Archive for March, 2008

The completely deranged practice of watching movies on cell phones just got a boost. The Hollywood Reporter has a story on Sony’s recent deal to put some of its classics catalog on AT&T’s “Mobile TV” network starting this May. Soon, subscribers will be able to watch movies such as Philadelphia, Stand By Me and Ghostbusters while on the subway or in the dentist’s waiting room. Whether or not they will want to is an open question.

To their credit, the honchos behind this seem to recognize that people aren’t going to sit there and stare into a tiny cell phone screen for two hours. According to a Sony exec, the objective isn’t to get people to watch the whole movie, and they don’t expect too many customers to watch Ghostbusters for the first time on a two-inch display. Rather, this is intended for those who’ve already seen the films and want to rewatch certain scenes on a whim.

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After foregoing an elaborate dog-and-pony show last April, MTV Networks will once again host a comprehensive upfront presentation in New York this spring, offering media buyers and clients a look at upcoming programming initiatives across the company’s portfolio of brands.

On May 8, MTVN will take the wraps off its 2008-09 programming slate in a scaled-down version of what was once the cable industry’s most overstuffed upfront events. According to Hank Close, president, U.S. ad sales, MTVN, the presentation will clock in at an hour, giving MTV brass just enough time to deliver a concise message to the company’s sponsor partners.

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The average cost for a prime-time spot on network TV in the first quarter dropped by 12%, to $125,634, according to an analysis performed by independent New York media shop TargetCast, pointing to some of the devastating effects the writers strike has had on the medium.

The shop said ABC, CBS and Fox saw the average cost of a commercial unit fall between 9% and 12%, while NBC’s average unit cost tumbled nearly 25%.

The analysis uses syndicated research and tracking data from NetCosts System, a service of Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Sqad. The service compiles confidential data from agencies and in-house buying systems to help advertisers understand the unit price relationship with each network and to measure future costs.

The first-quarter numbers show just how the writers strike has hurt network ad prices. During the fourth quarter of 2007, which included six weeks of the strike, the average network prime-time unit cost — or the out-of-pocket cost for an advertiser — rose nearly 4% to $141,376. CBS and Fox were flat, according to the analysis. ABC saw its unit cost rise 7.3%, while NBC saw its unit cost rise 3.4% from a year earlier.

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IN AN ANTICLIMACTIC RESOLUTION TO a high profile, and potentially sensational courtroom battle, a federal judge late last week signed a settlement agreement ending erinMedia’s antirust suit against Nielsen Media Research. The settlement marks the latest in a long line of victories for Nielsen, which over the years has fended off competitive challenges from Arbitron, AGB, R.D. Percy & Co., and SMART. It also marks the end of the most recent chapter of erinMedia founder Frank Maggio’s storied career, which reads like a Horatio Alger novel, though Maggio vows it is not his final chapter where the TV industry is concerned.

“I can confirm that erinMedia’s antitrust suit against Nielsen Media Research has been settled on confidential terms,” Maggio told MediaDailyNews on Friday, but declined to elaborate other than to say erinMedia would remain in business, and would focus on ways of licensing its patents for TV audience measurement.

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Toyota is looking to get maximum exposure for the 2008 Scion xB, an entry-level wagon designed to appeal to younger drivers.

Per terms of a sponsorship deal with Adult Swim, Scion xB will serve as the lone integrated brand throughout season two of Assy McGee, the network’s animated series about a crack detective who’s a regular Dirty Harry.

In the latter half of each episode of Assy, Adult Swim will run a customized 35-second spot that features the titular character in an auto showroom, aggressively shilling would-be car buyers on the virtues of the Scion xB. The brand will also appear throughout the week in Assy tune-ins.
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An insider at Donald Trump’s newly announced ‘My Fair Lady’-style MTV reality show tells PEOPLE that infamous call girl Ashley Alexander Dupré has been asked to join the cast.Based on a British show called ‘Ladette to Lady,’ the show will take a group of 15 hard-partying young women and send them off to a boarding school environment where they’ll learn to become more ladylike.

“She’s the perfect candidate,” the show insider says of Dupré, the 22-year-old at the center of the Gov. Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. The show has not yet heard back from Dupré with any reaction to the offer.

Trump is hardly the first famous person to reach out to Dupré with an offer. Joe Francis of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ recently offered her $1 million to pose for his new magazine. But Francis took the money off the table when one of his employee checked the archives and discovered that in 2003 Dupré spent a week on the ‘GGW’ bus in Miami, during which time she made seven full-length tapes which included nudity and same-sex encounters.

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The best place a brand would ever want to be is right in front of the consumer when they are searching for something they sell.  That of course is the advantage of contextual advertising and the huge growth of the Pay-Per-Click advertising world.Now enter video in the world of search advertising and you have pseudo product placement - but it’s ‘Google Style’.

According to Click Z , word has been out for about a month on Google’s plans to test video ads within SERPS, but no one has actually seen them until this week.

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Consumers looking to access premium video on their mobile devices mostly have been limited to paying for subscription-based packages. But a firm called mywaves is working quickly to correct that.

The startup, which allows users to download free, ad-supported video to their phones, has inked a distribution deal with MTV Networks to add content from several of the company’s top TV series to its platform, including MTV’s Jackass and VH1’s Best Week Ever. Already, the global vendor features premium content from Sports Illustrated, Break.com, RipeTV and various major record labels. MTV will also provide content from its Web platforms, including Atom Entertainment and Gametrailers.com.

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Spike TV has devised a multi-dimensional promotional campaign to plug its upcoming airing of the entire “Stars Wars” saga.

The multi-million dollar campaign with the tag line “There is much to be learned” combines a heavy round of on-air hype with some novel offline marketing stunts.

On-air trailers started trumpeting the April 4 debut of the epic series in February on Spike. Interstitial segments about the origins of the Lightsaber and other Stars Wars back story content will run with the feature films. Spike is also teaming up with LucasArts to provide exclusive peaks at an imminent video game release, “The Force Unleashed.”

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NEW YORK On the Independent Film Channel, a short film shows international soccer player Thierry Henry standing in an old, romantic square in Barcelona, Spain, fielding questions from fans. Occasionally, the screen cuts to shots of Henry at play, bouncing a soccer ball on his head or kicking it down an alley. Behind the camera is Spanish actress Paz Vega (Spanglish), making her directorial debut.

Although a handful of companies — most notably Procter & Gamble — have a history of producing original content in the analog space, the industry’s increasing emphasis on digital has encouraged a new crop of brands, including Reebok, 1-800-Flowers.com, Anheuser-Busch and Dell, to commit to in-house content creation.

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