The Screen Actors Guild primetime and film contract talks collapsed Tuesday, and the next day, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists began their own primetime TV talks with the studios, raising fears of a SAG strike and heightened inter-union strife between SAG and AFTRA. 

The talks between SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the studios – were less nasty than the WGA talks, but no less contentious.  SAG had several goals:

• Improvements in new media, above and beyond the DGA and WGA deals.
• Doubling the DVD residual – which would be a renegotiation of a 24-year old deal, albeit one quite unfavorable to talent.  SAG later revised this to a proposal that DVD residuals be subject to pension, health and welfare contributions, which would amount to a 15% increase.

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Male entertainment portal Giant Realm today announced a $2 million investment from Softbank Capital, bringing their series A total to $5.5 million.

Softbank joins existing investors Comcast Interactive Capital, Edison Venture Fund and William Morris Agency.

Giant Realm targets men "from puberty to marriage," CEO James Green told AO's Matt Bowman. Its communities focus on video games, movies, TV and music. 

The MPAA has won a battle in its ongoing war to close the piracy flood gates. An LA Judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per infringement for 3,699 films and shows.

From CNET:

In a major win for Hollywood studios, a California federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy to pay some $110 million in damages for infringing the copyright of thousands of films and TV shows through its BitTorrent search engine.

The Los Angeles judge, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, also issued a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy, which was once one of the most popular indexes of BitTorrent files before it shut down in March after a two-year copyright battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The company closed its site on March 24, citing financial hardship and a desire to protect the privacy of its users.

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Shrinking production costs are creating huge opportunities for startup studios. That's a good thing for young directors with inspiring stories--and the guts to ambush a Hollywood superstar.

Three months after their homeless father died in jail, twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller cornered 4-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris in an alley outside the Castro Theatre and pitched him on their autobiographical movie, Touching Home.  With a trailor built on credit card debt, the brothers won Harris over and landed a deal. Welcome to the new Hollywood market.

Check out the movie at www.touchinghomemovie.com

Hoping to close the market share gap, Microsoft announced it will let Zune users legally share portions of their song libraries with other users.

From WSJ:

Microsoft Corp., trailing Apple Inc. badly in the market for portable music and video players, is introducing a new technology that will let users of its Zune portable devices legally share portions of their song libraries with other Zune users.

The Redmond, Wash., company on Tuesday also plans to announce it has started selling downloads of television shows that will play on Zunes, including "South Park" and "Heroes," through relationships with Comedy Central, NBC, MTV and other broadcasters. The company says it will have about 800 episodes available for purchase at $1.99 each on its Zune online store, compared with thousands of episodes from 600 different shows on Apple's iTunes Store.

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Who in the would do this to the coolest musical man on the web?  Peter Gabriel, who has fought to forge new music models that work for artists and consumers, has had his music empire raided.

From the Register:

Server theft knocks Peter Gabriel off the web

Raid on ISP's data centre

By Drew Cullen → More by this author
Published Monday 5th May 2008 16:35 GMT
Peter Gabriel's online music empire is reduced to a holding page, following the theft of servers from his web host over the weekend.

According to the web monitoring firm Netcraft, Gabriel's servers are hosted by Rednet Ltd, although that appears to be a defunct brand of a UK company called Opal Telecom, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse.

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Amazon is offering a new set top box that turns the internet into a channel on your HDTV.  The difference with the “ZvBox” is that you can rout the internet to any HDTV in your home with one box.

From the press release:

ZeeVee Launches ZvBox, New Consumer Electronics Product for Broadcasting Any Internet TV or Computer Content to All HDTVs in Your Home

Available for preorder online at Amazon.com, ZvBox’s pioneering ZvCast technology defines new “localcasting” product category

LITTLETON, Mass., May 1, 2008 — Startup company ZeeVee Inc. announced today the launch of ZvBoxTM, a new consumer electronics product for watching any Internet TV, online video, or computer content on HDTVs at home. Available for preorder online exclusively at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018L7NUA), ZvBox will redefine television as we know it.

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Music bloggers are growing in value.  As the doorways to discovery, sites like Stereogum and BrooklynVegan are making music the first non-techie industry to fully harness new media tools.

From CNet:

Technology may have made it simple to obtain digital music, but it hasn't provided an easy way to sift through millions of tracks to find the tunes we like.




The Internet has, however, connected music fans to a legion of hardcore aficionados who help steer people to new music. Think of Barry, Jack Black's rock-addicted character from the film High Fidelity, with a blog.

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Sports Illustrated will launch a fantasy-football game on the Facebook. Given the ridiculous popularity and hyper-interactivity of both, this should be a big winner.

From WSJ:

Sports Illustrated to Take Fantasy Game to Facebook

Sports Illustrated Group has reached an agreement with Citizen Sports Inc. to develop and promote sports-related Web content, including a fantasy-football game that will be played on the Facebook Inc. Web site.

Sports Illustrated plans a fantasy-football game to be played on Facebook's Web site.

The move is, in part, an admission by the iconic sports brand, owned by the Time Inc. division of Time Warner Inc., that it needs to do more than draw traffic to its own Web site. It also needs to take its products to a site people already visit.

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The big movie studios have agreed to let iTunes offer movie downloads the same day they're released on DVDs.  Hollywood is getting sucked further North.

Major movie studios have agreed to allow Apple Inc.'s iTunes to sell movies on the same day they are released on DVD, another sign of Hollywood's acceptance of business models that encroach on traditional DVD-sales markets.

Films from most studios hadn't been available on iTunes until weeks after their DVD release. "This is a game changer," said Craig Kornblau, president of General Electric Co.'s Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Digital Platforms. "For all the studios to offer all their movies [on the same date] as DVD, with the most influential marketing company in the digital space, is a very exciting development."

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