Showbiz Sandbox 130: It’s The Data, Stupid (or Why Live Nation Bought BigChampagne)
December 19, 2011
As 2011 comes to an end mainstream media companies continue to struggle with how to distribute their content through the Internet. That was never more apparent than this week as concert promoter Live Nation acquired BigChampagne, a media tracking and technology company. Joe Fleischer, Big Champgne’s chief marketing officer, explains why a live-event company is interested in staying on top of the latest music industry data and how the acquisition will help Live Nation better understand their customers.
Meanwhile, as SOPA and PIPA make their way through Congress, Universal Music Group caused a stir when they tried to squash news reports of their copyright infringement lawsuit against MegaUpload. Then there was comedian Louis C.K. who used digital convergence to his benefit by selling a video of his most recent stand-up show directly to fans, making a huge profit in the process.
Matt Damon was also muddying the waters last week by revealing the in-fighting going on behind the scenes of the”Bourne” franchise. Of course, we also cover the top entertainment news stories of the week including the Golden Globe and SAG award nominations, Howard Stern’s new television gig on “America’s Got Talent” and Madonna’s new record contract.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 129: Ticket Masters – The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped
December 12, 2011
Anyone who has ever tried to get good tickets to see their favorite band in concert knows how frustrating it can be. Josh Baron and Dean Budnick, two editors of Relix magazine, spent three years speaking to hundreds of industry veterans to research the history of modern ticketing. Their book, “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped
The end of the year usually marks a busy and highly profitable time in the movie industry, however box office receipts have been declining over the past two weekends to three year lows. It certainly doesn’t help that as film critics from around the nation bestow their annual awards, there doesn’t seem to be a clear frontrunner for the upcoming Oscar season.
In the music world, despite the glut of music subscription services such as Spotify, Rdio and Mog, some musicians are pulling their latest releases from the platforms. Most recently, The Black Keys have joined the likes of Coldplay in not allowing their new album to be streamed on any of the top services. Rather than help increase sales, the feeling is that these services may actually be preventing them.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 122: The Real Story Behind Steve Jobs And Pixar
October 10, 2011
Millions mourned the loss of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs this past week when the innovator behind the Macintosh computer, the iPod and others died at the age of 56. Though the endless eulogies of Jobs always mention Jobs Pixar tenure, they rarely provided any real detail. Truth is Jobs lost money with Pixar for ten years trying to turn the company into a successful computer hardware business. We’ll dive into the story of how Jobs came to own Pixar and how the company stumbled upon success in computer animation.
Of course, there has never been a Pixar film that didn’t make money. However, we often blithely dismiss one movie as being a box office loser and another as a hit even though they might seem similar in budgets and box office. When we consider a film a hit or a flop, we’re making numerous assumptions on various factors. It’s always a judgment call, but to try and explain what sort of judgments we’re making, we’ve decided to look at several different movies and explain why we consider them a hit or miss.
It’s not as hard to tell when a new television series is a flop, especially after the network cancels it. A number of new shows (“Playboy Club”) got axed this past week, while others (“New Girl”) were picked up for an entire season. One series which nearly didn’t make the cut was “The Simpsons”. After its 23rd season the animated show was nearly canceled over a contract dispute with the cast providing voices for its lovable characters.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 114: Hollywood Overflows With Streaming Content Deals
August 1, 2011
Digital distribution of television shows, movies and music has become quite trendy in Hollywood. Not a week goes by that companies such as Netflix, Spotify, Hulu and others aren’t in the news cutting some sort of deal with a big studio, television network or record label. This past week retail giant Amazon and online video portal YouTube made big additions to their streaming content libraries while Fox decided to limit those who could view their shows online. We provide a rundown of all the recent announcements and what they might mean for you, the consumer.
We are also joined by Roger Goff, an entertainment attorney with Wolf, Rifkin, Shapiro, Schulman & Rabkin. He helps us understand a few recent lawsuits filed by television producers, especially one in which the producer of “American Idol” is suing Fox over not being made an executive producer on the upcoming reality series “X-Factor”.
Speaking of legal issues, it turns out the NBCUniversal Comcast merger wasn’t as much of a done deal as everyone thought. A federal judge is threatening to hold up approving the union claiming it may not be in the “public interest”.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 103: Midnight In Cannes – This Year’s Fest Sparks Fireworks
May 16, 2011
Woody Allen’s film “Midnight In Paris” opened the 64th annual Cannes Film Festival last week, but it was Terrence Malick’s long awaited “Tree of Life” which everyone was eager to see. The film divided audiences with some booing loudly and others proclaiming it a masterpiece. We provide all the highlights from this year’s festival, including news about films and the scene along the Croisette.
Google decided not to wait around for record labels to offer them a decent license before launching their cloud music service. After watching Amazon launch their own music service, Google realized they would never get an appropriate licensing deal from the labels so took matters into their own hands.
