The Morning Fix: TV everywhere or nowhere? Cannes previews! David Hill rants. Be nice to the cable guy.
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After the coffee. Before another fun day at the cable show. Wait, did I say that out loud?
TV Everywhere? Not yet. At last year’s cable industry convention, Time Warner President Jeff Bewkes made headlines when he unveiled the concept of ‘TV Everywhere.’ The idea is simple enough -- television content available online. The catch is that to access it, consumers have to already subscribe to a pay TV service. A year later and the concept is having fits and starts. Not every programmer is on board -- Disney, Viacom and News Corp. all have channels that are not playing ball with TV Everywhere. Meanwhile, Apple and others want to try to offer their own subscription packages. An update on TV Everywhere from the Los Angeles Times.
Be nice to your cable guy. ComcastCorp. Chief Executive Brian Roberts, who oversees the nation’s largest cable and broadband provider, says the industry gets a bum rap and is underappreciated by the public. Speaking at the big cable convention in Los Angeles on Monday, Roberts said, ‘We’re the industry everyone loves to hate.’ I love my cable, but what I don’t like is when my bill goes up $25 and I call my cable company (which isn’t Comcast) and discover that the offer I signed on to last year expired but I can get a new discount on the same service. Why not just tell me what the new discount is from the start instead of hitting me with a huge increase and seeing if I notice and inquire about it? Anyway, enough of my rant. For more on Roberts, including how he likes to watch Showtime’s ‘Californication’ with his wife, here’s my take.
Chernin’s turn. Since leaving his post as president of News Corp. to set up his own media company, speculation has swirled around Peter Chernin’s grand plans. The New York Times takes its crack Wednesday and tells us ... not much new. His production company has movies and TV shows in development (although the story leaves out that the Chernin Co. did not have a great pilot season and the headline ‘Chernin Assembling a Vast Media Empire’ seems just a tad premature). Chernin did not participate in the story and is still keeping his plans close to the vest. He interviewed Brian Roberts at the cable convention Monday and quipped that he was here to ‘dispel any notion that I’m going to be a talk show host.’
From Hill’s top. PaidContent’s Staci Kramer caught up with Fox Sports chief David Hill at the cable show and he was, as usual, outspoken. He warned that the sports leagues are risking killing the golden goose by creating too many TV deals and putting too much on new platforms. Said Hill: ‘They need the power of broadcast television. We need to make money off of those rights and if they keep slicing and dicing, one morning we’re going to wake up and say, this doesn’t work for us. See ya.’ He has a point.
Disney delivers. Somewhere Dick Cook is smiling. The Walt Disney Co. studio he used to run had a nice rebound thanks to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and helped boost the company’s bottom line in its second quarter. Overall, Disney’s net income jumped 55% to $953 million. Revenue was up 6% to $8.58 billion. The cable networks were also strong. More on the numbers from the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Just ignore that volcanic ash. The Cannes Film Festival gets underway this week and it looks like it will be a buyer’s market. ‘The festival’s taste has stayed the same, full of difficult, challenging and experimental films, but the market has moved on,’ Thorsten Ritter, head of Germany’s Bavaria International, told the Hollywood Reporter, adding ‘it’s harder and harder to find a distributor to pay for these festival films.’ More on the festival from the Wrap.
So why did Bob Berney quit Apparition? Lots of theories on his surprise exit and none of them mean anything good for the indie movie business. Analysis from Variety.
Inside the Los Angeles Times: Kenneth Turan’s Cannes preview.
-- Joe Flint
