Deal or No Deal?<br>MediaBizzBuzz.com for January 14, 2008

Winter, be damned. Last week the (cashmere) gloves came off.   Just as our presidential candidates, particularly of the blue varietal, are pitting change against experience ( i.e., the status quo) that same contest writ large is also the meta in the Writers Strike, the forced march of the recording industry, the future of the mobile industry. Last week, as CES unfolded and the Globes were emasculated, the hibernation of the holiday season came to an abrupt end. 

ABC enacted its force majeure provision and terminated some thirty deals, including relationships with such stalwarts as Borat's Larry Charles, Brothers & Sisters creator Jon Robin Baitz, producing partners Nina Wass & Gene Stein. Warner Bros TV is rumored to be next with the machete.  Yet, Late Night television roared back to life. Letterman's interim deal with the WGA started the ball rolling with United Artists and The Weinstein Company followed suit. But while Leno, Kimmel, Stewart, and Colbert returned sans writing staffs, their comedy was muy sympatico to the writers - particularly Jon Stewart's. One gets the sense that despite a public frown, that the WGA is patting him on the back in the Green Room. Comedy Central must be beaming as well, Colbert's ratings are up over 20% across all key demos. A new plot twist revealed itself over the weekend: the DGA began formal talks with the AMPTP. Jack Myers asserts that the Strike " may be nearing an end if expectations for a quick agreement between producers and theDirectors Guild are realized." Conversely, he holds that "if Directors fail to reach agreement with network and studio executives, it promises a complete collapse of the traditionalHollywood power structure." (Click to read entire commentary)

An unintended consequence of the Strike is the explosion of online video sharing. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that traffic to sites such as YouTube and Reever DOUBLED in 2007, and that there has been a spike overlapping with the strike. NewTeeVee reports that entrepreneurial-minded striking A-list writers have formed Virtual Artists and are in the process of raising the tidy sum of $30 million for an online video endeavor. The article also namedropped other like-minded media plays: 60Frames, Blowtorch Entertainment and Hollywood Disrupted.

CES Was The Warmup
This week's MacWorld promises the opening oratory of Apple majordomo Steve Jobs, short of his announcing an end to famine, global warming, a cure for cancer, and an end to Fred Thompson's candidacy. His keynote is Tuesday, 9am PST. Engadget will be Live-Blogging. While Apple's flying high, it is facing its first real threat to iTunes with Amazon locking down SonyBMG, the last of the major labels, to selling DRM-free mp3sin its store, and to its nascent AppleTV with Netflix opening up its online streaming as unlimited to all but its lowest-tier customers (and Mac users, ironically). BusinessWeek think that Jobs faces an especially uphill battle on this front against cable.

The End of DRM Isn't A Do-Over For the Music Industry:
Post-DRM, the music industry has been turned on its head. The Good News: Despite giving away its music last fall, Radiohead's In Rainbows was #1 on last week's Billboard charts. The Bad: This as online internet radio fav Pandora was forced to stop streaming to the UK. The Badder Still: EMI is about to cut 36% of its staffthis week, or 2,000 folks.  Haven't had enough? MediaFuturist sees a songwriter/composer strike for 2008.

Social Networks,Mobile , FCC Go Primetime:
60 Minutes sat down with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg last night. The podcast of the interview should be up here shortly. Meanwhile, following in FB's footsteps, fast-growing social network Bebo launches an open API this week. 
There's little dispute that the June release of the iPhone upended the cellular phone industry. Wired has a raw and mostly uncensored look at how the Jesus Phone came to be, while GigaOm industry expert Chetan Sharma predicts a disruptive year in mobile what with the Wireless (700 MHz) Auction, Google Android, and WiMax on the horizon as well. The FCC, attempting to preempt an investigation by the House Energy & Commerce Committee, will endeavor to explain. We're all ears.

Lucy, You Got Some Splainin' To Do:
Finally, pollsters took an historical drubbing when Hillary Clinton bested Obama inNew Hampshire , despite predictions of an Obama double-digit lead. eMarketer deconstructs how this happened. Was it Hillary's softer side that turned the tide? Ed Martin thinks that it was the media that was vaklempt. The clip itself is a bona-fide phenomenon: it's been viewed over a million times on YouTube alone, in six days.