This guy came shimmying down to my 27th floor window within minutes of my arriving in my hotel in China. One small misstep would send him hurtling to his death. You can see Beijing’s Western business district behind him. A good metaphor for the widening chasm between China’s upper class and the low-paid workers who are creating the wealth.
Posted under Michael's Blog, iHollywood China
This post was written by Michael Stroud on September 21, 2009
Kind of bizarre that Vampire Diaries promotes the Red Cross one week, and Jamie Lee Curtis another. Seems like I should be able to spy a trend here, but damned if I can figure it out.
Posted under Michael's Blog
This post was written by Michael Stroud on September 11, 2009
CW’s teen vampire play “Vampire Diaries” appears off to a decent start, scoring the network’s best season premiere ever: 4.84 million screaming young women. Whether the show can hold on to them remains to be seen. The network’s launch of sophomore show 90210 this week attracted nearly 2 million less than last year’s premiere of about 2.6 million viewers. And Diaries also runs the risk of giving viewers vampire diarrhea as ”True Blood”, the “Twilight” movie series, and reanimated “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dark Shadows” walk again.
Posted under Michael's Blog
This post was written by Michael Stroud on September 11, 2009
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Analyst Jason Bazinet of Citigroup estimates in a new report that combining Comcast with Time Warner Cable could achieve $1.6 billion in programming savings and could add something like $7.1 billion, or $2.46 a share, to Comcast’s value. That mega-company would control about 37% of the U.S. cable market — permittable now that rules barring cable companies from controlling more than 30% of the U.S. cable market have been overturned
The analyst’s assumption is that regulators would cast a blind eye to this oligopoly because new TV entrants like AT&T, Verizon, Dish Network and DirecTV redraw the traditional definition of what constitutes the pay TV market. But he’s conveniently forgetting these giants’ move into telephones, Internet and wireless, and their growing ability to dictate the terms of content distribution.
Wall Street might get richer from such a scheme, but consumers would be poorer as rates rise and programming choices fall.
Posted under Michael's Blog
This post was written by Michael Stroud on September 10, 2009
Here’s my take on the top 5 benefits of a Disney-Marvel combination:
1) Access to capital. In today’s strained economic times, Marvel was being forced to self-fund a chunk of its movie slate, leaving it with less cash to develop its products on other platforms. Disney is cash-rich.
2) Merchandising. Disney is the entertainment industry’s best merchandiser. Marvel’s characters are made to merchandise.
3) Spinoffs. The possibilities for spinning off Marvel characters on other platforms — games, Internet, theme parks, mobile phones — is endless.
4) Boys. Disney’s much better known with girls. This gives the Mouse House greater strength in its core demographic.
5) Untapped characters. Thor, Captain America and the Sub-Mariner and other Marvel staples haven’t been exploited for TV, movies and games — at least not in the 21st Century.
Posted under Michael's Blog
This post was written by Michael Stroud on September 1, 2009
