The conventional wisdom that Hollywood never suffers in a recession may prove false this time.

Even if consumers flock to movie theaters, production appears likely to take a hit – especially for independents. Like elsewhere in the financial world, banks and other traditional funders of movie and TV production are cutting back on their investments until they see how the economy fares.

“Production will fall significantly,” said D. Jeffrey Andrick, Managing Director of Continental Entertainment Capital, which arranged co-financing in September for independent film

Indie "Give 'Em Hell Malone" was lucky it got funded in September, not October

starring Thomas Jane and Ving Rhimes. “Deals that looked like they might come together a certain way, that relied on a certain equity source, have been paralyzed.”

Hedge funds, a popular source of film financing recently,  are also struggling; and foreign distributors – which often help finance films by pre-committing to it – are also sitting on the sidelines, Andrick said.

Big studios aren’t likely to dramatically cut films they’ve already committed to. But look for a lot more caution if the recession deepens. And indie filmmakers, whose financing prospects are shaky at the best of times, are going to have more trouble getting films made.

So even if more consumers chill at the movies, they’ll likely have a lot less product to choose from.

Posted under Michael's Blog

As I was reading about CBS’ $1.8 billion purchase of CNET on MarketWatch.com, I couldn’t help but remember when CBS purchased MarketWatch.

Today, MarketWatch is owned by Dow Jones. And Dow Jones, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Meanwhile, you have Norman Pearlstine (previously head a top honcho at Time Inc. and the Wall Street Journal) hired by Bloomberg, another online powerhouse.

The common denominator: Online is where many, if not most, people are getting their news.

This implies several things:

1) The continued deterioration of newspapers, and possibly soon, of magazines.

2) An acceleration of the massive shift of advertising from traditional media to the Web.

3) A growing recognition by TV powerhouses like CBS that the Internet is no longer just a vanity play or a way to promote their shows. It’s a major piece of their future revenue as viewers fly from TV to the Web.

See Also

• CBS to Buy Web Publisher CNET for $1.8 Billion

Posted under Uncategorized

Nuru Rimington-Mkalif is a 21-year-old, unknown, London-based filmmaker who suddenly finds himself represented by William Morris Agency and positioned to make a Hollywood feature film — because of an online contest. 

Filmaka.com, the online studio created by former Fox TV chief Sandy Grushow and "Bend It Like Beckham Producer" Deepak Nayar, selected Rimington-Mkalif from among hundreds of online contestants. The site relied on a combination of online peer review from 3,600 members and the opinions of people like actor Bill Pullman ("Sleepless in Seattle") and producer Laura Bickford ("Traffic")

"I never allowed myself to think I would win," Rimington-Mkalif said in an interview. "I just focused on getting it done."

Rimington-Mkalif was one of 15 finalists who were told to create a short film around the theme "The Secret Adventures of…"

Filmaka will fund production of the film from backers such as Aramid Entertainment, and India’s Future Capital Holdings.

Studios often spend tens of millions of dollars to develop films that aren’t made or pay established talent to direct and produce it. This approach provides an alternate channel — as well as easy transition to making webisodes or TV shows. fX, the Fox cable channel, is also using Filmaka to scout for talent. 

See Also

• Filmaka: Vetting Filmmakers on the Web

Posted under Uncategorized

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

A Comcast executive’s revelation at Digital Living Room last week that the cable company is testing cameras in its DVRs in the living room set off a storm of angry blogs.

It began when Chris Albrecht of NewTeevee quoted Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior vice president of user experience, as saying the company is testing cameras that recognize you when you turn on your cable box, allowing your TV set to make recommendations about what you might want to see, or to serve up tailored ads.

The angry comments started on the New Teevee site, ranging from "officially the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life" to "Comcast is trying to make Orwell’s vision of 1984 come true". From there the commentary spread to PC World  (Comcast’s Creepy Experiment) and the New York Times, among other places).

