“Youbet.com, Inc. signed a co-promotion agreement with a racetrack in Louisiana, the company announced Tuesday. Woodland Hills-based Youbet will feature Delta Downs Racetrack content on its online advance deposit wagering website and use its e-direct marketing and customer incentive programs to develop national wagering for the track. Delta Downs will promote online wagering at Youbet.com with on-track signage, print advertising, simulcast TV spots, and Delta Downs home page banner ads.”
“DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. intends to produce all of its films using 3-D technology, with its first such feature, “Monsters vs. Aliens,” scheduled for release in 2009, the company said Tuesday. The company said it intends to make films with the stereoscopic 3D concept in mind from the beginning of the production process, instead of adding it in post-production like in most films. DreamWorks said that the number of theaters capable of playing 3D films has “dramatically risen” in the last two years and the company expects several thousand screens to be equipped for 3D by 2009.”
“The investment firm run by former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Michael Eisner has launched a studio that will produce and distribute videos for the Internet, portable media devices and cell phones… Eisner founded the L.A.-based Tornante Co. after he left the entertainment giant in 2005. Tornante has also purchased… a San Diego studio named Vuguru, which will make the mobile movies. The first production will be called “Prom Queen†and will be a mystery comprised of 80 installments, each 90 seconds.”
“The European Union’s consumer chief is taking aim at Apple Inc.’s popular iPod, saying it’s wrong to bundle it with its iTunes software. Meglena Kuneva comments about Cupertino-based Apple came in the German weekly magazine Focus. ‘Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don’t. Something has to change,’ Kuneva said.”
“A Turkish court ordered access to YouTube’s Web site blocked on Wednesday, after a prosecutor recommended the ban because of videos allegedly insulting the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk… Over the past week, Turkish media publicized what some called a ‘virtual war’ between Greeks and Turks on YouTube, with people from both sides posting videos to belittle and berate the other. The video prompting the ban allegedly said Ataturk and the Turkish people were homosexuals, news reports said. The CNN-Turk Web site featured a link allowing Turks to complain directly to YouTube about the ‘insult. On its front page on Wednesday, the newspaper Hurriyet said thousands of people had written YouTube and that the Ataturk videos had been removed from the site. ‘YouTube got the message,’ the headline said.”
“Is Long Beach, Calif., the new South Beach? As far as ‘CSI: Miami’,'Dexter’ and ‘Nip/Tuck’ are concerned, it is. All three shows, set in Miami, have filmed in the southern California port city as well as at other locations in and around Los Angeles. ‘We go to Long Beach all the time, ‘Dexter’ executive producer Clyde Phillips said. One of the challenges posed by shooting in Los Angeles are the hills that appear in shots of the horizon. Shooting in Long Beach eliminates that problem. The productions also have found that the beaches in the area can mimic Florida’s, complete with office buildings near the waterfront.”
“A San Francisco weekly newspaper that bills itself as ‘The Voice of Asian America’ is facing harsh criticism from that very community for publishing a column Friday titled ‘Why I Hate Blacks.’ In the column, AsianWeek regular contributor Kenneth Eng listed ‘reasons’ to discriminate against African Americans. The piece has been pulled from the newspaper’s Web site, but the print edition of the free paper, owned by the politically influential Fang family, was still available in news racks Monday. Eng called himself an ‘Asian supremacist’ in January in another installment of the column, which runs under the label ‘God of the Universe’. “
“ViDeOnline Communications Ltd., a digital media networking company, said Monday it closed a $12 million funding round. Redwood City-based ViDeOnline said the round was led by Intel Capital, the venture investment arm of Santa Clara-based Intel Corp. Over the past two years, ViDeOnline said it has been working with local authorities in China to address how international content, compliant with China’s regulations for censorship and media licenses, can be offered over an IP digital network. ViDeOnline said it will enter the China market with licensed, censor-approved content for delivery to consumers through carriers and local IPTV or digital TV and Internet service providers.”
