Nothing irks me more than to see a Time Warner pitchman come on my TV to talk about all the money they’re “saving” me over satellite. Please. I’m currently spending more than $150 a month on my cable service, and that doesn’t count the $120 a month I pay for business class Internet service from Warner Cable.

The New York Times described my dilemma exactly when  it interviewed a 27-year-old actor who’s using a new service called Boxee that allows users to bypass the cable company and get the channels they want through a direct Internet connection to their TV. “Most people my age would like to just pay for the channels they want, but cable refuses to give us that option,” he told the reporter.

Not just his age. Us 49-year-olds balk just as much.

Once you unchain TV shows from the cable gatekeeper, you’re opening Pandora’s box — just as you are when you allow studios to sell directly to cell phone users and bypass the carriers. Don’t be surprised if cable companies try to sue Boxee and others like them out of existence to maintain their lucrative oligopoly.

But in the long run, hopefully those efforts will fall short. Content, as they say, wants to be free. And as somebody who pays through the nose for a product controlled by those cable and satellite oligopolies, it can’t come a moment too soon.

Posted under Michael's Blog

Usually, you meet Hollywood types on every flight to Las Vegas during CES — the executives shopping “content” for new devices, or the looky-loos from production. This year, many of those people didn’t go, if my admittedly unscientific conversations in the last few days are an indication. “Unless there is a very specific reason to go, travel has been chopped,” one talent agency exec told me.  Certainly that’s true for TV executives,  who have seen budgets slashed 5% to 10% across the board as advertising has plummeted. Overall, attendance is expected to drop at least 22% from last year’s 141,000.

Posted under Michael's Blog

You know things are bad in the newspaper business when you wonder whether you should resubscribe to your favorite newspaper as a charity gesture.

Times are hard, and I’m still questioning whether I should renew my subscription, when I get everything I want online.

Then I read that my favorite newspaper’s revenue dropped 13.9% and, most worrisome, that its Internet revenue slid along with it. As Forbes notes, “those online revenues continued to account for a bigger and bigger piece of a smaller and smaller pie.”

I still remain convinced that the digital future of newspapers is strong. New technologies (successors to the Kindle and the iPhone) will bring serious readers back into the fold, even as paper dies. I just hope the New York Times and other newspapers can survive until then.

Posted under Michael's Blog

Warner Music's Led Zeppelin in Concert

Warner Music Group’s decision to take down videos and music on Google’s YouTube reflects the music industry’s frustration that video sharing on the Internet still isn’t paying off.

Warner Music, says the Wall Street Journal, had expected to garner more advertising revenue from the video site — proof once again the big audiences doesn’t necessarily guarantee big revenue. YouTube earns only about $200 million this year, a tiny fraction of Google’s total revenue.

Google pays licensing fees to music companies when users click on advertising content. But clearly, online video has a long way to go before it pays its way for Hollywood content.

Posted under Michael's Blog

3-D movies — from Jaws in 1983 to Spy Kids in 2003 — have long been staples of movie fare. Then as now, audience goers donned special glasses that make double images leap out of the screen. But today’s movies, using advanced cameras, are far sharper; and the prospect of standardized 3-D for all films and TV shows means the technology will likely become a DVD staple, too, over the next 10 years.

Or at least that’s director James Cameron’s message at Hollywood’s first 3-D Entertainment Summit. Cameron is currently producing Avatar, his eagerly awaited $200-million feature film, set on another planet in the far future. Shot entirely in 3-D, the film is set for release in December 2009. (More)

Posted under Digital Media Watch, Michael's Blog

Amid mounting advertising pain in the TV business, CBS took a $12.5 billion third-quarter loss yesterday, and Disney is reportedly preparing cost-cutting measures that could include job cuts.

CBS’ loss came after it took a $14.1 billion charge to reflect the lower value of advertising-supported media assets.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Disney executives have been meeting this week to prepare belt-tightening measures.

The news comes two weeks after NBC Universal said it would cut $500 million in spending, or 3% of its budget, because of “unprecedented economic challenges.”

Posted under Michael's Blog

Will soft money be the next casualty of the recession?

Wisconsin legislators hyping their tax credits for film and TV production

Studios rely on tax incentives from more than 40 states (and other countries) to help cover the cost of production. There’s even an open market for those credits — similar to the derivatives that caused such a mess on Wall Street.

States like New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New Mexico refund as much as 40% of the money studios spend on below-the-line workers for a movie or TV production. The money means producers can be comfortable with a lot more short-term debt, knowing they’ll be repaid.

Now the executives at big studios (and presumably indies) who take advantage of this so-called soft money are feverishly reworking their risk assessments to take into account the probability that some of that rebate money will dry up — a casualty of state governments trying to stay solvent themselves.

“There are forces within each state that are against (soft money) because they look at it as a big giveaway,” said a studio executive. “That’s only going to intensify in the current economic environment.”

Studios worry that shows already in production may see their tax credits revoked, forcing them to be moved to another location, she said. New York, hard hit by the financial meltdown is particularly worrisome since many shows are produced there, and the state has one of the most generous soft money programs. Right now, the state has committed its soft money through 2011.

“It’s all about risk assessment,” she said. “No one knows what’s going to happen.”

Posted under Michael's Blog

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

If you think mobile social video is a no-go in the U.S., you might consider Itsmy.com, which claims 2.5 million users of its personal broadcasting service worldwide, with half of them American.

The site ((http://m.itsmy.com on
your mobile phone) lets anyone with a video-enabled mobile phone create
their own mobile “TV show” for free and share it with other friends,
family or love prospects.

The company’s fixed Internet site is bare-bones and unapologetically devoid of uploading capabilities.

“We are convinced that we don’t need an Internet site for our users,” says Sabine Irrgang, COO of Munich-based GoFresh, which owns Itsmy.com. “Many are not interested, or they don’t even have a computer.”       MORE

Posted under Michael's Blog

MobiTV unveiled Mobi4Biz at the CTIA conference in San Francisco this week, the first in a planned series of TV channel mashups that will allow the mobile television company to repurpose mainstream TV for specific vertical markets. The new “channel of channels” — set to launch initially in late October exclusively on AT&T’s forthcoming BlackBerry Bold – will include video-on-demand, customizable stock tickers, andbreaking news from Fox Business, CNBC, Bloomberg and TheStreet.com.  MORE

Posted under Michael's Blog