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We're Not Who You Think We Are

Disney Buys Pixar – Hands Jobs The Keys To The Kingdom

January 24, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Disney has agreed to purchase Pixar for $7.4 billion, ending weeks of speculation surrounding the acquisition.

How quickly things change in Hollywood. It seems like just yesterday that Steve Jobs vowed to take Pixar elsewhere as soon as his studio’s contract with Disney ran out. Jobs fueded openly with Michael Eisner and the relationship between the two companies (and executives) could not have been worse. Now, Steve Jobs is about to become the single largest Disney shareholder.

Seriously, think of the implications of Steve Job being the single largest Disney shareholder.

For one, Disney is likely to halt their plans to market a Mickey Mouse branded Prism DuroSport.

Filed Under: Mediacratic

The Curse of Availability

January 23, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Interesting thinkpiece in the today’s PopMatters about how the explosion of alternate versions, deluxe reissues and bootleg recordings could possibly alter and in some cases, diminish our original perception of a particularly beloved piece of music.

  •  The Last Temptation of the Completist

This has, of course, been going on since the earliest days of the CD reissue, but as record companies struggle with the new paradigm of anything anywhere anytime, they often release two or three different versions of an individual album within the space of a few months.  This is often frustrating to the people who ran out and bought the original version, only to have it become obselete a few months later.  Perhaps, though, it brings in those who were on the fence in the first place.

In the meantime, did the fact that I’ve been collecting live Wilco bootlegs for a decade end up enhancing or diminishing the pleasure I got from their recent live album? (Enhancing, but only because I know that Wilco is one of those bands who does something different each time out.) Will the eventual issuing of the Basement Tapes in their full ragged splendor be an event or a ho-hum because nearly everyone who cares already has downloaded or copied all of those dozens of recordings?  Barring some new treasure trove, or absolutely perfect sequencing, I’m guessing the latter: not because the music isn’t great, but precisely because it is so great, I’ve already wringed nearly everything from it that I’m going to.

Filed Under: Music, Unexpected Results

Medialoper News of the World

January 21, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

We’ve pulled together a sampling of stories that reflect discussions happening all over the entertainment industry. This week, we pay special attention to the UK.

  • Long-lost tunes dug up for jukebox of the net; Universal releases 100,000 vintage tracks online; Archive raid aims to get older fans downloading: Realizing they have a cash cow just sitting there, Universal opens the vaults for the iPod generation (which not only includes pre-teens but also baby boomers). Bands like the Fairport Convention, the original Nirvana, and Big Country will be released into the wild. It is unclear what service Universal plans to use.
  • BBC chiefs defend licence fee bid: The BBC needs a 2.3% hike in its licence fee to give the public what it wants, BBC director general Mark Thompson has told the House of Lords: A changeover to digital programming, demand for fewer repeats fuels the increase. The question remains as to whether this will do much to position the BBC for the future.
  • CBS to Air ‘Micro-Series’ on TV, Internet: CBS will air The Courier in seven installments of a minute or less via cellphone and on the internet. The series will also air during CBS broadcast programs (think commercial break, no product). Pontiac is sponsoring the series; CBS.com will provide further details about the series’ core mystery. Inexplicably, CBS will not release the micro-series concurrently to cellphones and the internet. Those users have to wait until a day after broadcast to download. CBS is using Verizon’s V Cast service, so if you’re not using that system (and you may not be in light of last week’s news), you’re out of luck.
  • Fox TV takes time on new distribution outlets: Fox isn’t rushing into making announcements and cutting deals, they say (though in-the-know types can easily assume that frantic deal-making is going on as we type). Peter Liguori is playing it coy on whether Disney’s deal with iTunes was premature, choosing to liken new media to a marathon. We’ll give him that.
  • E-read all about it: The world of publishing stands on the cusp of the greatest innovation since Gutenberg. With cheap, portable electronic readers just around the corner, what is the future of the printed book?: Robert McCrum contemplates how electronic devices will affect the future of the book (we could have saved him some time: the book as we know will remain an institution for a long time to come). He looks at devices and contemplates the big question: how long before the OED offers download-to-your-phone definitions?
  • Close-up on what went right, wrong: Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times reviews the last year in entertainment (motion picture-centric). He points to the key factor driving changes in how we watch: time. As in the consumer’s time. (Note: at least one level of registration required.)
  • Ofcom suggests TV download plan: Broadcasters in the UK could have the right to distribute independently-made TV shows for downloading under new proposals from media watchdog Ofcom.: The UK continues to grapple with new technologies that threaten to drastically change how television has been controlled for decades. Interesting tidbit: the UK is the world’s biggest market for illegal television downloads. So much for our image of prim and proper Britons.
  • Journalism’s paper tigers? A decade into the Internet age, newspapers try to stay relevant after losing a monopoly: Newspapers, who stood by as the internet siphoned off classified advertising revenue (we remain slack-jawed at the way the leading papers failed to grasp the importance of Craigslist), now try to figure out where they fit in the new new media.
  • Wait wait! Don’t tell me! Too bad. TV spoilers abound, and the best you can do is keep up: Finally, the decline of appointment television has created a new challenge for viewers — how to avoid spoilers.

