Archive for June 16th, 2008

Dippin’ Dots is hyping up the upcoming release of New Line Cinema’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with an online sweepstakes.

Customers can enter at www.dippindots.com/journey through July 25. One grand-prize winner will receive a four-day trip to Reykjavik, Iceland, including airfare and hotel accommodations. Each person who registers will be entered into weekly drawings for a chance to win movie tickets, posters, memorabilia and Dippin’ Dots ice cream party packs and merchandise.

People can earn additional entries by collecting four character cards, which feature computer-generated creatures from the film. The cards are available at participating Dippin’ Dots locations, and feature codes that can be entered on the Web site.

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Hostess is partnering with Universal Pictures to promote the July 18 release of “Mamma Mia” with an on-pack game offering the chance to a VIP trip to Las Vegas.

Specially marked family-sized packages of Hostess 100 Calorie Pack Cup Cakes, Muffins and Coffee Cakes feature a game code. Visitors to www.hostesscakes.com register the code to find out if they are an instant winner.

Millions of packages will carry the promotion, which runs through Aug. 31, the company said.

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NBC Sports is partnering with the online World Championship Sports Network to create Universal Sports, which will become a year-round online home to virtually all Olympic sports content and competitions.

Beginning June 19, fans will be able to access all early-round coverage of the Olympic gymnastic trials live. On June 20, Unversal Sports will cover the diving trials. Previously, these early round trials have not had a media platform for viewers.

WCSN previously had been showing over 200 live events and more than 2,000 hours of annual original event programming, along with thousands more hours of archival sports programming, delivered online; and on wireless devices, satellite radio and TV.

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While media buyers were dumbfounded by the strength of the broadcast network upfront marketplace the week prior, they were equally astonished last week with the syndication market. Many top-tier first-run and off-network shows were landing price hikes in the 8-9 percent range.

And much like their sales counterparts on the broadcast side, which saw prime-time ad revenue for the Big Four networks grow by 3.5 percent, TV syndication sales executives were making bullish predictions that they could cumulatively see a dollar volume increase of about $100 million, to $2.4 billion–up 4.2 percent over last year’s syndication total.

Early last week, while they were forking over hefty cost-per-thousand increases to cable, buyers scoffed at a potential bull market for  syndication, but by week’s end, several major media agencies had done deals with syndication studio sales teams and paid super-sized price hikes, particularly for daytime programming.

One syndication sales exec who declined to speak for attribution, said deals had been cut with at least two major agencies, and there were expectations that at least 50 percent of the company’s upfront sales would be wrapped by end of day June 13.

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General Motors, after realigning its eight brands into four channels, is shifting divisional marketing staff.

At Chevrolet, Kim Kosak will be general director of advertising and promotions, reporting to Ed Peper, North America vice president, which is analogous to her current role as divisional manager. Rick Scheidt, previously executive director of product development, will be executive director, product marketing. Kurt McNeil, previously regional general manager in the South-Central region will now be general sales manager. Scheidt and McNeil will report to Peper.

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Strike two?

It didn’t seem possible just a few months ago that there could be another strike hitting the TV and film industry. But the way the Screen Actors Guild is talking, there’s a real possibility that it could happen again, following up on last winter’s Writers Guild of America strike.

For the networks, the good news is that all this is happening in the summer–more or less out of the limelight of TV viewers’ attention. The bad news is that the summer will end. Then viewers will be left with the possibility that the customary fall season start of new shows won’t happen.

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Tribe Pictures has created a new original Web series, “Get Fit With Alyson,” starring Alyson Stoner (of the upcoming Disney film “Camp Rock”) premiering today at http://www.getfitwithalyson.com/.

Designed to engage, motive and inspire teens to exercise and live a healthy lifestyle, each 3-minute webisode in the continuing series features Alyson leading other teens through a fun exercise routine, an unscripted chat with the cast about the things on their minds, and her personal musings in “The World According to Alyson.”

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The best ads surprise; the worst annoy. Time Warner’s TBS has decided to run a commercial — of sorts — that does both in equal measure. To tout the coming season premiere of TBS’s “The Bill Engvall Show,” the network has been running a promo at the bottom of the screen during episodes of “Family Guy” that is impossible to miss. Mr. Engvall, with a remote control in hand, starts speaking over the dialogue being uttered by Stewie, Peter, Brian and other members of the animated comedy’s Griffin clan.

Mr. Engvall quickly uses the remote to freeze-frame the show and continues talking. After delivering a promotional message, he lets “Family Guy” roll on, only to let the audience discover after a few seconds that the show is breaking for a commercial.

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Did you know that Wii Fit won the highly coveted Chrysler Design Innovation Award? Neither did we! Of course, we didn’t know that Chrysler awarded such a thing to begin with, nor were we aware that Chrysler awarded anything to anyone ever. We’ve learned so much, thanks to Bravo’s A-List Awards, which gave “the Wii Fit” an opportunity to shine on basic cable in a manner just slightly less awkward than when it appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. One last thing to note, we’d avoid using the word “diddling” in proximity to the word “Wii” in general conversation lest there be some unfortunate misunderstanding.

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Universal Studios appears to have claimed next May the 15th on which to release Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat follow-up, tentatively titled Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt.That pretty much explains what type of shenanigans Cohen is up to for this stealthily filmed outing, and I believe that it comes across as a remarkable vote of confidence from Universal that they’re willing to face off against the likes of a DaVinci Code prequel (which, if the first film is any indication, might be worth a couple of laughs itself).

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