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.

Are the Winter Olympics getting frozen out? Not exactly, but drumming up advertising and sponsorship dollars isn’t as easy as it used to be. Here’s how Andrew Benett, the global chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG, described what’s happening:  “You have a confluence of many factors happening here. One, winter versus summer. Two, a hangover from Beijing. And three, the economic times.”

Of those, the economic situation is the one that’s drawing away most of the money. Bank of America, General Motors, and Home Depot are just some of the big names that have dropped their sponsorship of the U.S. team.

But experts we spoke to also pointed to some broader problems facing the Winter Games. For one thing, behind the scenes, they say the IOC and USOC haven’t always been accommodating with the advertising community. For another, younger audiences (and thus advertisers) just aren’t that into some of the classic winter sports. It’s not that they don’t want to see athletes competing on the mountain — they would just prefer to watch them competing in newer, thrill sports like those of the X Games.

So, while the ugly economy — and Beijing hangover — may only be temporary problems, there are longer terms issues that must be tackled. And the stakes are high. Recall the International Olympic Committee, alone raises an estimated $4.5 billion from the combined sponsorship and global TV rights deals for every four-year period.

Keep an eye on:

• The Beatles take a step closer to selling their music online on Wednesday with the simultaneous release of the band’s re-mastered catalog and the MTV video game The Beatles: Rock Band (Reuters)
• Hollywood may have seen near record revenue from the box office this summer, but attendance was down and there were as many notable flops as hits (NY Times)
• AOL has appointed former Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse as president of its Web and mobile communications group (Reuters)

Filmmakers in Bollywood, India’s movie industry, are notorious for borrowing liberally from foreign films far and wide, especially Hollywood.

Even when they don’t copy an entire film frame by frame, Bollywood directors often borrow from several films at once, melding story lines and adapting them to an Indian setting, complete with song and dance. They do this, of course, without buying the remaking rights. Despite a lot of original cinema coming out of Bollywood, plagiarism is rife.

Hollywood hasn’t cared until now, The Washington Post’s Emily Wax reports. Twentieth Century Fox recently settled a lawsuit with BR Films — a well-known banner — over its remake of the 1992 hit “My Cousin Vinny.” Fox accepted $200,000, paving the way for a release of the Hindi version, called “Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai” or “This Guy is Fearless”.

The Times of London has reported that a lawyer representing major American studios has recently sent warning letters to producers who he believes are copying Hollywood films. Among the titles are “Ghostbusters”, “Jerry Maguire”, “The Departed” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, the paper reports.

Will Fox’s action finally put a stop to the widespread plagiarism in Bollywood? More likely, Bollywood producers will just have to cough up the money to buy remaking rights, which is how it should be.

Keep an eye on:

• Nokia plans to tackle Apple’s iPhone with a bet on Linux software. (Reuters)
• Channel 4 will drop Big Brother as it focuses more on public service broadcasting. (Financial Times)
• Alcatel-Lucent shares jump on rumors of Chinese bid. (Reuters)

Photo: www.moviegoods.com

What’s going to happen to MGM?

On Tuesday, the Hollywood studio announced it was replacing its chief executive Harry Sloan with a team that includes a turnaround expert. It’s a well-known fact that MGM, which is owned by private equity firms and Comcast, has struggled with a massive debt load. It has payments due on $3.7 billion of debt and the future isn’t looking too good, given the down market and shrinking DVD demand.

Media and entertainment industry analysts believe MGM won’t last much longer as an independent studio, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times:

Most industry watchers believe that MGM will not survive much longer as an independent studio and is likely to be sold to a bigger media company such as Time Warner Inc. or merged with another movie and TV studio like Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Qualia Capital, a private investment firm headed by Amir Malin and Ken Schapiro, is actively looking at MGM, said a person with knowledge of the situation.

Who else could be a buyer? There were rumors earlier that investor Carl Icahn, who is a major shareholder in Lions Gate, was buying up MGM’s debt in the open market with the intention of forcing a merger between the two studios.

Then, there’s Comcast, which already owns a stake in MGM and could potentially be interested in owning MGM’s rich content librabry, which includes the James Bond films. Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke recently wrote that investors worry that Comcast will make a splashy acquisition soon. Could this be it?

