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Category: News Headline

  • AOL launches KOL Jr. on the Web

    AOL launches KOL Jr. on the Web

    MUMBAI: Preschoolers now have their own website, with the launch of KOL Jr., AOL’s website for kids aged 2 to 5, at http://www.koljunior.com/. The site contains original cartoons, games, music, bedtime stories and other fun, interactive features designed to help parents introduce the Internet to their young children.

    The launch of KOL Jr. also marks the debut of a brand new cartoon called Pilar’s Adventures, which covers topics that engage preschoolers’ imaginations while helping them deal with everyday life experiences.

    “Parents want to be as involved as they can with their young kids while they are online,” said AOL Kids & Teens SVP Malcolm Bird, “At KOL Jr., parents and their children will have fun learning and playing together, with fresh content and activities that aren’t available anywhere else online.”

    Developed by a former teacher and current programming director for AOL, Pilar’s Adventures follows Pilar, a young horse with a wild imagination who joins her new friends in Farmer Roxy’s barnyard. Pilar and the gang — Cleg the horsefly, Hampshire the pig and Susa the owl — explore new places all while learning new and valuable life lessons.

    The animated cartoon will launch with 10 five-minute episodes. Beyond Pilar’s Adventures, young kids will also find other engaging activities on the new KOL Jr. service including:

    ” – Animal Videos – Watch videos from National Geographic and footage of dolphins swimming at the National Aquarium.

    ” – Games – Play games featuring Pilar’s Adventures’ characters, such as coloring and dot-to-dot, and educational games from AOL Learning Games.

    ” – Music – Dance along to popular tunes by the Wiggles, Strawberry Shortcake, Hi-5, Barbie Princesses and Barney.

    ” – TV – Check out kid-friendly movies and DVDs clips such as Muppets, Trollz, Chicken Little, Cinderella, Bambi, Care Bears and Scooby Doo will be available.

    ” – Toy Time – Become official Toy Time Testers. Parents and kids work together to rate toys from all the biggest toy companies.

    ” – Printables – Print out some of their favorite characters including Pilar characters, KOL Gliders, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winx and many others.

    This launch follows the success of KOL – AOL’s highly popular service for kids aged 7 to 12, and will compliment other content already available for kids on AOL.

  • HBO Latino new boxing series to debut 27 April

    HBO Latino new boxing series to debut 27 April

    MUMBAI: HBO Sports introduces an exclusive Spanish-language boxing series that will launch on HBO Latino on 27 April. Five additional boxing events will be presented in 2006.

    The Generación Boxeo series, an innovative and dedicated original program created for HBO Latino, will feature the best young Latino fighters, behind-the-scenes interviews and round-by-round Spanish-language commentary by Raul Marquez and Mario Solis.

    “The Generación Boxeo series captures the action, spirit and fury of the ring for boxing enthusiasts,” said director Brand Development at HBO Adrion Porter, “This is another great opportunity for us to continue the event-level type of sports programming that “Oscar De La Hoya Presenta Boxeo De Oro” did on HBO Latino previously.”

    The 27 April event will feature the delayed broadcast of three fights: Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., son of legendary Mexican champion Julio Cesar Chavez, against undefeated challenger Tyler Ziolkowski in a junior welterweight bout; unbeaten Mexican-American Juan Diaz defends his lightweight title against Jose Miguel Cotto, brother of Puerto Rican boxing sensation Miguel Cotto; and Mexican Jorge Arce, considered one of the best young fighters of the moment, takes on veteran and two-time champion Rosendo Alvarez of Nicaragua in a flyweight title fight.

    Available in 45 per cent of HBO’s cable households, HBO Latino is a dedicated Spanish-language channel designed to reflect the diversity of Latino culture in the country. HBO Latino features U.S. premieres of Spanish-language movies and documentaries; music videos; and original short-form programming, such as “Habla,” that spotlights entertainment and cultural issues; plus a mix of popular Hollywood films and the best of HBO’s originals.

