At Europe’s biggest video games convention in Leipzig last week, evidence of a distinctive European flavour was largely absent, apart from in karaoke-style titles such as Activision’s Guitar Hero or Sony’s SingStar and sports games.
    Music from local bands and singers is a necessity for these titles, and the new World Tour edition of Guitar Hero delivered it in the form of artists such as Germany’s emo-lite Tokio Hotel, Swedish rockers Kent and Spanish 80s classic Radio Futura.
    Sony offered a more unusual twist with a Turkish Party edition of SingStar for release in Germany in November, to capitalise on the country’s large Turkish population as well as nostalgic holidaymakers.
    In the case of sports games, a title such the next annual revamp of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer is understandably expected to sell better in Europe than the United States.
    But outside these two genres, industry executives struggled to pin down differences. Konami’s head of Europe, Kunio Neo, noted that Europeans did not take to games with manga-style graphics as readily as gamers in the company’s Japanese homeland. Konami also said it expected one game in development, Lords of Shadow, to appeal particularly to European sensibilities — early artwork leans heavily on director Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth, which was set in Spain.
    Neo’s counterpart at Electronic Arts, Jens Uwe Intat, made similar claims for Mirror’s Edge, which he said had a high-end aesthetic which he hoped would be particularly successful in Europe.
    But Intat in general saw little difference between what made a hit game in Europe compared to the United States.
    “With the exception of American football all franchises that work in the U.S. work in Europe too — though as in the movie industry you see slightly different top tens,” he told Reuters just before the start of the Leipzig event.
    Yet critics can easily point to distinctive traditions of French, Italian and British film alongside Hollywood and Japanese movies, which has no equivalent in video games. Why do you think this is? Does it bother you?

How tough are things at General Motors?

Not only has the car maker scaled back on its advertising budget, but now it wants the ad agencies it works with to cut their fees by as much as 20 percent this year and next, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

It’s no surprise GM has pulled back on some marketing — just look at any figures over the past year. It’s not like anybody else in Detroit is going gangbusters with their spending either — Ford and Chrysler have also cut their spend, data from TNS shows.

But the WSJ article underscores the risks to the advertising and media industry posed by the meltdown in Detroit. Car makers, after all, are huge clients for advertising agencies. The money they spend also fuels revenue for the media companies that carry the advertisements, from television to print and beyond.

Here’s what the article says about the GM move:

“The owner of Cadillac and Chevrolet works with dozens of agencies around the country, including Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett and Interpublic Group’s McCann Erickson and Campbell-Ewald.

Several ad executives familiar with GM say the cuts could translate into more than $20 million in total savings for General Motors, but likely will mean layoffs for the agencies involved.”

If GM gets its way, you can bet others will be clamoring to follow suit.

Keep an eye on: 

• Warner Music Group posted a smaller quarterly loss as improved sales in Europe softened the effects of the slowdown in the global music industry (Reuters)
• Google has sold Performics, the search agency it got in the acquisition of DoubleClick, to Publicis Groupe (AdAge)
• A flurry of films arriving in North American theaters between now and September are opening on a Wednesday — long considered a moviegoing dead zone — as studios seek to build early buzz for movies ahead of the traditional Friday dash to the multiplex (Reuters)
• LA Times, which has struggled of late, is posting some solid traffic gains on its Reader’s Representative Journal blog (paidContent.org)

(Photo: Reuters)

We’re once again wondering who will blink first in Hollywood.

The Screen Actors Guild and the major firm and television studios are having another pow-wow today, and the subject is an ominous sounding “final offer” that management has presented to the union.

As we have seen, the talks so far haven’t gotten around the same sticky issues that prompted a strike this winter by the Writers Guild of America strike. So a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the studios doesn’t sound too promising if the entertainment biz is to avoid another strike.

But wait! SAG executive director and chief negotiator, Doug Allen, suggested on the eve of his union’s formal response that the door to further deal-making remained open. He had this to say in an interview with Reuters:

“I don’t know that those categorical statements are always to be taken at face value,” he told Reuters. “In fact, somebody from the WGA told me they got a total of 10 final offers from the AMPTP (during their talks). So we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the studios may be looking at a slight change in strategy. It reports:

“The studios, fearing SAG leadership might drag negotiations on through the union’s elections in September, are considering adopting a more aggressive strategy. The producers have discussed the possibility of publicly asking SAG leadership to allow its members to vote on the current deal or declaring an impasse in the talks, which would allow them to implement parts of the current offer.”