Kunkel responded to the outcry with a posting of his own on NewTeeVee, emphasizing that Comcast’s experimental camera-based gesture recognition device is "in no way designed to – or capable of – monitoring your living room".

The incident illustrates once again the morass cable companies and telephone companies are potentially stepping into as they continue to offer "triple play" services that combine TV, high-speed Internet and telephone service. Even if Comcast’s system doesn’t currently offer in-room monitoring, it clearly could without too much modification. And you can bet that when it becomes a reality, the government in its search for "terrorists" will be close behind.

It’s only fair to mention, however, that panelists at the show also talked about more benign uses for such technologies: monitoring a home when a family is away, for example, or allowing family members to monitor elderly parents.

As we move toward two-way video communication in the home, these issues are going to only intensify. It’s good to have an early heads-up.

See Also

• Comcast Cameras to Start Watching You?
• Comcast’s Creepy Experiment Puts Cams Inside DVRs to Watch You

Posted under Uncategorized

When I was a TV reporter seven years ago, us journalists used to pose hard-ball questions to broadcasters about how they were going to deal with their plummeting audience share.

Lower CPMs presumably meant lower ad dollars.

These days, I’m surprisingly beginning to hear  TV executives talk about tailoring their message to each customer.

One of these is Deanna Brown, President of Scripps Interactive Networks, overseeing the interactive components of the Food Network, the Fine Living Network and Home and Garden Television, among others.

For Brown, the message gets as granular as helping Mom make chicken soup.

 "Ultimately, people are looking for things that are important to them, the individual user," says Brown, who spoke at IPTV World earlier this week. "Our job is to aggregate those individuals."

Here’s how it works:

1) One of Mom’s friends tells her about Recipezaar, a Scripps property that creates a web space where she can choose between 1,006 chicken soup recipes, rate them and share her own.

2) Mom becomes a regular user and one day happens to bump into 12 cocktail recipes from the Food Network, the better to ply hard-drinking Dad.

3) Mom gets hooked on Rachael Ray videos.

4) Mom starts watching the Food Network.

What’s interesting is the way this model turns the networks’ current strategies on its head. Your favorite shows are all on TV, but you know you can watch them stream on the Internet. Here, you’re starting on the Web, and gradually pulling people into the TV experience.

And, your Web experience is built around helping them get what they want making, rather than enticing them to do what you want (i.e., click the banner ad).

Food for thought.

See Also

• IPTV World

Posted under Uncategorized

When I first started iHollywood Forum with my wife six years ago, my Uncle Irv from Castro Valley was skeptical about the idea of public conversations about digitized Hollywood content.

“Hollywood just makes crap for TV and movies,” he groused, showing a proper Bay Area disdain for all things L.A. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We’re not really talking about what’s in the programming,” I protested. “We’re talking about the new technologies for distributing and monetizing it: the Internet, cellphones and so forth.”

Technology, after all, makes Silicon Valley run, so Irv was satisfied. And so was I, going on to produce dozens of seminars and conferences about distributing and monetizing content.

But, coming off a 10-day meditation retreat, I find the content issue niggling at me. Here we have all this media consolidation happening: with News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500) bidding $5 billion for Dow Jones (Charts); Thomson chasing Reuters in a possible $17.5 billion merger; and Clear Channel Communications, Cablevision and Tribune in private equity firms’ crosshairs. These guys all want to put exabytes of TV shows, movies, games, newspapers, video footage, newspapers and other content on the Web, cellphones, XBoxes, home networks, portable DVRs, and every other imaginable platform and monetize it every conceivable way.

The problem is that the vast majority of the stuff is junk. At the risk of alienating my core audience (and my kids): most of the material on TV is mindless; most movies are designed to maximize studio cash flow, not enlighten audiences;  most cellphone games are inane (bowling, anyone?); most news outlets toady to their readers’ basest leanings — to say nothing of gambling, sex and more dangerous “content” accompanying it all.

If this content is king, let me out of the kingdom.