    Along with Generación Boxeo, boxing coverage on HBO Latino includes HBO’s flagship World Championship Boxing series, with live ringside Spanish-language commentary, and the critically acclaimed HBO Boxing After Dark, states an official release.

  • ABC to roll out ‘Lost Experience’ game in UK, U.S. & Australia

    ABC to roll out ‘Lost Experience’ game in UK, U.S. & Australia

    MUMBAI: ABC is teaming with many networks around the world to launch a global interactive web-based game inspired by the hit TV series Lost. ABC announced the creation of an interactive multiplatform treasure hunt game called Lost Experience that will introduce a new story line but stay true to Lost’s signature mix of supernatural and psychological mystery.

    The Lost Experience will feature a parallel story line to the show. Clues will be provided either during the broadcast of the episode itself, or during a commercial break. Not all clues will be given in the U.S, according to media reports.

    ABC is teaming up with 19 other media outlets to bring the The Lost Experience to continents the world over. Each part of the world will be receiving different clues.The network also hopes that the game will appeal to both fans and non-fans of the TV show.

    Rollout is expected to begin 2 May in the U.K., 3 May in the U.S. and 6 May in Australia. There is no winning prize to the game, but it is expected to provide some extra information to fans of the series. The Lost Experience will require players to trade e-mail messages and phone calls and check out billboards, TV commercials and websites to gather all the necessary clues.

    “It’s like a giant, worldwide mysterious jigsaw puzzle that will come to life for all the world to solve,” ABC Entertainment senior VP of marketing Mike Benson is quoted as saying. “The game reaches back into Lost history and looks forward to future episodes. We wanted to make it so that if you watched Lost from the beginning or if you’ve never watched the show before you can get into this.”

    The storyline of the game will be different from the one seen in the show but users will have to watch the show to collect clues and other information for the game. The game will also feature new characters and background on the Hanso Foundation, the mysterious group behind the Dharma Initiative.

    ABC also announced earlier this month that it is making new episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias and Commander in Chief, available in May for free online viewing, although fans will have to sit through ads that they can avoid if they download commercial-free shows for $1.99 per episode from Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

    Lost, which has averaged 15.4 million viewers this season and is one of iTune’s most popular TV downloads to date, will leave viewers staring into the dark hatch of summer hiatus with a two-hour season finale on 24 May.

  • YouTube.com and Weinstein Co. to feature ‘Lucky Number Slevin’ content on Web

    YouTube.com and Weinstein Co. to feature ‘Lucky Number Slevin’ content on Web

    MUMBAI: Viral video site YouTube.com and the Weinstein Company will feature the first eight minutes of the thriller Lucky Number Slevin.

    Lucky Number Slevin is in theaters nationwide in US, which stars Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis. TWC is offering YouTube users an exclusive first glance of the first eight minutes of the movie on the web.

    In an official statement issued, this marks the first time that the opening of a feature film will be released specifically for the YouTube audience.

    The Weinstein Company executive vice president Gary Faber stated, “Audiences love the opening of Lucky Number Slevin — the twists and turns, all set up in this eight minute opening are one of the major reasons why word-of-mouth on the film has been so overwhelmingly positive. Deciding to partner with YouTube was a no-brainer — what better way to help fuel the film’s positive buzz than by partnering with the number one word-of-mouth website out there today.”

    “Bringing more entertaining and exclusive content to YouTube helps further our goal of providing the best video experience on the Internet,” said YouTube VP programming Kevin Donahue.

    “The Weinstein Company is one of the most progressive movie studios moving beyond traditional means to promote its films with original video programming on YouTube,” adds Donahue

    Lucky Number Slevin is a thriller that moves its way through an underworld of crime and revenge where nothing is as it seems. Set in New York City, a case of mistaken identity lands Slevin (Josh Hartnett) into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city’s most rival crime bosses: The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman).

    Slevin is under constant surveillance by relentless Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) as well as the infamous assassin Goodkat (Bruce Willis) and finds himself having to hatch his own ingenious plot to escape the maze alive.

