Carlos Martinez's List: GILGAMESH

• The ARA-MovieArb Equity Strategy is a private equity vehicle targeting Hollywood films. The goal is to raise $275 million which will be invested in 10-film slates, with an equity limit of $7.5 million per movie.

   

• Furlin says Epagogix counts one “major, major” Hollywood studio among its customers and has been “uncannily accurate,” not so much in predicting winners but in “spotting losers.”

   

• Furlin also points to Tinsel Town’s “insatiable” demand for content—“You see all these alternative platforms now,” says Furlin, “you have Netflix, Amazon, they’re all competing to distribute, however, there’s still the same number of content providers,”—as well as its need for financing.

   

• Like many a Hollywood screenplay, Furlin’s investment approach is based on a formula: guarantee release on 2,000 screens, control the print and advertising budget, use no senior or mezzanine debt.

   

2 more annotations...

• virtual capitalism: the "combination of marketing and the new information technology will enable certain firms to obtain higher profit margins and larger market shares, and will thereby promote greater concentration and centralization of capital"
• • high-tech capitalism^[11] or informatic capitalism (Fitzpatrick 2002) – to focus on the computer as a guiding technology that has transformed the productive forces of capitalism and has enabled a globalized economy.
   

• One of the central paradoxes of the information society is that it makes information easily reproducible, leading to a variety of freedom/control problems relating to intellectual property. Essentially, business and capital, whose place becomes that of producing and selling information and knowledge, seems to require control over this new resource so that it can effectively be managed and sold as the basis of the information economy. However, such control can prove to be both technically and socially problematic. Technically because copy protection is often easily circumvented and socially rejected [1] because the users and citizens of the information society can prove to be unwilling to accept such absolute commodification of the facts and information that compose their environment.

   

1 more annotation...

• Data visualization is closely related to Information graphics, Information visualization, Scientific visualization and Statistical graphics. In the new millennium data visualization has become active area of research, teaching and development. According to Post et al. (2002) it has united the field of scientific and information visualization".^[4]

   
• Data mining is the process of sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information. It is usually used by business intelligence organizations, and financial analysts, but is increasingly being used in the sciences to extract information from the enormous data sets generated by modern experimental and observational methods.
• Data transforms is the process of Automation and Transformation, of both real-time and offline data from one format to another. There are standards and protocols that provide the specifications and rules, and it usually occurs in the process pipeline of aggregation or consolidation or interoperability. The primary use cases are in integration systems organizations, and compliance personnels.

1 more annotation...

• “Syndication is much more entrepreneurial than it used to be, that’s what I really like about the business right now,” says Jim Packer, co-president, MGM Worldwide Television Distribution. MGM, for example, has sold TV stations a year-round package of four off-cable originals, called MGM Select, that includes The Outer Limits, Dead Like Me, Poltergeist and Jeremiah. “The four-show format gives stations more ways to sell an advertiser,” says Packer. “If they don’t like a particular show, they have three other bites at the apple. The station community embraced it because they want to have different kinds of product,” says Packer. CW, My Network and independents bought the package for weekend afternoons and early and late fringe, he says.

   

• because basic cable networks tend to use original series to brand themselves, by the time they make it to syndication most are already considered too closely associated with their originating networks. And cable networks often will buy the off-net run of their own shows—like USA and Monk, or Lifetime and Strong Medicine—and strip the repeats while airing originals in primetime to keep the brand close to home. That keeps the show largely out of the off-net market, although NBC Universal has sold Monk to TV stations for weekend runs starting next fall.

   

• Still, off-cable shows can represent fresh programming for TV stations. “We’re always interested in shows that do well,” says Caroline Chang, program director at Cox’s Fox affiliate KTVU and independent KICU in San Francisco. “Whether it’s off-network or off-cable, I really don’t care.”

       

   

  <!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->        

   

   

1 more annotation...

• A. C. Nielsen Company measures and   compiles statistics on television audiences. It sells this data   in various formats to advertisers, advertising agencies, program   syndicators, television networks, local stations, and cable program   and system operators.

• FX’s drama series Nip/Tuck has been sold in off-cable syndication  (yep, that’s what off-network syndication is called when a cable series is sold to another cable network).

• A Media Buyer is responsible for purchasing media space or time, as well as developing the campaign and researching how it will be most effective for the client. Their mission is to find a combination of media that will enable the marketer to communicate the message in the most effective manner possible at the minimum cost.

• Their roles may include analyzing target audiences, keeping abreast of media developments, reading market trends and understanding motivations of consumers

• Syndicated television represents a $4.2 billion advertising marketplace, with more than 110 weekly shows and dozens of specials and movie packages. Syndication airs more hours of programming each week than the six traditional networks combined.   
   

   

• Syndication is a huge national TV programming enterprise, bigger than any TV network
• Yes! Syndication's potential reach is comparable to ABC, CBS and NBC combined. 
  
    For example, Two and a Half Men in Syndication gets an average 3.2 C3 rating vs. the 5-network primetime average rating of 2.4. (Source: Nielsen March 2009 A18-49 Live +3 Commercial AA/GAA Ratings) 
  
     Syndicated programming airs on top stations, including network affiliates and independents.
  
    Click here to visit our Media Planning section.  
• Syndication offers far more programming aimed at target groups than the networks

1 more annotation...

• Of course. In fact, while syndication offers advertisers very large audiences with broad demographics, it also has opportunities for niche buys, from science fiction to adventure to instructional and self-help programming genre. Syndication has the niche programming that cable touts, but with significantly higher audiences than cable TV.  

• Popular shows like Seinfeld, Friends and (I'm afraid) Two and a Half Men have an afterlife as cash cows, but most run-of-the-mill TV shows also rely on syndication fees to cover their production costs. In fact, the recession has meant lower syndication fees, which in turn trickles back into lower production quality. But that's a different story and not one that affects Jerry Seinfeld.

• Seinfeld in numbers

  $2.7bn Amount grossed since going off air in 1998, equivalent to £1.9bn

  $14m Average earning per episode

  $65m to $80m (£45m to £55m) Reported annual earning of star and co-creator Jerry Seinfeld from the show according to Forbes magazine

  180 Number of episodes over nine seasons

  30 million Average audience per show during airing

  105 million Number who watched the last episode in 1998

  $1.7m (£1.2m) Cost of 30 seconds of advertising during last episode

  46 Number of Porsches reputedly in Seinfeld's collection (including a $700,000 (£490,000) Porsche 959)

   

   

   

• For instance, one insider said reruns of "Seinfeld" at 11 p.m. weekdays on station WPIX in New York have prompted the ratings for the station's 10 p.m. local news lead-in to improve dramatically. "Some days, 'Seinfeld' is the highest-rated show on the station," said the source.

• The   rationales for Fin-Syn are numerous. The FCC was concerned that   vertical integration (control of production, distribution and exhibition)   unfairly increased the power of the networks. By taking away the   long-term monetary rights to programs created by the networks, and   severely restricting their participation in syndication, the FCC   eliminated incentives for the networks to produce programs, thus   separating production from distribution.