To choose the “best” of 120 stories from VideoAge’s nine monthly editions of 2017 is not an easy task, but it is an annual one that cannot be avoided. Enjoy the selections!
Is Trumpism good for the TV biz? Opinions vary
It looks as though the American and most of the international media is up in arms about the upcoming Donald J. Trump presidency. To review the potential impact of “Trumpism” on show business, VideoAge surveyed ten experts from nine countries. For most Americans, Trump is a “trump” (wild) card, but for Europeans, and Italians in particular, Trump is a déjá vu experience. Italy had a precursor in Silvio Berlusconi, who had been Prime Minister and founding president of a political party for 10 years on-and-off, starting in 1994. Indeed, Italians have a name for it: Trumpusconi.
Read the complete article in the January issue here.
Streaming: IPTV does not mean Internet television
On a technical level, VideoAge considers Netflix a streaming service, but there is a bit of confusion when generalizing about streaming TV services. For Sasha Zivanovic, CEO of Nextologies in Toronto, the definition of streaming “is broad,” he said.
Read the complete article in the April issue here.
Managing more than 80 rights is very costly
Administering and keeping track of rights management is a nightmare for content distributors, especially the studios. It was simple when there were only a few rights to sell and windowing was easy (sales were often made by handshakes), but now the film and television industry is dealing with more than 80 rights for a good number of programs.
Read the complete article in the May LATAM issue here.
Peak TV: A new challenge for producers more than viewers
What was once known as the “Golden Age” of television has evolved into “peak television.” With so many cable, broadcast and streaming TV shows out there for a viewer to watch, many experts believe that the industry has reached the peak amount of original shows possible.
The term was originally coined by FX president John Landgraf at the Television Critics Press Tour in 2015: “There is simply too much television… The audience is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of TV shows. It’s impossible to get you to take another look at something you’ve already rejected,” he said.
Read the complete article in the May Studios issue here.
Bolloré, Berlusconi in a Napoleonic feud
To recap what is now becoming a Napoleonic war between Mediaset’s Silvio Berlusconi and Vivendi’s Vincent Bolloré: In April 2016 Vivendi signed an agreement to acquire 89 percent of Mediaset’s money-losing, pay-TV service Premium.
Read the complete article in the June issue here.
MIPCOM road is paved with 500 new TV shows
In terms of overall participation, MIPCOM, with close to 2,000 exhibitors, is expected to follow last year’s successful outcome. And, as far as new content is concerned, it is estimated that over 500 new TV titles will be for sale, leaving little or no money in the yearly budgets for acquisitions at subsequent film-TV markets.
Read the complete article in the September issue here.
The complex world of Canada’s TV Upfronts
For Canadians, their own Upfronts in Toronto start after they return from the L.A. Screenings. The three major TV groups worked furiously to get information on the shows they bought in Hollywood in order to prepare media kits and get the U.S. talent ready to go to Toronto.
Canada’s television business is fighting a digital challenge along with the rest of the world. According to ad-buying firm GroupM, digital accounted for $5.4 billion, or 41.9 percent, of all ad spending in Canada last year while television drew just under one-quarter of ad spending and that’s expected to decline slightly.
Read the complete article in the October issue here.
Strategy, reasons for B-movie release schedules
When speaking about U.S. movie classics from the 1970s, no conversation would be complete mentions of Prime Cut, Cisco Pike, Ulzana’s Raid, Two-Lane Blacktop and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, right? Wrong, of course. Few people have ever even heard of these B-movies, much less would call them classics. But in a series in Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You(Bloomsbury, 2017, 197 pages, U.S. $27), author Charles Taylor treats these forgettable trifles – which often came and went from movie theaters in less than a week – as masterworks that need to be revered and studied in order to truly understand America in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam “Me Decade,” when people’s understanding of what it meant to be an American was undergoing a radical change.
Read the complete article in the November issue here.
NATPE Miami to tackle a rapidly changing world
The theme of this upcoming NATPE Miami market, the 38th in the association’s 54-year history, is “A Changing Industry in a Changing World,” and even though it is appropriate, it doesn’t go far enough. The world, and the U.S. in particular, is indeed changing rapidly, and the television industry is right in the middle, enmeshed in various “fake news” and “alternative facts” controversies.
Read the complete article in the December issue here.
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