The Selling of Al Jazeera TV to an International Market

By ERIC PFANNER and DOREEN CARVAJAL
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 31, 2005

Fruit cups and tea were served, and then came the matinee feature: a documentary about the Arabic broadcaster Al Jazeera, full of American bomb bursts and bloodied and bandaged Iraqi children.

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Startup Looks for Profits in Online Video

By GARY GENTILE
AP Business Writer

LOS ANGELES - The Internet is buzzing with amateur videos, the kind that feature kids lip-synching or imitating Jedi knights. They get e-mailed and posted on Web sites and often become the topic of water cooler chat. But few, if any, make money.

A new company called Revver is trying to change that by attaching advertising to the videos and giving the creators a cut of the profits.

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www.revver.com

TV gives better returns for ad dollars: industry players

SINGAPORE : Television continues to provide a compelling platform for advertisers to reach out to consumers on a mass scale, industry players say.

They say TV ads give better returns for advertising dollars because they can be the basis of an all-round ad campaign.

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Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too

SAUL HANSELL
New York Times

Mountain View, Calif. - IN many ways, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem an unlikely pair to lead an advertising revolution. As Stanford graduate students sketching out the idea that became Google, the two software engineers sniffed in an academic paper that "advertising-funded search engines will inherently be biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers."

They softened that line a bit by the time they got around to pitching their business to venture capitalists, allowing that selling ads would be a handy safety net if their other, less distasteful ideas for generating revenue didn't pan out.


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New trends in trend-spotting

With onslaught of blogs,‘coolhunters’ take on more managerial role

Gina Piccalo
Los Angeles Times

There was a time, way back in the late 1990s, when coolhunting was still cool, when nearly every Madison Avenue ad agency wanted a resident hipster to interpret the spending habits of those inscrutable Gen-Xers. Then the Internet exploded, connecting everyone to everything in an instant, and suddenly the art of predicting the next big trend got way more complicated.

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Kahlua travels branding roads on 'Exotic' series

By Gail Schiller
REUTERS

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - With a new five-part travel series premiering Saturday on the Oxygen Network, Kahlua has accomplished what many advertisers are talking about but have yet to achieve in the branded entertainment space.

The coffee liqueur has created, produced and maintained full ownership of its own TV show, allowing it to control how its product and brand messages are portrayed.

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TOXIC MARTHA

KISS OF DEBT: The stock deal reality TV guru Mark Burnett got to produce "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" is sinking along with the show's ratings. His paper profits have plunged 79% - from $62.2M in February to $13.4M.

By PAUL THARP
The New York Post

Reality-television king Mark Burnett may have punched the wrong dance card with Martha Stewart — and could see a possible $62.2 million jackpot go up in smoke. Stewart's company yesterday dropped an earnings bomb on Wall Street, sending its shares tumbling as much as 16 percent in a vicious selloff. The slide started wiping out Burnett's paper fortune — contained in a stock deal based upon the TV show "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" and the stock price — signaling that the Domestic Diva's comeback is quickly deflating.

In its latest quarter, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said its losses were worse than anticipated, due largely to $10.8 million it had to hand over to Burnett as one of the first big payments in his deal to produce her "Apprentice" TV show. The show debuted last month to critics' pans and a ratings flop.

Instead of taking an upfront cash deal to produce and hype the TV show, Burnett picked a Hollywood-styled back-end deal that gave him as much as 5 percent of the whole company. The deal came in the form of a warrant allowing him to buy 2.5 million shares at $12.59 each over seven years. And just months after he signed his deal in late 2004, the company's stock soared to new high of $37.45, giving Burnett a paper profit of $62.15 million.

But today, that paper profit stands at just $13.4 million due to the sliding stock, which fell $3.23, or 15.3 percent, to $17.97. Burnett's deal will be worthless if the stock falls below $12.59. The company said Martha Stewart Living magazine's ad pages soared 48 percent and the publishing group was doing well, but their gains were wiped out by the perks it had to pay to Burnett. Stewart herself is said to get $100,000 per episode of the show, if it doesn't get canceled.

The company also projected fourth-quarter earnings below Wall Street expectations and acknowledged disappointing ratings for its other TV show, a syndicated TV talk and cooking show called "Martha."
For the three months ended Sept. 30, the company lost $26.07 million, or 51 cents per share, vs. a loss of $14.97 million, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier. Sales rose 5.7 percent to $40.85 million from $38.65 million.
Stuart's Everyday Food magazine enjoyed a 21 percent increase in advertising pages, and the company expects ad growth to double by next year. Its TV revenue was $3.4 million, up from $2.2 million a year ago period. Merchandising sales were flat, inching higher to $8.3 million from $8.0 million due mostly to Sears Canada payments.

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Presley Tops Forbes' Dead Celebrities List

NEW YORK - Elvis Presley tops the annual Forbes list of celebrities who are the top moneymakers from beyond the grave. The singer, who died in 1977, made an estimated $45 million in the past year.

Cartoonist Charles Schulz (2000) is next on the list with $35 million, followed by musician John Lennon (1980), who raked in $22 million.

Artist Andy Warhol's (1987) take was $16 million, "Cat in the Hat" author Dr. Seuss (1991) made $10 million, followed by actor Marlon Brando (2004) with $9 million.

Actress Marilyn Monroe (1962) and "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien (1973) are tied with $8 million apiece. George Harrison (2001), Johnny Cash (2003), and Irving Berlin (1989) finished in a three-way tie, with each musician bringing in $7 million.

