By Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
Our friends at Blogger & Podcaster Magazine are giving away one month’s FREE listing in USA Today’s Blog Directory. This is a great opportunity for someone looking to expand his or her work to a much wider audience. USATODAY.com’s homepage alone, receives 10.4 million unique visitors per day!
To take advantage of this offer please visit the B & P Magazine website. Remember to include the special promo code: BlogReps when you register.
TNT, AMC ratings report for the end of July
Good news for TBS: its scripted comedy My Boys, which began again Monday night with two back-to-back episodes, did better in the ratings than their first-season counterparts. The marketing campaign that TBS launched in the break between its seasons in hopes of reaching a young female audience may have paid off - the two episodes that aired Monday outperformed last season’s premiere by 43% in the 18-34 demographic, and the median viewer age was 29, eight years younger than the median viewer age My Boys averaged last season.
TNT also did well, earning steady ratings for the second week of its new drama Saving Grace. The episode that aired this week drew fewer viewers than last week’s, but 5.37 million viewers is still a considerable success, especially for a show that’s just getting started.
AMC’s Mad Men was not so lucky this week: the show dropped from 1.6 million viewers last Thursday to 1.04 million viewers for the next episode (aired July 26). Bravo’s Welcome to the Parker was in a similar boat, garnering only 334,000 viewers for its premiere episode.
Seeing how these shows do at collecting a permanent audience will take time, and the ratings could still do a lot of fluctuating at this point. But for now, it looks like TBS’s Boys are off and running.
(Source: Broadcast Newsroom)
Want to see the exact figures for these shows? Check out the original story here.
TCA hit the ground running for the kickoff of its cable segment on Thursday morning. Two very strong female-lead shows were presented - Lifetime’s State of Mind, starring indie film fave Lili Taylor, and FX’s Damages, starring Glenn Close, Ted Danson, and Danny Boyle ingenue, Rose Byrne. Nip/Tuck was also on the agenda.
Lifetime has been pleasantly surprising a lot of critics lately due to Army Wives, which seems to have lifted the Tori/Valerie/Meredith tragi-movie of the week cloud that’s been hanging over its head. State of Mind will hopefully keep them going on this path. In State of Mind, Lili Taylor plays a therapist in a large practice who has problems of her own. Despite the large ensemble cast, the panel was very Lili-focused. As candid as ever, Lili freely admits that she regularly attends therapy herself: “A hundred bucks and you feel a little better, then it’s worth it.”
Watch the premiere episode here.
Glenn Close was luminous on the Damages panel, as was Ted Danson, who’s officially gone gray. It’s very apparent that a lot is riding on this show for FX, which is known for its critical success but relatively modest ratings. The legal thriller has gotten stellar reviews, promising to be their crown jewel - let’s hope it succeeds.
Location, location, location seemed to dominate the Nip/Tuck panel. In case you missed the season finale of Nip/Tuck, Troy and Namara have made the big move to L.A. - a welcome change. Along with opening a new firm, the ambiguously gay duo score a new gig as plastic surgeon advisers on a low-rent makeover reality show.
With the move to L.A. come more opportunities for celebrity guest stars. FX V.P. of Publicity John Solberg confirmed that Rosie O’Donnell will be back as Dawn Budge starting in episode four. The following individuals will also showing up for consults: Portia de Rossi, Bradley Cooper, Lauren Hutton, Oliver Platt, Paula Marshall, and Stifler’s mom, Jennifer Coolidge.
Coming soon: A full report on HBO, Showtime, E!’s latest Reality programming, and High School Musical 2.
Animated ‘Explorers Club’ to debut in late fall
In production, financing, and voice acting, Kevin Costner is onboard for the Internet-based “Explorers Club,” an animated series of 12 four-minute-long episodes set to start around the holidays. The series will revolve around gothic tales of explorers in a Victorian setting, detailing their journeys into strange and distant places. According to Variety, the ultimate goal is a feature film: after the mini-series has developed a fan base, a live-action feature will follow it, which Costner is expected to both act in and direct.
Describing the merits of his first Web-based venture, Costner said:
“Each episode is clever and visual, it works as a series, and it has massive potential for the big screen. Distribution channels have grown, and as a filmmaker, I was excited by the opportunities to draw an audience into a story in a new way.”
(Source: Variety)
Several weeks ago, Louisville Courier-Journal sports reporter Brian Bennett was ejected from a college baseball game because he was live blogging the events for his newspaper and thus violating ESPN’s exclusive “live representation” rights. As of Wednesday, the NCAA has relaxed its regulations slightly: live blogging is allowed so long as it involves only the score and the time remaining in a game.
