The Ten Spot: Nov 30, 2009
via The Media Equation – For Media, a Sunset Is Followed Quickly by a Sunrise – NYT
For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.
via The $20m Actor…Who Needs ‘Em? | ZDONK
I like to think of it like this: Every time a studio green lights a movie for production, it’s like they’re investing in a company. Some companies are run by charismatic leaders who are proven winners ($20 million actors), but if that company’s agenda and business model (script) are weak, then it doesn’t matter who the CEO is. I have to imagine that every Fortune 500 company started out with a great concept, not some name brand face.
via Spotify CEO Confident For 2010 U.S. Launch
“Subscription doesn’t work on its own because that’s been proven for 10 years as well,” Ek continued. “But the combination of an ad pricing model and a subscription model does. So far, in terms of Spotify, we haven’t actually spent any money at all on marketing. But what we have done is that we have taken a lot of people in using the free service, they start using the free service and they find attractive options such as becoming a paid user because they wanted to have [the service] on their mobile phone or they wanted to have higher volume quality… and they’ve done so now at the scale where we can say that we’re the biggest subscription service in Europe.” Read more >>
Ken Auletta’s Googled: 25 New Media Maxims
Ken Auletta’s new book is a journalist’s take on the Google phenomenon. He conducted interviews with some 150 current and former Google employees as well as the CEO Eric Schmidt and the normally media-shy founders Larry and Sergey.
Read the transcript from the Charlie Rose interview. And the addendum of 25 media maxims to create a consequential media empire in the digital age. Full download after the jump…
25 Media Maxims
- Passion wins
- Focus is required
- Vision is required
- A team culture is vital
- Treat engineers as kings
- Treat customers like kings
- Brand often means trust
- Every company should strive to take the risks out of capitalism
- Every company is a frenemy
- The speed of change accelerates
Read more >>
The Ten Spot: Nov 18, 2009
EXCLUSIVE: Carl Icahn Buying Up MGM Bonds “Like A Bat Out Of Hell” – Deadline.com
As for Icahn’s intentions for MGM, film financing circles think he’s going after the studio because he wants it for his son. True, Icahn wanted to give one of the four Lionsgate board seats he was seeking to his 29-year-old offspring Brett. A Princeton grad like his dad, Brett worked for years under the radar as an analyst for his dad’s investment company. He has been one of 10 young traders moving the firm’s cash and its hedge fund, which the family started two years ago with $1 billion.
Rupert Murdoch’s Guy Gets It | Newser
If Arthur Miller were at it again, he’d call the play Death of a PR Guy. Gary Ginsberg, Murdoch’s PR guy who got the ax yesterday, used to beg me not to call him a PR Guy—his official title was Executive VP of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs—but that was his job: making Murdoch look good. Read more >>
The Ten Spot: Nov 17, 2009
You-Be-The-Terrorist Videogame Sales Reach $600 Million In 5 Days | SAI
In one week, Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has raked in more cash than any form of entertainment for sale. It sold around 9.4 million copies of the first-person shooter game in five days and made $600 million.
via Here’s Proof Originality Doesn’t Pay in Hollyw’d | The Wrap
Some enterprising Wikipedia contributor decided to pull together a list of the 50 films with the highest worldwide gross of the decade so far. One has to go all the way down to No. 15 on the list, Disney/Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” before finding one created from original material — in other words, not a sequel, remake or adaptation of existing material or characters (such as Batman or Harry Potter).
via Andy Plesser: YouTube Integrated with Huffington Post, NPR, Politico and SF Chronicle
YouTube has introduced a solution for media sites to moderate and post video uploads from visitors. The Huffington Post, NPR, Politico and the San Francisco Chronicle are the first media companies to use the system which is called YouTube Direct. The system allows registered YouTube users to upload videos directly to a media site. These videos are also seen on the member’s personal YouTube channel. Read more >>
“I’m With the Brand…”: Multiplatform & Monetization Strategy
Just presented my keynote at XMediaLab’s Amsterdam 2009 conference on public media – think PBS, CBC or BBC. Goals were presenting general strategy re protecting media investment; avoiding cannibalization, i.e., disruption not destruction of value; viewing lifestyle media as the new inclusive parent of entertainment media (as opposed to Big Media owning lifestyle media); and carving out rights to build audience while marrying these niche communities to brands.
Must-View: Traditional vs Digital Journalism
A must-view from the Monaco Media Forum: Arianna Huffington from Huffington Post debating with Axel Spring AG CEO Mathias Dopfner, who runs one of the largest newspaper publishing companies in Europe. A very sophisticated debate on traditional publishing versus internet/aggregated or citizen journalism; plus, Arianna’s key quote on “traditional media versus digital media: ADD versus OCD.”