    Also starring Lucy Liu, Lucky Number Slevin is directed by Paul McGuigan and written by Jason Smilovic. The movie is a MGM release of a TWC presentation.

    In addition to Lucky Number Slevin, Deep Focus, the advertising agency for TWC, has reached YouTube’s audience to promote recent films by posting trailers for Scary Movie 4, which has been viewed nearly 1.5M times on YouTube, and Clerks II, which is gaining steam with more than 200,000 video views on the site, informs an official release.

    “Prior to YouTube, there was no other way to premiere the first few minutes of a movie in a viral way,” said Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer.

    “With help from the YouTube community, Scary Movie 4 had a record-breaking box office release. With the upcoming release of Clerks II and with Lucky Number Slevin in theaters nationwide, we are excited to continue to find cool, new ways to bring our movies to market,” said Schafer.

  • Fox, Toyota partner for ‘Prison Break’ mobisodes

    Fox, Toyota partner for ‘Prison Break’ mobisodes

    MUMBAI: A sponsorship deal has been signed between Fox Broadcasting and Toyota that will have the car maker as the primary advertiser for episodes of Prison Break set to air on mobile phones. Earlier this month, Fox had announced that it would be rebroadcasting its content on the internet, with a revenue share deal for its local station affiliates.

    Fox’s Prison Break will serve as the centerpiece of a new marketing partnership between several News Corporation divisions-including Fox, FX and Fox Mobile Entertainment-and Toyota that will include a series of mobisodes inspired by the show.

    The promotion coincides with the launch of Toyota’s new Yaris Liftback and Sedan and will comprise Fox Broadcasting, Fox Mobile Entertainment (FME), Fox Interactive Media (FIM) and the FX cable channel.

    The News Corp. subsidiary is teaming with Toyota to produce 26 short videos that are set to be released every few days for subscribers of Sprint Nextel Corp.’s Power Vision service.

    Saatchi & Saatchi LA will produce 10-second marketing messages for Toyota that will air at the beginning of each mobisode, followed by a two-minute episode that parallels the current Prison Break storyline.The Toyota vehicles will be prominently featured in the 26 mobisodes.

    Prison Break: Proof of Innocence introduces the character Amber McCall and follows her attempts to exonerate her friend L.J., who has disappeared after being framed for murder. L.J. is the son of the show’s lead character-death row prisoner Lincoln Burrows. The mobisode series is produced by Eric Young of Sparkhill, producer of the award-winning 24: Conspiracy series.

    Toyota VP of marketing Jim Farley noted, “We’re utilizing this emerging entertainment medium as a way to provide fans of Prison Break with details about the show courtesy of Yaris. Our partnership with Fox provides an exclusive portal to showcase Yaris to consumers in a fun way where they can discover more about the car on their own time.”

    Fox Interactive Media will also create a Toyota-branded Prison Break microsite within Fox.com, offering content tied to the series. Also, Fox is providing Toyota with “category exclusivity” for auto advertising during several upcoming Prison Break broadcasts, with the first airing today. Fox will also drive viewers to both the Toyota-branded microsite and the mobisodes with co-branded advertising in daily and weekly national publications. Toyota was also sponsor of the FX cable channel’s Prison Break marathon last month.

  • Spielberg to get 2006 International Emmy Founders Award

    Spielberg to get 2006 International Emmy Founders Award

    MUMBAI: Steven Spielberg is to recieve the 2006 International Emmy Founders Award at the 34th International Emmy Awards Gala. The event will be held on 20 November in New York City. Last year’s recipient was Oprah Winfrey.

    This Award is presented for outstanding work that crosses cultural boundaries and reflects the commonality of the human experience.

    International Academy president and CEO Bruce Paisner said, “Steven Spielberg has a long and distinguished career in television. As in his movies, he has the ability to move us and entertain us in equal measure. The International Television Academy takes great pleasure in recognizing his contributions and his creative genius with our 2006 International Emmy Founders Award.”

