Through the Wire
by Linda Haugsted, Todd Spangler and R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 2/2/2009 2:00:00 AM
Tyler Perry Digs Koonin But Isn’t Keen on WGA
Writer-producer-actor Tyler Perry is adamant about more than a few things: He loves working with “crazy” Turner Networks president Steve Koonin, he won’t take notes from studios because he knows his audience best and he won’t join the Writers Guild of America. Not ever.
At a NATPE conference panel in Las Vegas last week, Perry made it clear he’s still irked over a dust-up with the writer’s union as he formed his 34th Street Studios in Atlanta last year. Perry said he’d negotiated deals with other unions such as the Screen Actors Guild prior to his conclusion with the WGA, adding the other unions provided contract concessions to him as a start-up studio. But before the WGA talks could be concluded, four writers on his House of Payne show were let go. They went to the union alleging he fired them for trying to unionize. A picket line by the union marred the grand opening of his studio complex.
Perry said he eventually got his WGA concessions, but he’s still surprised about how nasty the process became. Because of that, even as his shows have become WGA signatories, he personally will never become a member of the union, he said.
But he can still write on House of Payne and Meet the Browns because “it’s my show,” he smiled.
He praised Koonin, calling him “crazy” because he took a gamble on Meet the Browns when the producer couldn’t sell the show. He self-financed the 10 episodes that TBS ran. Koonin gave Perry an unprecedented 80-episode order when most networks give shows six- or 12-episode orders. Shows don’t have a chance to get going in that amount of time, he said.
In an aside, Perry noted this was his first “legal” visit to NATPE. Before he became a media mogul, he worked at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, the former home of NATPE conventions. He used to pick badges out of the trash and go on the show floor on the final days to check out the content, he admitted.
Hulu Teed Up For TV Debut
Hulu — a poster child for “new” TV — was set for a monster marketing kick on “old” TV. The fast-growing video site planned to launch an ad campaign sometime during NBC’s Super Bowl telecast, typically the largest TV event of the year.
“During Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday, look for the launch of Hulu’s ad campaign. Finally, we’ll reveal the secret behind Hulu,” said an e-mail the company sent to reporters last week.
A Super Bowl 30-second spot was going for upward of $3 million. And while one of Hulu’s daddies is NBC Universal, the venture paid for the spot — it wasn’t included in the 5 minutes NBC set aside to promote its own shows, according to The New York Times. (Of course, there may have been some kind of friends-and-family rate.)
By the time you read this, the spot will have aired, but leading up to the Tampa festivities Hulu wasn’t saying anything more about its Super spot. Reps wouldn’t even tell us which quarter the ad was slated to run in. (Check Multichannel.com for info on Hulu’s old-TV debut.) Allegedly, most Hulu staffers had not even seen the ad before game time.
Which recalls an old joke: How do you keep an idiot in suspense? I’ll tell you tomorrow.
It’s Hard Keeping Up With Gosselins
Publicists for TLC were besieged last week with calls from Los Angeles area television and online news outlets trying to get access to the Gosselin family of TLC’s popular reality series Jon & Kate Plus Eight.
The reason? The press outlets were looking for reaction from Jon and Kate Gosselin — as well as their eight siblings — to the recent birth of healthy octuplets to an unidentified woman at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif.
TLC spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said the network tried to fulfill as many requests as possible, but found the task difficult to say the least. “Trying to coordinate 10 people at the same time is never easy,” she pointed out.
Even Less Appetite For Paid Web Fare
With the economy getting worse, consumers are even less interested in paying for content on the Web, Deloitte Consulting found in research that came out at NATPE in Las Vegas last week.
A year ago, 37% of respondents said they were willing to pay for Web content. That dropped to 26% in this year’s survey, which included respondents from the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, Germany and Japan. A majority of those respondents said that television is still the most influential media, but the report indicated that mobile advertising is an up-and-coming category.
The survey also indicated content vendors will have less pricing flexibility going forward, too. In 2007, 60% of respondents said $25 a year for content was reasonable. This year, only 56% said that was a good price.
Discussing the findings, Diane Robina, president of Comcast’s emerging networks, predicted much more content will be delivered free on the Internet, with content providers forced to find the advertising support model that works, whether it is super-short ads or product integration. Producers may have to harken back to the “Golden Age” of television when a sponsor supported a whole show, such as Philip Morris’s sponsorship of I Love Lucy.
Robina added Comcast’s Web sites “get a lot of eyeballs” but the company is still trying to figure out how to make money off that traffic.
Deloitte also said 46% of all television viewing is now filtered through a DVR; a third of all respondents now use cell phones for entertainment; and a third of time spent online by viewers is spend watching user-generated videos. Family and friends’ recommendations influence 25% of those user-generated video viewings.
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