Production/Commissioning/TV News

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by johnone

Well AMC Blinked first...yesterday yesterday they came to an agreement with AT&T and the channel is back on the air, however AMC remains dark on the dish network with AMC releasing a press release about the situation in which they question DISH networks refusual to negotiate ....Although the AT&T announcement lessens the damage ...AMC cannot afford to lose the viewers the DISH network brings.

It's become a common story, with advertising rates staying constant from year to year the channels are no looking at the Satellite and Cable companies to cover their increased costs. Of course the providers are trying to limit their costs in the fear of more cord cutting.

So the end of every transmission contract seems to conclude with a few weeks of darkness with the channel blaming the provider and vice versa

Funnily DirecTV (the largest satellite provider) took forever to broadcast the HD signal of AMC and many left for Dish who did. Now they find themselves with a dark channel but faced with early termination costs if they go back to DirectTV

Personally AMC are way over pricing themselves, yes they have Mad Men, Walking Dead, The Killing but only one at a time. The rest of the the week is filled with badly edited movies

[johnone]

Bizarrely AMC shares ended 12% up at the end of trading yesterday on wall street....so every cloud

Tom Hanks Sci Fi web series Electric city begins goes online next week on Yahoo.....it actually is a ninety minute drama but it's been split into a series of seven to nine minute episodes.

And Run...Ruuuuuun as Carlton Cuse is returning to television....A&E have commissoned Bates Motel without a pilot...this thirteen part "Original "series will cover what happened to Norman Bates Before Psycho.....if it's cuse don't be surprised if Norman is possessed by a smoke monster with a promise that all will be explained...this by the way will be the fourth show next year whose lead will be a psychopath....is it me or is the market getting crowded?

[Midnighter]

Sky Acquires UK Rights To Arrow, Elementary, The Following & Vegas.

[johnone]

Christine Lahti has signed on for the next season of Hawai Five O as Steve McGarrets Mother....this is part of a new Arc where she will have a"Mysterious" past that McGarrett will have to investigate.

[Midnighter]

Comedy Central to screen Anger Management in the UK.

[johnone]

Bill Campbell ( The Rocketeer) will play Abraham Lincoln in a new Docudrama for Discovery network, the Docudrama will cover the confederate conspiracy to assinate Lincoln.

Meanwhile the Networks have won the right to sue the Dish Network over their DVR system which allows the viewer to cut out all advertising , according to Deadline their argument is Dish is in breach of contract because the networks depend on advertising revenue. There are those who are comparing this to the Networks suing Betamax in the early eigthies to prevent people recording programmes to watch later, however unlike then Dish is actually charging customers money to broadcast the networks so their recorder could be seen as biting the hand that feeds them....this could get nasty.

[SimonG]

Originally Posted by johnone

Bill Campbell ( The Rocketeer) will play Abraham Lincoln in a new Docudrama for Discovery network, the Docudrama will cover the confederate conspiracy to assinate Lincoln.

Shame it's not a vampire conspiracy!

[johnone]

This is bad....Last night Direct tv shut off All viacom channels on their sattelite service , that includes MTV , discovery and Nickelodeon , over a dispute about payment....Viacom are looking for rise in their fee of a few percent...both sides are claiming the other is being unreasonable with Direct tv Claiming they had warned Viacom in advance with Viacom cliaiming they had no knowledge this was going to happen ( it is not helped that Direct only announced what they were going to do a few hours before the switch off.) what is certain is that Viacom have lost Twenty Six Million homes in the switch off.

[DaveC]

Originally Posted by johnone

This is bad....Last night Direct tv shut off All viacom channels on their sattelite service , that includes MTV , discovery and Nickelodeon , over a dispute about payment....Viacom are looking for rise in their fee of a few percent...both sides are claiming the other is being unreasonable with Direct tv Claiming they had warned Viacom in advance with Viacom cliaiming they had no knowledge this was going to happen ( it is not helped that Direct only announced what they were going to do a few hours before the switch off.) what is certain is that Viacom have lost Twenty Six Million homes in the switch off.

Viacom are losing the plot, at the beginning of the year they sold rights to many of their shows to Netflix and Hulu consequently the viewers of the shows on the TV providers collapsed (add to this they're still trying to mine shows like "Jersey Shore" which long since passed its sell-by date)

With no viewers their advertising rates collapsed and now the station is trying to get money out of the providers by increasing their fees by 30% whilst having hardly anyone watching their shows in the first place

So Viacom's strategy to having no-one watching their channels is to pull the plug on the largest provider and thus drop 19m potential subscribers

One analyst actually asked earlier this year whether any provider was brave enough to drop Viacom, it seems that Direct TV might be prepared to

The only Viacom channel I watch these days is Comedy Central for the Daily Show, Colbert but I'm not suffering as thanks to Viacom crazy decision to sell the rights to Hulu I can watch the shows on my Laptop, Iphone, Ipad, Xbox360

[johnone]

The Viacom situation is a messy one , the longer it goe on the more Viacom will llose out.

the NCIS cast will all return after contract negotiations were finalized two days ago.

Spartacus may be coming to an end next year but creators Steven S DeKnight and Robert Tapert have already have two new genre shows with Starz In development.

De Knight is creating INCURSION a war series where a squad of Human Soldiers move from planet to planet in a neverending war with an Alien enemy

Tapert as teamed up with Joe Michael Straczynski to produce Vlad Dracula , a series which will mix History and Fiction as it follows Vlads Rise from 15th Century Warlord to Vamopire......hmmm something tells me the blood fx people on Spartacus will be busy for a while yet.