Admittedly, there’s plenty of great content out there, too. I love what’s happening with music, although — ironically, from the column’s standpoint — it’s being monetized the worst. There’s news on the Internet from great outlets like the Wall Street Journal (at least until you-know-who buys it), the New York Times and Reuters. And some TV shows, chat rooms, games (the massively social networking kind), virtual worlds,  movies and other content deserve to be on as many platforms as possible.

But if this is all about catering, as we do today, to the lowest common denominator to maximize cash flow on as many platforms as possible, what are we creating? What does constant exposure to junk and worse do to the minds of our children and our communities? What legacy are we leaving the world? Do we really aspire to make lots of money and nothing more of our lives?

For years, I’ve dreamed about doing a conference exploring these issues. The problem is, no one would come. There’s no money to be made.

See Also

• The return of media merger madness
• My recent musings about media

Posted under Uncategorized

When I used to interview job applicants, I’d ask them if they know what IPTV is.

"It’s television over IP,” they’d reply. "You know, Internet television."

"It is not," I’d snarl. "It’s the telcos getting into television. TV over phone lines. AT&T and Verizon, and those hundreds of rural telcos, too.”

Of  course, they’d never get the job.

Well, my reply would also get me the boot at any online video company.

Yes, IPTV is about those telcos taking on the cable and satellite companies. But it’s really about how video is becoming platform-independent. The video on your broadband will soon become the same video on your TV and your mobile phone.

That fact was made dramatically clear at last week’s IPTV World conference at NAB 2007 by the presence of a Revver executive on the opening panel, "Battle for Eyeballs”.

Revver, a user-generated video site, has a deal with Verizon to supply video to both its Fios IPTV and Vcast mobile services.

Its content also plays on Jack Black’s experimental Acceptable.tv TV show on VH1. Watchers get to vote on just how acceptable that content is via cellphones or the Internet.

How cool is that? Think that qualifies as IPTV?

Thinking of video is something that’s passively watched on a clunky TV is passe. It’s time for me to get with the program.

See Also

• IPTV World video coverage
• Verizon to Offer Revver Clips on FiOS TV
• IPTV World conference

Posted under Uncategorized

I wrote a blog a few weeks back entitled "The Fifth Estate" that said citizen journalists deserve to be the "Fifth Estate" behind the executive branch, Congress, the courts and "real" reporters. That’s because these citizen bloggers — or cloggers, as I termed them — have an increasingly important role in restraining errant members of the other four branches.

Well, so it is. Bloggers played a critical role in bringing about Don Imus’ well-deserved demise as a radio host at CBS.

A 26-year-old researcher for the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America was among the first to blog about Imus’ Wednesday morning reference to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as "nappy-headed hos”.

This relatively obscure group attracted dozens of heated comments to its postings of transcripts of the address on its website. But the major news outlets published nothing at all, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The National Association of Black Journalists and other individuals and groups added their voices to the "digital brush fire" that brought Imus down.

CBS, which Thursday merely suspended Imus for two weeks before firing him on Friday, did not ultimately fire him for making racially charged remarks.  The network, MSNBC, syndicators and other members of the media elite profited handsomely from his misogynous and racist comments over the years.

Advertisers didn’t drop out because they were disgusted, either.  They put up with his trash as long as they hit millions of demographic desirables.  

CBS and advertisers deserted Imus because of 3,435 enraged cloggers, by Google’s last count. 

And lest you grieve too much for Imus: how much do you want to bet he pops up on XM/Sirius or some other media outlet more concerned with profits than propriety?

Irony Dept.: Conservative talk show host Doug McIntyre of L.A.’s KABC remarked to the L.A. Times  with an apparently straight face that, "free speech was imperiled if ‘a joke — a lame, idiotic, stupid joke’ could get Imus fired".  Imus was fired by the public, not by CBS, Doug.  I do believe they get a vote in what garbage they listen to.

