'Where The Wild Things Are' Runs $32.4M 
Oscar Can't Always Get What He Wants 
NBC Bright Spot Of Lousy GE 3Q Earnings; 4Q … 
Oops! Vivendi May Delay 20% NBCU Sale? 
65 Nations Vie For Foreign Language Oscar 
Elle's Women In Hollywood Power List 
HOW BIG IS BIG? AEG Predicts Michael Jackson … 
Sane Debt-Reduction Move By Redstone; But … 
EXCLUSIVE: Comcast Wants NBCU Deal Done … 
Tonight at the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Bill Gates announced a bunch of Hollywood movie, TV and other content deals with Disney-ABC, NBC Universal, MGM and Showtime. Most of the pacts are meant to strengthen Microsoft's Xbox and MSN online services in the marketplace to keep pace with rivals like Apple's iTunes. Sony's Sir Howard Stringer also spoke. All the details in the morning along with lots of CES updates throughout the conference, including the Hollywood CEO symposiums. Oh yeah, this is going to make the WGA-DGA-SAG negotiations with the AMPTP way more intersting.
Loading ...
You mean the New Media that the studios keep saying they aren’t making any money from?
Yet another victory for the AMPTP, as this proves their claim that internet distribution is not a viable income source.
After all, Bill Gates knows nothing about making money and has no skill at developing new technology markets, and…
…wait, what? Oh.
Ummm, never mind. I’m bad at this.
So the AMPTP starts talks with the DGA the same day Microsoft announces a massive new media distribution deal.
Interesting timing. I’m not sure if it’s brilliant strategy or blatant incompetence on the AMPTP’s behalf.
- Richard
And at MacWorld, Jan 14th, Apple will announce iTunes store “video rental” deals with Fox and Disney.
links are everywhere
Bill Gates is a philanthropist. He has a charitable foundation. That is what this is about, a kindly gesture on Gates’ part. He’s destined to lose every penny because there is no money in new media, but he just doesn’t care. Did you know that at one point he was planning to leave his fortune to charity? Charitable guy, that Bill.
The AMPTP is correct is their assertion that the WGA needs to pull its demands off the table.
After they do, the WGA should place a new set of more realistic demands on the table. 2.5 cents? What the frakk were they thinking? Writers should be pulling seven cents, minimum.
Inside scoop is the deals for Bill weren’t easy to come by. While striking said deals the congloms kept throwing strange demands on the table like,
“Bring Back windows 98!” and “No talking with Steve Jobs!” and then would just walk out of the room.
We all freelance so we’ve put up with bad deals as long as it’s something. We know we have been getting SCREWED for years. The studios couldn’t have picked a worse union to try to mess with. We are already suffering and already out of work some of every year. We lose what we have we are through. So if you won’t meet us halfway and be reasonable then we HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ASK FOR AN HONEST DEAL! WHILE WE ARE WAITING, something we NEVER HAD! We can sit and we can get paid. Watch them all drop like flies. Like Hilary with all her money dropping to Obama. THe world needed these industrialists (robber barons) to help us mobilized to compete with the world. Now that most of them have sided with the interests of foreign lands like India and China, well let’s just say the industrialists have gone a bridge too far.
IT’s time to balance the books, so America can be great again. It’s not that these Pirates steal our money, It’s that they don’t have enough imagination to spend it properly so America survives and we all prosper.
Moonves gets a record raise after he loses record money for Sumner. Is SUmner stupid or stealing and Moonves is his excuse to the stockholders. Hell I got paid scale working on SPiderMan 3, a 300 million dollar movie. If they can triple my salary on a 50 million dollar film then they can skim off the top of 300 mil paying scale. Renny Harlin has made a career on going over budget and bombing. They keep giving him movies, so going over budget must benefit him.
The bottom line is it’s a scam and we all know it. We put up with it because we always got our pittance of a share and unlike them WE LOVE MOVIES AND TV. Now they waqnt to take the pittance away. A line must be drawn in the sand.
God Bless Mr Cruise by the way. Huge Cojones. These side deals are just the kind of offensive action that is long overdo. They hate each other more than they hate us. Let’s sit back and watch them fight while each independent deal becomes better and better for us and their stocks tank. Ownership has it’s privileges and we own this industry. WE JUST NEED TO CLAIM OUR PROPERTY. The deal with Cruise gets us on our way for MORE DEALS.
