Video Age International articles from April 2005

Video Age International archives from April 2005

German TV business continues its limbo dance.(FOCUS ON GERMAN TELEVISION)
April 1, 2005... Only three months after becoming CEO of the German RTL network, Marc Conrad hung up his hat. It took the industry by surprise; it was mere management news, but of an unusual variety. Only about two weeks earlier, Josef Andorfer, managing...

Buyers seek originality at the L.A. screenings.(Los Angeles )
April 1, 2005... The ink on the scripts is dry and the casts are being assembled by the production companies, as the U.S. broadcast and cable networks prepare to show their wares to the advertising community during the traditional upfronts market in New York in...

Studios have the screenings, but for indies, MIP-TV is it.
April 1, 2005... It seems that this year, MIP-TV is providing solace for anyone suffering from even the slightest case of Attention Deficit Disorder. The Cannes market, held from April 11-15 at the Palais des Festivals, will cover everything from documentaries...

Is it harder to buy or to sell? The Documarket's Reel Story.
April 1, 2005... Marian Williams, vp, programming, Discovery Europe, was unequivocal: "The job of buying documentaries," she asserted, "is getting much harder." She ascribed this change to "so much programming being pre-bought as part of the funding process,...

My two cents.(Interview)
April 1, 2005... The January issue featured an interview with myself; this time I have an exclusive interview with my alter-ego, Mod Inifares. Dom: VideoAge is entering its 25th year. Isn't it time to... Mod: VideoAge is as young as it looks. When it...

Monte Carlo TV fest changes beat.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Few festivals have undergone as many changes as the Monte Carlo TV Festival but, according to David Tomatis, executive vice president of the event, it is the festival's ability to adapt that has sustained it. "A lot of TV fests have been coming...

Canadian telco goes into TV.(WORLD)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Canadian phone company Aliant will soon introduce television service over Internet-based networks. The move comes in an effort by Aliant to become a one-stop shop for communications, information and entertainment, to boost plunging share...

Napster goes after movies.(WORLD)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Napster, often thought of as the bane of the music industry's existence, may now become a nuisance to the film industry as well. The U.S. digital music service is considering applying its online music model to films and videogames, allowing...

BVITV return to Brazil's Globo TV.(WORLD)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... In January, Rede Globo and Buena Vista International Television Latin America formed a new alliance. Under a new programming distribution agreement, Rede Globo was granted exclusive broadcast TV transmission rights for the next three years to a...

China enters into cartoon biz.(WORLD)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... A new cartoon channel is broadcasting in Shanghai from 6 a.m. to 12 midnight. The net, aimed at people of all ages, is part of an effort set forth by China to improve its cartoon production, something often associated with its neighbor, Japan....

Sirius-ly: TV on road trips!(WORLD)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Sirius Satellite Radio will offer video service to properly equipped cars by 2006. In the U.S., Sirius plans to launch its Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Video 9-supported service in the second half of 2006. But Sirius Canada, whose radio...

New kids on pay-TV block.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... According to printed reports, an unknown company has applied for permission to launch a new pay-TV movie channel in Canada, ending a two-company monopoly that has resided in the territory for two decades. Canada's pay-TV market has been run...

Montreal juggles three fests.(Film festivals)
April 1, 2005... The establishment of a new major international film gathering in Canada has caused quite a melee. Le Festival International de Films de Montreal (also called the New Montreal FilmFest), will hold its inaugural edition October 12-23, 2005 in the...

Fuji's dance with NBS and its suitors.(WORLD)
April 1, 2005... Japan's Fuji Television Network has offered to purchase more shares of radio broadcaster Nippon Broadcasting System (NBS) and turn it into a subsidiary. The current relationship between the two companies is unusual. Fuji TV owns a 12.4 percent...

DTT reaches Namibia.(WORLD)(digital terrestrial television)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... South African broadcaster MultiChoice has launched the first digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcast system in Africa, in Windhoek, Namibia. The system allows for six channels to be broadcast on the same frequency. MultiChoice's initial...

Famous quotes.(WORLD)
April 1, 2005... "We've learned trash TV from the U.S. and now we produce our own trash." Carlo Sartori RAI SAT president in a speech at NATPE's Educational Foundation

In memoriam.(WORLD)(Video Age International)(Tommaso Giannotta)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
April 1, 2005... VideoAge has lost its long-time art director, Tommaso Giannotta, who succumbed to a prolonged illness in February. Tommaso was 54 years old and a native of Palermo, Sicily. He moved to the U.S. in 1983 after attending the University of...

From media mogul to political powerhouse and back.
April 1, 2005... Chances are, even without following international politics, one would be familiar with Silvio Berlusconi, at least by name. Though known first for his media empire, his notoriety rose with his political career and the (yet unproven) corruption...

Singapore's Italian-style television mission to Europe.(Exploring Digital TV)
April 1, 2005... Marco Polo had an easier time visiting the Orient than a delegation of media executives from Singapore did traveling to Italy. After many months of negotiations with TV executives from the two major TV groups in Italy and various Italian...