See Also

• The Fifth Estate
• Behind the Fall of Imus, a Digital Brush Fire
• Imus’ End May Be a Hopeful Sign
• Rice Calls Imus Remarks `Disgusting’
• Some Conservative Talk Show Hosts Angered by Imus’ Firing

Posted under Uncategorized

Let’s see.  It’s been a hard day at work and I head home for dinner, a Bud and Bud.TV.

I don’t think so.  And apparently neither do the 100,000 other people who bailed out of Bud.TV’s struggling online network, one month after it launched with an underwhelming 253,000 visitors in February. Anheuser-Busch is said to have spent between $20 million and $30 million to launch the site, and hopes to have 2 to 3 million visitors a month by early next year.

AdAge.com opines that the 40% drop in traffic at Anheuser-Busch’s site is due to the online form on the launch page, which verifies your name, age, zip code and gives you a user name and a password.  That’s silly.  People fill out oodles more to sign up for free MySpace or Amazon accounts.  It took me five minutes to fill out Ad Age’s own online reg form — and they made me fill in my address, company, job title and check a box not to receive the magazine’s email propaganda.

There are two reasons why people aren’t going to Bud.TV.  One is tepid content.  A hackneyed show about fake celebrities, interviews with Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and a "Bud Light daredevil" who orders pizzas using only the words "large" and "yes," is not exactly compelling content.

But the more important reason why the site is bombing is that people just don’t want to watch a TV channel run by a beer company.  Especially when it features the same kind of beery spots you see in Bud Light commercials.

Imagine if NBC started selling beer in grocery stores.  You think that would sell?

Advertisers are advertisers for a reason.  It’s because they need to bounce off content consumers really want to see to get their attention.

Now, you could argue that a few advertisers really are in the content business, say BMW Films.  But they’re really not.  BMW’s critically acclaimed Internet short film series featured the work of famous directors like John Woo, Ridley Scott and John Frankenheimer.  BMW wrapped itself in their notoriety, the way any good advertiser does.  But it didn’t produce the films.

Had Bud done its site that way, leaving the programming to programmers, Bud.TV might have had a chance.  As it is, I predict it will end its life as a mere belch in the history of Internet programming.

See Also

• Traffic Plummets at Struggling Bud.TV
• Beer Site Hobbled by Barriers to Easy Access and Shareable Content

Posted under Uncategorized

Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell — flush from buying Tribune Co. — made a fascinating hint yesterday in a Bay Area speech.

"If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be?" he’s quoted by the Tribune-owned L.A. Times as saying.

Now remove the word "newspapers" from his statement and insert "record companies" or "TV programmers". See why it’s fascinating?

Google, of course, would never outright steal music or TV programs from their august owners. But if pirated music videos end up on YouTube, hey, that’s showbiz.

Now, on to newspapers. So far, the Fourth Estate has made nary a peep about Google getting all that good news copy for free. Nor has it filed suit, like Viacom did last month against YouTube to punish it for letting users upload clips from The Colbert Report, South Park and other Viacom-owned material.

Could Zell, the consummate dealmaker, be considering a middle course? One that let’s him have his cake and eat some of Google’s, too?

Let’s suppose Zell went to Google and said, "Look, guys. It’s been a good run. But we’re being eaten alive. You need to cough up some of the revenue you’re taking from all those little ads on the side of the L.A. Times stories in Google searches.”

And he might just cough politely and mutter "Viacom" under his breath. They’re smart in Silicon Valley. They know a veiled threat when they hear one.

Google, in its own way, is a content pipe –just as T-Mobile and Vodafone are content pipes for the dozens of so-called "off deck” companies who use mobile operators’ air waves to sell everything from sex to silk slippers.

Except T-Mobile and Vodafone are smart enough to recognize a paradigm shift when they see one. They make those off-deck companies pay freight. And they make a fortune in the process.

So I’ll be fascinated to find out if Zell was indeed hinting at  a middle path for reinvigorating newspapers. Google him in a few months and check it out. That’s what I did.

See Also

• Papers, Web firms need ‘a new deal,’ Zell says
• Can rich Americans save newspapers?
• Is Google Too Powerful?

Posted under Uncategorized