Reports gathered by Alden Scott Crow and Musea.
Editor: for some reason the news is somewhat bleak plus there's more of it this month than usual. Bear with us:
MERGE OF THE MONTH: #1 largest newspaper chain Gannett (USA Today) has added more to its 74 dailies in the USA. They have bought for $2.6 bill. The Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star. This comes 3 weeks after Gannet paid $1.1 bill. for 21 dailies owned by Thomson Newspapers.
That's 97 now by my count. You'd expect them to follow the buy with an announcement of how they're going to improve the quality of the paper right?
"There are very significant opportunities to cut costs and raise the cash flow margin from about 27% to the mid-30% range" - Gannet CEO Douglas McCorkindale on the merger. (USA Today)
I COULD HAVE BEEN A CONTENDER: We may have to add to our list of Corp. Art 8, AT&T/Liberty Media (And possibly Dreamworks Films too). But a wait and see attitude may be best.
3 Behemoth mergers are being scrutinized by regulators:
1) WorldCom's merge with Sprint has been denied by the European Union antitrust chief who was concerned that the pair would dominate high-level internet access around the world - sounds like a James Bond plot.
2 & 3) AT&T just merged with MediaOne, while Warners is trying to merge with AOL. But consumers groups urged the US gov. to investigate because of cross ownership links between AT&T and Warners. The AT&T-MediaOne merger gives AT&T a 25% stake in Time Warner Entertainment! "The power that AT&T and AOL/Warner (the worlds largest media company already) would wield, could seriously undermine competition and leave consumers paying inflated prices for cable tv and high speed internet services." - Consumer's Union. Musea adds, "Well duh!"
To find out who owns what in Corporate Art you need a scorecard: go to www.cjr.org/owners/ and they list them all even down to little local yokel Belo.
BIGGEST: The biggest search engine with more than 300 million pages cataloged, isn't Yahoo or Alta Vista but www.alltheweb.com (PC World) (Personal note, finally Musea is listed on Yahoo - type in Musea+zine and you get a button that lists 104 of our Musea web pages. Yahoo, for some reason took years longer than the others to list Musea.)
In other net news, this quote from Doug Block, who's film Home Page was the 1st film to be streamed on the Internet in its entirety, prior to its theatrical release (10/99) "What's depressing is the desire of media companies to turn new media (internet) into old media. The web offers more possibilities than just retail shopping or the stock market's focus on the "get rich quick' aspect." (Videography)
CHUMPS OF THE MONTH:
*CHUMP #1: Chairman of NIKE shoes Philip H. Knight, gave a pledge for $30 million to his alma mom, The Univ. Of Oregon. But then those pesky university free thinkers - faculty, administration and students - voted to join the Worker Rights Consortium , an association that monitors sweatshops. Knight pulled his pledge and vowed not to give again.
CHUMP #2: Ad agencies. I think they're going too far in their invasion of privacy, but hey you be the judge: "Our belief is that we target the family from birth until death" - Johnathan Rodgers, pres. Of Discovery Networks, or try this one; "One of GM's biggest goals is to move beyond the individual to the household. It wants to learn not only about the person who has his or her name on a car's title, but also about spouses, children, parents and siblings." - Tony LaCivita, director of customer experience and enterprise customer management at GM (Broadcasting & Cable , Informationweek)
CHUMP #3: French media and utility group Vivendi is in a deal to buy Corp. Art Co. Seagrams (which includes the largest music co. of all). This sentence was from a news story on the merger. Something about it seemd somewhat ironic. See if you can pick it out. (Note: Bronfman is the CEO of Seagrams):
"Following the PolyGram deal which reflected Bronfman's devotion to Music, Universal Music dropped hundreds of artists, laid off thousands of workers and folded several labels." (Reuters)
CHUMP #4: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (Oscars) issued this ruling in Jun: "films which receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release will not be eligible for Academy Awards in any category." Translated that means internet films and TV films are too much competition and we mean to nip that in the bud! (Variety) ... to all you chumps booooooooooooooo!
UPDATES: As you regulars know, Musea is full of ideas. And now that we're nearing 10 years old, many of these are creeping into the mainstream: 1) we are opposed to billboards. The Dallas City Council has recently outlawed billboards. We salute this vote.
