The Hollywood Stimulus Package: Back To Work! MediaBizBuzz.com for February 11, 2008

To paraphrase Freud, there are no coincidences in the collective unconscious. This Wednesday promises not only the signing into law by Mr. Bush of a $152B stimulus package, but -- pending a Tuesday vote by the WGA's 12,000 members - the return of writers to TV studios and movie sets, and of course, blank computer screens. Both are daunting accomplishments given the roiling enmity between the legislative and executive branches, as well as creative tension (to put it mildly) between the AMPTP and the WGA. While there are always winners and losers, last week proved that not all outcomes are zero-sum.

To wit: While the Patriots did not see a 19-0 season immortalized in the record books, Ed Martin took note of the record-shattering audience of 97 1/2 million that turned on the Game. Even though Murdoch's NewsCorp was estimated to have banked $250M for the telecast, the L.A. Times opined that Fox hadn't even begun to tap into ways to further monetize XLII, beyond selling it on iTunes for $1.99 a pop.

Super Duper Tuesday was certainly a win-win for democracy. While political pundits strained their credibility even more than usual, technology made watching the returns pure joy: Google Maps teamed up with Twitter, showing both state vote counts and live Twitters, often at polling places, across the country and abroad. And while we continue to have anxieties surrounding electronic voting (hanging chads, anyone?) this week debuts the first time out for e-Voting for American expats, estimated at close to 6 million registered voters worldwide. This isn't an esoteric exercise, in the close Democratic race, twenty-two (!) delegates will be up for grabs. (Shame on the RNC; registered Repubs still can't vote online.)

To the Writers contract: It might have been a bitter pill for the AMPTP, but it reflects the evolving marketplace for both content creation and consumption. PaidContent has the nuts and bolts here, it's actually a slight improvement on the DGA deal (Exhibit A: creators are entitled to 2% of distributor's gross after three years). For up-to-the-second coverage, no one has been more obsessed than LA Weekly's Nikki Finke; over the weekend she must have posted on the hour. Currently, she's reporting that showrunners are back to work today.

Following the neutered Globes, last night's Grammy's ("The Kanye West & Amy Winehouse Show") was a first look at Awards Season (if the WGA contract is ratified, the Feb. 24th telecast of the Oscars will get its closeup after all). The music industry's fete comes at a time when even flatCD sales are cause for celebration. PaidContent reported that the Department of Justice is investigating Universal's Total Music, their planned subscription service; Yahoo! Music closed up shop and ported its listeners over to Rhapsody. The entertainment industry managed to politicize HR 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act; the rider seeks to strongarm colleges across the land to offer site-wide music subscription services (including Real Networks and Napster) or face a threat of financial de-funding. In response to declining record sales and the concurrent uptick in mobile usage, last night's Grammy award-winning Timbaland (for LoveStoned) is partnering with Verizon. Rather than do a traditional album release, he'll drop a song-a-month, exclusive to Verizon's 65.7 million subscribers. And while we generally abhore puns, the touring Verizon Mobile Recording Studio Bus actually sounds inspiring. Fellow Grammy-award winning producer Jay-Z (for Umbrella) goes Timbaland one better in opening his own ad agency, Translation Advertising, to serve the untapped market of the multicultural consumer; Interpublic has a 49% stake in the company. This week sees the launch of Yahoo! Finance's Tech Ticker, (will it report on itself?) as well as Web 2.0 rechristenings of Fast Company and theIndustry Standard.

Yahoo!'s Got Chutzpah!
Microsoft's $31/share offer to takeover Yahoo! was summarily rejected last Friday, with some wiggle room for a $40/share offer. There wasn't one media outlet that didn't take a position. For a while Quadrangle and Softbank were each offered up as White Knights. Google continues to be a possible player as Yahoo! seeks to hold off Steve Ballmer & Co. There was opining on what the merger would mean for Barry Diller's IAC and Ask.com, by Diller himself. Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Investor termed the likely union a "disaster" in the making, while TechCrunch's Michael Arrington noted that since the jousting had commenced that the Street had knocked $40B off of MSFT's market cap. In view of Yahoo!'s rebuff, PaidContent sketched out MSFT's thrust and parry.  Jack Myers takes a longer view: tapping a number of executives not only to speculate on the portal's missteps, but asking them how, going forward, they would define their markets, respond to new, disruptive models, and expand their positions.

Last week was marked by a scourge of ad hominem attacks, particularly in the political arena. Lots of debate whether or not MSNBC's David Schuster did an Imus when querying if theClinton campaign was "pimping out Chelsea."  Sexist coinage aside, here's what a real attack looks like: Here's a three minute clip from that banned Boondock's, with Aaron McGruder savaging BET's Reggie Hudlin. In case there's been a takedown, here's a fallback. The clip is so devastating it makes Southpark's  Trapped In the Closet  episode look restrained. Intrigued? Here's the full episode of Hunger Strike against BET.