Video Age International articles from April 1999

Video Age International archives from April 1999

Hungary to Tax Film Distributors.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... Hungarian film makers will benefit from a law being drafted that would require local distributors to turn over about 15 percent of its revenues. Currently, distributors pay a 3 percent culture tax. Istvan Balint, managing director of...

Kid's TV Nets Lose Steam.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... As we can see from the following chart, 1998 was an annus horribilis for children's programming in the U.S. Only nine out of 12 players remain in the game, which translates into a loss of 24 hours a week of original kid's shows when compared to...

TAP to Address Ad Issues in Latin America.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... During a director's meeting in Guadalajara on March 4, the Television Association of Programmers, Latin America (TAP) approved the formation of an advertising advisory council as a way to address advertising issues in the region. The council...

Entertainment Execs Request Restrictions.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... A group of Canadian entertainment executives encompassing the TV, film, music and publishing industries called for increased control on cultural investments in a report released early February. This control could possibly come through the...

Latest Bout: Networks v. DirecTV.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... By August, DirecTV may have lost the ability to broadcast network programming to almost 2.25 million American subscribers. A judge in Miami had ordered DirecTV to cease broadcasting network transmissions via satellite by February 28. The...

FAMOUS QUOTES.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... Percentage of 12- to 17-year-olds who watch [U.S.] network news: 2.5 percent. Percentage of 12- to 17-year-olds who watch the Jerry Springer Show: 2.6 percent. Chance that a local [U.S.] TV station has a written policy for handling...

Televicentro Restructures Debt.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... Grupo Televicentro, the holding company of Mexican network Televisa, refinanced $1.3 billion worth of debt in an agreement with its creditors. Consequently, Grupo's liabilities dropped to $533 million. Televisa also made a cash purchase of...

Politicians Entertain the Issues.(Review)
April 1, 1999... Political candidates utilize media not to debate their platform, but to court an entertainment-saturated public Richard Davis and Diana Owen examine the role of nontraditional media in today's political races in their book New Media and...

Gaumont: The Old and the New.
April 1, 1999... At 105 years old, France's Gaumont calls itself the oldest cinema company in the world... and there's certainly no one around old enough to refute that claim. But the venerable company is making an effort to put a finger into all the different...

The Studios Weigh MIP-TV.
April 1, 1999... When the 36th MIP - TV convenes from April 12 through April 17, it will find itself short one studio booth and beset by rumors that other studios were considering pulling out. Since a company's presence at the venerable Cannes market has at...

AFM '99 Saved by the Numbers.(American Film Market)(Statistical Data Included)
April 1, 1999... Good overall presence brings confidence to film distributors The telltale of a market lies in the figures: the number of buyers, the number of exhibitors and the number of quality products available. Under those premises, the American Film...

Producers to the Rescue at Monte Carlo.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... It was the same old story at the Monte Carlo TV Market. Some grumbling was heard in the corridors, but inside the suites the distributors were, for the most part, satisfied. Coral Pictures' Guadalupe D'Agostino reported that an impressive...

Format Sale: The New TV Craze.
April 1, 1999... Problems to be solved, business models explained The world's first format market was held this year at Monte Carlo. This marks the turning point of an undercover business which has become what Bruce Gyngell, Chairman of Nine Network...

American Cable Nets Invade Int'l.
April 1, 1999... In the U.S., producers and distributors of both network and syndicated series have long profited from foreign sales of their programming, but for the niche nature of much American-made cable fare, the expansion into foreign markers has been...

MIP-TV Rush After AFM - Film Companies After TV Business.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... Forget Iraq. Forget the recession. As far as this year's MIP-TV is concerned, things couldn't be better. All the booths at the Palais in Cannes are completely sold out and, in the U.S. and in Europe, they're standing in a waiting line to...

Middle Eastern TV Expanding Platforms.
April 1, 1999... Sat TV services flooding the market with niche and general channels The television scenario in the Middle East appears to be reaching a new phase: an expansion of digital platform technology and transmissions of global broadcasts. Since...

What's Cooking on Television.
April 1, 1999... The cooking show, hot in the U.S., boils over into other countries There's an interactive cooking show (Cooking live on the Food Network). There's a cooking show for dogs (Three Dog Bakery on the Food Network). There's even an English...

The Wild, Wild Net: A New Frontier.
April 1, 1999... With the millennium approaching, many companies are positioning themselves for a Webcasting breakthrough. This is a smart strategy since a look back at the early days of television reveals that the industry standards were set by those companies...

The Future History of Television.
April 1, 1999... Broadcasters won the battle for digital TV with an obsolete standard, but a studios-supported TV format could replace ATSC and DVB After winning the battle over the high definition TV standard, American broadcasters lost the war for the...

CityInteractive Does Interactivity With Attitude.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... Since its launch in 1994, CityInteractive deftly ignored the distractions of the information "Super Hypeway," and instead focused on the business at hand. Scalable growth and multiple revenue streams enabled CityInteractive to navigate the...

Europe's Pay TV.
April 1, 1999... How and Why Pay TV Biz Has Been Partitioned French domestic politics will determine the future of pay TV in Europe. The spotlight of European pay TV has shifted back to France whereas, in the recent past, it was focused first on the U.K....

L.A. Screenings: Confusion Over Dates, Sequence.(for Motion Picture Association of America)
April 1, 1999... If you're confused about this year's L.A. Screenings dates, you're nor alone. The buyers are confused; the independent distributors are confused; the hotels' reservation staff is confused; and we at Video Age are confused. Originally, the...

Eight Questions for Eight Indies.(independent video producer forum)
April 1, 1999... The world is changing for independent producers and distributors. Everyone seems to know it, but how that world is changing is up for debate. And that is exactly what Video Age did by putting together eight producers/distributors covering...

Saban's World Spins In a Mini-Major Way.(Saban International)
April 1, 1999... The television universe is also composed of companies that are small and act independently, but are a part of a large conglomerate. Worldvision Enterprises and Saban International come first to mind. The first is part of Viacom with its studio...

My Two Cents.(on the future of digital television)
April 1, 1999... Could it be that those who advocate digital television are really subscribing to a divide-and-conquer strategy? Taking a closer look at the television technology, one notices that analog -- with its cozy, limited capacity -- has united...

EBU Expresses Dismay.(European Broadcasting Union dismayed over copyright law)
April 1, 1999... The European Parliament voted on a strict copyright protection law two days before the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced the launching of a two-year project that would transfer Europe's television archives to digital storage. To the...

Israeli Demographics On Eurodata TV.(Mediametrie integrates Israel into its international databank)
April 1, 1999... Mediametrie has integrated Israel into its international databank, Eurodata TV. Approved by the Israel Audience Research Board (IARB), Israeli demographics of 5 million television viewers has been measured over the past year using a sampling of...