Archive for March 5th, 2008

The Boston Red Sox on Tuesday announced the creation of “Coca-Cola Corner,” a new family oriented area of historic Fenway Park.

The 412 new seats in the section will be ready to go for the 2008 season.

The Red Sox also said the Atlanta-based beverage company will display its famous red and white signature logo on a new illuminated sign. The sign will be about 42 feet wide and 12 feet high and will have 1,059 LED lights. The sign is a tip of the hat to the historic Coca-Cola sign that stood on Storrow Drive near Fenway for more than four decades and will provide the company with a new and even more meaningful historic Fenway presence.

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The victory of the Blu-ray high definition format may be shortlived if a Vancouver, BC-based company has anything to say about the matter. Internet Media Technologies has announced that it plans to install 1,000 satellite-linked kiosks in September at which consumers will be able to connect flash drives or MP3 devices and quickly download any of 3,000-5,000 movies to rent. Users will also be able to download music and TV shows instantaneously. “DVDs and CDs are going the way of Beta and VHS tapes,” company CEO Romeo Prescott told Home Media magazine.

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Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell and Naveen Andrews are both trying to fit comfortably inside a phone booth when their TV Guide photo shoot suddenly takes a playful turn. The actress — the show’s Other-worldly Juliet — wraps one leg around her costar, exposing a long stretch of skin through the slit in her show-stopping black gown. “I’d like to have a gun strapped to my leg,” she says with a giggle. “Or a nice, shiny Hitchcock knife.”

Mitchell could be channeling a heightened version of her character. In the March 6 episode, Juliet is armed when she’s instructed to kill for Others ringleader Ben — a job we also saw Andrews’ Sayid tasked with in a flash-forward. Such twists are all part of Lost’s creatively recharged Season 4. Not since Year 1 has ABC’s Emmy-winning drama been this consistently thrilling. The flash-forward odyssey of the Oceanic Six — the survivors who made it off the island and back to the future — has infused the series with renewed urgency and richer emotional resonance. “It’s heartbreaking to see these characters we love so hopeful [about] getting rescued,” Mitchell says, “because we’ve seen that things after the fact haven’t turned out so well.”

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Net profits at battling British terrestrial web ITV plunged 38% last year, but defiant topper Michael Grade insisted that his turnaround strategy was on track.Announcing figures for the 12 months to December 2007, ITV said its net profit for the year was £138 million ($273.2 million) compared with $439.6 million in 2006.

Overall sales were down 5% at $4.122 billion. The figures were broadly in line with forecasts and made little impact on ITV’s flagging stock price, which earlier this week hit a new low.

ITV blamed the decline in sales on a fall in revenues generated by ITV’s premium rate phone services — which last year landed the web in hot water with regulators following widespread viewer deception in phone-in quizzes — and a drop in content revenues, especially in the U.K.

The failure to win more commissions is a particular worry for ITV because much of the broadcaster’s growth strategy involves boosting the activities of ITV Production, both at home and overseas.

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WHITE PLAINS, NY – February 19, 2008 – Sheraton Hotels & Resorts is celebrating the second season of the highly acclaimed SHOWTIME original series, The Tudors, by providing a sneak preview for guests in more than 50,000 hotel rooms across the country beginning March 16.  Through its industry-exclusive partnership with Showtime Networks, Sheraton guests will receive advance access to the second season premiere episode before its March 30 debut on SHOWTIME.  Sheraton will also host the red carpet world premiere screening event for The Tudors’ second season on March 19 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers.  The Sheraton-SHOWTIME alliance is one component of a larger effort to dramatically differentiate the guest experience at the Sheraton 408 hotels across 75 countries, currently rolling out nationwide.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Books, TV movies, a presidential candidate and now a philanthropic reality show. Maybe everything Oprah Winfrey touches really does turn to gold. Sunday’s premiere of “Oprah’s Big Give” on ABC was seen by 15.7 million people, the largest audience in prime-time last week for any program not named “American Idol,” according to Nielsen Media Research.

ABC also did well with Monday’s prime-time remake of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which finished in the top 10 with 12.7 million viewers.

Meanwhile, NBC found that few people cared about its much-ballyhooed transfer of a series, “Quarterlife,” from the Internet to broadcast. Only 3.1 million people watched, earning it a quick hook and shift to the Bravo cable network. Among the top four broadcasters, only a Saturday night rerun of an “All-Star Tribute to Jimmy Kimmel” had a smaller audience.

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DES MOINES, Iowa - As part of its ongoing commitment to health and wellness, Hormel Foods is once again collaborating with Hy-Vee Stores here as a key sponsor of the retailer’s 2008 triathlon.

The 2008 Hy-Vee Triathlon, held the weekend of June 20-22 in Des Moines, is an Olympic Team Selection Event for U.S. athletes who are competing for the chance to race on the global stage. While world audiences anxiously await the opening of the Beijing 2008 Summer Games, this Olympic qualifying event will offer a glimpse of the athleticism to be showcased in August.

Beth Damm, Hy-Vee’s director of sales and promotions said, “Through this sponsorship, as well as consumer education events and awards, we will increase awareness for triathletes, the sport and the benefits of well-balanced lifestyles.”

Both Hy-Vee and Hormel “are dedicated to helping consumers get active and make smart, healthy food choices,” said Eric Steinbach, senior product manager, Hormel Foods, adding that the sponsorship provides Hormel an excellent opportunity to showcase its wide line of nutritious, lean protein offerings that are a key part of a well-balanced diet in an environment that cultivates the importance of an active lifestyle.

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Wii’s ‘Terebi no Tomo’ Channel has launched in Japan, free for download from the Shop Channel. Better understood as ‘TV Friend‘ Channel, the service, which was announced last November, provides users with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) that updates over the internet from Japan’s G-Guide service. While it might be a giant step backward for TiVo and DVR users, the new channel may be useful for elder Wii owners still stuck with ancient SD analog programming. EPG browsers can search by genre and keyword — in 3D! — and then ’stamp’ programs of interest. These picks can then be shared with in-house users and coded Wii friends, and are used by Nintendo to give programs aggregated popularity scores. The service will also send out an alert to an email address specified during setup, 30 minutes prior to a stamped program’s start time.

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SAN DIEGO — Marc Ecko Entertainment has signed a production deal with Showtime Networks to develop a video game based on the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning TV series “Dexter.”

The “Dexter” game is being designed for multiple platforms, including the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, and will be aimed at avid gamers, many of whom have become fans of the Showtime series.

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Bravo unveiled their big sponsors for the new season of Top Chef, set to debut March 12, and there are some interesting choices. On Top Chef, more so than on other programs, sponsors are integrated into the show itself, usually in the form of challenges, or forcing the chef to use their appliances, etc…

Knowing that made me a bit queasy when I saw that this year they included Clorox, Toyota and Verizon, as well as Michelob (the only one that seems a natural fit, even though their beer is, how can I put it, sub-par).

How, after all, can you fit bleach into a cooking show? Have a segment featuring the chef’s cleaning up after themselves? That would be riveting.

 In fact, it turns out the Clorox Company owns Kingsford (charcoal), Hidden Valley (Ranch Dressing) and KC Masterpiece (BBQ sauce), so expect those brands to be making a number of appearances on the upcoming season.

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