The Morning Fix: FX gets Trek, Google gets radio static, Jim Lehrer gets makeover
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After the coffee. Before Matt and Meredith sign off.
Cable network FX snagged the rights to Paramount’s latest ‘Star Trek’ smash. If the movie tops $200 in U.S. box office, FX could pay as much as $24 million for its window. Variety says rival bidders included TNT and USA.
Video may have killed the radio star but Google couldn’t kill the radio ad salesman. After three years trying to translate its online ad success to radio, the search giant has had enough static and is pulling the plug. The Wall Street Journal says while the lackluster radio effort was small change to Google, it has larger implications for a company determined to take its online success into traditional media.
Pirate this book! Well, it doesn’t quite have the ring of Abbie Hoffman’s ‘Steal This Book,’’ but nonetheless with the growth in ‘E-readers’ comes a surge in digital piracy of books. ‘It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole,” author and pirate fighter Russell Davis, told The New York Times. “You knock one down and five more spring up.”
TV and movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer is the latest Hollywood player to throw his hat into the video game ring. Bruckheimer tells the Los Angeles Times that ‘games are evolving just like movies, there’s storytelling and there’s character development.’ There’s also lots of money in it too, but Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a great track record in the game business.
PBS’s ‘The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer’ is getting a makeover, according to The New York Times. While Lehrer, 75, has not announced plans to step down, the move to add co-anchors and a more lively set is seen as a nudge ‘however slightly, toward the day when its longtime anchor decides to retire.’
This is just a test. With the switch to digital television a month away there is concern that millions of Americans will be left in the dark so the government and local broadcasters are considering a quick flick of the on-off button so consumers will know if they are in fact prepared for the next generation of television. The Washington Post says the trial run could come as early as May 21.
--Joe Flint
