Archive for February 8th, 2008

February 05, 2008 | by Rachel CericolaWhen Cablevision customers purchase “American Gangster” from their video-on-demand (VOD) service, they will get more than they bargained for. A new deal between Popcorn Home Entertainment and the cable provider will allow subscribers to receive a hard copy of movies they purchase.

So when you click to buy the movie, not only will you be able to watch it non-stop for 24 hours, but a DVD will arrive in the mail within a few days. The deal also means that subscribers will have access to titles the day they are available for DVD purchase, versus the normal VOD waiting period.

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Late last month, the South Carolina Department of Education invited advertisers to get on the bus, literally.

Seeking a new source of revenue, the board inked a deal with contractor SAC to place an 11-inch-wide strip of advertising above the windows inside school buses. Interested school districts get about $2,100 per month per bus.

That came a month after McDonald’s agreed to remove its logo from report cards disseminated to elementary school students in Seminole County, Fla. Both are recent examples of ad creep, which some argue has gotten out of control. “It’s become so pervasive that the average educator can’t really see it,” said Joe Kelly, a steering committee member of the Campaign for A Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston, said of ad creep. “It’s really crossing the line.”

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Myriad Pictures has acquired all rights outside the U.S. and Canada to Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst’s feature helming debut, “The Education of Charlie Banks.”Film centers on the titular character, a high school student (Jesse Eisenberg) who was tormented in his youth by the school bully (Jason Ritter). College offers him the chance to escape — until the bully shows up on campus. Peter Elkoff penned the screenplay.

The financing, production and worldwide sales outfit also has named Amanda Blue veep of development and production. Blue moves from a similar position at Inferno Entertainment, where she worked on the Jay Roach-produced “Smother” and “Hachiko,” starring Richard Gere.

Myriad prexy-CEO Kirk D’Amico complimented Blue’s “eye and ear” and said the new VP will help expand Myriad’s slate of commercial and quality films.

“Charlie Banks” took top honors in the Made in New York category at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Jason Ritter drew the breakthrough performance nod at the Lone Star Film Festival.

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Samsung is launching its partnership with Landmark Theatres’ Truly Indie program with advertising and marketing support for an independent film that will be screened in five cities for five days in the hopes that it will be picked up for distribution.

Samsung said the indie film will be chosen by NYU and other university film-school students as well as select consumers invited to screenings of the five finalist films at Landmark Theatres in April and May. They can then vote for the film of their choice, with the winner receiving Samsung funding to bring the film to five Landmark screens in June and to market the film with outdoor, online, print and on-screen ads in Landmark Theatres. The five finalist films will be chosen by a panel of indie film bloggers and industry experts.

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MADRID — Agnes Varda has a new film, “ Les plages d’Agnes,” and a sales agent home.Currently in post-production, and looking set to be ready for delivery by Cannes, “Plages” is an autobiographical docu feature by the vet French auteur, whose 1962 film “Cleo From 5 to 7” gave a female tint to France’s Nouvelle Vague.

“If you open people, you’ll find landscapes. In my case, you’ll find beaches,” Varda is quoted as saying.

Recording the beaches in her life, and the people in her life, “Les plages d’Agnes” tells one story of the near 80-year-old helmer’s existence.

Overseas sales rights on “Plages” have been taken by Roissy Films. In the run-up to Berlin, the French sales agent also announced Tuesday that it has acquired international rights to Amos Gitai’s “One Day You’ll Understand,” based on the novel of the same title by TV exec Jerome Clement, president of Arte France.

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SodaHead.com, an opinion-based social networking site, is being used by a growing number of entertainment and music brands — including 50 Cent, My Chemical Romance, All-American Rejects, Aly & AJ and Plain White T’s — to interact with their fans and create greater brand loyalty.

With its site centered on finding friends or so-called “sodaheads” who have common interests and passions through one-question “opinion polls,” SodaHead allows music brands to ask their fans such questions as which is their favorite song on an album, who they want a band to perform with at the Grammys or which is their favorite item in the band’s online store.

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Hong Kong Disneyland, the studio-branded theme park, reversed the recent trend of bad news in the first quarter of Disney’s financial year.

Park, which opened in October 2005 and missed attendance targets in its first two years, showed “double digit growth” in the October to December period, according to Thomas Staggs, Disney’s CFO.

“Attendance at Hong Kong Disneyland improved significantly versus prior year as our entertainment offerings during Halloween and the holidays helped to boost attendance from both the local Hong Kong market and Mainland China,” he said.

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This characterizes the age-old mentality of the online advertising world: the more traffic a site generates, the more potential consumers are viewing - and clicking on - online ads. But has the proliferation of social media turned conventional advertising wisdom on its head? Are the sites with the most traffic necessarily the ones yielding the best advertising performance? This topic has been debated ad nauseam since the explosion of social media has captured a coveted slice of the collective consumer attention span. The concept of advertising on social media, like blogs, is nothing new, but since blog advertising has gone mainstream, the debate has gotten even more heated. To date, many marketing strategists have argued that meaningful advertising ROI can’t be found by targeting niche blogs within the proverbial Long Tail — primarily because the level of traffic required to produce results just doesn’t exist. Simply put: for advertisers, the Long Tail does not scale.

A month into 2008, it feels like it’s time to revisit this assumption. In fact, several trends point to the fact that 2008 may just be the year the Long Tail delivers the kind of performance advertisers are looking for.

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WASHINGTON — A majority of the five members on Federal Communications Commission has approved the agency’s moving forward to rewrite disclosure rules for product placement on TV.

FCC officials said a final announcement that it will launch a formal rule-making is imminent; the agency is awaiting the vote of two remaining commissioners, Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate. The FCC pulled a vote on the proposal to start the disclosure rewrite from its December meeting agenda, but the proposal has since been circulating among the commissioners.

Ad, media opposition
Advertising groups and media companies had opposed the FCC decision to rewrite the disclosure rules, arguing that there was no evidence consumers are hurt or misled by product placement. The Advertising Coalition in two letters to FCC commissioners argued that any changes puts the cart before the horse, essentially altering rules before showing they need to be altered.

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BEIRUT — The massive car bombing in Beirut on Jan. 25 could not have come at a worse time for Arab television giants MBC and LBC. Hours after the attack, which killed one of Lebanon’s top terror investigators, both networks were to air big-budget shows live across the Middle East from studios within the Lebanese capital.But as the nation reeled from its ninth high-profile assassination in three years, producers at both networks had concluded that their much-anticipated programs would go on as scheduled.

Featuring an elaborately lit set, and despite an official day of mourning declared by Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, cameras rolled and catchy signature music cued as LBC unveiled the fifth season of its hit reality series “Star Academy.”

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