Keep an eye on:

• In a CNBC television interview, Sumner Redstone says his daughter is no longer the company’s heir apparent and that she will leave the Viacom board as part of an agreement he had reached with her (NY Times)
• Financial news and data company Bloomberg LP is creating several new units as part of a reorganization that includes a shuffling of top management (Reuters)
• Interpublic Group, the advertising services company, named Matt Seiler as global chief executive of its Universal McCann media buying agency as part of a broader shake-up (Reuters)
• Yahoo will let customers, academics and even rivals build customized Web search services on top of its own technology, introducing a resale model into a major Internet market where it ranks a distant No. 2 to Google (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

The Screen Actors Guild ran an ad in the local paper on Wednesday seeking better labor terms. We’re not talking about the L.A. Times here, but rather the Idaho Mountain Express, straight out of Sun Valley, Idaho, where Hollywood’s elite are bumping shoulders at the annual Allen & Co conference.

SAG was dealt a blow late Tuesday when another smaller Hollywood union ratified a new prime-time TV contract.  SAG’s contract talks stalemated last week over some of the same issues that led to a 14-week screenwriters’ strike that paralyzed Hollywood and centered on disagreements over how union talent should be paid for work created for the Internet.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists won final approval despite an unusual all-out campaign by SAG to vote down the AFTRA accord. A “no” vote would have given SAG more leverage to negotiate a more favorable settlement with studios.

So why the ad in Idaho? Here’s what Screen Actors Guild National President and National Negotiating Committee Chair Alan Rosenberg said in a release:

This media conference is the place where significant deals get made.  We wanted to remind the entertainment media leaders in attendance that there is another important deal to be made.  Actors are the creative heart of the entertainment business, and our Screen Actors Guild members want to partner with our industry to invest in and share the rewards of our mutual digital future. Let’s keep talking and let’s make a fair deal.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

The countdown is underway in Hollywood, with just hours to go before the contract covering 120,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild expires. What happens next is anybody’s guess, though it would be some time before actors walked off the job.

Indeed, SAG president Alan Rosenberg said in a statement that it had “taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote” and that any speculation was “simply a distraction.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes that several options are left for the guild and the studios. “They could negotiate a contract extension, which could be by day, week or month, and keep talking; the studios could lock out the actors; or SAG could seek a strike-authorization vote from its membership, which will be at least a two-week process as the negotiating committee must vote on whether to bring a strike.”

SAG’s contract talks have bogged down on some of the same issues that prompted the strike by screenwriters, who walked off the job late last year and stayed away for months.

In the meantime, most film production has already shut down since the studios don’t want the risk of their projects being interrupted by a strike, Variety reports. It said that “TV production has also ratcheted down but not stopped completely.”

This all sounds very, very familiar.

Keep an eye on:

• Sony Pictures’ latest ”Hancock” opens in theaters on Wednesday and will be available –after its theater run but before release on DVD — over the Internet, directly to viewers’ television sets, if they own a Sony Bravia TV with a Web connection (NY Times)
• Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia lowered its U.S. ad spending forecast, predicting that ad spending in the U.S. will increase 3.4% in 2008. That figure is down from a 3.7% forecast Zenith made in March (WSJ.com)
• MTV is expected to unveil a $50 million push into selling downloadable songs in the open source, iPod-friendly format through its Rhapsody digital-music service (NY Post)
• Marc Andreessen, who founded Netscape, Opsware and Ning, is joining Facebook’s board of directors (TechCrunch)
• Jon Friedman rolls out his nominees for the 10 most intriguing media industry headlines so far in 2008 (MarketWatch.com)

Did the strike hurt NBC’s wallet?

In a first quarter where scripted programming was severely limited by the effects of the lengthy Hollywood writers strike, NBC Universal managed to boost its revenue by 3 percent to $3.58 billion, and increase it profit also by 3 percent. But it fell far short of its target of 5-10 percent profit growth.

