The Morning Fix: Selling Leno; kissing frogs; gang of 14 plots new ratings system; Bloomberg wants Business Week?
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Before the coffee. After remembering.
Cheap commercials. NBC’s Jay Leno experiment kicks off Monday with the debut of his 10 p.m. comedy/variety hour. The Wall Street Journal says a commercial in the show can be had for as low as $55,000 per 30-second spot. NBC’s dramas in that hour had been getting an average of almost $140,000. NBC has indicated that they are going with Leno for the long term (or at least more than a few months) but if he bombs out of the gate, new NBC Universal Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin told WSJ, ‘to say that I have a clear backup plan would be exaggerating.’
Kissing frogs. Walt Disney Co. gave a sneak peak of ‘The Princess and the Frog’ at its D23 Expo The movie, which is done with old-school drawing, is a gamble in an era of computer-generated animation, says the Los Angeles Times. Disney CEO Bob Iger asked attendees to promise they’d see the rest of the movie.
Gang of 14. A consortium of 14 major media companies, advertisers and agencies unveiled their plans to try to develop new ways to measure how people consume media. Sounds like somebody isn’t too happy with Nielsen. Analysis from Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Advertising Age and Variety.
Raising the debt. Media companies have raised almost $20 billion in debt this year, more than $4 billion alone last month, which may mean the credit market is warming up and that could lead to more deals, speculates Bloomberg.
Record companies not fans of Ellen. Ellen DeGeneres may love music (and will get to show the world that when she joins ‘American Idol’) but not all music companies love her. Some record companies filed a suit claiming her daytime talk show is violating copyright and using songs without permission for her popular ‘dance over’ segment. Warner Bros., which makes her show, told the Associated Press it is willing to solve the issue on ‘amicable and reasonable terms.’
Bloomberg wants Business Week. New York Mayor and media mogul Michael R. Bloomberg’s Bloomberg L.P. is looking at buying Business Week, The New York Post reports. Bloomberg LP has a few days to put an offer together. Considering how cheap the magazine is said to be on the block for, perhaps Bloomberg won’t even have to cut his $1 per-year salary to run New York City to buy it.
Inside the Los Angeles Times: Taking a look at how Ellen DeGeneres ended up on ‘American Idol’ and what it might mean for the show. Another Tyler Perry movie is likely to open big.
--Joe Flint
