Kristen Stewart topless (no implied crap) in upcoming On The Road (2012)
(confirmation will come later this week at Cannes Film Festival. It will be her first real nude scenes. The percentage of female child stars performing nude scenes in their adults is pretty high. Some still resist the temptation. Looking at you, Anna Chlumsky)
How 'On The Road' Slashed Kristen Stewart's $20 Million Paycheck and Finally Made it to Screen
Marlon Brando turned it down, Mexican drug wars nearly derailed it, and Francis Ford Coppola never got to direct it -- but the "Twilight" superstar trimmed her fee to less than $200K for director Walter Salles, and Jack Kerouac's beat-generation novel finally made it to the screen.
On the Road began its troubled progression to film with an unanswered prayer to Marlon Brando. "Dear Marlon," wrote Beat novelist Jack Kerouac in a 1957 letter, "I'm praying that you'll buy On the Road and make a movie of it. Don't worry about structure; I know how to compress and rearrange the plot a bit … making it into one all-inclusive trip instead of the several voyages coast-to-coast in the book." He added: "You play Dean, and I'll play Sal. … Come on now, Marlon, put up your dukes and write!"
Brando never responded.
Fifty-one years later, at the end of 2008, Walter Salles had his own On the Road dream shattered.
"We were about to be greenlit when the American financial system imploded," says the director. French financier Pathe wanted to drastically cut the $35 million budget for his adaptation of Kerouac's generation-defining novel.
Producer Rebecca Yeldham, who oversaw another road-trip movie with Salles -- 2004's The Motorcycle Diaries, about a young Che Guevara's pan-American trek -- was devastated when she heard the news. "The movie was so close, and we had this beautiful cast," she says. "We were doing everything we could to reduce costs and retain Walter's vision, but we realized we weren't on the same page [as Pathe]. It was a very deflating moment."
"It was a question of integrity," insists the director. "We couldn't responsibly do the film."
More than a half-century after Kerouac wrote Brando, three decades after producer Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights and four years after Salles became attached, one of the longest-gestating pictures in history was dead.
Or so Salles thought. With the kind of luck almost every indie needs, the director was in Paris discussing other potential movies with Nathanael Karmitz and Charles Gillibert of MK2 Productions when they asked if he had any passion projects. Well, yes, he said, Sur La Route. Karmitz and Gillibert's response: "Let's do it."
Talks commenced, and exactly two years ago at Cannes, Salles got his greenlight. But that "yes" didn't make it easy. It took herculean effort to reduce the budget to the mid-$20 million range, the minimum Salles thought would work.
Then he had to persuade the cast he'd selected in 2007 to stay on board. Britain's Sam Riley (Control) was all in to play Kerouac's alter ego, the writer-protagonist Sal Paradise, whose multiple journeys with Dean Moriarty across America formed the spine of the book. Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) was so devoted to the project after he was chosen to play the wild, untrammeled Moriarty that he refused to take potentially conflicting jobs for two years while financing was secured. (Other actors mentioned for male roles through the years included Matthew McConaughey, Russell Crowe, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Franco and Josh Hartnett. After he abandoned playing the part himself, Kerouac envisioned Frank Sinatra as Sal.)
For the role of Sal and Dean's free-spirited companion, Marylou, Salles had found little-known actress Kristen Stewart through Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
"'Look no further,' " Salles remembers the Babel director telling him. "'I've just seen the first cut of Sean Penn's Into the Wild, and there's this 16-year-old girl you'll fall in love with.'" But once she became a star of the blockbuster Twilight franchise, much maneuvering was required to accommodate her schedule. It was critical that filming on Road end before October 2010, when shooting needed to start on Breaking Dawn -- Parts 1 and 2. To Salles' relief, Stewart remained committed to the role for which she received about one-hundredth of her $20 million salary for Breaking Dawn -- Part 2.
"There is something scary and unpredictable and animalistic about Marylou," she explains about her attraction to the character.
When On the Road debuts in May at Cannes, audiences will see whether the film warrants these years of effort. They also will see whether Stewart, 22 (whose Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson is in Cannes, too, with Cosmopolis), has the chops to create a post-vampire career. And they will see whether Salles, 56, can repeat the success of his most recent Cannes triumph, Motorcycle Diaries.