SEE THE ENTIRE LIST AT FORBES.COM

It's official: Carolla gets the Stern slot

Infinity Broadcasting confirms that key West Coast cities will hear the comedian's show, while Eastern markets get David Lee Roth.


By Martin Miller,
LA Times Staff Writer

Infinity Broadcasting finally confirmed Tuesday what the company's shock jock and long-time cash cow Howard Stern had been saying for months — that ex-Van Halen rocker David Lee Roth and comedian Adam Carolla will take over his morning radio slots in key East and West Coast markets, respectively.

Carolla, already with a late-night talk show on Comedy Central and a home improvement one on cable's TLC, will assume Stern's drive-time duties at KSLX-FM (97.1) in Los Angeles, and at Infinity stations in San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore. No official start date was given for "The Adam Carolla Show," but it's expected to debut early next year. Longtime Carolla friend Jimmy Kimmel, star of his own late-night talk show on ABC, has been hired as a creative consultant for the new radio program, and as an advisor for Infinity as well.

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A Big Gorilla Weighs In

By SHARON WAXMAN
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 - In hiring Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, to remake the monster classic "King Kong," Universal Pictures took a daring leap, paying him $20 million to direct, produce and be the co-writer of the film.

With seven weeks to go before the movie's release, the risks are becoming clearer. After seeing a version of the film in late September at Mr. Jackson's studio in New Zealand, Universal executives agreed to release "King Kong" at a length of three hours.


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Plot line: Drink Pepsi!

By John Furia Jr.
LA Times

TELEVISION, particularly reality TV, is erasing the line between content and advertising by clumsily grafting sponsors' car brands, soft drinks and other products into story lines.

American television has always been a commercial medium. Advertisers pay the bills. Early shows, following radio's lead, often jumped through hoops to promote sponsors—beginning with the launch of Texaco Star Theater in the 1940s. But this commercialization never penetrated the artistic product. Classic shows, from "Bonanza" to "Seinfeld," managed not to sell out to sponsors.

That's changed. On "The Apprentice," for instance, contestants now compete in what are essentially hourlong commercials to market brand names, including Burger King. In the episode sponsored by the burger chain, the contestants ran around like goofballs trying to come up with catchy taglines for its latest product. They then donned Burger King's blue and yellow uniforms and struggled to perform jobs easily mastered by high school dropouts. Why? The fast-food chain paid upward of $2 million to have its newest hamburger flipped by Donald Trump's would-be minions. Never mind selling real estate — on "The Apprentice," contestants win challenges by shilling for major advertisers.


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High Fliers

Chuck Salter
FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE

Two buddies from Long Island came up with the idea of offering (relatively) cheap access to private jets. And with the help of folks like Warren Buffett, Derek Jeter and J. Lo, they turned the Marquis Jet card into one very cool brand.

"Did you see American Idol last night?" asks Ken Austin. Beaming like a proud parent, he pops a tape into the conference-room VCR. "You've got to see this."
He fast-forwards through the two-hour finale of Fox's season-long talent show until the anxious moments before the big announcement: Bo Bice or Carrie Underwood, the long-haired southern rocker or the long-haired country ingenue. Host Ryan Seacrest reminds the fidgety crowd what's at stake--a $1 million recording contract and a new bonus prize: use of a private jet. The live audience emits can-you-believe-it squeals. Seacrest holds up what looks like a black credit card. The camera zooms in, and the words "Marquis Jet" fill the screen.

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The most sensational, inspirational reality show

Associated Press

Los Angeles — The Muppets could come back to primetime television with their own reality show.

ABC has ordered a script and five episode outlines for America's Next Muppet, in which viewers may join in choosing the newest member of the puppet family that includes Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, a network spokeswoman said Tuesday.

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Google Shows TV Star Talks

RED HERRING

Search giant signs deal with Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation to show interviews with TV stars.

Google teamed with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation on Wednesday in a deal to put online the Foundation’s interviews with TV performers, producers, directors, and executives about the history of television.

Among the performers whose interviews from the Archive of American Television will be available for free are Alan Alda, Phyllis Diller, Sid Caesar, Andy Griffith, and Dick Van Dyke. The first 75 interviews from the 284-interview collection are already online at Google Video, and the rest will be available later.


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Comedy Launches The MotherLoad Of All Broadband Destinations

Erik Sass
Media Daily News

Hoping to strike one on a new media platform, cable network Comedy Central Tuesday unveiled "MotherLoad," a new broadband Web destination designed to extend its reach online.

Launching on Nov. 1, the site is aimed at capturing Comedy Central's core young adult audience when they're online or away from the TV. With bite-sized three-minute clips, including a significant mix of Web-only content, "MotherLoad" seems well-positioned to capture the short attention spans of many online surfers.

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Video iPod puts wrinkle in TV advertising

Reuters

Apple Computer's latest iPod, a video-enabled music player that serves up some of the season's hottest television shows without commercials, will likely prod advertisers to get serious about finding a foothold in portable media players, media buyers said.

Apple last week unveiled the new model in its popular iPod lineup. The company reached a deal to sell downloads of top-rated ABC network shows such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" the day after broadcast for $1.99 per episode.

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Lincoln aiming new brand advertising campaign at younger buyers

LAURA CLARK GEIST
Automotive News

DETROIT -- Lincoln is launching a brand advertising campaign aimed at younger buyers and introducing its Zephyr entry-level luxury sedan.

The new campaign is called "Reach Higher." It seeks to cast Lincoln as a contemporary luxury brand by focusing on the 2006 Zephyr, Mark LT pickup and Navigator SUV.

Lincoln's aging flagship, the Town Car, is intentionally absent from the brand ads.

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