Filed Under: Mediacratic, The Weekly 'Loper

iTunes Downloads Boost Ratings For “The Office”

January 19, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

We keep hearing that Hollywood is experimenting with video downloads in a non-committal sort of way. Industry insiders almost always qualify their online video efforts as “pilot programs” — and we all know what happens to most pilots. It’s no wonder that some analysts are predicting that the television industry will somehow manage to maintain the current status quo until the year 2015. Unless, of course, the status quo begins to crumble in the face of . . . higher ratings.

The most recent episode of NBC’s The Office just scored a 5.1 — a personal best for the network’s interpretation of the highly regarded British comedy series. Network officials seem to think that The Office’s tremendous success on iTunes is actually helping the program’s ratings.

According to NBCU Television Distribution President, Frederick Huntsberry:

“Consumers have choices, and we are not reaching all consumers with one technology”

Appropriately, last week’s episode of The Office featured a bizarre reverse product endorsement as Dwight admired Pam’s Prism DuroSport (the cheap iPod knock-off her boyfriend gave her for christmas) and encouraged her to download music from a Russian website — the songs are only two cents each, but they’re all in Russian.

  • NBC: iPod Boosts Prime Time

Filed Under: iTunes, Television

The Window is Closed

January 18, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Back in the 1980’s, video store proprieters referred to the amount of time between when a huge hit such as “Rambo” or “Beverly Hills Cop” debuted in the movie theatres and the time when a person could enjoy the same piece of entertainment at home. Typically this window was between several months and a year, depending on how big of a hit the movie was. The flipside of this, of course, were those films that the studios deemed to be huge turkeys, and didn’t even bother to put in the theatres: the much-derided “straight-to-video,” which was code for “this movie sucks.”

Over the past two decades, that has all changed for several reasons: things like the video & DVD revenues making hits of films that failed in the theatres; the splintering of the mass audience into a zillion different pieces; the rise of digital media and distribution have all contributed to lessen the equation that theatre release means quality in the mind of the public.

So that window kept rolling up: a year became six months became 3 months becomes simultaneous. At the end of this month, a film from a major director — Steven Soderbergh — will be simultaneously released in theatres, DVD and HDTV. On purpose, as a marketing strategy, with no comment implied on the quality of the film itself. This is a quantum leap, even if the movie tanks or sucks (and it’s one of his more experimental films, so we’ll see), the idea itself of the release window is antiquated in a world where you can have everything when you want it.

And if it even remotely succeeds, we will be able to add downloading to that simultaneous release schedule very very soon.

Filed Under: Marketing, Movies, Television

Hens in the FOXhouse

January 18, 2006 by Jim Connelly

FOX, which once upon a time had a reputation of being a cutting-edge network, has decided to chicken out when it comes to making its shows available for download.

While it strikes me that this decision will be short-lived, especially when a Google Video Search on “Family Guy” returns 338 hits, not a single one bringing any revenue to FOX (or Seth MacFarlane, for that matter), but it’s still a bit puzzling.  This isn’t a case of counter-programming (like running 24 against The Golden Globes), it’s a case of on the bus or off the bus.

