Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for Jon Stewart.
Stewart, whose "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" returned to the air yesterday, has been supportive of the striking writers. Nonetheless, he apparently is annoyed with the Writers Guild of America. During his show, Stewart mentioned that his production company tried to reach the same deal with the guild that David Letterman's Worldwide Pants received and was turned down.
Apparently, the guild wants to present a united front against the media conglomerates, including Comedy Central's corporate parent Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), Walt Disney Co.(NYSE: DIS)'s ABC, General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)'s NBC and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX). That's why Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel are being forced to appear as guests on each other's programs and why the Golden Globes were canceled by NBC.
InterActive Corp. (NYSE: IACI) seems to be following the herd with this week's announcement of a comedy news channel that sounds very similar to Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The new IAC property, titled 23/6, will partner with liberal political site the Huffington Post and will be in full comedic charge of satirizing the news with humor interlaced throughout all moments.
Bloggers from the Huffington Post as well as comedy writers from The Daily Show and The Simpsons will be part of the cast, so expect some funny moments from the new network. 23/6 joins a growing roster of online and television networks and series dedicated to taking normal (and highly predictable) news and turning a spin on those stories to keep the bay of reality, well, away from the mind of the normal consumer. At least, that's my two cents here.
I especially like 23/6's planned "Monolog-o-tron," which will be an online tool for generating your own talk show using drop-down menus on a website. That's a shot at Letterman and Leno and my guess is that it won't be the last one taken. With a whole new generation taking to the web for news and satire instead of played late-night shows, this could very well be another great hit for Barry Diller's IAC.
Fans of Comedy Central's left-leaning The Daily Show (this means you, Mom and Dad), rejoice! Jon Stewart will remain the show's host through at least 2010. The affable anchor has signed a two-year contract extension that keeps him in the employ of the Viacom (NYSE: VIA) network through 2010. His previous contract was set to expire at the end of next year.
In other news, fans of Stewart can review his Daily career, beginning in 1999, as Comedy Central has launched a standalone website for the program, featuring video clips dating back to January 11, 1999, when Stewart first took over the reins. Seriously, does anyone remember when rigid pretty-boy Craig Kilborn hosted the thing? It seems now as though The Daily Show and Stewart were simultaneously formed. The website also features episode synopses, games, and additional features.
Stewart will also continue to serve in a executive producing and writing role.
In addition to South Park, The Daily Show is the cable network's longest-running original series that is still on the air. It spawned a very successful spin-off -- The Colbert Report -- which itself may have spawned our next Commander in Chief. Referring to Colbert's (fake?) declaration of his candidacy earlier this week, Stewart was quoted by The Associated Press as joking: "I look forward to using this [contract] extension to having great fun at President Colbert's expense."
Net income was $434 million, or 63 cents per share, compared with $437 million, or 61 cents, the New York-based company said in a press release. Revenue rose 13% to $3.19 billion. Excluding gains and charges, profit was 54 cents. Analysts had expected earnings of 50 cents on revenue of $3.07 billion, according to Thomson Financial.
Advertising revenue rose 6% to $1.15 billion while affiliate fees jumped 15% to $577 million. Though profit was hurt by higher costs, revenue from its cable channels rose 10 percent to $1.92 billion, helped by a gain on the sale of MTV Networks' investment in Russia and an impairment charge from Amp'd Mobile.
Strong box office receipts from its Dreamworks SKG films "Shrek the Third" and "Over the Hedge" helped push up revenue in the Filmed Entertainment business by 20% to $1.31 billion. David Jones, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co., told Bloomberg News that the unit outperformed his expectations by about $100 million.
Shares of Viacom are down more than 7% this year as investors continue to worry about who will succeed chairman Sumner Redstone who reportedly is feuding now with his daughter Shari.
"Revenue was better than expected because filmed entertainment outperformed by about $100 million or so,'' David Joyce, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, said in an interview. He has a "buy'' rating on the shares and doesn't own them.
USA Today's tech-guy Edward C. Baig took a look at Joost, a website where people can watch television with other fans. Think of it as an expansion of what G4's TNG 2.0 is all about just without the middleman - a television.
Joost lets you watch various full-length television shows free on a computer. The difference - you watch with other people. You get to build a community around the show, chatting and sending instant messages while watching your favorite full-length episodes. At the moment, the site lacks any live programming so users will have to deal with a limited library of old shows: from black-and-white Lassie to Comedy Central's Stella. Some time this summer CBS Corp (NYSE: CBS) is promising episodes of its CSI franchise and Survivor.
This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.
The battle between CNN and Fox News isn't a question of liberals and conservatives. That debate was settled long ago and the conservatives won.
News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) makes a ton of money from Fox News, which continues to dominate. Its ratings have rebounded after slipping last year. CNN parent Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) launched Headline Prime in 2005 as a Fox without Bill O'Reilly, complete with rabid right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck.
One night for fun, I decided to compare O'Reilly and Beck. Boy was I lucky. I picked a night to DVR their shows when both hosts were at the the top of their games.
On his program, Beck railed against all sorts of people bent on destroying the America, including filmmaker Michael Moore, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, and pop star Elton John.
Elton John? Rocket Man? I was shocked too.
