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Daily Archives : Aug 14, 2008

Pilot Delay Leave Critics, Marketers in Dark

The delay of many new fall pilots and series is affecting other segments of the business, Daily Variety reports. Marketers have had little material to use to put together the fail promotional campaigns and TV critics are still in the…

Baseball Touching New-Media Bases

America’s pastime has gone digital, and the Wall Street Journal interviews Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media unit, which generated $400 million in revenues last year. Bowman says baseball’s next target is handheld devices, with applications on…

Hanks, Baldwin, Field Oppose SAG Leaders

High-profile actors Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin and Sally Field yesterday endorsed a slate of candidates running against current leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Unite for Strength group says SAG leadership has mishandled negotiations…

ABC: ‘Stay Home’ for Premieres

ABC is dubbing its premiere week as “National Stay at Home Week,” a campaign to encourage viewers to save gas and money by staying home and watching TV, Daily Variety reports. The network only has two new series premiering in…

Some Olympic Events Live From N.Y.

NBC has some of its Olympic announcers watching the action from Beijing on high-definition monitors at the “Saturday Night Live” set at its Manhattan headquarters, the New York Times reports. While watching the action on TV is awkward for former…

HD Digital Titles May Be Delayed by More Than Bandwidth

That flood of demand for high-definition digital titles may be a little farther off than some studios and content providers had hoped. Movie-download service Vudu said this week that it will let customers renew high-definition movie titles for $1.99. The…

Over-the-Air Holdouts May Help HD Sales

With the U.S. switchover to all-digital broadcasts a mere six months away, consumer procrastination may be a good thing for high-definition television retailers. Most of the 9 million U.S. households who in late 2006 said they would buy set-top boxes…

Worldly: Gaurav Dhillon

The player: Gaurav Dhillon, founder and chief executive officer of Jaman.com. The play: Mr. Dhillon founded the movie-download service, which specializes in independent and international titles, in 2005. With investor-advisers that include publishing heir Will Hearst, ICM Chief Executive Officer…

This Week in HD: Rites of Passage

HD programming picks for Aug. 14-Aug. 20: “Rushmore,” “The Karate Kid,” “Y tu Mama Tambien” “Rushmore” (Starz). Fri., Aug. 15, 8:20 p.m. Jason Schwartzman stars in and Wes Anderson directs the offbeat 1999 comedy about a prep-school kid dealing with…

New Rules for TV Success

As broadcast networks stumble, cable channels are writing new rules for success in the television business, Portfolio observes. Among the principals the broadcasters might well embrace include accepting the fact that niche is the new normal; knowing your brand; don’t…