    Spielberg’s began his career, working on Night Gallery, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Name of the Game and Columbo, among others. His TV movie Duel was released theatrically in some international markets, and his feature film career took off with the release of Jaws.

    He however continued to work in TV, creating the weekly anthology series Amazing Stories, Band of Brothers, Taken and Into the West.

    Future projects include a long-form production about World War II in the Pacific, the sci-fi production Nine Lives and On the Lot, an unscripted series that will allow aspiring filmmakers to vie for a studio development deal at DreamWorks.

    Spielberg’s philanthropic causes include the Righteous Persons Foundation and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and he is the chairman emeritus of the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation.

  • Viacom acquires online game service for $102 million

    Viacom acquires online game service for $102 million

    MUMBAI: With a view to let Viacom and its MTV Networks unit connect online gamers, Viacom has acquired Xfire, a Silicon Valley company that makes free instant messenger software for computer game players.

    Owner of MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and the Paramount movie studios, Viacom said it will buy Xfire for $102 million in a bid to dominate the youth market on the Internet as it has on television.

    Social networking and online gaming sites are two of the hottest investment areas for top U.S. media companies as they try to hold on to younger consumers dividing their time between the Internet and traditional outlets like television.

    As part of MTV Networks, Xfire will be better able to maximize its advertising revenues through more aggressive marketing, greater global penetration and comprehensive integration with the company’s other digital and cable properties that address the gaming demographic.

    Launched two years ago in California, Xfire has 4 million registered members who use its software. Its 1 million active users average 91 hours per month, with an average session length of over three hours. The ad-supported application supports hundreds of the latest PC games and provides social networking, instant messaging and information for online gamers.

    Viacom’s chief executive Tom Freston said. “It’s a wonderful component of our overall digital strategy, particularly on the gaming front. Our key audiences are and probably will remain kids, teens, young adults–we want to be anywhere these audiences are. On both a strategic and an economic level, this is a terrific deal for Viacom. Xfire is far and away the leading PC gaming communications and community platform, has outstanding management, and is a perfect fit with our growing digital businesses at MTV Networks. It’s a bull’s eye against our young audiences.”

    Freston said Viacom continues to look at other Internet properties as potential acquisitions, mostly deals valued much less than $1 billion, and said further purchases were possible this year. At the same time, he said, Viacom is investing in building up entertainment channels it already owns into new formats for its audience.

    MTV last year acquired NeoPets.com, a site that allows users to invent and care for virtual pets. Rival News Corp. purchased social networking site MySpace.com as well as gaming company IGN Entertainment.

    Xfire’s services are advertising based and its features will be incorporated into MTV’s online properties. The company’s technology also allows users to share such entertainment as their favorite music videos, lending itself well to distribute video from MTV.

    Xfire has a distinct combination of tools, including:

    > Friend List for Gamers – Users can see when their gamer friends are online and what games they are playing.

    > One-Click Join – Users can see what games their friends are playing and use the one-click join feature to play alongside their friends instantly.

    > Xfire In-Game Messaging – Xfire users can send and receive instant messages while playing in many games without having to minimize or leave the game.

    > Stats Tracking – Through automatically updated player profiles, Xfire displays what games users are playing and how many hours they have played them.

    > File Downloads – Xfire’s file download system delivers demos, patches, trailers, and other files to users via a closed peer-to-peer distribution system.

    > Voice Chat – Allows gamers to talk to each other over a private peer-to-peer chat network.

    “Online gaming is an intensely social phenomenon, with millions of young adults around the globe interacting constantly. Xfire is the leading gamer community platform, and we look forward to integrating its services and user base into our multiplatform strategy at MTV Networks, which already includes assets like Neopets, GameTrailers, iFilm and more,” said MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath.

    McGrath said MTV would seek to expand Xfire’s base regionally, particularly in countries with ardent gaming communities like Japan and Korea. MTV will also promote the community network, possibly with plugs on its television shows and Internet sites.