Many have regarded the NCAA’s strict decision to remove Bennett as over the top, including Chris Botta, vice-president of communications for the NHL’s New York Islanders, who remarked as follows:
“In this day and age, there are so many ways to get the score of the game – on the Internet, satellite. I would hope nobody would overreact the way the NCAA did.”
Restricting live blogging to score and time remaining may seem unnecessarily harsh, especially in an age when reporting and the media it uses are changing almost too fast. Nonetheless, the concept of live blogging is still new for many, and until live events learn where to draw the lines with this form of media, repeat conflicts like this are more than likely.
(Source: Blog Herald)
Media Rights Capital has a new horror movie in the works, and they’ve already sighted a star. Cameron Diaz will play the leading role in “The Box,” a movie based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.” The story follows a young woman who is given a mysterious box covered in buttons by a stranger and told that different things will happen depending on which button she chooses.
The movie will be directed by Richard Kelly, who directed “Donnie Darko” in 2001. Speaking of the movie and the partnership between star and director, Modi Wiczyk, who founded MRC and still runs it in conjunction with Asif Satchu, had this to say:
“The storyline has all the commerciality of ‘The Ring,’ but with Richard and Cameron, this film can rise to the level of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Others.’”
MRC will begin seeking distribution offers for “The Box” in fall.
(Source: Variety)
After preliminary reports, iPhone lives up to its high expectations
The first wave of iPhones has finally arrived, and despite the anticipation that has built up during months of waiting, Steve Jobs’s newest technological miracle doesn’t appear to be faltering. Early reviews from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek didn’t give the iPhone a perfect score, but all of the early reviews shared a sense of the iPhone’s impressiveness, especially in living up to the hype that six months advance marketing created.
Edward Baig of Newsweek had this to say about his experience with the new Apple creation:
The mania over Apple’s iPhone launch has created stratospheric expectations that are near impossible to live up to. Yet with a few exceptions, this expensive, glitzy wunderkind is indeed worth lusting after.
As distribution widens, will the iPhone manage to meet all of the expectations that have built up around it? Only time will tell. Yet the outlook is positive, and early reviews cement the possibility of a device that could really be everything it advertised.
(Source: Valleywag)
“The Price is Right” slated to join top soaps in on-demand streaming
In an effort to please viewers and advertisers alike, CBS has announced its intention to offer three of its highest-rated daytime shows – “As the World Turns,” “Guiding Light,” and “The Young and the Restless” and “The Price is Right”– free on demand for up to a week after their original broadcast date.
According to CBS head of daytime programming, Barbara Bloom the deal is a win-win for fans and the networks:
It establishes more opportunities for our rabid fans to watch their favorite shows, creates a new platform to recruit potential new viewers to our daytime programming, and it offers our advertisers another means to reach a valuable demographic audience.
(source: Variety)
Removed fan video returns to YouTube with Fox approval
When New York-based comic rock band Guyz Nite posted their parody of the “Die Hard” movie trilogy on YouTube last August, Fox Studios legal department lost no time in requesting its removal. The video featuring a mashup of clips from all three original “Die Hard” movies set to the band’s music was immediately yanked from the site
Six months later, with another “Die Hard” sequel on the horizon, Fox contacted the band again, this time to offer them compensation for reposting the video and updating it with scenes from the movie to come. Now the once-rejected parody is back on YouTube and has earned over 90,000 hits.
For YouTube and other media hosting sites, movie studios seeking the censor of fan-pirated videos and copyright infringement is nothing new. On the other hand, a studio supporting fan material – and even paying for it – is a rarity. Perhaps the industry is ready to change its stripes?
(source: New York Times)
|
Earn more money with your blog using JargonFish, a FREE, customizable in-text search widget. JargonFish adds depth and value to your content, and provides an added source of advertising revenue. You can customize JargonFish for your audience to maximize its effectiveness and seamlessly integrate it into your site. Choose from either the ‘in-text’ application or the ‘search box’ implementation option. Contact a JargonFish Representative for more information. |
|
Get listed in USA TODAY.com’s Blogger & Podcaster Guide FREE for the entire 1st month (Reg. $49.95 per month). Thereafter, you will receive a 20% discount making your listing within USA Today only $39.96 and better yet you can cancel anytime! Want even more exposure? The USA Today’s print edition of “The Blogger & Podcaster Guide” only costs $195 per week. However, Blogger Rep members also will save 20% (or only $156). |
