The News Corp. who owns the Dow Jones and Company which publishes the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s weekly business magazine among many others in the U.S. is considering a company breakup into two entities. It would separate the media giant’s underperforming newspaper business from its lucrative entertainment assets. Approximately 70 percent of the company profits come from television. The new newspaper business could include The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The New York Post, and as many as other 175 newspapers worldwide. These publishing enterprises contributed $8.8 billion in revenue in 2011. On the other hand, the much more lucrative entertainment enterprises contributed $23.5 billion in revenue in 2011 to the media empire.
Rupert Murdoch who is the Chairman and CEO of the News Corp. built the company from a single newspaper in Adelaide, Australia into a billion dollar multi-media giant. The Murdoch family owns 40 percent of the empire and will continue to handle both parts once separated.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is valued at about $53 billion. A recent phone-hacking scandal at its News of the World British tabloid caused it to close the publication. It is faced with enormous financial strain and decline in print advertising revenue.
The 1970’s dominant music group, Bee Gees, singer Robin Gibb died on Sunday, May 20, 2012 at age 62 due to his long battle with colorectal cancer and intestinal surgery. The group included Robin and his two fraternal brothers Barry and Maurice. Robin Gibb was born on December 22, 1949 in Isle of Man and grew up in Australia and U.K.
Robin was a solo artist prior to Bee Gees and he became the lead singer for the group. Trio owned 1960’s pop songs like “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to you”. Bee Gees carrier spans more than five decades and sold over 200 million records worldwide. Robin was a singer as well as a song writer. The trio wrote most of their number one hits. Bee Gees were the gold standard for pop and R & B.
Bee Gees also produced materials for such artist like Barbara Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.
Robin Gibb received a CBE from the Prince of Wales for his contribution to music.
Robin’s twin brother Maurice died in 2003 and only surviving Bee Gees is Barry, age 65. Robin was married to Molly Hullis in 1968 and together they had two daughters. They got divorced in 1980.
Ross Bagdasarian Sr. spent $190 of his last $200 in 1958 to buy a state-of-the-art tape recorder that can playback at various speeds. He recorded “Christmas Don’t Be Late” with a fictitious group known as Chipmunks who sang with a high pitched obscure voice. The song later became the No. 1 Billboard chart, sold over four million copies and created the now famous three Chipmunks: Alvin, Simon and Theodore. Today, Chipmunks is a family owned business based in Montecito, California. Ross Bagdasarian Jr. with his wife now owns the right to the Chipmunks empire.
Over the years, Chipmunks popularity came in waves. However, Fox bought the three characters in 2007 and this resulted in creating three hit movies: Alvin and the Chipmunks, Squeakquel, and Chipwrecked. Besides the major movies, there are many other productions, a TV series, several movies on DVDs and other merchandize. The company is also exploring an idea to make a live show that can travel around the world.
The current owners are very involved with the business and tightly control the branding of Chipmunks. Once they refused a proposal to manufacture and market a sugary cereal using the brand name. The owners are also involved in several law suits to protect the brand from exploitation.
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes place in Las Vegas at the beginning of each year. The Just concluded 2013 show was dominated by TVs. In the past smartphones and gaming devices dominated the show. This year there were many different TVs that mesmerized the attendees.
Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics displayed thin, curved, and OLED TVs. Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) are more energy efficient than those current TVs, provides a better quality picture, are thinner than those that are available today, and are curved to optimize the viewing angle. Another feature that was rolled out this year was the ultra-high-definition (UHD) or 4K. UHD contain four times more pixels than 1080p high-definition TVs. In order to benefit from this technology, the content needs to be recorded in UHD. The problem with that is it takes 2,500 times the data that takes to produce a typical HD movie. This alone makes it extremely difficult to stream a movie.
New technology is not cheap. An 84-inch TV from Sony is priced at $25,000. Smaller sizes may go for less but don’t expect less than five figure price tag. On average people replace their TVs in every six years.
In January 2012, Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP announced that it is funding up to $300 million to Ryan Seacrest Media to develop companies, content and television shows. Ryan Seacrest is the producer and host of the Fox reality TV show American Idol. In 2002, he began as a co-host of the show and a year later became the host of the show. More than 26 million watch the weekly show. In April 2012 he signed a $30 million contract to stay as the host of the show for two years.
Since 2004, he is also hosting numerous radio shows. He took over the American Top 40 from Casey Kasem in January 2004. In the same year he became the host of the Los Angeles based KIIS’s morning show replacing Rick Dees and the show is broadcast over 150 stations in North America.
In 2005, Ryan Seacrest became the executive producer and the co-host of the Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Since Dick Clark’s debilitating medical issues and April 2012 death, he is hosting much of the show now. The 40th show attracted more than 22.6 million viewers giving the show number one spot. He has substituted in the CNN’s Larry King Live from time to time.
The final installment of the vampire franchise, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” was released on November 16, 2012 by Lionsgate in the U.S. due to its merger with Summit Entertainment. Based on the Novel, “Breaking Dawn” by Stephanie Meyer, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” will close the series. All three main cast members, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, are appearing in the movie.
The plot still revolves around Bella and her family. She is enjoying her life and new powers after the birth of her daughter, Renesmee. But they are threatened with a new menace. Vampire Irina believes Renesmee could challenge the power and existence of Volturi, so she rally Volturi to destroy the potential threat including Bella and Cullens. They assemble their allies and to launch a crucial, ultimate fight to protect their family. As the novel, Bella finally says “…then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.”
