Posts Tagged entertainment
Good Work of 2009
Madison & Vine’s list of the past year’s best branded entertainment deals. In true Ad Age fashion, handy stats on impressions, dollar values and viewers are included where known.
I particularly like the Ikea efforts.
AND
From racked – their five best retail stunts of the year – full of photos for you to reference.
Add comment January 3, 2010
Old Dogs Learn Some New Tricks
Two interesting examples of decidedly un-digital entities taking steps into the world of apps, tweets and all things online, technological and social.
Expect a follow-up in the coming months to check on their progress.
Bill Cosby promotes his new album with a new media plunge:
These days, it is not unexpected that a veteran comic would plant a flag on the Internet: Shecky Greene has a Web site, and Shelley Berman has a Facebook fan page.
But lately Bill Cosby has put them to shame. This fall, he has taken the new-media plunge with both feet: his Web site, billcosby.com, includes eight outlets to follow Mr. Cosby, including the micro video-blogging site 12seconds; the audio streaming site blogtalkradio.com; MySpace; Facebook; and Twitter. There is a Flickr feed, and a Facebook application that allows users to try on one of Mr. Cosby’s familiar sweaters.
And the PBS mainstay, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, is undergoing a major alteration:
It has been a tough 19 months for “NewsHour” as it has dealt with a severe budget shortfall as well as the prolonged absence of Mr. Lehrer last year, due to health problems. But Mr. Lehrer returned reinvigorated. Instead of stepping down, he pushed for what has been the program’s biggest overhaul since 1995. And PBS hopes the changes will attract new audiences, whether on air or online.
Beginning Dec. 7, Mr. Lehrer’s name will not be on the program. Instead it is being renamed “PBS NewsHour,” and there will be a variety of co-anchors aiding Lehrer.
A redone Web site will go up Thursday. It will be easier to find Mr. Brown’s popular but often hidden Art Beat blog. Ms. Woodruff and Ms. Ifill, along with much of the rest of the staff, will begin contributing to a news analysis blog, as well. Mr. Sreenivasan, once he settles in, will anchor regular video news updates on the site, which will also feature extended interview material not used on the air.
All the show’s content will be more easily adaptable to various digital outlets, including an iPhone app.
Add comment December 1, 2009
U2’s Tour Overhead
I’ve found some numbers that help bring to life the enormous financial impact a single entertainment entity can have.
U2 is currently out on the road, doing its worldwide thing. (Apparently Bono has time to do more than just rock the house and save Africa.)
This tour started in June and contains a huge steel construction (“The Claw”) as the band’s portable stage. The giant sculpture (and paying the huge team needed to put it together) costs roughly $800,000 per show.
U2 manager Paul McGuinness explains, “The tour’s engineering problems are enormous and costly. We had to find a way for it to be aesthetic and figure out a way of doing video. Whether we’re playing or not, the overhead is about $750,000 daily. That’s just to have the crew on payroll, to rent the trucks, all that. There’s about 200 trucks. Each stage is 37 trucks, so you’re up to nearly 120 there. And then the universal production is another 50-odd trucks, and there are merchandise trucks and catering trucks.”
And despite selling out tickets around the world, the group won’t actually start pulling any revenue back in until the North American leg finishes in October 2009.
Add comment October 21, 2009
The Guild: Future of Original Content?
My girlcrush of the year!
Wired magazine interviewed Felicia Day here. I think her “isolated” success is very telling about how media industry folks do NOT understand how the game is changing right beneath their feet. Perhaps the huge swell of interest that the new season of The Guild is generating will FINALLY translate into interest from the trad folks. Felicia Day is the talented, 2.0 version of Steven Spielberg people. Pay attention to the numbers! She has MILLIONS of fans but can’t get cast as anything other than the cat lady, still, to this day???
Felicia Day’s stardom wasn’t handed down to her from on high by Hollywood. She’s guest-starred on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and House, but most of her legions of fans still know her because of a show she wrote and produced herself that doesn’t air on any network.