Apparently, Sir Elton is the "high priest of hypocrisy," according to Beck. The singer had a 60th birthday party at St. John the Divine, a big church in New York. Seems John, who has little use for religion, made some changes to the church building for the concert, including removing the pews. To make matters worse, John showed a background of a burning church at his show the next day at Madison Square Garden. Oh yeah, that was on a Sunday.
All of this was too much for the talk show host to take.
"If he wants to drop a few million to desecrate your church than who am I to judge, right? Wrong!" he said of the pop star.
Viacom chose Google rival Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) for a multiyear search advertising deal on almost three dozen Viacom web sites. Though this won't make much of a dent in Google's overwhelming market dominance, this deal is too important for Google to ignore.
Yahoo! has the option to extend that agreement to include search activity and text advertising all Viacom's properties, which includes an additional 140 sites. That's more than 175 sites that Yahoo! could be displaying relevant text ads on -- the same magic formula that Google has employed to build itself into being the kingpin of all online advertising.
The numbers do hold some pretty decent figures, though. Traffic to Viacom's Nickelodeon website (www.nick.com) and ComedyCentral.com each had roughly 10 million unique visitors in March. Add a few more top-performing websites into that mix and Yahoo!'s presence in serving text ads at those properties starts to look significant, yes?
Question for people who post large chunks of their favorite TV shows on YouTube: do you think you're going to get sued?
Now that Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA) is suing Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) for $1 billion that's not a far-fetched scenario. Google has tried and failed to cut deals with other big content providers. Unless Google pulls off a miracle, it's probably a matter of time before another big media company joins Viacom and another one after that
Although people hated the music industry's campaign against Napster and other file-sharing services, the message got out that you should pay for music that you download. Why is video sharing any different? Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban, a critic of YouTube, called the site "a haven for pirates." It's hard to disagree.
It took me 20, maybe 30 seconds surfing YouTube clips from "Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report." "American Idol", "Lost" and" Family Guy" that would probably give lawyers from big media a fit. Reuters came to the same conclusion. YouTube can be that oblivious.
Many of the YouTube clips I found were multi-minute chunks of hit shows. They were the funny moments, the highlights that fans enjoy. Some were as long as 15 minutes. Media companies would be insane to give that away for free. How is that legal?
Legal experts are divided over whether Viacom has a case against Google, according to The New York Times. The safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may offer Google protection against people posting videos they don't own. As Melly Alazarki pointed out yesterday, the DMCA was enacted during the Internet's Stone Age. Copyright holders have to flag objectionable content and ask sites like YouTube to take it down.
By the time that happens, the illegal content has spread to every corner of the Web. Remember it was still wrong to post other people's conent in the first place.
Some sort of balance has to be struck that doesn't stifle creativity and respects the rights of copyright holders. But if YouTube is to survive, it will have to figure a way to stop pirated content and punish those who post it.
There are many of us who are guilty of the following scenario - miss Al Gore on The Daily Show? Or need just one more shot of Justin Timberlake bringing sexy back to the Video Music Awards? Hop on over to YouTube, and you will most certainly find satisfaction.
Today, Viacom (NYSE:VIA), the parent of MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and other major networks, is tired of this pattern. The conglomerate has sued Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and its YouTube unit for more than $1 billion, citing unauthorized use of copyrighted material.
In addition to more than $1 billion in damages, the suit, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks an injunction against further violations. VIA alleges that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of company-owned programming has been uploaded onto YouTube and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
GOOG representatives have so far failed to comment. The stock has dropped nearly one percent in trading so far today; VIA shares have gained nearly one percent.
Kudos to a reader named Kathleen for pointing out that we missed "vetted" in our list of the most overused buzzwords. I also agree with her that the mashing together of celebrity couple names like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Brangelina) has got to stop.
We probably should have vetted our buzzword list with Kathleen (who didn't give her last name) before publishing it. Vetted, like all buzzwords, is a fancy-sounding word that describes something simple. It started out meaning reviewing or checking out for accuracy as in the qualifications of a nominee for a cabinet position on an article for scientific journal. Now, it's being bandied about to describe every type of review. For example, officials in Louisville are vetting a dog ordinance. When words like vetting get overused, their original meaning becomes diluted.
Finally, please dear God, when will the name mashing madness end? I mean first there was Bennifer, now Brangelina. I think Stephen Colbert created the ultimate celebrity couple when he merged William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman into Filliam H. Muffman. With the 2008 presidential election gearing up, I'm afraid the name mashing will only get worse. I'll get the process started with Hillbama (Hillary Cilnton and Barack Obama).
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for Jon Stewart.
Fans of Comedy Central's left-leaning The Daily Show (this means you, Mom and Dad), rejoice! Jon Stewart will 
If the current tussle between 
There are many of us who are guilty of the following scenario - miss Al Gore on The Daily Show? Or need just one more shot of Justin Timberlake bringing sexy back to the Video Music Awards? Hop on over to YouTube, and you will most certainly find satisfaction. 
Before the bell: Wall Street headed higher; automakers, retailers in focus
Waiting for the other shoe to drop: The looming credit crisis
Bet on T&A with J&J (JNJ)