2) We advocated neighborhood buses as an alternative to traffic, new highways, and ridiculously expensive rail transit. DART (Dallas Area Resents This) has set up such a neighborhood system. But in typical Dallas form it's not in the poorer sections or the most highly congested. It's in the richest college in the city. Yep to help those financially challenged SMU preppies, Dart continues the Mustand Express a free bus service for students who live off campus. Hey why not a pool while we're at it! (DMN)
3) We advocated the reproduction of paintings (there are techniques that make them look virtually identical to the originals), then send them on tour across the world - can you imagine a show of every Rembrandt painting! In an ad from Art Business News this: "When I first saw a Giclee on canvas (a type of reproduction system) I was in awe. I knew I was seeing the future of fine art reproduction. I placed one of my framed originals and the framed Giclee reproduction side by side and invited my staff and clients in. They sat unbelieving in their chairs. The depth, color richness and texture of my original had been captured with stunning accuracy." - Artists Dale TerBush. Also in a recent color print competition, 1200 firms competed for the prize ( won by Bentley House, a CA co). This really is the future and galleries and museums will have to adapt or stop.
4) We advocated a triangle of land from Downtown to Fair Part and White Rock Lake to Rochester Forest and the Trinity River, to be free of cars. In Ferrara, Italy, pop. 140,000, "most of the old part of town is off limits to private cars, and motorists can park their car at the edge and rent a bike to get around or hop a taxi or bus. A few streets are off-limits to motorized traffic altogether, reserved only for shoe and pedal power."
Also 150 cities in France, Italy, and Switzerland celebrate every Sept. 22nd by banning cars from town centers for the day. Also France has banned trucks off the road on weekends for 25 years. (Auto Free Times)
MUSIC You know that artist formerly known as? He has signed a new contract with Arista that is ground breaking. Record companies typically sign acts to multi-album deals, taking control of an artists career for years. Performers get royalties of 10-12% of a CD's retail price. They must cover their advance and the cost of recording and some promotion. Often they don't earn much beyond the advance. Worse, they give up ownership of the music. Prince's deal is this: one record only, Arista pays him a straight cut of sales without requiring him to earn out his advance or cover recording and promotion costs, and lets him retain ownership of the music including the right to sell it over the net. (Forbes)
MEDIA CRITICIZES ITSELF: Quotes from Editor & Publisher article - a survey of 552 top execs, mid-level editors, producers, and reporters from both national and local news media: "The news media survey found that journalists believe reporting standards are dropping; there is an ongoing drive to deconstruct the line between editorial and business; and there's too much reliance on sensationalism, and that these factors are undermining press credibility... The press also feels that a loss of public trust is a leading cause of declining news audiences. Many editors and reporters attribute journalism's problems to growing financial and business pressures that increase bottom-line pressure and hurt the quality of coverage."
MUSEA HELPS THE MEDIA CRITICIZE ITSELF: If the Boy Scouts financed a newspaper, do you thing the newspaper would criticize the Boy Scouts? If a church group financed a newspaper, do you think it would criticize that religion? If advertisers finance the media , do you think the media would criticize advertisers? - Art S Revolutionary
JUST SAY "SO" A study by the New England Journal of Medicine looked at 207 news reports of 3 popular drugs from 1994-98 (note that drug commercials are rampant on the 5:30 national newscasts) and found: 53% failed to disclose drug risks, 40% described benefits without any numerical context, 61% of stories citing experts with financial ties to a drugmaker, failed to reveal those links. And 70% failed to mention drug cost-effectiveness. The survey covered 40 news organizations and network TV shows. (USA Today).
Also I'll add that the media seldom puts risks in perspective. Ex. In the last 100 years 5 million Americans, more than have died in all U.S. wars, have been killed by automobiles. The Pentagon should develop a missile defense for that!
CAMP CHAMP - A REAL TREE HUGGER! We salute, as our Camp Champ of the month Julia Butterfly Hill, for her moxie: she lived 2 years and 8 days on a small tarp-covered platform in the upper boughs of a 1,000 year old redwood named Luna. On Dec. 18th 1999, she came down from her triumphant protest with a victory - Pacific Lumber's Maxxam Corporation, had agreed to permanently protect the tree and a 200 ft. radius buffer zone from logging. ..Julia's feet touched the ground; she then fell to her knees and collapsed in a ball, weeping. After a long moment, she rose back to her knees, lifted her arms up towards the tree and cried out. "We did it!" When she rose to her feet she was hugged by her ground support crew followed by her father. "I think before anyone could be allowed to cut down something like this they should be mandated to live in it for 2 years," she later joked. Musea salutes you. You are a genuine hero! (Auto Free Times)