Now in its third season, The Guild — Day’s microbudget comedic web series about a group of online gamers — enjoys financing from Microsoft as well as cushy placement on the Xbox 360 dashboard. But fans are still discovering Day and her nerdy ways online.
Wired.com: Did the impetus for creating The Guild stem from being a struggling actress and writer in Hollywood?
Day: I’d been in Hollywood for five years before I started writing The Guild. I worked enough to pay all my bills. So I was very lucky in that respect. Most people don’t make a living acting. But being the kind of girl who is stereotyped as the secretary — or I’ve played a crazy cat lady five times, which is fine because I do that very well — but at a certain point you’re like, “I am more than this.” That’s why I wrote Codex (her character in The Guild). I sat down and was like, “What role would I have the most fun playing and would never be offered to me.” I think Codex, in a mainstream world, would have a perfect nose and great highlights, but that’s not reality. And I wanted to, somehow, infuse reality into what I was doing.
Wired.com: People respond fairly enthusiastically.
Day: When our music video hit the top 10 on iTunes over all the label stuff, I have to admit that I was definitely heartened. I do like breaking the common patterns of behavior. When we have a victory like that, it’s very fulfilling. We’re going to be in stores with the DVD right next to major TV shows. We shoot in my shed. So, I don’t know, that’s just a cool message. And when I have people come up and say, “Because of you I started composing again. Or, “I’m making my own website without waiting for funding.” That’s awesome.
Add comment October 20, 2009
Kinder, More Gentle Wrestle Mania
Vince McMahon, 64, is hawking a kinder, gentler, wrestling show, and that new approach was on display this past weekend when WWE took over L.A. Live as part of a massive promotional push. The effort culminated with SummerSlam, a sold-out pay-per-view telecast at Staples Center on Sunday night, which was also expected to generate roughly 500,000 purchases across the country.
With mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting attracting an older and rougher crowd, WWE is taking aim at kids and families to shore up its bottom line. While the occasional chair might still get thrown, the violence is “very Wile E. Coyote-ish,” according to Hunter Hearst Helmsley, better known to wrestling fans as Triple H.
“It’s less of ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ now,” added John Cena, arguably the WWE’s biggest star, who takes some of the credit for pushing McMahon to make the entertainment less edgy.
The wrestling attire for the ladies has become more conservative as well. Maria Kanellis, one of the WWE’s “diva” wrestlers, used to perform in lingerie but these days tries to dress “a little more sophisticated” for her matches.
“The guys miss it, but that’s how it goes,” she said.
Her costumes now consist of leggings, lots of “fringe outfits and things that are sparkly.” It’s not unusual, she said, for some of the girls to get reprimanded for “showing too much cleavage,” something that would’ve never happened a few years ago.
This new direction has generated a certain measure of controversy. YouTube is filled with videos from hard-core fans ripping the softer WWE, and there is no shortage of arguments about the subject in Internet chat rooms. “You can’t please everybody,” Cena said, adding, “Our business was down and the product was becoming old and stale.”
But the strategy has proven effective. After McMahon toned down the content, he went to his network partners and asked them to reconsider the ratings assigned to the show. WWE’s programming, scattered across cable networks USA and SyFy, superstation WGN and broadcast television’s MyNetworkTV, was usually given a TV-14 rating, the small-screen version of the MPAA’s R-rating and a surefire red flag to parents and advertisers.
The milder programming, which now usually garners a TV-PG rating from WWE’s TV partners, has cleared the way for more blue-chip advertisers to come aboard, including Pepsico, AT&T and Procter & Gamble.
The audience has grown too. In the second quarter, WWE’s television programs averaged 16 million viewers, a 10% improvement from the same period a year ago. Of that audience, 36% are women. WWE also has a strong Latino following that accounts for 23% of its audience.
The WWE’s next move is to launch a cable network, which McMahon hopes to get off the ground within two years.
Add comment September 2, 2009
