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Sex and the City success portends Sopranos movie (TWX)

Jon Ogg — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Launches, Consumer Experience, Competitive Strategy, Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and Advertising

It's no secret that 'Sex and the City' has been an overwhelming success. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie grossed $56,848,056 this last weekend. This is almost nothing more than found money for Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) as it gets to recycle its old content into a fresh new round of content, and it gets to do so at $8 to $10 per ticket. Add in the merchandise sales, future DVD sales, and the redistribution, and you have bonus bucks for the company.

So what's next? Seems pretty obvious to me.

'The Sopranos' was a monster success for Time Warner's HBO. As I noted last year before the finale of the Sopranos, "....it's hard to imagine "truly" killing off a major franchise...."

Tony lived at the end of the series, but it looked like a showdown over a bust or bloody restaurant shootout was imminent as the "leave you hanging" point for future releases.

The series has the same winning formula for success as Sex and the City: Characters that get talked about beyond the show, trend-setting themes, extreme audience loyalty, and so on.

Yep, this all points to Tony and whoever really is alive from the end of the season finale to head next to the big screen.

For Time Warner, the money is just too big and you don't have to be a mobster to do that math. Plus, this will be a movie that guys won't want to skip either. Don't fuggedaboutit...

Sex and the City success portends Sopranos movie (TWX) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'Sopranos' yard sale: same junk as any other yard sale in Jersey

Beth Gaston Moon — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:30:00 EST

Filed under: Television, Time Warner (TWX)

For those die-hard Sopranos fans that aren't still up in arms about last week's controversial season finale, you can enjoy the luxurious experience of heading to a warehouse in Queens to scoop up paraphernalia from the popular show's set. Furniture, rugs, lamps, books, and other items that decorated the Jersey-based sets will be available for purchase, but sources close to the show say the more "iconic" items won't be up for grabs.

What one defines as "iconic" is anybody's guess, but a Daily News reporter surmises that you probably won't be able to nab Tony's ubiquitous bathrobe or the soiled bowling-ball bag that once hid Ralphie's severed noggin. Paulie's velour track suits? One can only hope.

The sale kicked off Tuesday morning and will run through Monday.

As for the future of Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX)'s HBO network, rumors of a rush of cancellations have been running rampant, but there have yet to be any hard figures released. I'm willing to bet that many such threats were idle, and while HBO subscriptions might see a modest drop off with The Sopranos bidding arrivederci, plenty of viewers will remain loyal, due to laziness, tradition, loyalty, a desire to catch the big boxing matches when they air, or a deep admiration of Big Love's Bill Paxton. Well, the first four reasons are valid, at least...

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

'Sopranos' yard sale: same junk as any other yard sale in Jersey originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time Warner closing bell: Cleaning house after search mess

Victoria Erhart — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:06:00 EST

Filed under: After the Bell, Good news, Press Releases, Magazines, Competitive Strategy, Time Warner (TWX)

Time Warner stock today closed exactly where it opened, $16.50. Most of the Time Warner news centered around consequences from the recent data release/privacy violation debacle at AOL. Thus far, the person who released three months worth of search queries has been fired, as has that person's direct supervisor. Maureen Govern, AOL's chief technology officer, resigned.

In what I am certain is a completely unrelated piece of news, Time Warner signed James Gandolfini, aka Tony Soprano of The Sopranos, to a three year deal with HBO. Maybe Gandolfini will be the new privacy policy enforcement officer. In addition to his hit series (no pun intended) on HBO, Gandolfini will also develop at least one documentary for HBO, tentatively entitled Occupation Iraq. It wil center around the lives and stories of ordinary soldiers serving in Iraq.

Perhaps consumers need not worry so much about AOL's inadvertant search query data release. According to Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post, the single most queried term did not deal with porn. It was Google. In her August 17, 2006 article, Nakashima stated that AOL's data release is the "first widespread public glimpse of how people search the Internet." Despite the fact that AOL pulled the data from its site, and terminated its participation in the academic project that prompted the data release, the information has already been copied on www.dontdelete.com and other sites. From AOL's own research from the data, 15% of searches were categorized as "other," meaning they were too diverse to classify. Entertainment and shoppping searches figured prominently. Porn queries accounted for 7% of all search queries, a surprisingly low figure.

Not everyone is reading porn. Popular Science, owned by Time4 Media, has scored 16.5% increase in newsstand growth since the revamped design was launched in January 2006. Popular Science is the world's best selling science mag, with circulation in excess of 1.3 million. Online page views are up 50% and online subscriptions are up 70%.

Time Warner closing bell: Cleaning house after search mess originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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