Video Age International articles from January 2007

Video Age International archives from January 2007

Domestic recovery fuels int'l boom for Argentina's Telefe.
January 1, 2007... Argentina's president Nestor Kirchner is riding an economic boom toward reelection and the bright economy has certainly brought smiles to the faces of Argentineans. And no one could be happier than Telefe executives. Everything seems to be...

Starz: the new studio with aggregation power.(Company overview)
January 1, 2007... The master plan is clear. "The goal of Starz," said chairman and CEO of Starz LLC Robert B. Clasen, "will be to aggregate audiences by distributing programming across multiple platforms." But like every master plan, the devil is in the...

The long tail form of distribution explained.(dialogue with Chris Anderson)(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine and author of business bestseller, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less For More." The phrase The Long Tail itself reflects a graphical image. When plotted on a graph, where...

Broadcasters call reinforcements for primetime TV.
January 1, 2007... It's that time of year again. NATPE comes around and U.S. broadcasters sadly acknowledge that some of their most promising fall shows just aren't cutting it. It's time to bring in the backups. It's time for midseason replacements. This...

MIT: media future is unpredictable.(WORLD)(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)(Brief article)(Conference notes)
January 1, 2007... A two-day "Future of Entertainment" conference, held last November in Cambridge, MA, and sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Convergence Culture Consortium (a partnership between those affiliated with the Comparative...

France Telecom gets into film biz.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... France Telecom (FT) is looking to enter the movie biz, with plans to invest in 10 to 15 films each year. The partly state-owned telecommunications group is seeking to acquire minority stakes in French and other European movies starting this...

Talk of Indian TV gets animated.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... The "Changing World of Indian Media," organized last November by Zion Integrated Services, a Bangalore-based specialized marketing and information technology company, was an "animated" event, attracting major players from Indian animation and...

Australia puts up its "for sale" sign.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... Australia's $7.5 billion-a-year media sector is receiving bids from some of the world's biggest private equity and media organizations after the recent passage of laws that will relax rules on cross-media and foreign ownership by the summer of...

India's TV scene to change in '07.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... Indian TV is in a transitional period, and changes are in store. This, according to the 16th annual Broadcast India Exhibition and Symposium held last fall in Mumbai. India's government plans to change cable and satellite ownership rules...

Age gets rated on Thai TV.(WORLD)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... It's never been easier for TV viewers in Thailand to shield their kids from inappropriate programs. On December 1, all free-TV stations in the country began including ratings of recommended viewing ages with their programs. Four Thai...

30 years of the Cairo Film Fest.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... The Cairo International Film Festival, which ended early last month, closed with a dazzling ceremony celebrating its 30th year, as well as its first time co-sponsorship with Cairo-based Telco giant Orascom. Chinese film The Road, by Zhang...

ProSiebenSat. 1 sold to KKR.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... After an unsuccessful 40 billion euro bid for Vivendi, U.S. private equity group Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), along with Permira (the European equity firm formerly known as Schroder Ventures Europe), are taking control of Germany's...

Uni down under for downloading.(WORLD)
January 1, 2007... Universal Pictures Australasia (a division of the U.S. studio) and ReelTime Media have launched the first-ever major movie download-to-own (DTO) service in the international market to include secure burn technology. The deal, which began at the...

The U.K.'s love-hate relationship with U.S. TV.
January 1, 2007... For years, a large percentage of the U.K.'S television landscape has been filled with American-made programs. From I Love Lucy in the '50s to more recent hits like ABC's campy Desperate Housewives, a lot of what was, and is, being watched...

Regulators: whose side are they on?(U. S. Case Study)
January 1, 2007... In an ideal universe, government telecommunications regulators would make decisions based on what would best serve the public they are mandated to protect from unfair business practices, while promoting competition and social inclusiveness....

Market with good results gets mixed reviews.(Asia TV Forum)
January 1, 2007... The monsoon season in Singapore certainly played its part--the intense heat and humidity caused a more relaxed general mood at the fourth annual Asia TV Forum (ATF). Even the two elevators servicing the nine terraced floors of the Shangri-La...

Show questions market. Executives await answers.(NATPE Preview)(Conference notes)
January 1, 2007... This year, NATPE is earlier, bigger and longer than recent incarnations. The 2007 NATPE Conference & Exhibition (the show's 44th edition) opens its doors January 16-18 at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas once again, with a theme: Evolve &...

New kid on the TV block promises real competition.(IPTV Monitor)
January 1, 2007... Kristen Mabry of Bowie, MD may be five-feet-four-inches tall and weigh less than 100 pounds (45 kg.) but, believe it or not, she represents a serious threat to U.S. MSOs Comcast and Time Warner. Fed up with the high monthly cable and Internet...

2006: the year that was and the year it'll bring.(Past and Future)
January 1, 2007... When asked what major event of 2006 would shape his approach to 2007, David Ellender, chief executive officer of FremantleMedia Enterprises, was adamant: "There is little doubt that the arrival of new digital media, especially VoD over...

Saban prepares to mind the gap: an interview with Joel Andryc, Saban Capital Group's chief creative officer.(From Teutons to Latins)(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Since immigrating to the U.S. in 1983, the professional life of Israeli-American investor Haim Saban has been the stuff of In 1988, he formed Saban Entertainment. By 1995, the company had joined forces with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to create...

La Inteligencia de Mercado en Internet.
January 1, 2007... A mediados de los '90s, habia una compania de Internet en el San Fernando Valley de California llamado Ultimate TV. Las personas vivian fascinadas de su website, que era el primer website dedicado a fanaticos de TV y "chat" de programas de TV....

Jornadas listo para un nuevo organizador de eventos.
January 1, 2007... Quizas las figuras anticipadas fueron muy optimistas, con unos 1,500 participantes que asistieron, en vez de los 3,000 pronosticados. Sin embargo, el decimosexto evento anual de Jornadas, la convencion de cable TV, fue su encarnacion mas...

Mas alla de la revolucion digital.
January 1, 2007... Varios paises--incluyendo Italia y los Estados Unidos--estan buscando, otra vez, reformar sus sistemas de radio y TV. Para esta propuesta, quisiera tomar prestado un elemento innovativo de la Constitucion Italiana (creada en 1947) que, junto...

Solitaire ya no gana a Hollywood.
January 1, 2007... Hannah Ballard de San Fransisco ama su telefono cellular. La inversionista sostiene un MBA y un Motorola RAZR con el que puede navegar el Web, bajar musica, y jugar juegos moviles 3D. Sin embargo, preguntele si alguna vez a bajado algun juego...

Latin America TV distribution directory.(Directory)
January 1, 2007... ARGENTINA America Video Films Sales Contact: Claudio Braslavsky Virrey Lotero 2426 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1426 Tel: (5411) 4787-9098 Fax: (5411) 4787-9094 E-mail: america@americavideofilms.com ...

Let's do lunch.(Calendar)
January 1, 2007... NATPE JANUARY 16-18, 2007 Las Vegas, Nevada TEL: (310) 453-4440 FAX: (310) 453-5258 www.natpe.org BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL FEBRUARY 8-18 Berlin, Germany TEL: (49 30) 259 200 FAX: (49 30) 25920 299 ...

My two cents.
January 1, 2007... Let's make a case for eliminating all regulatory agencies. They're necessary, but tend to be useless So for the sake of efficiency and better allocating taxpayer resources, all nations should do away with regulators. Especially since nowadays,...