Daily Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE

Tom Green has been spending his time online with a daily show he shoots in his living room and airs at 11p ET/8pm PT. That show will soon come out in syndication in a deal with Debmar-Mercury, as of January 2008, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Tom Green Live will have a slow roll out, debuting in a handful of markets and then expanding. And the show will continue to air live online on Green’s website, and shared virally on YouTube, MySpace and iTunes. (http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6485635.html 10/1)

Tom Green Live (Perez Hilton guest star)

Despite its vast media holdings, News Corp. is dwarfed by the enormity of the Internet, says chief Rupert Murdoch. “We don’t dominate anywhere,” says the media mogul. News Corp. remains “a tiny fraction” of the media universe, with the public well able to find differing opinions elsewhere. (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/murdoch-flags-political-strife-myanmar/story.aspx?guid=%7B44A32F3C-44A0-4664-BC4C-12A4ACC46A7D%7D 9/28)

Despite efforts by Viacom/CBS chief Sumner Redstone to play down the split with daughter Shari, sources say the truce is tenuous. Talks between the two camps “have come to a grinding halt.” The elder Redstone is said to be content to have issues of succession decided after his death. (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-shari1oct01,1,2769766.story?ctrack=1&cset=true 10/1)

Viacom’s Nickelodeon went dark for three hours on Saturday, encouraging its young viewers to “go out and play.” But MeMe Roth, head of the advocacy group National Action Against Obesity, dismissed the move as a marketing stunt: “Imagine the benefits of turning TV off altogether.” (http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/nick-to-kids-stop-watching-for-now 9/29)

What the hell? The last thing I need is for my television to start telling me how to me good to myself. I encourage Nickelodeon to stick to good content, not self-help collateral. If I was a “young viewer”, I might boycott the network all together after a stunt like this. . .until of course I remembered that Spongebob is a Nickelodeon property.

Disney’s squeaky-clean hit “High School Musical” franchise taps into something “a lot of producers have missed,” say pop-culture observers. Many kids, especially girls, simply don’t want to see sex on television. “HSM’s” lack of irony, of hipness, is “almost avant-garde; subversive.” (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070928/high_school_musical_mania.html 9/28)

The New York Rangers (owned by Cablevision’s Madison Square Garden LP) is suing the NHL claiming the league is seeking to monopolize the team’s web sites. The lawsuit claims the NHL demanded that MSG hand over control of nyrangers.com so that the league could convert it into a uniform site matching the look and feel of other nhl.com team destinations, threatening a $100,000 a day fine if the company didn’t comply.

After a blistering ratings summer, cable channels such as Comedy Central, USA Network and Bravo, are rolling out new series in the fall. This is unusual because the broadcast networks, after being dormant for the summer, unveil their new shows in the fall. (Mediaweek 10/1)

NBC has ordered up 13 episodes of a drama based on the story Robinson Crusoe, with plans to launch next fall 2008 or midseason 2009. While based in the original 17th century as the original story, some of the story lines will be a little updated including one on race relations, and it will include new characters, says Hollywood Reporter. In fact Crusoe himself is getting a little bit of a makeover, as he will have MacGyver type qualities in his ingenuity.

CBS has ordered up another Mark Burnett production - Jingles is an unscripted game series wherein the contestants (made up of individuals or teams) attempt to come up with winning new jingles for familiar products. The jingles are then performed in front of a live audience. The winner’s jingle gets made in to a commercial; the loser goes home. No launch date yet, tho according to Variety, look for this probably next summer.

U.S. broadcasters will move to all-digital programming on Feb. 17, 2009. After that, some 70 million antenna television watchers will see their TV sets go dark. But many consumers have no idea that the change is coming, and broadcasters may risk losing advertising dollars. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/28/AR2007092801769.html 10/29)

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, is acquiring Lonely Planet, an Australian travel guidebook company, for an undisclosed amount. Lonely Planet publishes 500 titles in different languages and receives 4.3 million visitors a month on its Web site. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVZZ2qCFBLWY 10/1)

Rome Hartman, the first executive producer of Katie Couric’s “CBS Evening News,” is behind the new “BBC World News America,” a newscast debuting 7 p.m. ET Monday on BBC America. The show will complement, rather than replace, the U.S. network newscasts that air a half-hour earlier. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070930/ap_en_tv/ap_on_tv_bbc_s_american_news 9/30)