Companies Divorcing might be “in”

Yesterday, AOL-TimeWarner ditched their hyphen and decided to go their separate ways. Legal and internal troubles where compounded by a failure to adapt to smaller emerging technologies. Its not like we didn’t see this coming, the marriage has been rocky from the start.

TimeWarner and AOL fell in love back in 2000, when “You Got Mail” said by a computer was considered awesome and dial up was the norm. The merger was a 111 billion dollar transaction and marked the beginning of a digital revitalization for the TimeWarner print based company. The plan for the conglomeration consisted of AOL providing the 56K pipeline for mountains Time Warner content. On Last night’s airing of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer media watchers also contributed the fallout to a lack of “synergy” and prevalent “culture shock”. Evidently, the young “hip” AOL had trouble adapting to the traditional TimeWarner business model.

The media implication for this separation is massive. Its like one of the six couples on the media block are splitting half of all their shit and ones moving out. More than that, the house is in major disrepair. Should T.M. continue to collapse, we could be left with only 5 media companies controlling most of our information or even worse, a buyout that keep the name alive but has another major behind the wheel.

Interesting stuff-

1998 movie bearing the title You Got Mail was produced by Warner Brothers before the merger. AOL still has 6 million dial up customers.

Something definitely is Rotten…

Rotten Tomatoes, the Internet film site originally devoted to rating films based on the cliché of throwing tomatoes at terrible stage performers, has now expanded to reviews, info and basic movie news. Started in 1998 to bring a variety of critic’s views together to rate various films, Rotten Tomatoes was sold to Imagine Games Network (IGN) Entertainment in 2004. IGN is a website devoted to multimedia news, reviews and video games. In 2005 IGN was bought out by Fox Interactive Media. Fox Interactive is owned by, none other than the big six company News Corporation.

What’s interesting is that the Rotten Tomatoes website only references a relationship with IGN Entertainment. By doing this, the site is able to present the illusion that it still may be an independent site with a relationship to another smaller named company. If the site were to openly reference its ultimate relationship with Fox or News Corporation, it would seem like just another gimmick film site.

Huge media corporations purposefully purchase small, independent companies, not only for financial gain but also independent credibility. The only problem is, once these small companies have been acquired they are slowly revamped to push big media’s agenda and push the independent perspective out, while the small company’s original followers are none the wiser.

One last coincidental tidbit, this weeks #1 Top Box Office listing (which is the very first film title listed on the upper left hand corner of the screen) is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Its rating on the “tomatometer” is an average 5.1 out of 10. Interestingly, this film was produced through 20^th Century Fox. News Corp is actually paying to own bad ratings for a film under their own umbrella. It just goes to prove, there really is no such thing as rotten publicity.

Indy film review sites I like:

www.urbancinefile.com

www.fwfr.com

www.filmthreat.com

Evil Plot to Take Over the World

Nearly a year ago a PR guy for Playstation told me about a website called Hulu during a basement party in the East Burn Bar. His cocktail promise was that it was going to be "bigger than Youtube…because it was legal video that was free and only had short commercials." Shortly there after, he got into a fight with the bartender and kicked out. At the time I figured it wasn't possible to be bigger than Youtube, after all its one of only two things more searched on Google than "porn" (according to Google trends- the other being Facebook).

I was dumbfounded when I ran across a prime time T.V. commercial promoting the website. Youtube doesn't have commercials! Hell, I hadn't seen a legitimate website commercial since the tech bubble popped (Cash for Gold and Go Daddy don't count). I was especially interested in the sites tagline- "An evil plot to take over the world".

Late last month the "evil plot to take over the world" started to look like less of a tagline and more of a mission statement. On April 30th, a press release from Hulu announced that Disney was joining NBC Universal, Newscorp and Providence Equity Partners as "Equality Owners of Hulu".

Essentially, Hulu is becoming the combined mega company of three of the six biggest media corporations in the world. NBC Universal is part of General Electric which rakes in approximately 183 Billion Dollars annually. Newscorp is chipping in to the Hulu pot with some of its annual approximate 33 Billion dollars and now Disney with its 37.8 Billion. Combined the three companies make about 253 billion dollars off of their communication assets, Hulu being one of the larger collaborations. The other three companies not involved in Hulu only make around 58 billion annually.

Collaborations like this are becoming all too frequent and represent the shrinking diversity of media outlets. In a way, Hulu is the young star of the television industry. It marks televisions adaptation to the internet, something radio still hasn’t figured out. However, it is also the biggest filter to entertainment and informational freedom. So it hasn't "taken over the world" yet, but it is well on its way. That day will come when Hulu starts airing real "news" and not just Weekend Update.

It’s a Small (Media) World After All

Green Day‘s newest album “21st Century Breakdown” was released on May 12th, 2009. Interestingly enough this rock super group had some extra help in the promotion of the album leading up to its release.