To me, it would make great sense for FOX to take some of their prematurely-canceled shows like Andy Richter Controls the Universe or Action and see if there is a download audience for those.  They could have done quite well, perhaps, with making the final shows of Arrested Development available for download at the same time they are burying them by running them against the Olympics.  That would be counter-programming.

Filed Under: Television

What We’re Talking About

January 18, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

There’s a lot of stuff I want to highlight this week, but thought this one was worth a quick post. When we first started discussion the Medialoper and Mediacratic idea, our focus was on television. It took about thirty seconds to realize that we’d have to look at all media. In the worlds of entertainment and information, every cherished institution is being re-examined.

Even magazines. I noted earlier this week that magazines are beefing up their online staffs, but what about the magazines who, well, abandon words entirely? What if there’s a movie magazine out there comprised of, well, movies? Short films, to be exact?

Wholphin (yes, that’s the progeny of a whale and dolphin) comes from the brain trust behind McSweeney’s and The Believer. And it comes at just the right time for the reviewers at the Washington Post:

That’s because we at The Magazine Reader are sick. We’re also tired. We’re sick and tired of words — endless words marching one after another in horizontal line after horizontal line in paragraph after paragraph in article after article in magazine after magazine.

In other words, we’re sick of reading. We long to join the rest of our fellow Americans sitting on the sofa with beer and Doritos, basking in the glow of a TV screen. And now Wholphin enables us to do just that.

  • Wholphin, a Journal Cast Against Type — On DVD

Filed Under: Unexpected Results

Gives ’em more time to download mp3z

January 17, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Some students are taking advantage of professors who post their lectures online by not showing up to class, and taking notes from the clips. Man, had I been able to do this, it might have only taken me nine years to graduate.

Filed Under: Podcasts, Unexpected Results

Top Downloads

January 16, 2006 by Jim Connelly

So, as a public service,one of the things that the Mediacratic was going to do was provide all of the top download lists of the big boy sites. Peoplewhole thing comparing the top video downloads of all of the big-boy sites: iTunes; AOL; Google & Yahoo! It would be in interesting compare and contrast, and perhapsprovide some insight to how the various sites’ strategies were panning out.

Well, not so much. iTunes has top tens. (The most recent eps of Lost, The Office and Battlestar Galactica.) (And oh my gods, how amazing was that latest ep of Battlestar? How they were able to have a major major victory against the Cylons and yet things are even more frac–, oh, right, the point.) But that’s pretty much it. AOL has “What’s Hot,” but there really isn’t a ranking. Yahoo! has a “Popular” section, but it’s based on searches, not downloads. And Google, well, who know what the hell is going on there?

It’s not a secret that popularity breeds popularity. People are interested in what other people are interested in. That’s why record stores and video stores have always have top sales and new release sections. So it’s a bit baffling that, except for iTunes, of course, none of these video download sites do.

Filed Under: Mediacratic

The Google Bazaar

January 16, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting profile of the head of Google Video Store, Jennifer Feiken (though we could have done without the tidbit about her height increasing when she wears high-heeled boots — seriously, it’s 2006, people). While I found myself mildly interested in Feiken’s journey from the cutting room floor (an aborted role in Hairspray) to Silicon Valley, I was more interested in how Google will work its way into the brave new world of the new media.

Google has made a lot of bold moves in the media world, most notably with its Google Book Search/Print/Publish initiative (what is it, anyway?). And it’s not an overstatement to say they own the search engine world right now. Aggregating and cataloguing data is what they do best — it remains to be seen if they’re up to the task of selling content to the user. Our initial analysis indicates that Google has a long way to go — hiring an entertainment industry insider is a good first step, but this may be the time that Google needs to leverage other skills even more. First up: make it usable.

LAT describes Google’s initiative as an “online bazaar” and indicates that established media companies are facing the project with skepticism.

The service got a rocky start last week. It was launched three days late because of technical problems, and some users complained about glitches and a shortage of popular TV programming. For example, there were only one episode of CBS’ popular show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and fewer than a dozen music videos from Sony BMG Music Entertainment — two of Google’s major media partners.

Google also faces challenges from existing partnerships established by its competition, not to mention the fact that iTunes has set the bar very high:

[Read more…] about The Google Bazaar

Filed Under: Google, Mediacratic, Services

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Previously on Medialoper

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