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UPDATE: At Least Seven Bidders For Hulu 
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That may raise some eyebrows among DirecTV shareholders who will also vote on whether to require the company to split the chairman and CEO jobs — Michael White currently holds both titles — when they meet on May 2 in New York. White’s big raise came in a year when DirecTV shares appreciated 17.3%. His package includes $1.6M in salary, $12.0M in option awards, $4.0M in non-equity incentives, $163,421 in deferred compensation, and $323,957 in other compensation. The $18M award is about 3.1 times the median compensation for DirecTV’s four other top execs. That’s just over the threshold that corporate governance watchdogs say raises alarms that the chief has too much power. It also is a big change from last year when White’s compensation was just 1.2 times bigger than the rest of the pack, well within the comfort zone. The AFL-CIO Reserve Fund submitted this year’s proposal to require that DirecTV pick an independent director to be chairman, saying that when the CEO has the job it “may hinder the ability of the Board to monitor the CEO’s performance and to provide the CEO with objective feedback and guidance.” DirecTV urges shareholders to reject the change saying that the current arrangement “promotes decisive leadership, ensures clear accountability and enhances the Company’s ability to communicate with a single and consistent voice to all stakeholders.”
DirecTV CEO Michael White’s $18M Package For 2012 Gives Him A 200%+ Raise
Sundance: Filmmakers Say Cable TV & Online A Good Place To Land
Traditional methods of getting a project made and finding an audience are evolving rapidly toward smaller screens, a panel of directors and producers agreed today at the Sundance Film Festival “Every time I’ve had a movie I couldn’t get financing for recently, the next question is always ‘could this be a TV series?’ It’s a business model. It’s boring but it’s real,” said Richard Linklater. “It does feel like great quality is going to TV and online… because the studios make tentpoles and not adult dramas,” added Fast Five director Justin Lin, who also co-created the YOMYOMF YouTube
channel. Linklater and Lin were appearing on the Power of Story: Independence Unleashed panel along with Enlightened co-creator Mike White and director Jane Campion. Linklater is back at Sundance this year to premiere his Before Midnight, the second sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise. Campion also returns to the Festival with her seven-part crime mystery BBC/Sundance Channel TV series Top of the Lake starring Holly Hunter and Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss. White is at the Festival as one of the producers of Writer/director Sebastián Silva’s Magic Magic. Lin is a Sundance alumni, having had his directorial debut Better Luck Tomorrow premiere here back in 2002.
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DirecTV CEO Takes On Sports Programming Costs In Lakers Fight: “The Industry Is Broken”
DirecTV CEO Mike White is no stranger to taking a stand against rising programming costs, pulling 16 Viacom channels off his service during the summer for 10 days before reaching a carriage deal. Now his company and Dish Network are the lone pay TV providers serving Southern California who don’t have an agreement to carry the LA Lakers’ newly created TV homes: Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Time Warner Cable Deportes. The satellite companies are balking at the $3.95-per-sub-per-month price that TWC reportedly wants. (Verizon, AT&T, Charter and, as of today, Cox Communications have made deals and are carrying the channels.) DirecTV, with about 1.2 million subs in SoCal, also is holding out on making a deal for a third rookie regional sports net, the Pac-12 Networks. It says that costs are out of control. (A fine Sports Business Journal report on the LA mess calculates providers must pony up about $10 per sub per month to carry all the RSNs in town). White was, well, direct during his company’s earnings call yesterday when asked about negotiations. Sounds like the Lakers, who play their fifth game of the season tonight in Utah, won’t be on DirecTV anytime soon:
In terms of Los Angeles, I think it’s another example of how broken this system is. People take the same content, package it up, bid it up for 3 times the national average on a per-game basis and then try and stick it back to the other distributors in the geography. And I think that’s very unfortunate. We have a system of very carefully tracking churn by day to look at kind of what we think our customers will be most interested in. We are continuing to have active discussions about the Lakers network. We hope to have a deal on that content. But all of these new channels that – everybody here wants a new channel and they want to stick it into the bundle, is not right. I mean we are taxing most of our customers who wouldn’t be willing to pay for that content. And I’ve said before, I think the regional sports network structure in the industry is broken. And it is. But I’m probably not going be able to change that overnight. But adding other stuff to the bundle that the average consumer can’t pay for without allowing it to be sold to those that want to pay for it is just not right. So we’ll continue to stand strong for our customers.
Mike White Signs Overall Deal With HBO
EXCLUSIVE: Enlightened creator/executive producer Mike White has signed an overall deal with HBO for his production company RipCord Prods. Under the pact, White, along with producing partner David Bernad, will create and develop new projects for the pay cable network.