At times, Salles was joined by Motorcycle Diaries screenwriter Jose Rivera, who had the daunting task of compressing Kerouac's meandering tale with dozens of encounters into a manageable script. Rivera spent six months reading before tackling the screenplay, writing about 20 drafts. "The main difference between the scripts I wrote and those written prior was that I based my screenplay not entirely on the published book but on the scroll," he says, describing Kerouac's original manuscript famously typed on a 120-foot roll of paper (he typed 100 words a minute and didn't want to take time to change sheets).
An 80-day shoot across Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Louisiana, Arizona and San Francisco began in Montreal on Aug. 4, 2010, with the funeral of Sal's father. Everything went wrong: The heavens opened, and rain bucketed down. "I thought, 'Maybe it's not meant to be,' " says producer Yeldham.
Then, gloriously, the light changed in the afternoon and cinematographer Eric Gautier yelled to go. "Some of the best moments in the movie were ones where things went wrong," reflects Riley. It happened again with one scene shot in Mexico, "where I drive the car to this house to get marijuana, and the engine just blew up. That's in the finished film."
But the deteriorating drug situation in Mexico posed a special threat. "We consulted with security experts, who counseled us strongly to get out of there," says Yeldham. The dangers forced a last-minute location shift from Torreon in the Mexican interior to Arizona.
Stewart's fame also required special care. "Wherever Kristen went, the blogosphere lit up with the specifics of her movements," adds Yeldham. Her topless scenes with Riley were shot on a closely guarded set to avoid paparazzi and fans.
The pressure of doing the scenes made Riley "sick with anxiety" -- but not Stewart. "I was so shocked at being able to do it," she says. "I didn't feel naked."
Knowing Mortensen (as the William S. Burroughs-inspired Old Bull Lee) was well read, Riley was "terrified during improvisation that he might ask me something about Nietzsche, like, 'What do you think about the Ubermensch?' The night before he arrived, I spent hours Wikipedia-ing Jean-Paul Sartre and others just in case he threw me a curveball." (He didn't.)
For Hedlund, one of the toughest moments came when Salles flew a skeletal team to Argentina to capture a real-life blizzard, and he had to drive while sticking his head out the window. "It was freezing, and I couldn't see a thing," says the actor.
Adds Stewart: "We never stopped shooting. They could have made a 20-hour movie."
The final version is a little more than two hours. In reducing its length, Salles had to lose several darlings, including scenes with the migrant Terry and a sequence where the protagonists stumble on wandering Jesuit hitchhikers.
Hedlund recalls how sad he was to leave everyone just before the wrap party for the premiere of Tron. Remembering his final moments, he cites his character's beloved Marcel Proust and his sad "farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp."
fallen Nippon idol 25-years old Erika Sawajiri will be totally nude in Helter Skelter (2012) slated for release in July.
Erika Sawajiri is a Japan-based actress, model, and musician. Her alias in her music career was Kaoru Amane, but she has recently started her own project under the name Erika. She was affiliated with Sony Music Entertainment Japan for her record label (formerly as Kaoru Amane and later Erika), and Stardust Promotion for her talent agency (with her real name, Erika Sawajiri) before her contract was terminated in late 2009 with rumors she had drug issues.
Erika Sawajiri reveals about nude scenes in ‘Helter Skelter’
Japanese actress Erika Sawajiri will soon be returning to the silver screens on July 14, 2012 in the movie ‘Helter Skelter’. The 25 year old actress reveals about the movie that she has done many sexually graphic scenes, including some nude ones for the flick.
Erika plays the main character of Ririko in the movie which is directed by Mika Ninagawa. The film is based on Kyoko Okazaki’s manga and is a story about a model who has gone through extensive plastic surgery all over her body.
When the clinic is investigated, the shady business practices are then busted. Ririko’s beauty then starts fading and so does her mental condition.
Erika’s last appearance in a movie was in the year 2007 with ‘Closed Note’. This was when trouble started for the actress as she displayed a bad behavior at the premiere of the movie in Japan. While talking about ‘Helter Skelter’ the actress said that she enjoyed making the movie and is happy to be back in business.
Sawajiri promises sizzling scenes in 'Helter Skelter'
May. 13, 2012
TOKYO —
The cast and crew of Erika Sawajiri’s upcoming movie “Helter Skelter” promise the movie will not shy away from the shocking content of the original and said there will be a steamy sex scene. “Helter Skelter” is based on an award-winning sexually graphic manga by Kyoko Okazaki. Sawajiri takes the role of Ririko who becomes a new breed of entertainment industry star after undergoing cosmetic surgery on her entire body. When the clinic is investigated for its shady business practices, Ririko’s beauty to starts fade. Her mental condition also starts to deteriorate.
