Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
BROADCAST/CABLE
The debut on Sunday night of HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me at 9p averaged just 910,000 viewers, tho increased the viewership by some 25% from its lead-in (repeat episode of Sopranos). Immediately following the debut was the premiere of this seasons Curb Your Enthusiasm at 10p which increased the audience yet again to 1.2 million viewers, down from last season’s debut to 1.6 million viewers.
Steve Schirripa, the actor who played Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on HBO’s “The Sopranos,” is getting his own cooking show. “Steve Schirripa’s Hungry” is scheduled to debut in December on Lifeskool, the free-on-demand service from Rainbow Media. (Yahoo!/E! Online 9/10)
The much-trashed, belly-baring performance by Britney Spears on the MTV Video Music Awards show turned out pretty well for the network. MTV averaged 7.1 million viewers for the show, a 23% increase over last year’s event. (Yahoo!/E! Online 9/11)
Bravo is in the casting phase for a new reality dance-competition series called “Step It Up.” The show will be produced by the same team that developed Bravo hits “Project Runway” and “Top Chef.” (World Screen News 9/11)
A “structural transformation” of Time Warner could come in the next 18 to 24 months, with Jeff Bewkes as the CEO heir apparent, according to a report from Lehman Brothers. Potential moves include a sale of publishing assets and a public floatation of a stake in AOL. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/time-warner-restarted-overweight-lehman/story.aspx?guid=%7B5CD38770%2D963A%2D47E2%2D8E62%2D66FADEC5E1A7%7D 9/12)
DIRECTV’s weekly half-hour original series Project MyWorld takes its second season to New Zealand and Australia starting October 1 at 6p with an encore airing at 9p on the satellite TV service provider’s original entertainment channel, The 101. During season two, a new “adventure girl” joins the other two as all three travel in search of love, adventure and the top independent bands through their MySpace connections. All three also contribute to the show’s website on MySpace at www.myspace.com/projectmyworld.
ESPN posted its highest ratings of the year thus far and the second and third-largest household audiences on cable for the 2007 double-header season premiere of Monday Night Football. The Cincinnati Bengals winning match over the Baltimore Ravens at 7p scored an 8.6 rating, which represents an average of 8.3 million households or 11.08 million total viewers. The second game at 1030p where the San Francisco 49ers routed the Arizona Cardinals drew in a 6.9 rating, which represents an average of 6.6 million households or 8.5 million total viewers.
The penalty on CBS for televising singer Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show will effectively censor U.S. broadcasting if it is upheld, the network argues, seeking to overturn a $550,000 fine imposed by the Federal Communications Commission. (http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1142486520070911 9/11)
“The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” dropped to another record low in the ratings last week, even though the anchor marked her first anniversary in the job on a high-profile trip to Iraq and Syria. The broadcast averaged 5.4 million viewers, the lowest ratings on record. (http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1111840920070912 9/12)
In a 5-0 vote, the FCC voted Tuesday night to require cable companies to distribute local TV stations in both analog and digital formats for three years after the DTV transition in February 2009. The vote was considered a major win for the cable industry because agency Chairman Kevin Martin had lobbied to impose dual must-carry without a sunset time frame. (Multichannel News 9/11, The Hollywood Reporter 9/12)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Facebook is considering bringing in partners to help raise additional capital, according to the Kara Swisher’s BoomTown blog. The site currently has about 40 million members and is expected to earn $150 million this year in ad revenue. Yahoo reportedly offered just under $1 billion for the company last year, followed by a rumored multi-billion dollar bid from Microsoft.
Google is being accused in a lawsuit of using another company’s technology in its project to put millions of pages of books online. Illinois Computer Research of Chicago claims that Google’s Book Search feature infringes a patent for technology allowing users to see book pages on the Web.