The Ten Spot: Nov 7, 2009
Spielberg: Have Movies Will Travel…. Again? – BusinessWeek
Even before Steven Spielberg’s newly reformulated Dreamworks SKG makes its first film, his studio is moving for a third time – well, sort of. BusinessWeek has learned that the Dreamworks operation, headed by Spielberg and producing partner Stacey Snider, is moving the rights to show its movies on pay TV from Starz (LMDIA) to Showtime (CBS).
The Hot New Business Of Virtual Goods – SAI
NYT: Analysts estimate that virtual goods could bring in a billion dollars in the United States and around $5 billion worldwide this year — all for things that, aside from perhaps a few hours of work by an artist and a programmer, cost nothing to produce. “It’s a fantastic business,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested $10 million in several virtual goods companies. “Because it’s digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins.”
FunnyorDie.com: ‘SNL’ for the online crowd – LAT
Since its launch, the site has transcended the initial hype of Ferrell and McKay’s debut video, “The Landlord” (with 66.7-million views and counting). Now it’s a fledgling new media studio with a CEO, a Silicon Valley office and a reported ($15-million investment. (Though the site is making money, it hasn’t turned a profit, according to those familiar with its finances. McKay calls it “our not-for-profit theater.”) For the legions of comic unknowns out there, the site offers another way to network and possibly get discovered. For the A-listers, it is a creative outlet, set apart from the conglomerates running entertainment, that may not earn them a dime but pays off with street cred on the comedy scene.) Read more >>
The Ten Spot: Nov 5, 2009
Chart: U.S. Virtual Goods Revenue Ready To Explode | SAI
The virtual goods market in the U.S. is ready to take off. Right now, the U.S. only has 28% of the total market. By 2013, the U.S. will make up 41% of the market with $2.5 billion in sales, according to research from Piper Jaffray.
The Decade of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple | Fortune
He’s a visionary, but he’s grounded in reality too, closely monitoring Apple’s various operational and market metrics. He isn’t motivated by money, says friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500). The financial results have been nothing short of astounding — for Apple and for Jobs. The company was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple’s groundbreaking “digital lifestyle” strategy, understood at the time by few critics. Today, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google.
CollegeHumor May Go to Ben Silverman Venture | Advertising Age
The deal would have Connected Ventures, parent of CollegeHumor and just-launched TV-production arm Notional, folded into Electus. [...] Connected Ventures is at the core of those content efforts, but Mr. Diller is said to lack confidence that the group can effectively monetize the properties it creates. Last week, Mr. Diller said investment in original content would account for “less than 10%” of the $1.8 billion the company will have in cash over the next few years.
One of the biggest questions in the TV biz has been when, and even if, Oprah Winfrey would give up her daytime syndicated talk show to focus on OWN, her long delayed Oprah Winfrey Network in 70 million homes that was supposed to launch in place of the Discovery Health Channel as a joint venture between Winfrey and Discovery Communications. Read more >>
The Ten Spot: Nov 4, 2009
[Ari Emanuel slipped this 1970 Life magazine to his agents recently. Per Patrick Goldstein:] Don’t overreact to the current studio cost-cutting frenzy. As this story makes all too clear, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Studios always think they can make the movie business into a more rational enterprise, but that’s a bean-counter fantasy. Making movies will always require a leap of faith.
Just as today’s studio chiefs think that they can now make “Transformers” and “Hangover”-style hits without movie stars, Bluhdorn was convinced that high-priced talent was superfluous. “You get from these big stars a document of conditions of how many hours they’ll work, what they’ll do and won’t do…. Well, who needs them? With today’s young audiences, names won’t sell a picture anymore. A great script and a devoted director — that’s what makes things happen. Substitute “special effects” for ”script” and you could easily slip those words into any of today’s studio bosses’ mouths.
via YouTube’s Content Head Jordan Hoffner Leaving To Join Ben Silverman’s New Venture | paidContent.
Jordan Hoffner, the head of content partnerships for YouTube, is leaving the company, and joining Ben Silverman’s new content venture at IAC (NSDQ: IACI), we have learned. The move from YouTube was announced internally today. This is the second senior digital exec to join Silverman’s venture, after we first reported on Drew Buckley also joining it last month.
via But Who’ll Break Up The Fistfights? – Deadline.com.
James Murdoch, Howard Stringer, Les Moonves, David Zaslav, and, interestingly, Comcast’s Brian Roberts and GE’s Jeff Immelt back to back, will be speaking at the annual hush-hush Quadrangle confab being held Wednesday and Thursday in NYC. [...] Speakers — Emilio Azcárraga, Grupo Televisa; Dennis Crowley, Foursquare; Barry Diller, Iac; Brian Dunn, Best Buy; Charles Forman & Dan Porter, Omgpop; Reed Hastings, Netflix; Reid Hoffman, Linkedin. More after the jump… Read more >>