The movie, directed by Mika Ninagawa, marks Sawajiri’s first movie starring role since “Closed Note” in 2007. That was the start of her troubles when she displayed a bad attitude during a stage appearance at the Japan premiere.
Sawajiri told reporters that she enjoyed making “Helter Skelter” and that she is happy to be back in business.
“Helter Skelter” opens July 14.
Erika Sawajiri sucks at sex scenes?
Now that Ninagawa Mika has wrapped up filming her latest film, Helter Skelter, starring Sawajiri Erika. Rumors have been flying about what happened on the set. From going to work 2 hrs late and keeping everyone waiting without a single word of apology, to not being able to perform the graphic sexual acts in the manga. Rumor has it the film will have threesomes, lesbian sex scenes, and even a nude scene! All involving the saucy actress.
Sawajiri plays Ririko, a famous model who went through some drastic plastic surgery in order to achieve fame and apparently there are tons of sex scenes in the movie! The thing is though, Sawajiri sucks at sex. She sucks so much at actual sex that she doesn’t even do a good job at pretending.
When director Ninagawa showed a cut of a sex scene to some female staff, they all said that Sawajiri sucks at sex. Why? They said she looked awkward, and it took her a lot of takes in order to get the scenes right. In fact, some acts she just outright refused to act out, even though she said that she’s willing to challenge her comfort zone in order to deliver a good performance. The thing that gets them the most? No matter where the other actor touches, Erika would simply go, “An~” instead of making any other sounds. When the actor sucked her nipple, she didn’t give any reaction even though it got hard.
Her rumored Spanish boyfriend even blabbed to a tabloid about how much she sucks at sex. Apparently she’s not like other Japanese girls, and would say no to many things he asked of her in bed. He thought she’d be fiery and passionate like a volcano, but apparently she was as stiff as a frozen maguro (tuna.)
Terajima Shinobu was said to be pissed at Sawajiri for not apologizing after being two hours late and showing up with a headache. Another actress, Momoi Kaori, was so disturbed by how stiff Sawajiri was that she asked, “Has she never seduced a man before?”
Sawajiri plays Ririko, a famous model who went through some drastic plastic surgery in order to achieve fame and apparently there are tons of sex scenes in the movie! The thing is though, Sawajiri sucks at sex. She sucks so much at actual sex that she doesn’t even do a good job at pretending.
When director Ninagawa showed a cut of a sex scene to some female staff, they all said that Sawajiri sucks at sex. Why? They said she looked awkward, and it took her a lot of takes in order to get the scenes right. In fact, some acts she just outright refused to act out, even though she said that she’s willing to challenge her comfort zone in order to deliver a good performance. The thing that gets them the most? No matter where the other actor touches, Erika would simply go, “An~” instead of making any other sounds. When the actor sucked her nipple, she didn’t give any reaction even though it got hard.
Her rumored Spanish boyfriend even blabbed to a tabloid about how much she sucks at sex. Apparently she’s not like other Japanese girls, and would say no to many things he asked of her in bed. He thought she’d be fiery and passionate like a volcano, but apparently she was as stiff as a frozen maguro (tuna.)
Terajima Shinobu was said to be pissed at Sawajiri for not apologizing after being two hours late and showing up with a headache. Another actress, Momoi Kaori, was so disturbed by how stiff Sawajiri was that she asked, “Has she never seduced a man before?”
Erika Sawajiri is born to a Japanese father and an Algerian-French mother. Her name Erika is derived from a flower’s name, Ericaceae’s Erica.
Erika started her entertainment career as a freelance teenage model before signing for Stardust (talent agency) after passing an audition in 1999. She entered the entertainment world because she wanted to meet her idol, Japanese pop star Namie Amuro.
Erika continued to work as a teenage model before making her TV debut in 2001 as a regular in a Japanese variety show. She extended her modelling career as a gravure idol (bikini model) at just about the same time.
Erika made her drama debut in 2003 with a small role in “Hotman”, starring Takashi Sorimachi. Her breakthrough came in 2004 with movie “Pacchigi” which won her multiple movie awards as best newcomer.
Erika then rose to super-stardom in 2005 with acclaimed TV drama “1 Liter of Tears”, in which she starred as a teenager with degenerative disease, based on a real life story.
Erika launched her music career in 2006, using the name Kaoru Amane, her character from TV drama “Taiyou no Uta” (not to be confused with same titled movie, starring another Japanese starlet Yui).
