What’s that? Jay Leno is moving to prime-time? You don’t say!

Frankly, it’s hard to remember the last time there was such hubbub about a TV show. It was, after all, the cover story in Time magazine. Not to be outdone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, and probably every local news outlet between New York and Hollywood had a story about the talk show host — more often than not raising the question of whether he’s going to save network TV.

(You’ve got to give it to the public-relations machine on this one. They really worked the story. Of course, their spinning was augmented by a huge marketing effort. Stuart Elliott of the New York Times today estimated that NBC put out more than $10 million in promoting the show).

But there is more to the fall TV season than Jay Leno. The media buyers and planners over at  RPA offer a useful road map to the season in a recent report.

Their take on the fall season is fairly upbeat (maybe network TV doesn’t really need Leno to save it).

“For the first time in two years, network fortunes will not be held hostage to the industry’s labor problems, but will be determined, as they used to be, by content quality and scheduling… Based on what we’ve seen, the overall quality of that content looks better than it has in the past two seasons,” the report says.

Here, according to RPA, are some things to keep in mind heading into the season:

• The five broadcast networks will debut 21 shows, accounting for 22 percent of scheduling hours.

• Dramas and dramedies (a mix of comedy and drama) will increase from 43 percent to 48 percent of the schedule’s hours. Comedies will rise from 10 percent to 17 percent.

• Not a single new fall show is a foreign co-production (which had been looking like a trend until now).

• Medicine is hot, with three hospital dramas debuting this fall and a fourth starting midseason (”Trauma,” “Mercy”, “Three Rivers,” and “Miami Trauma”).

• Paranormal is big, too. Four new shows built around that theme will land this fall (”V,” “Eastwick,” “Flash Forward,” and “Vampire Diaries”).

Oh, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

Rupert Murdoch used News Corp's fiscal fourth quarter conference call on Wednesday to say he wants to be paid ANYTIME his news is read online. Perhaps he was just in a cranky mood, but most of the reporters listening to the call thinks he's going beyond what he's said many times before on the topic.

The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made the content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all news websites.

That's not just for newspapers and websites, but also for his TV news channels, like Fox, and by implication, Sky, when viewed online, Murdoch said.  However, when asked if he will be charging for celebrity photos from newspapers such as The Sun or News of The World, it was by no means clear he's figured out how to make visitors pay to view these other than by watching ads.

He said he's prepared to be first among his competitors to do this and considering introducing a paid-content plan for News Corp web sites in the company's current fiscal year that ends in June 2010.   

Of course, there's nothing counter-revolutionary about content creators wanting to get paid. It just made the blog posting trifecta work.    

(Transcript: News Corp Q4 2009 conference call, Seeking Alpha; Image: The Sun)                                           

See also Revolution and Evolution

A year ago, the big story around Emmy nominations was the acclaim showered on cable programs like “Mad Men” and “Damages.” A quick glance at today’s nominations indicates little has changed.

Just look at the best drama category, where Fox’s “House” and ABC’s “Lost” will face stiff competition from cable’s “Big Love” (HBO), “Mad Men” (AMC), “Damages” (FX), and “Breaking Bad” (AMC).

While the Emmy awards aren’t everything — ratings are still the holy grail — they certainly don’t hurt. Particularly when it comes to cable networks, which have built a reputation for developing more sophisticated, bolder programs than the broadcast counterparts.

While ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox are under heavy pressure from advertisers (and their corporate parents) to show immediate results, the cable networks can take more care with their programs. After all, they draw some revenue from carriage deals and subscriptions, which buys shows like “Breaking Bad” some time to develop.

That seems to be paying dividends — and not only when it comes to awards. While broadcast TV advertising rates are still at a sizable premium to cable, most advertising executives say the gap is shrinking. Couple that with carriage fees and a generally lower cost structure and you see why TV executives like NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker spend so much time talking up their cable assets.

Keep an eye on:

• Google will be under the spotlight when it reports second quarter earnings later today. How much of a toll has the downturn in advertising and the competition from Microsoft taken on the web leader? (Reuters)

• Speaking of Microsoft, its share of the U.S. market increased in June as it rolled out Bing (Reuters). And its not just focussed on search and Google — the company plans to open some retail stores “right next door” to those of Apple Inc. (Reuters)

• Don’t get too comfortable watching your favorite TV show on the web with only a few commercials. Media companies are pressing ahead with plans to put more ads in web videos. (Wall Street Journal)

Starting today Disney content will go live on Hulu, consumating a deal that was struck earlier this year to join the two-year venture with NBC Universal, News Corp and Providence Equity Partners.

The first few shows include popular fare from ABC such as Grey’s Anatomy,  Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty. This means Hulu is going from strength to strength in locking down its leadership as the place for watching TV on the Web.

Part of the attraction of Hulu is that it is free for U.S. residents, since most of the content can be watched for free over the air in the U.S. But we wouldn’t be surprised if Hulu’s owners added a paid service as part of the TV Everywhere initiative players like Time Warner have been promoting. Such a ‘paid-for’ service would actually be free if the customer is already a paying cable/satellite TV subscriber.