Green Day is a part of Warner Bros/ Reprise records, however as of late their music was being heavily used by ESPN and ABC (which are both owned by The Walt Disney Corporation) during sporting events and highlight reels. This heavier than normal use was within the month leading up to their albums release.

As these two media giants worked together it not only helped promote Green Day’s latest album, it also was a simple way for ABC/ESPN to use a popular, relevant band to liven up there highlights.

Don’t think it stops there with this partnership. The magazine US Weekly (which is owned by The Walt Disney Corporation) reviewed the recently released Green Day album and gave it a surprising, four out of four stars! Who would have guessed…

With all of these companies and people in the same bed, it seems like it’s getting pretty full. But if this is what it takes for these media giants to make as much money as possible, then they will absolutely do it.

In this case both sides of this partnership each win, and seemingly will continue to combine media they control until they have homogenized media into exactly how they want it. All to themselves.

Media Giants, Unite!

On May 6th, 2009 Ascent Media Group announced that CBS/Viacom and Time Warner will begin working together to build a new platform of media distribution. This platform is being built so that CBS may air its syndicated programs along with Time Warner in High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD).

By combining the technical advances of Time Warner along with the popularity of CBS programming, they will then be able to work together to reach more people, save each other time and effort and of course make a tiny financial profit.
The plan they have now will reach a minimum of 800 stations, as well as the top 100 domestic markets in North America.

By CBS and Time Warner joining forces it only homogenizes media on an even larger scale than it has been. Once these “Big 6” companies start working together, media deals such as this one
become a problem. If they work together and form an even stronger alliance then it will leave us with fewer choices of programming and media, and in turn less freedom to choose.

Ascent Media Group – Santa Monica, California based subsidiary of Ascent Media Corporation. Ascent Media Corporation is the largest provider of integrated global services for the creation, management and distribution of media content (Ascent Media Corp.) They have 40 facilities in regions of Southern California, Atlanta, London and Singapore to name a few. They are powerful when it comes to media in America.

Ascent Media Corporation:
http://www.ascentmedia.com/

Article: Ascent Media, CBS and Warner Bros. Entertainment Create Next-gen Syndication Distribution Platform conglomerate
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1896651,00.html

Pocket Rockets

A little company called Pocket Books revolutionized the publishing industry in 1939 by producing small, pocket sized paperback books that were inexpensively replicated and sold for only 25 cents.  Sold to Simon & Schuster publishers in 1966, Pocket Books kept publishing under the same name and are now known for publishing popular fiction, based on movies and television shows such as Star Trek.

Interestingly, Simon & Schuster is owned by "Big 6" media conglomerate CBS. CBS also happens to own Paramount Television who in turns owns the Star Trek franchise and all rights to the latest Star Trek Film in theaters May 8th, 2009, (and lets not forget about the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas, Hilton). 

Originally airing on NBC and continually syndicated on the Sci-Fi channel, it seems that our love for all Star Trek television series have not been monopolized by one media giant, but in fact TWO media behemoths. NBC and the Sci-Fi Channel are both conveniently owned by "Big 6" rival General Electric.  Though General Electric does not own the rights to the Start Trek series, they are able to reap financial benefits by airing their programming and drawing viewers to their channels.

                  (Click to see larger map)

Perhaps this all just goes to show that maybe media moguls really are willing to share in profit space and air time, maybe they re not as greedy as we thought, maybe they will play nice, just as long as it is only with one another.

For more detailed information on the ownership story for Star Trek: 

http://www.canonwars.com/STCanon.html 

Riddle: What does the band Atreyu and Miley Cyrus have in common?

Did you know The Walt Disney Company not only owns its infamous children’s animated films, theme parks and the entire ABC television network it also owns record labels?

The Walt Disney Company owns three record labels to be exact. These are in no specific order but include Walt Disney Records, Lyric Street Records and Hollywood Records.

Now, with that information, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a few of the artists on these record labels include; The Jonas Brothers (Hollywood Records), Miley Cyrus (Hollywood Records) and Rascal Flatts (Lyric Street Records). But, I bet you would be interested to know that one of the artists on Hollywood Records is a hardcore metal band with albums named, “Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses” and “The Curse”. The band I am referring to is Atreyu.

Now remember, they are on the same label as Miley Cyrus.

Is this the image you would come to expect from The Walt Disney Company who also owns Mickey Mouse®? Probably not, yet this is a common practice in the world of big media who control the majority of what we see and hear on a daily basis.

They are not really concerned about who is on what label or what they sing about, they are concerned with controlling media and making money to suit their best interests. They figure that people have become complacent and won’t connect the dots to figure out who owns what when it comes to media.

Without looking deeper into who owns what, “big media” will continue its campaign of controlling the vast majority of media. And if this trend is not stopped we will be forced into having a very slim chance that any “progressive ideas” or local media companies will flourish. Help stop these media giants and “GoLittleMedia”!