Media Money with Julia Boorstin
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Facebook needs to be careful about protecting the user experience. The way it handles ads, watch privacy issues, and avoid the "ice" factor when ads feel *so* targeted.
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Legendary/Warner Deal: Private Equity Still In The Picture
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
Legendary Pictures has raised $1 billion plus in new financing, and extended its first-look co-producing and co-financing deal with Warner Bros. through 2012. This means that their first partnership--which they say was profitable--worked out for both parties. About a year ago all my Hollywood banker pals were talking about how the private equity money was going to start pulling out of these movie studios--it's unstable, risky, and Wall Street can get burned.
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"Ratatouille": Why Disney Spent $7.5 B On Pixar
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
"Ratatouille" is Disney/Pixar's first joint venture since the acquisition, and the movie--and its associated merchandise -- is exactly why Disney wanted to snap up Pixar. The film's opening on Friday but I got a sneak peak at the premiere a week early, and I was seriously impressed. Call it "Cyrano de Spice Rack", it's the story of a rat who loves to cook, and befriends the garbage boy in the best restaurant in Paris, becoming his secret chef. I was really impressed.
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National Day Of Silence: Will Internet Radio Be Heard?
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
Internet radio sites are declaring a "National Day of Silence" Tuesday, protesting higher royalty rates. The SaveNetRadio coalition (savenetradio.org) is organizing webcasters to fight the higher rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board, which are due July 15, and are retroactive to January 2006. The leader of SaveNetRadio says these new royalties would bankrupt the smaller players and would render the divisions of the large companies unprofitable, putting them out of business, effectively ending Internet radio as we know it.
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Will "Sicko" Be Healthy At the Box Office?
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
There's no question that "Sicko" is impacting the national debate on health insurance--but will the movie be a box office hit? It's gotten an incredible amount of press, but as we saw with "Snakes on a Plane," media and YouTube, buzz doesn't always mean box office dollars. (A YouTube search finds 4,800 "Michael Moore" related videos--of those 2,200 come up for "Sicko.)
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Is MySpace Over?
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
When MySpace announced the beta launch of its instant messaging system -- MySpaceIM -- I wasn't impressed, I was surprised that MySpace was so late to the game. And what kind of a beta launch is this? It had a soft launch a year ago to give it some legs, before MySpace announced the "official beta." Check out this comparison of traffic ranking of MySpace, YouTube and Facebook traffic.
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Nielsen's Whiting: Exclusive On "Upfront" TV Sales
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
As the network TV upfront ad sales period comes to an end -- the numbers are surprisingly strong-- back up into the range of $9 billion in advertising revenues, by some estimates up 3% over last year. ABC and CBS are pretty much done with their upfront ad deals, with ABC snagging the biggest price increases per rating point, up 8.5% to 10%. (This means that ratings aren't necessarily up, but advertisers are paying more for lower ratings.)
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YouTube Japanese Game Show Video: OUCH!!
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
The New Game Show Craze: YouTubers seem to be obsessed with this Japanese game show clip-- check it out. It's been viewed 2.1 million times! And there have been 1,231 comments made on it. I guess some humor totally transcends culture and language. Take a look...
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Yahoo Ripple Affect On News Corp., Google, Microsoft
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
In the wake of Terry Semel leaving Yahoo and Jerry Yang stepping back in, the question is, how far will those ripples be felt. A couple of my in-the-know sources are predicting that Microsoft will buy Yahoo. And then of course there's speculation that Yahoo might combine with eBay. But let's talk about News Corp talking about swapping MySpace for 25% of Yahoo -- what would that loss mean for News Corp.
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Best Buy "Sounds Out" iPod Set
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
Best Buy is known for selling old fashioned music-- you know, CDs? Now Best Buy is pushing to keep up with the iPod set. The big box retailer announced that more than 450 of its stores will carry the Sonos Digital Music System, which it boasts is the only multi-room wireless music system with handheld control. The idea is that customers connect Sonos to their direct music services like Sonos or Pandora, to play music all over their home, starting at $999 for two rooms of music.
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Is Google's YouTube On Global Mission?
Posted By: Julia Boorstin
While everyone's talking about the shakeup at Yahoo, Google continues to take over the world. Google's video site YouTube is launching its first foreign-language Web sites. Already, over half of the site's audience comes from outside the U.S., but by translating its site into seven other languages is intended to fend off competition. Eventually YouTube will tweak the translated sites to the specific countries-- Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK, featuring local content and being sensitive to cultural issues.
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About Media Money
Media Money keeps you ahead of the curve in the ever-changing but always exciting media business. From Hollywood to Bollywood, digital explosions to perils in publishing, Julia Boorstin brings you the insight you need to better understand this evolving but ever entertaining industry.
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Working from Los Angeles, Boorstin is CNBC's media and entertainment reporter and author of CNBC.com's "Media Money" blog.