Keep an eye on:

• Travel Channel bids were due on Tuesday. Who’s going to buy it? (CNBC)
• Virtual cooking is a hit on Facebook. (Los Angeles Times)
• The New York Daily News bumped the Wall Street Journal off most-visited sites list. (Editor & Publisher)

Photo: Actor Daniel Craig. the current James Bond/Reuters

Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.

Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM’s 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors,  will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.

Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise’s ”Valkyrie”  in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with  lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.

Cooper,  well-known for  turning around big troubled companies Krispy Kreme and Enron, has been appointed to restructure MGM’s  balance sheet to enable Parent to make movies.

MGM is due next to release a remake of the 1980’s hit “Fame” and to start production on “Red Dawn” another remake, in September.

Sloan left a private law practice in 1983 and has been a media executive and investor since. He invested and ran three media companies, including SBS Broadcasting, Lions Gate Entertainment and New World Entertainment.

To say the film “Avatar” is eagerly awaited would be an understatement. The 3D film is 4 years in the making — twice as long as it took for director James Cameron to make the blockbuster “Titanic.” It is due to hit the screen in December, but fans who call some of his other works (”Aliens” and “Terminator 2″) sterling works of art (guilty, as charged) are itching to see a glimpse of the film. What better way to do that than at E3, the video game conference in Los Angeles this week, since there is a sister video game also in the works, right?

Wrong. Cameron gave a very (very very) detailed description of the (mildly complicated ) flick, which all seemed to set the table for a butt-kicking clip, a must-see trailer. But none was forthcoming. Not even a clip of the game, which is developed by Ubisoft.

Strange behavior at a show — E3, the annual Video Game conference — whose every briefing, bar none, includes some kind of glossy video of cinematic or real-game action.

Check out the video above, as Cameron describes part of “Avatar”, including his vision that the battle at the end of the film is “the mother of all battle.” I guess I’ll have to wait to see it.

Not so fast Mr. Icahn. Lions Gate Entertainment is trying to defend itself against famed financier Carl Icahn by hiring an advisory team, including investment bank Morgan Stanley and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz.

It also is in talks to offer a board seat to Mark Rachesky of MHR Fund Management, the studio’s largest shareholder.

Icahn controls 14.5 percent of Lions Gate’s shares and wants to increase his sway, seemingly because he’s frustrated with things like costs and the company’s decision to buy the TV Guide cable channel.

All this has set up a potential proxy fight – perhaps a nasty one.

Who is the smart money on? Hard to tell. Icahn is an old hand at these things, but given Lions Gate’s moves on Tuesday — it also hired Joele Frank Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, a public relations firm that built a reputation advising companies involved in hostile deals – it looks like they aren’t about to back down.

A showdown could be coming.

Keep an eye on:

• Discovery Communications  has sued Amazon.com, accusing the online retailer’s Kindle of infringing its patent on electronic book technology (Reuters)
• Hollywood labor leaders are considering sending out strike-authorization ballots unless negotiations with advertisers on a new commercials contract improve quickly (The Hollywood Reporter)

(Photo: Reuters)

Picture this: An Apple 10-inch touchscreen netbook. And hold that image for at least a little longer.

Rumors have swirled this week that Apple could announce a touchscreen PC, but it instead unveiled early on Wednesday a revamped iPod shuffle. Here are the details from the press release, headlined “Apple Announces Incredible New iPod Shuffle”…

The third generation iPod shuffle is significantly smaller than a AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use with all of the controls conveniently located on the earphone cord. With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle features a gorgeous new aluminum design with a built-in stainless steel clip that makes it ultra-wearable… The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle is now shipping and comes in silver or black for a suggested price of $79

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Apple isn’t developing a touchscreen netbook. Reuters and others have quoted sources saying Taiwan’s touchscreen specialist Wintek has received orders for the screens that are  are roughly the same size as those used in mini PCs.

And here’s what the Wall Street Journal reported:

Some people familiar with the matter say the device is a netbook, an inexpensive, shrunken notebook computer. Netbooks have been a growth segment for the PC market over the last year.

Other people close to Apple, however, say the device will be more like an iPod Touch with a bigger screen that will make it easier to watch movies, play videogames, read electronic books and surf the Internet.

Anyway, how about that new shuffle? Apparently it can speak to you in 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Swedish!!! Incredible!