Hulu is also making strides to launch in the UK soon.

In the meantime, if you’re stuck at your desk tomorrow at 9.30am PST (12.30pm EST) you can watch the Michael Jackson service live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.  The broadcast is being provided to Hulu by half-sister network Fox News. After the live-stream, Hulu will also offer on-demand access of the entire memorial service.

For those of you unable to make it to the Fox upfront today at the New York City Center (or skipped it and went straight to the party), here are some of the takeaways:

• Fox introduced its four new comedies and two dramas to its prime-time lineup, plus the Wanda Sykes show on Saturday nights. The best looking of the bunch was “Glee” — a cutting comedy, musical feel-good hour that has received some big hype. The show may be deserving, if the clip played for media, advertisers and affiliates today is any indication. It got a rousing cheer from the crowd.
• But not as rousing as the cheer for Kiefer Sutherland, who showed up (as he often does) to thank everyone for their support of “24.” He wrapped up by saying, “I don’t want to take up much more of your time, because I know you can’t wait to get to the party. It promises to be a good one. I will be looking for you… at the bar.” Nice one, Kiefer.
• Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly and Sales President Jon Nesvig took pains to remind the audience that broadcast network TV is not yet dead, and in fact still blows away cable TV and online video. They sounded a bit like newspaper executives. “All the noise and data I’ve seen over the last six months tells a great story about network television,” Reilly said. “Network TV is still the biggest branding opportunity out there.”
• Peter Rice, the new chairman of Fox Entertainment, made an appearance. The executive behind movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” as well as “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Juno,” and “Little Miss Sunshine” sounded happy as a clam to be over on the TV side of the business.  “In movies it just takes forever to finish a film. You can spend years, literally years, working on screenplays. Then another year shooting and editing. And perhaps as much as a year marketing. And when it hits the theaters, you all cross your fingers and hope it can do $100 million. If it does $100 million, you breathe a sigh of relief and throw a big party and it’s front page news,” Rice pointed out. “In the last eight weeks, I’ve come to realize that a $100 million movie actually translates to about 10 million people. That’s 10 million viewers. And that’s an average number of people who watch Fox every single night. With a show like ‘American Idol’ we deliver 26 million people from stage to screen at light-speed. Think about that: On Tuesday, ‘Idol’ reaches that total number of people who saw ‘Ironman.’  And then it follows it up the next night with the number of people who saw ‘Harry Potter.’ Those movies take weeks to amass that audience.

(Photo: Reuters)

Ah spring. Opening day. Stolen bases. Hot dogs. Rain delays. Fresh baseball commercials flashing across your TV set.

Major League Baseball has just taken the wraps off its new 2009 campaign, “The is Beyond Baseball,” supported by 20 TV spots running through the World Series.The spots will run on ESPN, Fox, TBS, MLB Network and MLB.com.

The idea, developed by McCann Erickson, is that baseball is more than just a game; it’s part of the fabric of our culture. In trying to get that message across, the spots will play up the stories behind star players like Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants and Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies.

And what’s an ad campaign without a web element? Here’s how the release describes baseball’s effort: “In addition, MLB.com will host Beyond.Baseball.com, which will feature interactive elements of the campaign including the campaign commercials, the MLB Network special, highlighted player profiles, a photo gallery, production outtakes, online vignettes and a detailed campaign description.”

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The Web is abuzz over Eric Schmidt’s speech on Tuesday at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual meeting in San Diego — a speech, as the New York Times points out, in which the Google leader sidestepped any controversy and instead delivered “a lengthy discourse on the importance of newspapers and the challenges and opportunities brought about by technologies like mobile phones.”

So why all the fuss? Because newspapers are in deep trouble, and Google is an easy target for blame. The web search leader is weathering the recession relatively well and some have argued that Google News is making money off the back of newspaper publishers.

As Reuters puts it, “Some journalists have complained that search engines run by Google and Yahoo Inc make millions of dollars off their news, and that it should belong to them instead.”

Publishers from The New York Times Co to EW Scripps Co are struggling with a decline in advertising revenue that threatens the survival of some of their newspapers.

They are trying to find ways to make more money online to make up for what they are losing on their print editions.”

Google contends that it helps newspapers make more of that money by referring readers back to their websites. Newspapers, for their part, simply haven’t changed their business models to keep pace with the web.

“Schmidt told the Newspaper Association that newspaper websites someday would need to use several business models, including ads that support free news delivery, subscriptions and micro-payments, which are small fees to read articles,” Reuters reported.

The message is pretty clear: Start thinking about your own business instead of worrying about mine.