The truth is, NBC was a bright spot in a surprisingly weak quarterly financial report of parent General Electric, whose overall results were hurt by the soft economy. GE has so far said little about the catalyst or troubles of its media arm which has been struggling since favorites “Friends” and “Frasier” ended their runs four years ago and faces particularly intense pressure to rebound. NBC could again finish the season last in the ratings race behind Fox, ABC and CBS.

It’s possible the profit and revenue gains were the result of cost-cutting. Or, despite Bruce Springsteen’s assertion that there are “57 Channels and Nothin’ On”, maybe TV lovers, you know, love TV, no matter what is on — even if it is a never-ending stream of reality programs such as “Deal or No Deal” and “The Apprentice.”

Fortune suggests that the results may fuel cries for GE to spin off or sell its media holdings.

(Reuters)

UPDATE: Here’s what GE executives said about NBC Universal on the conference call they held with investors Friday morning:

• Its shows have been performing pretty well and NBC prime time is on track to finish number two.
• Local ad spending was down 11 percent, “an indicator that it’s tough out there.”
• In cable, “USA was No. 1 for the seventh consecutive quarter.”
• MSNBC had its highest-rated quarter in six years.
• Ratings at CNBC Business Day were the highest in seven years
• Film “had a very strong quarter,” and operating profit was up, principally driven by the this year’s DVDs.

Keep an eye on:

• Yahoo may have played its top two cards by pulling out possible deals with AOL and Google, but it does not seem to have changed Wall Street’s view that Microsoft will eventually win the takeover battle. (Reuters)
• Blockbuster is developing a set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets and is expected to announce the offering sometime this month. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Facebook has hit 70 million users. It still trails MySpace, but is growing fast: Last summer, Facebook hit 30 million active users. (AlleyInsider)
• Is Katie Couric simply overpaid? (Time)

(Photo: Reuters)

Too little too late, at least for 2008. Hollywood’s long awaited decision to back a winner in the single next-generation DVD wars didn’t come fast enough to stem a further decline in DVD sales this year, according to Pali Research’s Richard Greenfield.Greenfield now expects consumer spending on DVDs to fall 4 to 5 percent this year, compared to a 2 percent decline in 2007, despite an anticipated tripling of Blu-ray DVD sales this year. Blu-ray won’t start slowing the decline until 2009-2010.Slowing sales of older titles, Wal-Mart’s decision to clean up its aisles by eliminating “dump bins” of discounted titles, and anticipated Internet service bandwidth increases that could boost piracy of video are also expected to pressure sales of physical media.Perhaps there is still time for DVD and Blu-ray to make nice with consumers. Sony’s U.S. chief said consumers prefer physical discs to Internet delivery, and that it could take a decade before downloading hits its stride.(Photos: Reuters / This is what they do to pirated DVDs in Bucharest.)

Its a (media) heavyweight battle: IAC’s Barry Diller vs Liberty Media’s John Malone.Not since former Disney chief Michael Eisner and one-time Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz squared off has the media industry seen as contentious a battle as the one we’re about to witness in Delaware on Monday as Diller and Malone fight in court over control.Long-time business partners are dueling over Diller’s move to break up the company in a plan that would eliminate IAC’s dual class share structure, which gives Malone’s Liberty some 62 percent of the company’s voting power. Under a longstanding agreement, Diller has been able to vote Liberty’s stake. Liberty now says IAC has breached that agreement by going against Liberty’s wishes.PaidContent posted a copy of Diller’s pre-battle message to troops.Eleventh-hour settlement hopes ahead of the trial have largely been dashed. Although there is still about a hour to go before the trial starts. Citing unnamed sources, NY Post says these talks are likely to continue through the week.Let the games begin.(Reuters)Keep an eye on:

• The hair-twirling, the fidgeting, the interjections. BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy learns how not to do an interview with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, when the crowd at South by Southwest Interactive turns on her. (News.com)
• Top six U.S. cable operators aim to spend $150 million to create a jointly owned company to court advertisers on a national scale. (NYTimes)
• Facebook, en Francais. (Reuters)
• MySpace’s talks with music industry heats up, considers launching service without Universal Music Group. (FT)

(Photo: Reuters)