RipCord recently wrapped filming the second season of White’s dark HBO comedy Enlightened, which will premiere in January. The series, starring Laura Dern and Luke Wilson, received Golden Globe nominations for best comedy series and best comedy series actress, winning for Dern’s performance. RipCord has several projects in development at HBO, where the company had a first-look deal, including an untitled comedy from writer Steve Conrad. RipCord also produced digital series The Boring Life Of Jacqueline, created by Sebastian Silva, which launched in August on HBO GO. Read More »
DirecTV Announces $6B Stock Repurchase As U.S. Sub Growth Slows In Q4
Shares are up in pre-market trading as the satellite company performed well in Q4, with a lot of help from Latin America. DirecTV had net income of $718M in the year-end quarter, up 16.2% vs the period in 2010, on revenues of $7.5B, up 12,7%. The revenue figure slightly beat the $7.4B that the Street anticipated. Earnings at $1.02 a share were well ahead of the 92 cents forecast. At the main business, the U.S. satellite service, revenues were up 9% to $6B as rate increases and higher sales of NFL Sunday Ticket subscriptions outweighed the growing number of discounts DirecTV offered to new customers. The company ended the year with 19.9M domestic subscribers, up 3% vs the end of 2010. The net addition of 125,000 customers in the quarter represents a sharp retreat from the period last year when DirecTV added 289,000 U.S. subscribers. Read More »
Golden Globes TV: Showrunners Of First-Time Best Series Nominees React
The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. went for an extreme makeover on the TV series side, snubbing a lot of long-time favorites for first-time nominees. Seven of the 10 best series nominees are freshman shows: dramas Homeland (Showtime), Boss (Starz), Game Of Thrones (HBO) and American Horror Story (FX) and comedies Enlightened (HBO), New Girl (Fox) and Episodes (Showtime). Five of them hail from pay cable where audience reach is limited. Earlier today, Deadline contributor Ray Richmond spoke with the showrunners of some of the first-time best series nominees, Mike White, Farhad Safinia, Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa, Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk and Liz Meriwether, about the nominations and their impact on the rookie shows:
Mike White, creator of HBO’s Enlightened, nominated for best comedy series and best actress, Laura Dern:
“Getting Golden Globe attention could really make a difference for Enlightened. That’s what makes it so cool. I mean, shows like Glee and Modern Family, I can’t see how the Globes are going to get them new viewers. They’re already part of the landscape. But for a show like ours, it could really have an impact. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but it could be a perception changer and game-changer. Because we’re struggling to find a bigger audience, and we’re still waiting to hear about getting renewed for season two. So this really puts the spotlight on us a little bit. HBO could be deciding our fate even as we speak, and they sounded really stoked about this today. We’re still kind of in the gray. Something like this gives you validation, gives you more ammunition to convince them that this is a show they should be proud to have and want to keep making.”
“We were hoping that maybe Laura (Dern) would get nominated. But we didn’t dream much beyond that…It’s so weird. I had this dream the other night where I was looking online to see if we were nominated, and there was a show called Enlightened on the list. But it was like in the children’s category. So I have to say I’m glad we weren’t accidentally categorized as a kids show.” Read More »
Craig Gillespie Exits Lionsgate’s ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
EXCLUSIVE: Craig Gillespie is exiting Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, becoming the latest filmmaker to walk away from the Lionsgate project. The screen adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel mixes the 1813 Jane Austen classic with a legion of bloodthirsty … Read More »
Craig Gillespie Set To Direct ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
Lionsgate has made it official. Craig Gillespie has been set to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the movie adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that mixes the 1813 Jane Austen classic with a legion of bloodthirsty zombies. Gillespie, who … Read More »
Craig Gillespie Poised To Direct ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
Craig Gillespie will soon be set as director of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, Lionsgate’s adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that enhanced the Jane Austen classic with a smattering of flesh-eating walking corpses. Now, Gillespie has been a … Read More »
Craig Gillespie Frontrunner For ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
Fright Night director Craig Gillespie is front runner to direct Pride And Prejudice and Zombies, the Lionsgate adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel. No deal yet, Lionsgate says. Mike White had the job but dropped out because of a scheduling … Read More »
Mike White Off ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
EXCLUSIVE: Mike White has just dropped out of directing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that injects flesh-eating corpses to Jane Austen’s 1813 literary classic. I’m hearing that White had a preexisting commitment at … Read More »
Mike White Sinks Teeth Into ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’
Lionsgate has closed a deal with Mike White to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that spices up Jane Austen’s time-tested 1813 literary … Read More »
Mike White Gets ‘Pride And Prejudice and Zombies’ Offer
Lionsgate has made a formal offer to Mike White to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that spices up Jane Austen’s time-tested … Read More »
Jonathan Demme To Direct Episodes Of HBO’s New Mike White Series ‘Enlightened’
EXCLUSIVE: There is a saying that you’ve got to be an Oscar winner to get to direct an HBO pilot these days: look at Martin Scorsese (Boardwalk Empire), Alexander Payne (Hung), Bill Condon (Tilda) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Miraculous Year). Now you may need an Oscar statuette to be an episodic director on the pay cable channel too. The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme has been tapped to direct two episodes of HBO’s upcoming Mike White/Laura Dern comedy series Enlightened. Read More »
Timm Sharp In For Mos Def On ‘Enlightened’
EXCLUSIVE: In a last-minute recasting, Timm Sharp has joined HBO’s upcoming Mike White/Laura Dern comedy series Enlightened as a regular. The single-camera comedy stars Dern as a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and decides to live an enlightened life, which … Read More »
Mos Def To Co-Star On HBO’s ‘Enlightened’
EXCLUSIVE: Mos Def has joined HBO’s upcoming Mike White/Laura Dern comedy series Enlightened as a regular. The single-camera comedy stars Dern as a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and decides to live an enlightened life, which creates havoc at home … Read More »
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