Meanwhile, major television networks began holding their upfronts where they inform advertisers, and the world, what shows will air during the fall television season. We fill you in on who made the cut, who got cut, and why. The announcement that Ashton Kutcher will replace Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men” was the biggest television news of the week.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 77: It’s Official – Hollywood To Make Nothing But Sequels
November 1, 2010
With the seventh installment of the Saw franchise and Paranormal Activity 2 topping this week’s box office, it’s not hard to see why Hollywood studios have been greenlighting sequels and prequels. They range from high profile titles such as “The Hobbit” and “Avatar”, to questionable projects such as “Top Gun 2”. Don’t even get us started on the prequel to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”.
If big budget Hollywood movies aren’t your thing, you could always stay home and watch television, provided the broadcast networks don’t get into a carriage dispute with your cable provider and black out their signal. Fox did just that to Cablevision subscribers recently and we’ll explain why. Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien prepares for his new late night talk show with a Rolling Stone interview.
During Big Deal or Big Whoop we provide analysis of the week’s top entertainment headlines, including Charlie Sheen’s latest trouble, a new hit for AMC and a film based on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. Our Inside Baseball discussion focuses on why consumers prefer to rent digital movies rather than purchase them.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 76: Taking On The Hobbit And Ticketmaster Down Under
October 25, 2010
Our friends Down Under generated a lot of entertainment news this past week. In New Zealand a union boycott of “The Hobbit” may cause Warner Bros. to relocate the production to another country. Director Peter Jackson has publicly opposed such a move, but as the Hollywood Reporter’s Jonathan Handel explains, this may just be Warner Bros. way of negotiating better government tax subsidies.
Over in Australia, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has launched Foxtix, a live event ticketing service aimed at capturing a share of Ticketmaster’s business. Taking on Ticketmaster is a difficult and expensive fight, but Adam McArthur, the head of Foxtix, fills us in on how the company will differentiate itself in the market.
Former Australian native and current Hollywood pariah Mel Gibson was all set to make a comeback with a cameo in “The Hangover 2”, but Warner Bros. decided he was just too much trouble and opted for Liam Neeson.
Meanwhile, in television news the Fox network pulled its programming from Cablevision’s channel lineup over a retransmission fee dispute. Don’t worry, Cablevision’s customers were still able to follow the baseball playoffs through Twitter posts from the Federal Communications Commission. Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 75: Hollywood Stunned By A Jackass (And It’s Not Perez Hilton!)
October 18, 2010
Everyone expected the latest installment of the low-rent “Jackass” franchise to bring in a few bucks, especially since it was filmed in 3D, but nobody expected the movie to take in $50 million in its debut weekend and set records for an October opening. Another surprise from this past week came when gossip blogger Perez Hilton told the world he would no longer “bully” or “out” celebrities on his popular website. Hilton has left everyone wondering if he is being honest, or just trying to grab a few headlines.
In television news, the big story was all about the Chilean miner rescue which drew huge ratings for cable news networks. As for some of the season’s new shows, we provide an update on which ones seem to be fairing well and which may be headed into a permanent hiatus.
The nominations for the American Music Awards were announced, though instead of pulling names from Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, the show relied on the Ultimate Chart published by BigChampagne.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 65: Hollywood’s Love/Hate Relationship With Twitter
August 2, 2010
Last summer a number of movies had enormous box office drop offs in their second day of release and studios blamed it on what they termed the Twitter Effect. Daniel Frankel from The Wrap joins us to explain how the social media trend that was going to revolutionize word-of-mouth hasn’t demonstrably done so. Platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and even text messaging seem to influence moviegoers more than Twitter. That hasn’t stopped studios from finding modest success on Twitter by purchasing trending topics.
A number of big television news stories broke over the past week thanks to the annual Television Critics Association press tour. Ellen DeGeneres resigned as a judge on “American Idol”, but Fox may be replacing her with Jennifer Lopez. Meanwhile, Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC, abruptly resigned under a cloud of controversy relating to rumored sexual harassment investigations and was promptly replaced by ABC Family topper Paul Lee.
In the music world Kanye West may be hoping the Twitter effect will help boost sales of his upcoming album. The hip-hop star made headlines by opening a Twitter account and turning up at Facebook headquarters to entertain employees.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Showbiz Sandbox 54: Le Petit Cannes – Downsizing The Festival
May 17, 2010
Two of our co-hosts, Michael Giltz and J. Sperling Reich, are still at the Cannes Film Festival. Along with David Bourgeois, who is covering Cannes for Movieline, they discuss all the films they’ve seen, which ones they’ve liked, which ones are duds and the trends emerging at this year’s festival. So far it seems Mike Leigh’s film “Another Year” is the movie everyone has liked, while Woody Allen’s latest proved disappointing.
Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” opened the festival, though it didn’t open theatrically as well as everyone had expected. In it’s debut week it couldn’t top “Iron Man 2” at the box office.
The past week also saw some big television news. Networks have begun holding their “upfronts” to announce fall schedules. As usual a number of new shows will be hitting the airwaves and few didn’t make the cut, including “Law & Order” which NBC canceled after 20 years. Read more
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