Keep an eye on:

• Cutbacks and budget troubles at National Public Radio Inc. are adding to tensions with some of its member stations (WSJ.com)
• In his new role, Peter Rice, recently appointed head of Fox Broadcasting, is faced with trying to remove some of the burden for the network’s ratings from “American Idol.” (New York Times)
• With magazines losing advertisers, the lines between advertising and editorial content are blurring (New York Times)

(Photo: Reuters)

In the high stakes battle over piracy in Hollywood, a Fox News columnist lost his job on Monday after he reviewed a pirated copy of the upcoming movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Roger Friedman is a big name in Hollywood entertainment news, but media reports say that fact did not protect his job when his corporate colleagues at 20th Century Fox called for his head, nor did it help that Friedman wrote a positive review of the movie (which has since been removed from the Fox website).

The New York Daily News reports that an estimated 75,000 people have downloaded the free, illegal copy of "Wolverine," which stars Hugh Jackman, and the studio is concerned that the high interest in the film online could slash its box office appeal. But no one is saying that Friedman leaked the movie, he just reviewed it. In that sense, was his punishment too harsh?

The case is interesting because it illustrates how high the stakes are for piracy in Hollywood. As in past piracy cases, the studio has enlisted the help of the FBI, which is investigating the leak. This comes as federal lawmakers consider ratcheting up the pressure on movie pirates. On Monday in Los Angeles, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing in Los Angeles, where eager entertainment industry executives and filmmakers called for harsher penalties to prevent piracy, trade paper Variety reported. "Che" director Steven Soderbergh told the congressional committee that showbiz types like himself should be "deputized" to track down pirates on their own. What would socialist revolutionary Che Guevara think?

With Hollywood increasingly flexing its muscles to go after movie pirates, Friedman is one of many in the future who will be forced to walk the plank.

CBS’s stock may be in the tank (now under $4 a share),  but Chief Executive Les Moonves is still pretty darn optimistic. That may be because his network — home to the “CSI” franchise, “Survivor,” and “The Mentalist” — is the only one of the big four that’s been pulling in more prime-time viewers. For months it has been crushing ABC, NBC, and Fox in the ratings game.

What’s the payoff? CBS won’t have to make wholesale changes to its 2009-10 schedule and should be able to hang on to more advertising dollars than its rivals,  Moonves told an audience at the Deutsche bank Deutsche Bank Annual Media & Telecommunications Conference.

Moonves figures CBS will need to shoot six fewer pilots than it did a year ago, and bring only 2 or 3 new shows to air next season. He also says that with known hits — like “The Mentalist” — and few question marks about its schedule the network should fare well in this spring’s upfront market.

What’s more, if advertisers get too skittish, CBS will simply hold back inventory during negotiations, Moonves said. “”We’ve never been afraid to play the scatter game,” he said. “My guess is there will be a little less volume going into the upfront.”

Of course, CBS has also been burned by holding back inventory and betting on stronger prices later in the year for the scatter, or spot, market. Remember 2001’s upfront? CBS cut its inventory, bet on the scatter market, and was hurt when advertising fell apart that fall after the attacks of Sept 11.

Still, Moonves sounded confident. “We will not reduce our prices,” he declared.

And he wasn’t about to apologize for CBS’s programming choices, which some say are too vanilla. “Do we program for Middle America? Yeah.  We’ve heard for years that we have too many procedurals. But we’ll keep doing them until America tells us to stop doing them. All I know is we keep getting base hits. Our on base percentage is phenomenal.”

Keep an eye on:

• Microsoft Corp is testing a new version of its online search service internally under the name of Kumo.com (Reuters)
• Thomson Reuters Corp will launch a video news service in June for financial professionals who use its terminals, part of a $1 billion plan to appeal to a new generation of customers (Reuters)
• Live Nation posts wider loss on writedown, but sees healthy 2009 ticket sales (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

What are you doing Saturday? Nothing? Wrong! You’re going on the Fox Business Network and you’re going to ask them questions about your finances. Here are the relevant details from the press release:

FOX Business Network (FBN) will debut “Your Questions, Your Money Live,” a new weekly series presented every Saturday from 10 AM to 2 PM (ET) starting January 24, announced Kevin Magee, Executive Vice President, FOX News.

Hosted by FBN’s Dagen McDowell, “Your Questions, Your Money Live,” is a weekly four-hour live call-in show where viewers can talk to experts about the ongoing economic crisis and raise questions about personal finance issues.

This week’s edition will feature business leaders Larry Winget, bestselling author of “You’re Broke Because You Want To Be”; Pat Powell, Powell Financial Group President; Barry Habib, CEO of the Mortgage Market Guide; Dani Babb, author of “The Accidental Landlord,” John Rutledge, Chairman of the Rutledge Capital, Liz Pulliam Weston, author of “Easy Money” and Bill Isaac, former FDIC Chairman as part of the program’s panel of experts.

Yes, there are plenty of programs on TV and the radio that truck in the “You and Your Money” business. But if you are a Fox Business Network follower or care about any part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, it’s worth watching it experiment. Case in point: 10am-2pm was not a period when FBN was broadcasting live before, a spokeswoman said. Expansion time!