios. Release is skedded before the summer 2008 bow “The Dark Knight.”

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HAVE YOU BEGUN to feel as if political advertising has saturated broadcast media? It seems as if every time I turn on the television there is an ad sponsored by a presidential candidate endorsing his/her message. I’ve never been one to delve into political advertising. Why? I guess there are so many people out there that specialize in it already. Would I work on a campaign nowadays? Sure. Why, you ask? Because most political advertising is horrible in message format and content — let alone media placement.

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It was Fed Ex!

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LONDON — BBC Worldwide, the pubcaster’s commercial arm, is considering buying out Virgin Media’s stake in UKTV, Blighty’s second biggest provider of pay TV channels after BSkyB.In another sign of Worldwide’s increasingly aggressive stance that in the fall saw the operator acquire 75% of travel specialist Lonely Planet, it is understood the BBC recently made a preliminary approach to Virgin.

Virgin Media’s investment in UKTV, which it inherited from Flextech, is valued at $740 million including a $300 million loan.

So far it is believed that no formal talks between the two parties have taken place.

UKTV, formed in 1997 by the BBC and Flextech, then owned by Telewest, runs nine channels, including oldies web, UKTV Gold, and Dave, recently rebranded to appeal to male-skewed auds.

Most of the UKTV channels are available on pay platforms like BSkyB. Read the rest of this entry »

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ECONOMIC CYCLES ARE A FACT of life in the advertising business. It’s been true since the beginning. But perhaps more predictable than advertising cycles are advertising forecasts. Hey, there goes another one!

The latest significant advertising forecast is from media agency ZenithOptimedia. According to Ad Age’s coverage of the report, marketers will spend $195 billion on North American advertising next year, 4.1% more than in 2007, while ad spending worldwide will near $486 billion in 2008 for a 6.7% gain. However, U.S. ad-spending growth this year will reach just 2.5%, far below the 3.7% growth it forecasted last summer and well under 3.6% inflation so far this year. That means that the respective growth of the entire pie is happening elsewhere, particularly in less developed advertising economies.

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