The movie had a $340.9 million worldwide opening, which was the eighth largest ever and highest for the Twilight franchise. It is expected to dominate the Box Office in coming weeks in spite of the showing of “Skyfall”, a bond movie.
One of the biggest complaints that people have with traditional radio is how restrictive it can be to finding new music. When you’re listening to free online radio though, things are completely different. Music on the internet has very few of the same restrictions that other radio platforms have. DJs from around the world can play what they want, when they want, without having to go through all of the official channels to get permission to play a certain song for fear of being fined. Internet radio has opened up a lot of avenues for music discovery. Are you taking advantage of all of them?
When you first venture into the world of internet radio, it may be hard to start finding stations to listen to. Sure, you know what type of music you want to listen to, but do you know where to find it. Many sites have come along in recent years to try and gather a comprehensive list of all of the internet radio stations on the web and make them searchable in one location.
One such company that does this is Online Radio Stations. They’ve taken the concept of free internet radio and magnified it so that you’re not hunting through Google or Yahoo just to try and find something to listen to. You’re able to click on a genre that interests you and get started listening to the radio online in no time at all. You can fly through a number of different stations and musical styles without having to flip through a dial like you would if you were sitting in your car or listening to traditional FM radio in any other way.
Free online radio is arguably the best way to enjoy music in the day and age in which we currently live. This type of radio is great for many different reasons, especially due to the fact that it does not cost a dime other than utilizing bandwith off of your current Internet connection.
So why exactly is this type of radio the best way to enjoy music? First and foremost, this type of music is completely free. Secondly, there is a real freedom to what you can do with these online radio stations. When you listen to these free stations you have the ability to sort by category of music, and much more. You can listen to 90s music if you would like, go back in time in the 60s or 70s, or choose a genre such as classic rap and jam out to some good old fashions N.W.A.
At the end of the day though, radio as we know it is no longer the same. Free radio is the way of the future and it is clear and apparent the more that the entertainment industry grows. Free radio over the Internet is not just the wave of the future, it is the here and now and it is revolutionizing the way we enjoy music. If you want to try out these online radio stations and see for yourself what type of music enjoyment you will get out of them, one of the better sites out there is www.onlineradiostations.com as these guys have the radio stations grouped by category and give you the ability to enjoy some great music.
The Doha, Qatar based Al Jazeera English was a news force during the Iraq war and President Bush criticized the TV network for its Iraq war reporting. Al Jazeera became a force in the U.S. TV broadcasting. Al Jazeera is controlled by the Qatari government. It has regular broadcasting services in New York City and Burlington, Vermont. However, the network is struggling to establish its foothold in the U.S. and making an attempt to get into sports broadcasting especially into soccer with its BeIN Sport network.
Qatar is scheduled to host the 2022 World Cup games. It is in the process of buying exclusive rights to broadcast the game in the U.S. and France. It also secured deals with Comcast, DirecTV, and DISH Network for its BeIN Sports channel. The BeIN Sports hold rights for Italian, French and Spanish soccer games.
In Europe, BeIN Sports bought the Paris based Saint-Germain soccer team last year and spent more than $180.2 million to acquire new players. It is spending more than $454 million for rights to broadcast European Union soccer games and other leagues. The large sums of money it is spending in Europe is crushing other sport broadcasters and BeIN Sports is establishing its foothold in sport broadcasting.
Creators of many YouTube videos that go viral put together the video, act on it, and find sponsors to up load it to the Internet and make money doing it. That era of YouTube production is fading and new companies such as the Collective are more and more handling the work leaving creators more time to do what they do best. This process is attracting sponsors such as McDonald’s and General Motors generating more revenue for the creators.
The Collective based in Los Angeles previously represented such artists including Kelly Clarkson, Snoop Dog, and Backstreet Boys. Now they are aiming at capitalizing on the shifting entertainment landscape. They paired the YouTube sensation, Annoying Orange with TV professional, Cartoon Network. The result was 2.5 million viewers. Apple’s iTunes Store sells an Annoying Orange Kitchen Carnage app for $1.99. Toys R Us and J.C. Penny sell Annoying Orange products and apparel. The Epic Meal Time generated 451 million viewers. One of the YouTube favorite, freddiew, features McDonald’s and Electronic Arts advertisements. Another YouTube sensation, humorist Rhett & Link, was so successful in getting brand sponsors and a cable show, they moved to Los Angeles. Twin sisters, Megan & Liz, who made home music videos, are now making back-to-school commercials for Macy’s.
There are a lot of applications which do a really great job of recording free online radio and streaming radio. With trial software and shareware you are able to assess whether the product will fit your budget and needs. But sometimes it can be hard to figure out which one is going to be best for you, so you want to try them. Here are a couple of good examples.
Replay Radio – This really works well for recording podcasts, internet streams, and much more. This was always a really great application for capturing the radio programs online. It records Internet radio and podcasts as well.
Radio tracker – This automatically strips the music from streams of radio stations online and it also separates them into some MP3 files to put into a music library. If you are searching for a great way to build a music radio, this is something that is going to save you a lot of money.
FairStars Recorder – This is another great software application which is designed to record the streaming radio from the Internet or any kind of signal that’s coming from the soundcard of the computer. This program is versatile, works well, and is affordable. You are going to get an app that is solid and that has a lot of options.
Whether you are listening to Christian music or another kind of music, a good place to start is www.onlineradiostations.com. There’s a lot of different types of music to choose from there.
