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The writers strike is pretty much over…well, maybe.
The Associated Press today is reporting that sources close to the informal discussions between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have progressed to the point that an agreement could be reached later this week.
The two sides have been holding informal talks since late last month in an effort to settle the strike that has brought Hollywood to a halt since November. News has been scarce since the talks began, as a media black out was implemented at the onset.
BEIJING — Three of the world’s top record labels have launched fresh legal action in a Beijing court against China’s top search engine Baidu for allegedly pirating music files, the recording industry org IFPI said in a statement.
“After months of fruitless negotiations, legal proceedings have been filed today against the country’s biggest internet company, Baidu.
Separate actions have also been brought against Sohu and its associate company Sogou,” the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a statement.
Yahoo China faces fresh proceedings following its refusal to comply with a landmark ruling in December confirming it violated Chinese law by committing mass copyright infringement, the IFPI said.
In a filing with the Beijing Higher People’s Court, Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong have demanded that Baidu remove music links they say infringe on their copyrights.
When you have such an explosive, controversial, money-making video game like Grand Theft Auto, we’re almost guaranteed to see a big-screen adaptation arrive in theaters at some point. The game itself has everything: Bad dudes, naughty girls and lots of violence — all of which has made it a number one target for people who believe everything that’s wrong with this society is due to violence in video games. Personally, I rocked out the first two versions of the game, and then fell off the GTA bandwagon when they unleashed the one featuring gang violence. They became too much work for a simpleton like me. That being said, news sprung up recently that a movie was indeed in the works, and that it would star none other than Eminem.
For the first time in memory, Fox TV shows held the top seven positions on the weekly Nielsen ratings chart, producing the highest-rated week in the network’s history. Moreover, the average weekly ratings for Fox far exceeded the ratings of the other three major TV networks combined, averaging a 16.4 rating and a 26 share. CBS, the second-highest-rated network, registered a 4.7/7 average, while ABC and NBC tied for third place with a 4.2/7. The Super Bowl telecast, of course, topped the Nielsen list with a 43.1/65, representing about 97.45 million viewers, the second-largest Super Bowl audience in history and the second-largest since Nielsen began keeping records. (It was exceeded by the 1983 finale of M*A*S*H, which attracted $106 million. In pre-Nielsen days, CBS’s 1957 broadcast of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the songwriters’ only musical written for television, was reportedly watched by 107-120 million viewers.)
In a conference call with analysts today, CEO Jeff Bewkes said Time Warner plans companywide cost cuts and specifically mentioned that its New Line Cinema movie studio is ripe for expense reductions. News reports said Bewkes stated that changes in the film industry leave less purpose for New Line. I reported last month that sources told me New Line co-founders Bob Shaye’s and Michael Lynne’s contracts wouldn’t be renewed by Bewkes and that the studio would either be folded into Warner Bros or sold altogether to someone like Terry Semel. My latest info is that when Bewkes met with the New Line pair to deliver the bad news, the twosome pushed back and told Bewkes they would put together a plan for reorganization that would save the company a lot of money in exchange for a contract extension that leaves them as co-heads of the studio. But Bewkes isn’t interested in that scenario.
SUPER BOWL ADVERTISERS ARE IMPROVING on cross-media integration, but many still have a long way to go to maximize returns on commercials that this year cost $2.7 million for 30 seconds of air time alone, according to results of Reprise Media Inc.’s annual post-game Search Marketing Scorecard.
On the positive side, search/social media agency Reprise, which has been tracking Super Bowl advertisers’ search and online integration behavior for four years now, found that:
70% of this year’s advertisers bought placement in paid search against their brand names–a 20% increase from 2007.
Most (84%) did display a URL in their commercials, and all of the URLs led to the right landing pages, a huge improvement over the scorecard results four years ago.
LONDON — Europe’s biggest paybox BSkyB lost £112 million ($224 million) in the first half of its financial year after taking a hit of $686 million on its investment in terrestrial web ITV.The satcaster’s new topper Jeremy Darroch, who succeeded James Murdoch two months ago, nonetheless hailed the company’s perf for the six months to December as “ very strong.”
Sales increased 11% to $4.92 billion as BSkyB announced it now had 8.8 million subscribers, including net additions of 167,000 in the crucial three month pre-Christmas period.
This was slightly fewer than analysts had predicted, but Darroch said the company was on target to meet financial forecasts for the year and to hit 10 million subscribers by the end of the decade.
The CEO said BSkyB had not yet decided whether to lodge an appeal over the recent decision by the U.K. government ordering the outfit to cut its stake in ITV from 17.9% to below 7.5%.
Between The Bucket List and the pilot of ABC’s buzzworthy new series Eli Stone, Chock Full O’ Nuts is having a stellar 2008. The product played a pivotal role in both the film’s ending and the television episode’s last scene. Oddly enough, both placements were similar in that….SPOILER ALERT….they featured characters’ ashes inside of them and cannisters buried in the snow.
NEW YORK - As broadcast networks head into the February sweeps period, the prolonged writers strike is starting to be felt in prime-time ratings.
Viewership on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox was down 9 percent during the first four weeks of the year compared with 2007. CBS and ABC were particularly hard-hit as the stockpile of episodes for favorite shows was depleted. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
For the first time in memory, Fox TV shows held the top seven positions on the weekly Nielsen ratings chart, producing the highest-rated week in the network’s history. Moreover, the average weekly ratings for Fox far exceeded the ratings of the other three major TV networks combined, averaging a 16.4 rating and a 26 share. 