Keep an eye on:

• Walt Disney Co shareholders rejected a proposal that would have given them say on executive pay packages, with some investors appearing to favor the idea that the board of directors alone should negotiate executive contracts (Reuters)
• Hollywood-based hardliners in the Screen Actors Guild are pressing to put the major studios’ latest contract offer to a vote by union rank and file in a move seen as possibly paving the way for a strike authorization (Reuters)
• Sony Pictures is cutting 350 positions, or about 3.5 percent of the Hollywood studio’s workforce (Reuters)

(Photo courtesy of apple.com)

Here’s the latest on Sumner Redstone: On CBS’s earnings call he reiterated that negotiations with lenders regarding National Amusements’ debt situation were moving forward.

“We are making very good progress with our creditors, and as I have also said before, we have not, since our original sale, sold a single share of CBS or Viacom, and our lenders are not urging us to do so,” he said.

He also told investors that the CBS dividend cut — they slashed it by 82 percent to 5 cents — wouldn’t mean a thing as far as National Amusements’ debt talks go (How the dividend cut will impact Redstone himself is another matter. Last year, he took home more than $80 million in dividend payments).

“Now with respect to the CBS dividend, I can tell you that the topic has been discussed with the lenders, and it will not impact the successful conclusion of the discussions. So that’s the update, and again, because of the ongoing nature of the discussions, I must decline to further comment,” he said.

Redstone may not be commenting further, but there is certainly some chatter about what’s happening with National Amusements. People familiar with the matter tell us that National Amusements is close to putting several hundred movie theaters up for sale.

Here’s the upshot:

An official sales prospectus on the theater chain is expected to go out any day now and bankers are reaching out to potential buyers to get them to sign confidentiality agreements, the sources said.

All U.S. theaters except those in the New England region are expected to go on sale, along with theaters in Latin America and possibly those in the United Kingdom. The theaters in Russia will be excluded from the sale, the sources said.

National Amusements operates more than 1,500 movie screens in these countries. The New England region and Russia account for roughly 300 screens. Citigroup Inc will handle the sale, the people said.

A sale could help National Amusements pay off the $800 million in bank loans it has due — or at least part of the payment. Analysts figure the theater chain could fetch up to $500-700 million. It’ll be up to Redstone to figure out how to make those numbers work.

Keep an eye on:

• Walt Disney Co will streamline some behind-the-scenes operations, including menu planning and ride design, at its two U.S. theme parks to try to offset the effects of the global economic downturn (Reuters)
• Entertainment industry jobs in the Los Angeles area will fall further in 2009 after an annual decline in 2008, according to a research report (Reuters)
• The New York Post faced widespread criticism for a cartoon it published that some say compares President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee (WSJ.com).

Because of a big upcoming debt payment — and a stock price of about 14 cents a share — Sirius XM Satellite Radio finds itself in quite a predicament.

This, apparently, hasn’t been lost on EchoStar’s Charles Ergen, who may be getting ready to take over the company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ergen has recently acquired part of a $300 million tranche of Sirius debt that matures on Feb. 17: “Sirius recently converted part of the debt to equity, reducing the total debt outstanding to about $175 million. It isn’t clear whether Mr. Ergen participated in the exchange, however. Mr. Ergen could also be buying up senior bank debt, due in May, which trades thinly on the over-the-counter market.”

Given all this, we now offer some food for thought:

1. How does Sirius XM’s Mel Karmazin feel about all this? After all, he is a well-known dealmaker. Is he ready to sell? Ergen could be doing him a favor.
2. If this does pave the way for an EchoStar takeover, would such a deal even make sense? Is there any business wisdom in combining satellite radio and satellite TV?
3. And where would such a deal leave Karmazin? Satellite radio has been his baby, would he leave the game altogether? If not, then how could he work with Ergen? Remember, Karmazin and Sumner Redstone? Not exactly a match made in Heaven.

Keep an eye on:

• Hollywood may at last be having its Napster moment — struggling against the video version of the digital looting that capsized the music business (NY Times)
• Warner Music Group posted better-than-expected results on Thursday, despite falling CD sales and slower growth in digital revenue (Reuters)
• Online DVD company Netflix Incon said one million Microsoft Xbox 360 video game console users have activated Netflix’s movie streaming service in the three months since the two companies formed a partnership (Reuters)

(Photo: Sirius XM Chief Executive Mel Karmazin/Reuters)