  • 47 per cent UK viewers oppose licence fee hike; report

    47 per cent UK viewers oppose licence fee hike; report

    MUMBAI: A BBC-commissioned report into public attitudes to the licence fee showed 47 per cent of the 2,000 adults questioned said they opposed the principle of the licence fee being increased to help those who could not afford to upgrade to digital TV.

    The UK government is due to cease analogue transmission by 2012, when all homes should be able to receive digital output. The proposed terms of the new BBC charter being issued later this year hand the corporation new responsibilities for assisting in this process.

    The findings are part of an independent report commissioned by BBC governors. The research indicate that most viewers – if forced – would pay more than they do now for their annual licence. However, they would only be happy to do so if the extra revenue was spent on relevant services, and the standard of the BBC’s output did not deterioriate.

    The reserach has been undertaken as part of a consultation process over the future of the funding for the corporation, and asked Professor Patrick Barwise of London Business School to gauge licence fee payers’ opinions.

    According to BBC News, the fee – £131.50 for each household – generated nearly £3 billion of revenue for the corporation in 2004-2005.

    The reaction to a rise in the licence fee of £150 by the middle of the next decade – for which the BBC has asked the government – was that the number of people willing to pay for existing services would fall from between 75 and 80 per cent today to nearer 65 to 70 per cent. However, if it proceeded with the proposal, “it won’t be the straw that breaks the licence fee’s back”, Professor Barwise noted.

    The survey also suggests the public is broadly in favour of most of the new interactive services being planned by the BBC. These include a media player offering a chance to catch-up with an entire week of programming, which 80 per cent of respondents agreed was interesting and 76 per cent said they would be likely to use.

  • Adlabs Films to list demerged radio business, swap ratio at 2:1

    Adlabs Films to list demerged radio business, swap ratio at 2:1

    MUMBAI: Adlabs Films Ltd (AFL) board has approved the proposal for demerger of its FM radio business to a wholly owned subsidiary.

    According to the scheme, the shareholders of Adlabs will get two shares of the new company for every new share held. The new entity will be listed on the stock exchange, the company said in a release.

    The scheme also envisages amalgamation / merger of two AFL subsidiaries, Entertainment One India LTD and Mukta Adlabs Digital Exhibition Pvt LTD, with itself. “The aforesaid scheme will be subject to all requisite permissions, sanctions and approvals including, inter alia, of share holders, lenders, stock exchanges, High Courts, regulatory authorities,” the company said in a release.

    Adlabs had made its debut in film production in the year 2002 through its 100 per cent subsidiary Entertainment One India Ltd. A year later, the company entered into a 50:50 join venture with Mukta Arts for digital delivery of movies.

    Adlabs board has also recommended a dividend of 45 per cent (Rs 2.25 per share) for the year ended 31 March 2006, subject to approval at the ensuing annual general meeting.

  • BBC World Service’s English teaching initiative completes 10 years

    BBC World Service’s English teaching initiative completes 10 years

    MUMBAI: BBC World Service has announced that its English language teaching service celebrates 10 years online this month. The site receives 10 million page impressions a month – 19 million if one counts English Language Teaching material on partner websites.

    Special features on www.bbclearningenglish.com to mark the anniversary include:

    A mini retro site displaying classic pages from the archives
    A specially commissioned piece by linguist David Graddol discusses who will be learning English in the future and how and what they will be learning
    A blogging facility providing daily language support to individual bloggers via a teacher’s weblog

    The website also features Flatmates – BBC World Service’s first interactive soap; Ask About English, where experts answer users’ questions; and Keep Your English Up To Date, in which Professor David Crystal discusses new words.

    And there are interactive teaching games Back of the Net and Commentary Box and a range of short audio programmes with quizzes, glossaries and downloadable scripts on lifestyle and entertainment.

    For teachers of English, weekly lesson plans based on topical news stories are available.