The Morning Fix: Weekend box office battles, NBC won’t be Detroit, CBS will gain because of NBC and, of course, more about Twitter!
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
After the coffee. Before the subway.
It’s a big weekend at the box office with ‘Terminator Salvation’ squaring off against Ben Stiller’s ‘Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian.’ Variety looks at the Memorial Day weekend madness.
Stay out of the 313. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker told the network’s affiliate stations he’s ‘not going to end up like Detroit.’ Explaining the move of Jay Leno to prime time and other efforts to stave off ratings declines and attract more advertising, Zucker said, ‘if we don’t change and change now, we will be like them.’ The Financial Times. CBS thinks NBC’s changes will help...CBS, reports The Los Angeles Times. The network is moving one of its hottest shows to the 10 p.m. time slot on Thursdays to play against Leno and is confident that it has the most to gain by NBC’s gamble.
The New York Times looks at how money factored into the fall television lineups.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help. The Federal Trade Commission wants to hold a hearing on journalism in the Internet age. According to The Deal, the FTC wants to evaluate the ‘collection and dissemination of news, not just because newspapers are closing down in the face of increasing Internet competition, but because of predictions that television and radio too will suffer the same fate.’
Comcast’s deal to pay ESPN for broadband content is watershed moment, says Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield.
Twitter continues to enjoy its 15 minutes of fame. In April, the 140-character social networking site had 32 million unique visitors, reports TechCrunch. That’s more than Digg, LinkedIn and even NYTimes.com. In other Twitter news, Broadcasting & Cable says Comcast’s E! network is going to start running celebrity tweets at the bottom of its screen much the way CNN and other news channels run crawls of the latest headlines. The CW meanwhile is looking to Twitter and other social network sites to hype their new shows, The New York Times explains the strategy.
And in today’s Los Angeles Times: Green Day’s new release ‘Breakdown’ is off to a strong start. California petitions the Supreme Court to uphold its efforts to curb the sale of violent video games to kids. Porn star Sasha Grey discusses her first mainstream movie. And for all your upfront TV news, check out Show Tracker.
--Joe Flint
