The Morning Fix: More Hulu hoops! Oscars in January? Hyping ‘Knight and Day.’ Disney’s real estate plans.
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After the coffee. Before getting back to the World Cup. Jumping through Hulu hoops. Bloomberg reports that Hulu, the online video site owned by News Corp., Walt Disney Co. and NBC Universal is in talks with CBS, Time Warner and Viacom about getting their content on the site. Bloomberg says the talks are revolving around Hulu’s plans to offer a subscription service. Such a service would likely offer a wider array of content and not just new shows. However, we did some probing too and there might be a little more smoke than fire at this point with these three companies and Hulu. There are always lots of talks between Hulu and the big content providers they don’t have on board. Viacom, Time Warner and CBS already offer their content online, so the actual issue is about when shows would run on Hulu, revenue sharing and how much content would be made available to the service.
Trying to see light in ‘Knight and Day.’ Time for the New York Times to check in with a short piece on 20th Century Fox’s ‘Knight and Day,’ the action adventure/romantic comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. While most reviews have been positive (although Wednesday’s New York Times panned it), the tracking is not good and Fox has since gone into sneak peek mode (the Los Angeles Times wrote about this on Saturday). One problem, in my humble opinion, might be the rather lame marketing campaign, those awful posters, and a title that sounds like a 1970s TV cop show.
And the award for most difficult producing gig goes to ... Veteran awards show producer Don Mischer is being teamed up with producer Bruce Cohen (‘American Beauty’) to helm the 83rd annual Academy Awards telecast. Variety reports on that while Deadline Hollywood says the show may be moved from the end of February to January, which is when the Golden Globes run. Maybe the Academy and ABC don’t want the awards show to bump up against the Super Bowl. That’s a joke, see, because the Super Bowl keeps getting pushed further and further into winter.
Disney’s winter home. Walt Disney Co. is getting into the residential real estate business. Yeah, there’s never any uncertainty in that world. The Wall Street Journal scoops that Disney is creating a development in Florida, home of Walt Disney World. The homes, according to WSJ, will go for between $1.5 million and $8 million, which is a slight markup from the $243,000 that the article says is the average price of new homes there (per Realtor.com).
Dish vs. Disney. Another day, another battle between a programmer and a distributor over money. This time, satellite broadcaster Dish Network has stopped carrying some Disney cable channels. The networks in question include high definition channels for Disney’s ABC Family, ESPNews. Details from Dow Jones.
End of an era. Mark Mays, chief executive of CC Media, the parent of the big radio owner Clear Channel, is stepping down. Mays, who will remain as chairman, is the son of the company’s founder Lowry Mays. Of course, Clear Channel stopped really being a family run company when it was sold to private equity firms Thomas Lee and Bain. More from the Financial Times.
Inside the Los Angeles Times: Even if a law floating around in Congress passes and bans a box office futures trading market, the fight will go on. The White House unveils its strategy to fight piracy. Griffith Park is the go-to spot for the movie industry. Kenneth Turan on ‘Knight and Day.’
-- Joe FlintGet over hump day faster by following me on Twitter at: Twitter.com/JBFlint