Discovering the door. Discovery Communications Chief Operating Officer Peter Liguori is leaving the cable programming giant at the end of the year, the company announced Wednesday morning. This comes about two years after he took the job. Liguori, who previously held senior positions at News Corp.'s FX and Fox Broadcasting, had been unhappy at Discovery for some time, people close to the situation said. While there, he got stuck with the dirty job of trying to manage Discovery's assorted partnerships, including OWN -- the cable network the company started with Oprah Winfrey that has struggled to build an audience. Discovery is not planning to replace him.
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Backstage drama. After making a joke about rehearsing that included an anti-gay slur, director Brett Ratner has stepped down as producer of next year's Oscar awards. Although Ratner had apologized and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences said it wanted to move on, the heat over the crack did not die down. Of course, Ratner also didn't help himself by going on Howard Stern's radio show and engaging in a raunchy conversation. The next question is whether Oscar host Eddie Murphy -- who was a package deal with Ratner -- will stick around or go too. More from the
Los Angeles Times,
Hollywood Reporter,
Variety and
Deadline Hollywood.
Merger mania. There has been a new round of consolidation in the local television industry, spearheaded by Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the nation's largest operators of TV stations.The local TV station business has struggled in the last few years. However, the development of new revenue streams for stations in the form of retransmission consent fees from cable and satellite operators and anticipation over big ad dollars from politicians next year, has heated up the industry. Details from the
New York Times.
World of Warcraft is on the decline...may lose its crown. Activision Blizzard Inc. on Tuesday raised its financial projections for the entire year, based largely on the strength of a single game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. But a sharp drop in subscribers for the game publisher’s other marquee title, World of Warcraft, knocked the wind out of the company’s stock.
The Santa Monica company announced Tuesday that subscribers for its World of Warcraft online game had fallen to 10.3 million, down from 11.4 million at the end of March.
“The magnitude of the decline was surprising,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. “The vast majority of Activision’s revenue and profit comes from World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. And if one of those shows a decline, investor confidence is shaken.”
Activision Blizzard’s shares slipped as much as 48 cents, or 3.5%, to $13.45 shortly after the company updated analysts on the game’s subscribers. Prior to the announcement, it had gained 19 cents to close at $13.93.
“World of Warcraft is the most profitable game of all time,” said Evan Wilson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “It would be tough to replace that size of profit stream.”
Stunning discovery. The key audience for television programming has always been women and many of those women are in fact also mothers. Apparently though this fact escaped Viacom's Nickelodeon, which spent months doing research on what anyone whose covered television for three days learns in 20 minutes. It is launching a new programming block from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. aimed at mothers. Fortunately for Nickelodeon,
The Wall Street Journal found all this fascinating. Sorry, guess I'm feeling particularly snarky today.
The world according to Ryan. Relativity Media's Ryan Kavanaugh says there is than box office performance when it comes to judging a movie. He better be right given that every move Hollywood makes with regards to when movies go to DVD or video-on-demand seems designed to reduce box office.
Variety on Kavanaugh.
Prince James in a can? On Thursday, News Corp. Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch is to appear before Britain's Parliament to again address his handling of the phone-hacking scandal at the company's now-closed News of the World tabloid. Murdoch, son of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, had oversight of the unit that housed the paper and has been accused of not coming completely clean with Parliament in his first appearance last summer. How he does could determine whether he remains the leading candidate to succeed his father at the top of the global media giant. A curtain-raiser from the
Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, the company took another hit when it was revealed that it had also spied on the lawyers of phone-hacking victims. More on that from
the Guardian.
Passing? Endemol, the reality show production giant, is likely to pass on a $1.4-billion offer for the company from Time Warner Inc., according to the
Financial Times. The offer, made last week, came as Endemol tries to restructure its debt. Endemol is keeping silent for now on whether it will say thanks, but no thanks to Time Warner.
A simple plan. Doug Morris, the new head of Sony Music, tells the
New York Times he wants to "create the pre-eminent record company in the world." The 72-year-old will have his work cut out for him as Sony Music has struggled for the last several years, in part due to the challenges that grew out of its merger with BMG. His first big deal, unveiled last week, was to sign Katy Perry producer Dr. Luke.
Tales of a G-Man. "J. Edgar," the Clint Eastwood-directed biopic about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is generating lots of attention, but how will it stand up to history? The
Daily Beast talks to some folks who worked for Hoover.
Talk about spin. Viacom has tapped public relations veteran Kassie Canter to oversee communications strategy for its entertainment cable networks, Comedy Central, Spike and TV Land.
Variety wrote up Canter's announcement but couldn't be bothered to report that the guy who had that job for decades -- Tony Fox -- was cleared out to make way for her. With reporting like that media companies don't even need to hire PR people to spin.
We can. Having beaten back investor Carl Icahn's effort to take over Lions Gate, the movie and television production company now has to show investors it is prepared to grow. Bloomberg looks at
Lions Gate and what's ahead.
Inside the Los Angeles Times:
Pioneering television producer Hal Kanter died at the age of 92.
Patrick Goldstein talks politics with Clint Eastwood.
Kenneth Turan on "J. Edgar."
-- Joe Flint
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Twitter.com/JBFlint
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