Erika’s debut single was quite a hit and topped the Oricon chart. She released her 2nd single, “Free” in July 2007 using her name Erika, and hit the #1 spot on Oricon chart once again.
Erika’s booming entertainment career however suffered a setback in Sept 2007 when she was promoting her movie “Closed Note” in an official event, where she showed some nasty attitude.
In a country (Japan) where politeness is everything, her gimmick drew huge criticism from the public. The media and some celebrities had openly criticised her attitude, and some of her fans had showed no mercy with this issue as well.
Erika had to make a career saving apology on her website a few days later.
Erika is currently taking a long break from her entertainment career; she left Japan for London in early January of 2009.
After nearly 4-years of hiding and staying away from the limelight, Erika makes a return to celluloid land and what a comeback it's going to be.
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HBO's 'Game Of Thrones' On Track To Be Crowned Most Pirated Show Of 2012
5/09/2012
Brace yourselves, HBO. The pirates are coming. 
With its popularity swelling and no easy way to watch for viewers without cable, HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” is inspiring massive levels of piracy, according to numbers from the BitTorrent-tracking and analysis firm Big Champagne. By the firm’s rough estimate, the second season of the show has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th’s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day.“It certainly appears to be the most pirated show of the year,” says John Robinson, a senior media analyst with Big Champagne. He says it’s too early to measure definitively, but the company’s data so far as well as the popularity rankings on download site the Pirate Bay point to “Game of Thrones” as filesharers’ favorite show of 2012. “The fact that it’s consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay’s top one hundred TV show chart seems like a pretty in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared.”
BitTorrent downloads over time, counting from the first appearance of the new season's episodes on BitTorrent trackers. Source: Big Champagne. (Click to enlarge.)
According to the BitTorrent-focused blog and measurement site Torrentfreak, the first season of “Game of Thrones” was the second-most pirated show of 2011 behind the sixth season of Showtime’s “Dexter.”
But Big Champagne’s numbers show that downloads of the second season of “Game of Thrones” so far consistently top “Dexter”‘s piracy numbers from the same point in its season last year. (See chart above left.)
It’s worth noting that BitTorrent is just one way that shows are pirated online–I was able to find streaming episodes of Game of Thrones on sites like free-tv-video-online.me and zzstream.com after just a few Google searches. But those streaming options are even tougher to track and measure than BitTorrent.
While “Game of Thrones”‘ filesharing rates are probably driven in part by its appeal to the young, geeky male demographic that’s most prone to using torrent sites, HBO hasn’t helped the problem by making the show tough to watch online for the young and cable-less. The show isn’t available through Hulu or Netflix, iTunes offers only Season 1, and using HBO’s own streaming site HBO Go requires a cable subscription. (The situation was captured in the widely read comic strip The Oatmeal, in which the author attempts the rage-inducing process of trying to watch “Game of Thrones” online before giving up and downloading it from a sleazy porn-ad covered torrent site.)
“This is absolutely a reaction to the show’s not being available elsewhere online,” says Big Champagne’s Robinson. “It’s a very tricky game trying to create this kind of scarcity.”
HBO Has Only Itself To Blame For Record 'Game Of Thrones' Piracy
HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ is on its way to becoming the number one pirated show in America. Of course, they have only themselves to blame for this.Andy Greenberg has some troubling numbers on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Turns out the show is not only really popular with HBO subscribers, it’s also really popular with pirates who are well on their way to making this the most-pirated show ever.
According to Greenberg, “the second season of the show has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th’s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day.”
Meanwhile, season one of the show was the second-most-pirated season of all time, right behind the sixth season of Dexter.
Now, it’s important to note the reason for all this piracy: lack of access to the show for people who can’t afford, or choose not to purchase, a cable-TV subscription.
“HBO hasn’t helped the problem by making the show tough to watch online for the young and cable-less,” notes Greenberg. “The show isn’t available through Hulu or Netflix, iTunes offers only Season 1, and using HBO’s own streaming site HBO Go requires a cable subscription.”
For the millions of Americans who don’t subscribe to HBO, or who may not even watch shows on a television, this means there is no legal way to watch Game of Thrones. If you only watch TV on your laptop, there’s no way you’re going to pay $50/month for cable and another $15/month for HBO.