All Good Things
We shall overcome.
Tod
It’s a well known fact that MS and Apple (among others) are going to take full advantage of this strike for there own business purposes, no surprises here.
PC
Hmmm, wonder how John Ridley feels now about those repeated studio claims that they don’t yet have a business model to make money off the internet?
I’m not sure I completely understand what is meant by this article..
All of this is so odd. It’s like they are not even trying to appear honest about this stuff.
In the middle of their claims that they are losing profits and the internet is a mystery, Viacom gives Les Moonves a new fat contract, NBC launches Hulu.com and now this.
Are they this stupid…or do they simply believe everyone else is just that stupid?
Regardless… I could really care less about this. Let’s stick to the WGA side deals story!!!
Okay, has anyone actually tried downloading and watching a HD movie via the Xbox 360? It takes hours before you can even start the movie! You think this is something that will reach the mass market? Look at the WGA’s own numbers: $150 million in profit via internet distribution over the next 3 years vs. $16 billion a year for DVDs. This was worth striking over? Maybe 3 years from now when real broadband access (around 75-100 Mbps) hits the US, this will be a viable form of distribution; but it just isn’t now. I’m all for people getting there fair share; but this truly did not merit a work stoppage. And by the way, Microsoft has lost billions of dollars in their entertainment division (Xbox & Zune). Not everything they touch turns to gold.
I don’t care what Bill Gates says! It’s obvious that the Hollywood studios have no idea how they will exploit new media technology…
For some reason this amuses me. Ah well, all the content will be DRM-infected and if it’s as hard to use as Microsoft-based online content often is, then, yeah, there’s not going to be too much money coming out of it. Mac and Linux users will be shut out, too.
Good timing Bill.
Reuters:
Gates introduced on stage Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. Bach reported on the tremendous momentum of Xbox Live, which has surpassed 10 million members. Bach also announced a partnership with MGM, in which the entertainment company will provide a library of films for Xbox Live.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $148 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry.
—
Some of the new gadgets for that new media that won’t make any money:
Motorola Moto Z10 – pocket-sized mobile film studio – plays and capture high-quality video
SlingCatcher – set-top box that delivers broadcast TV, Internet-based content and personal media to the TV
Taser International – Taser MPH combination hand-held music player and Taser (sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? movies shouldn’t be too far behind)
Panasonic Life Wall, which basically makes one wall in your home a touch-screen that can display videos, phone calls and photos, etc.
And for your home, a 150″ plasma screen (11 feet wide)
SoonToBeUnemployed, get real. Yeah, DVDs are more profitable right now, the only problem is, we previously agreed to wait until DVDs were established in the marketplace before figuring out a formula for receiving a fair share of the profits. Well, oddly enough, DVDs seem to be doing okay now, I guess it’s just an oversight that the moguls haven’t called us in to announce they’ll be showering us with the monies we so reasonably deferred, and doing so with open hearts. Sure, we asked for a mere two more cents and they huffed and puffed and told us to take that off the table and then fled, but they were just confused, they thought they heard someone say TNT and ran for their lives.
We need to get this settled now, because the more profitable New Media becomes the less likely we’re going to be to see a dime off of it. And the more likely the studios and networks will be to transfer more and more content to New Media channels to avoid fair compensation. At that point we’ll never get the issue back. If we wait until everyone is watching TV through the internet, it will already be far too late.
Just amazes me how people can actually believe that this story somehow encapulates what the writers are asking for. Most items showcased at CES never truly see the light of day, the high end items require high end infrastructure that at this time doesn’t exist in most areas. It will be many years before broadband is in every home and even then it won’t be at such speeds that will make this your media choice.
As another pointed out, all that is Microsoft doesn’t not turn to gold. I’ll throw in the promises of WebTv not so long ago.
While the writers certainly deserve residuals from downloaded material (and they currently get that they just want more), and they deserve some kind of a deal for streaming content. Is it really something worthy of an immediate strike considering it could be years before this bears any fruit.
Sorry the more I read about this situation, the more I am starting to believe that the WGA leadership is more concerned with unionizing the entire industry, than it is in increaing current residuals, which I feel should be it’s primary focus.
But that’s just me.