Tuesday November 17, 08:30 AM

Source: Indian Express Finance

World View

By fe Bureau
Sony to release films on web, before DVD In a nod to its vision of the future, Sony will make its animated hit Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs available to consumers directly through internet-enabled television and Blu-ray players before the movie is released on DVD, says a New York Times report. It is the latest experiment in Hollywood s effort to find a way to compensate for the steep decline in profits from home entertainment. The move is significant because it represents the latest tinkering with the movie industry s release windows, something Hollywood has long been reluctant to do out of fear of upsetting the profitability of DVD sales and angering its most important retailer, Wal-Mart. But with the decline in DVD sales, off as much as 25% at some studios, finding new ways to distribute movies has become a necessity. The price of the film, $24.95, is high enough not to alienate retailers, Sony said. We don t need a war with Wal-Mart or any other organisation, and I don t think they re hostile to this, said Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony. It will make televisions more valuable, and that s a good thing. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the only Hollywood studio tethered to a major hardware manufacturer, is in a unique position to experiment with selling movies directly to consumers through television sets, in this case Sony s Bravia internet-enabled sets. Discovery says market more robust now US-based broadcast network Discovery Communications reported a 4.8% increase in advertising revenues in the third quarter. The company that owns channels such as Animal Planet is also seeing an improvement in the overall market conditions. Discovery s chief executive officer David Zaslav was quoted in reports saying: The market does feel more robust and while we can t predict where it will be in three weeks or four weeks, it feels much stronger. Audi pins hopes on BRIC countries Germany-based luxury auto manufacturer Audi has pinned its hopes on BRIC countries to boost its sales. The company recently said it is expecting its sales will increase in Brazil, Russia, India and China till 2015. According to media reports, Peter Schwarzenbauer, the executive board member of sales and marketing at Audi recently said that the company expects to sell around 30,000 units in Russia by 2015 against the current sales level of around 16,500 models. In India, the company hopes to sell around 2,000 cars in 2010 against 1650 units it sold this year. The company hopes that the auto market in India is geared for a faster growth and there will be around 3 million vehicles zipping on Indian roads by 2015. It is almost double the number of vehicles that ply on roads as of now. Likewise, in Brazil, the company hopes to sell around 5,000 units in 2013 against its current sales figure of 2300 units, and in China, Audi s biggest market in the region, the company hopes to sell close to 130,000 units this year itself. The company s performance in the European market has been less than impressive as its market fell around 50% in the year to September, according to reports. Viacom hopeful of ad rates inching up US-based cable TV company Viacom Inc has said it is hopeful of a recovery in the near future. The company, which owns channels such as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, posted a 15% jump in its net income for the third quarter. At the time of the announcement of the results, it said that TV advertising was looking up and with the festival season being round the corner, it is likely to improve further. According to media reports the company s chief executive officer Philippe Dauman said, there is demand out there at the moment . He also said that the rates for the last minute inventory was up by double digit percentages. News Corp, WPP in a digital pact News Corporation s Fox Audience Network (FAN) and marketing communications company WPP Group have formed a partnership to share consumer insights from the digital space. FAN, which runs an audience segmentation service, will provide inputs to the WPP group to support its online planning and measurement. This was announced by Jonathan Miller, the chairman and the chief executive of News Corp digital media division. Miller said the rise of mobile media platforms, real time communications and the socialisation of the internet were among the key trends shaping the digital universe. Starting from the social networking environment ... people tell you a lot about themselves in unstructured data. Once you structure it and make it useful as a seller, you make it useful to a buyer, Miller said. Concerns raised over Comcast and NBC Universal deal A section of industry in the US has raised concerns over the proposed deal between Comcast and NBC Universal. According to reports, The Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group, recently referred to the proposed deal as the equivalent of Godzilla swallowing Rockefeller Center. Both Comcast and NBC Universal are one of the biggest media organisations in the US and also, have significant influence over the markets under their control. Their coming together, if it happens, will invite intense media as well as regulatory scrutiny. The industry, in fact, sees that the proposed deal, which is likely to be announced soon, as one of the biggest challenges before the US media regulators. Comcast is the biggest cable system operator in the US and NBC Universal, in which General Electric owns around 80% stake, runs broadcast networks and a number of popular cable channels. Research agency Bernstein Research said recently that Comcast and NBC Universal would be calling the shots for one out of every five viewing hours in the United States.