For people like me who wish HBO would sever ties with cable television and offer its own streaming service that didn’t require a cable subscription, that doesn’t look at all likely. HBO GO will remain available only to cable television subscribers rather than as a stand-alone service. HBO co-president Eric Kessler said that cord-cutting has been “minimal” and largely the result of “macroeconomic” conditions in an interview at the VideoShmooze: NYC Online Video Leadership Forum.
But HBO is missing out on a huge potential audience by limiting themselves to cable TV subscribers. I don’t blame the company for keeping their shows off of Hulu or Netflix, but offering HBO GO as a stand-alone service could put a serious dent in these piracy numbers, and bring in a lot more legitimate viewers to shows like Game of Thrones.
Of course, on the one hand I hate to see a show that I love getting pirated. I want the show to succeed, and for it to do that it needs to prove that it draws a large audience. But HBO has only themselves to blame at this point. Cord-cutting is not a temporary phenomenon caused by a down economy. It’s a trend.
This underscores the larger problem with how so many companies in the entertainment industry think about piracy. Instead of thinking about the ways lack of access to media creates opportunity for piracy, and how increasing the access to products could help stave off illegal downloads, too often people want to take legal measures or implement digital protection on their products. These “fixes” always have easy work-arounds.
Meanwhile, the millions of pirated Game of Thrones episodes show that it’s not difficult at all for non-subscribers to enjoy the show. I’m willing to bet that a stand-alone HBO GO service would largely fix this problem, though nothing will stop piracy altogether.
As a side-note, I personally don’t condone piracy, but I think it’s very important to understand why people pirate content in the first place. My family subscribes to cable-TV for only a few months of the year – just so we can watch Game of Thrones. But I would happily pay more for a stand-alone HBO GO service year-round than the $15 (I think) it costs to tack on HBO to our cable. This would net HBO even more revenue over the course of a year. Quite a bit more, actually.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/tf6aq/hbos_game_of_thrones_on_track_to_be_most_pirated/
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Big Media Q1 Corporate Earnings Roundup: How Long Will The Good Times Roll?
| Saturday May 12, 2012
Big Media companies in the Q1 earnings season that wrapped this week reminded me of Garrison Keilor’s description of the kids in Lake Woebegon: Virtually everybody was above average, at least when measured against analysts’ expectations. Media stocks began to trade ahead of the overall market as Q1 reports spread their cheery results. But CEO presentations to analysts left me thinking that companies simply had a good quarter. With just a few exceptions — Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen comes to mind — they seemed as complacent as ever about the need for bold initiatives to reinvigorate their maturing businesses. Movie theaters still aren’t addressing the long-term declines in ticket sales. Studios still don’t know what to do about their evaporating DVD sales. Networks appear flummoxed by the general decline in their ratings. And most pay TV distributors can’t imagine anything besides marketing gimmicks that might enable them to proactively boost subscriptions. In order to beat the Street’s earnings expectations, several companies relied on unsustainable gambits. They cut costs, raised prices, and enjoyed the fruits of conveniently timed licensing deals with digital streaming services including Netflix and Amazon. It sounded like they’re hoping that they can keep coming up with new tricks, and that they’ll be bailed out by continuing growth in the overall economy, which remains vulnerable to shocks including a possible worsening of the European debt crisis.
With CEOs so desperate for revenue, you could almost hear their hearts sink when analysts asked them about one of investors’ top new concerns: Are streaming services, especially Netflix, starting to cannibalize traditional TV viewing? Viacom’s Nickelodeon is a SpongeBob in the coal mine on this issue. Ratings for Nick’s target audience have dropped steeply since the fall, and were down 29% in Q1. If ratings on ad-supported TV shows are falling because kids are watching SpongeBob Square Pants, iCarly, and other shows on Netflix, then Viacom probably would have to give up the streaming deals that have done so much to improve its financial results. CEO Philippe Dauman believes that he can continue to have his cake and eat it too. He says Netflix has ”a minimal impact” on Nickelodeon: Its kids audience would only account for 2% of Nick’s TV viewing. Disney’s Bob Iger seems to share that view. “We have not seen any negative impact from the presence of Disney Channel shows on these new platforms,” he says. (Bernstein Research’s Todd Juenger — who vigorously argues that Netflix has hurt Nickelodeon — says that Iger has little to lose from palling up with Netflix on this issue because Disney Channel doesn’t sell ads.) But Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes disagrees. Cartoon Network was up 14%, he said, in part because “we don’t have our program sitting on (a streaming) service where parents can park their kids….Obviously, that’s taking some viewing away from some of the other animated channels.” We’ll hear more about this over the next several months, especially if there’s any sign that streaming is endangering traditional sitcoms and dramas.Here are some of the other themes from the Q1 season:
Movies: Total box office sales were +20.5% in Q1 vs the same period last year. Attendance was up. Ticket prices were up. Concession spending was up. Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games emerged as a huge new franchise. In short, it was a great time to be a theater owner. But they still have to figure out what to do with their cash. Studios are lobbying for them to invest in technologies that will improve the movie-going experience. For example, Warner Bros wants them to pay for digital projection software upgrades so they can show movies at 48-frames per second vs the current 24 frames. That could become a big deal this Christmas when director Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is available in the smoother-looking projection speed. But theater circuits also see an opportunity to grow by snapping up small venues with owners who couldn’t afford to convert to digital projection. “By the end of this year, we estimate that approximately 65% of domestic industry screens will have been converted to digital and major studios will begin to plan for the eventual end of 35 millimeter prints,” Regal Entertainment CEO Amy Miles says. “We believe that these factors combined with the healthy box office environment provide a good backdrop for M-and-A activity in the near-term.”As for the studios, Disney had to take its lumps for the John Carter debacle, although few seemed to care following the huge success of Marvel’s The Avengers. Paramount’s lighter release schedule included The Devil Inside, A Thousand Words, and Jeff, Who Lives At Home and generated less revenues than last year’s True Grit and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, but the unit recorded higher profits. Fox performed well with help from Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked and The Descendants – but the company warned that the current quarter will look less attractive. News Corp will have to record costs for its big June releases, Prometheus and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, before most of the revenues pour in, and the films may not compare well to last year’s Rio and X-Men: First Class. Time Warner in Q1 recorded box office revenues for Sherlock Holmes 2, but not the costs for the December release. The company’s Journey 2 and Project X did better than expected, although DVD sales were just meh. And although Sony had a hit early this year with 21 Jump Street, revenues were up and operating income was down mostly due to changes in television; the company seemed more interested in having investors look ahead to releases including The Amazing Spider-Man, Men in Black 3 and the upcoming James Bond film Skyfall.
Ad Sales: Moguls who harbor any concerns about the market would be nuts to openly admit that on the eve of the annual upfront advertising sales frenzy. That said, their descriptions of the environment were pretty consistent: it’s good, but not sensational. Most seemed to agree with CBS’ Les Moonves‘ view that “the marketplace clearly has gotten a lot stronger” in Q1 than it was in Q4. He says that ads in the scatter market are selling for rates that were more than 10% higher than they were in last year’s upfront. Discovery says that scatter prices are “well above” the last upfront, and predicts its U.S. ad sales will be up “high single digit” in Q2. Scripps Networks says scatter prices are up high teens to mid-20s over last year’s upfront, and the current quarter’s scatter pricing is up mid single digits from Q1. Auto companies, which account for about 20% of TV ads, are leading the way. But food, consumer packaged goods, financial, and retail are also contributing.
Pay TV. Recalling a line from a favorite old Monty Python routine, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett says distributors who recently seemed so vulnerable to cord cutting are “not dead yet.” They collectively gained 422,000 customers in Q1. (Phone company video services were +375,000, satellite +185,000, and cable -137,000.) Still they seem to be on a collision course with pay TV programmers. Just about every network owner told investors to look forward to hefty price increases. For example, Time Warner’s Bewkes says that “the rate increases that we’re getting now are higher than the rate increases that we got before. And we have every intention to try to get our networks closer to where we believe fair value is going forward.” Discovery’s David Zaslav says that “we have a good hand” to negotiate higher rates, especially for the OWN joint venture with Oprah Winfrey. And Viacom’s Dauman says investors can “confidently plan” on high single digit growth rates “for the foreseeable future.” But distributors say that they can’t keep raising consumer prices — or cutting their own profits — which means something has to give. “It’s very difficult,” DirecTV’s Michael White said. “It’s forcing distributors to have to take a very hard look at low-rated channels…and look for ways to economize for our customers who are having trouble affording all this content.” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge echoed that view, saying that programming is “a difficult part of the business to manage from a cost perspective.” And Dish Network‘s Ergen — who plans to drop AMC Networks in June — says the time is coming for someone to offer fewer channels at a lower price. “Most customers have four providers to choose from who all sell exactly the same thing.” If someone offers a cheaper but smaller package, it “may be disruptive short term.” Still, he says, “a lot of things can go on over the next year or so in the programming side.”________________________________________________________
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