Floor gets hot, lifts backfire, biz lights up.(NATPE '05 REPORT)
April 1, 2005... This year's NATPE market was the best it's been in years. Pacing 10 to 15 percent ahead of last year, attendance was estimated around 8,000. The floor of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas and the floors and elevators of the...

VideoAge saves faith & values.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... When it became a reality that our shipping company had lost our entire NATPE shipment, Claudia Duran (our marketing manager) and I already had a back-up plan in mind and were ready to execute it. We needed a big Faith & Values Media sign...

The next big thing in TV may be small.(The Fourth Screen)(Television cell service the upcoming market)
April 1, 2005... By now, everyone in the TV industry has heard the buzz about TV-on-cellphones. It is the talk at water coolers, at TV studio lots and at network and producers' boardrooms. It may just be the next frontier for TV programming. While it is still...

Spanish TV in a planning stage: DTV, Pay-TV, RTVE.(Territories)
April 1, 2005... Television in Spain is mainly on the "plan," since many projects are now in the planning stage. * Canal +, of the two pay-TV platforms in Spain, is planning to become a 24-hour unscrambled service. * Veo-TV is planning to change its...

Canadian TV festival reinvents its status.(The Road to Banff)
April 1, 2005... The road to Banff is paved with gold--television gold that is: content, connections and deals. That is the stuff expected to take place at the Banff World Television Festival from June 12-15 at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel in the heart of...

The changing face of TV toy town.(Licensing)(kids' properties licensees)
April 1, 2005... A change is underway in the production of children's programming in Europe, and it has the potential to become revolution. There is an lincreasing tendency for producers to sit down with key potential licensees at an early stage of development...

Gender neutral in a sex-specific world.(Kid's Channels)
April 1, 2005... Over the past few years, there has been an effort by many executives to broaden their demos by adopting a new mantra: "We are trying to become a little more gender neutral," said Betsy McGowen, Kids' WB general manager. "I'm guessing that...

Cable boosts U.S. syndication biz.(TV WINDOWS)
April 1, 2005... When it comes to primetime, cable has provided the U.S. syndication market with a much-needed boost, both as a buyer of programming and as a supplier. With a limited number of off-net hours available on the broadcast affiliate stations,...

Discs complement syndication: Int'l TV sales not affected.(DVD BUSINESS)
April 1, 2005... Despite concerns that the explosion of current TV series DVDs could hurt the shows' chances for syndication, the sense throughout the television industry is that DVDs may actually increase syndication value. Roy Restivo, NBC Universal's vp...

De-mystifying a complex mess.(PUBLIC DOMAIN)(Interview)
April 1, 2005... The DVD market for Public Domain (PD) movies and TV series has seen an increase in the past few months. Large U.S. chains such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City buy millions of PD discs each month, while many DVD companies around...

Marketing old movies: more about sense than dollars.(Library Sales)
April 1, 2005... It seems as though every day studios are breathing new life into old movies. With the increasing ubiquity of DVDs, younger audiences are getting a chance to watch never-before-seen films, and studios have the opportunity to break into their...

Broadcast news: is the public getting a balanced picture?(TV News in the News)
April 1, 2005... Much has been written about the alleged right-wing bias of news outlets such as Fox News in the U.S. and the various Sky News in the world, and of the public's dependance on theatrical political documentaries to get information. Professor...

German-produced fare does not get fair share.(FOCUS ON GERMAN TELEVISION)
April 1, 2005... The importance of the German-produced content industry pales in comparison to the size and turnover of the market. But this is nothing new; observers of the German TV and production industries have been stressing this for a while. Indeed,...

Hello, Hollywood? Germany is calling.(Cable television broadcasting industry)
April 1, 2005... Historically, the experiences of the large U.S. entertainment conglomerates in Germany could be compared to a roller coaster ride. Disney has been able to gain a cross-platform presence throughout the German TV map. Viacom scored a few points...

German TV enters the U.S. market.(ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... In the U.S., ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, the Saban-controlled German commercial TV group, has launched ProSieben Welt, a German language pay-TV channel on the Dish pay-TV satellite platform. It is a mixture of news, popular magazine formats, TV...

The downs and ups of German pay-TV.(Focus on German Television)
April 1, 2005... Within this year, both major German commercial TV network groups, ProSieben and RTL, intend to expand their activities into pay-TV. It's not likely that they will launch their own digital platforms to compete with the existing, and now...

Commissioned pilots.
April 1, 2005... ABC COMEDY Adopted Young man tries to balance biological and adoptive families Bobby Cannon Retiring pro-athlete mentors protege Crumbs Two estranged brothers are forced to work together in family business ...

Alison Baker of Australia's Southern Star Int'l talks docs.(Interview)
April 1, 2005... VideoAge: How much easier or harder is it now to market documentaries? Alison Baker: The documentary market has been changing for some time. There is certainly less appetite for the straightforward wildlife documentary, and broadcasters...

Let's do lunch.
April 1, 2005... RAI TRADE SCREENINGS APRIL 6-8 Taormina, Italy TEL: (39 06) 3749 8257 FAX: (39 06) 6370 1323 www.raitrade.it MIPDOC APRIL 9-10 Cannes, France TEL: (212) 370-7470 FAX: (212) 370-7471 ...