(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aW_JS0Z55R3I 9/11)
In its latest move to beef up its marketing muscle, Yahoo will sell most of the display advertising for England’s leading online social network, Bebo. Yahoo’s biggest rivals, Google and Microsoft, already have ad partnerships with MySpace and Facebook, respectively. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070912/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_bebo 9/12)
Nickelodeon’s interactive-themed iCarly is a hit online with icarly.com registering almost 300,000 unique visitors during its premiere week. iCarly videos produced 1.1 million streams on TurboNick during the week from 9/3-9/9, with two-thirds, or 721,000 streams, taking place over the weekend. Nick.com launched an iCarly “Webisode Wardrobe” game on Sept. 6, which ended up as the number-one game for the week with 575,000 game plays.
Antonio Gonzalez AKA “DJ Satisfaction” of Camden, NJ has been crowned the winner of “The Score,” VH1′s online search for the “next great Hip Hop Producer.” Close to 8,000 entries were submitted on the site for consideration. Hip Hop performances and additional content will be featured on VH1 on demand, VH1 mobile and VH1.com leading up to the broadcast of this year’s VH1 Hip Hop Honors broadcast on Oct. 8 at 10 pm ET.
He’s not really droppin’it like it’s hot but he’s droppin’something.
Viacom is combining a number of its Web properties into one entity, banking that one site aimed at young males is better than three or four. The relaunched destination, Spike.com, will eliminate or scale back on brands including iFilm, Xfire and GameTrailers. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117971851.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1 9/11)
(Below) It’s not hard to see how this would be the case. If you take the cookie out of the jar and put it in the cupboard, I’ll go to the cupboard. That does not mean, however, that I wouldn’t rather go to the jar.
Viacom’s strategy of disallowing the use of its content on YouTube may have boosted traffic on its own site. The Web site of Viacom’s MTV recorded its highest traffic ever on Monday, the day after the cable network’s telecast of the Video Music Awards. (http://www.thestreet.com/s/britneys-bomb-boosts-viacom/newsanalysis/mediaentertainment/10379091.html 9/11)
AOL is announcing that its Netscape social media experiment will be migrated to a new site, Propeller.com. The so-called possible Digg-killer is now being “relegated to the backwaters.” The new Netscape is to become “a more traditional and editorially-driven news experience.” (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/11/propeller-will-be-the-new-netscape-digg-clone/ 9/11)
The series premiere of Fox’s docu-drama Welcome to Nashville is now available at no charge to viewers and fans across multiple portals and websites including FOX.com, AOL.com, IGN.com, TV.com, Comcast.net and TVGuide.com.While spot TV ad spending declined by .3% to $72.59 billion over the first 6 months of 2007, online ad spending continued to rise according to TNS Media Intelligence, albeit at a decreased rate. Internet display advertising registered a 17.7% increase to $5.52 billion during the first half, down from an 18.9% growth rate last year at this time.
Filed under: WIRELESS
WIRELESS
Details have emerged surrounding Palm’s Treo 500. The smartphone, which is scheduled to be released today, will run on a Windows Mobile 6.0 operating system and feature 3G technology, although the phone does not come with touch-screen technology. (InfoWorld/IDG News Service 9/11)
Filed under: GAMING
GAMING
Online games will grow 25% a year until they capture one third of all game software revenue in 2011, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. Online games earned an estimated $3.8 billion in 2006, and they are expected to rise to $11.8 billion in 2011. (GameDaily BIZ 9/11)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
Sony will introduce four new Blu-ray disc recorders to consumers in early November, just in time for the holiday shopping season. Industry estimates predict sales of high-definition players/recorders will top 400,000 units in the year ending March 2008. (Forbes/AFX News Limited/Thomson Financial 9/12)
SanDisk has quietly positioned itself as the second-place company in the U.S. market’s hotly contested MP3 market. “Apple is out there and it is the 800-pound gorilla,” said Mitch Cohen, SanDisk vice president of operations, engineering and product management. “Our mission and our goal is not to supplant Apple but to grow our space. … Being No. 2 is just fine for the company.” (Forbes 9/11)
A new study found that 35% of female shoppers would purchase more electronic goods if retailers offered them more assistance on Web sites and in stores. “There is a real opportunity here for brands and retailers in the consumer-electronics sector to target women,” study author Belinda Parmar said. (vnunet.com 9/11)
