January 2009: Other Stories
For the last few weeks of the year, I’m going through stories I saved, but never posted. Today stories from January 2009:
* An amazing resource for interviews with many people involved in the entertainment industry at this site: Emmy TV Interviews
* Want to know why one reason why movies cost so much? Check out this revelation from Cynopsis:
During NBC’s Super Bowl XLIII broadcast on February 1, viewers will need 3-D glasses to view a 90-second commercial promoting the March release of animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens from DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said the 90-second commercial plus giving away 150 million pairs of 3-D glasses through 28,000 retail locations via the Pepsi/SoBe Life displays will cost “tens of millions of dollars” and he calls the deal “perhaps the biggest media-advertising event in history.” A single 30-second ad in the Super Bowl is tabbed at approximately $3 million.
* Is the MPAA set on following music industry off a cliff:
Naturally there are concerns about the interactions between RealDVD and services like Netflix and Blockbuster online. As state previously, RealDVD is not interested in providing an avenue for people to illegal copy and share DVDs. They have spoken often about how eager they are to work with the film industry to install protections on DVDs rented from companies like Netflix and Blockbuster in order to ensure they cannot be backed up using their program.
And how does the film industry react to this program? Does it embrace it as an avenue for their continued survival to ensure they don’t go the way of the recording industry?
Of course not.
Instead the major Hollywood studios banded together, sought legal action to block the distribution of RealDVD, and were ultimately successful in temporarily shutting down the distribution of the program. A Federal Judge will hear the case and the status of the preliminary injunction will be decided sometime in the next few weeks.
* And this great quote I found:
“Television has raised writing to a new low.”
— Samuel Goldwynn
More flotsam and jetsam tomorrow from February 2009