At least that is what the Silicon Valley Watcher blog thinks:
If you work in Manhattan you feel at the center of the media universe. Midtown and the Avenue of the Americas is where the capital of the media industry has sat for many decades. Whenever I am in New York, it feels as if I am in the coolest, the most media saviest place in the world. Just as in the famous New Yorker magazine cover, in which New York is depicted large and the Rest of the World is shown as distant, small, and uninteresting, that’s the way it feels to me when I’m there.
As a media professional, New York has always been a mecca, where I love to be. It was one of the perks and attractions of working at the Financial Times that our US HQ was smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, in the ITT building, and I loved those opportunities of working in New York.
Which leads me to my point, New York’s media industry doesn’t see the shift that is going on because it feels as if it is master of its universe. It has noticed that its business models are under tremendous pressure but it hasn’t noticed the shift westwards, the competition in Silicon Valley and in Santa Monica.
Google, Yahoo, Ebay, etc, are keen to portray themselves as technology companies rather than media companies–it is much more conductive to establishing partnerships and ad network deals in which they benefit far more than their old school media partners. If they were seen as more media company than technology company, I’m sure things would be different.
“Warner Music Group said it is forming a partnership with Norwegian telecommunications group Telenor ASA to allow its content to be featured through Telenor’s network of mobile companies. The deal announced Wednesday will make available Warner’s full-length songs, ringtones, mobile music videos and wallpapers on at least nine of Telenor’s 13 mobile operators.”
“Doppelganger Inc., a provider of avatar-based virtual worlds, on Wednesday named former Borland Software Corp. executive Tim Stevens as new president and CEO. San Francisco-based Doppelganger said Stevens succeeds the company’s founding chief executive, Andrew Littlefield, who remains on as chief creative officer and board member.”
It looks like the popular “California Insider” blog on the Sacramento Bee website will now really be just for “insiders”. Daniel Weintraub, the author of the blog that provided news and political commentary wrote what is apparently its last post and said that the blog will be “moving on”. He will still be writing for a paid, subscription-based service run by the Bee called “Capitol Alert” along with other columnists. In an earlier post Mr. Weintraub gave a partial explanation for the decision, “It’s all part of the new reality in the news business, where revenues from print are increasingly scarce and managers are looking for innovative ways to generate income from the Internet to keep our journalism alive.”
“Eva LaRue, star of CSI:Miami, has signed on to host an important humanitarian documentary entitled UGANDA, Peril to Pearl. This feature-length documentary, financed by HHB Inc. and produced by The Film Factory, LLC (both California Companies with offices in Riverside), will explore the difficulties that this landlocked African nation has in attempting to finance its growing needs and revive its people and culture.. Eva LaRue will travel to Uganda, New York, Washington D.C., Georgia, and London, seeking insight from politicians, getting historical perspectives from universities, finding common ground from humanitarian organizations, and garnering understanding from all parties. As her efforts progress, follow John Parks and Bill Seiber of HHB Inc. in their attempt to broker a failsafe and transparent compliance program that will invigorate investment, free international financial aid, and create business opportunities for this suffering nation, while protecting investors and donors.”
The Los Angeles Times has reported that 24 year old blogger Josh Wolf, who has been in jail for 171 days, is now the longest incarcerated Journalist in U.S. History. Wolf defied a federal grand jury’s order in July to hand over raw footage of anarchists clashing with police in San Francisco. While he claimed 1st amendment protection, a Judge found him in contempt of court and ordered him to the federal detention facility in Dublin, California. A police officer was injured in the anti-globalization protest that Wolf filmed in July 2005, and outgoing U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan’s office was investigating whether protesters tried to set fire to a police car. A statement attributed to Wolf recently was posted on his blog: “If the U.S. attorney can compel journalists to testify about what they’ve learned through their work and to force them to turn over their unpublished materials, then not only will the public be unable to trust reporters, but journalists themselves will become de facto deputies and investigators”.
