By Ruth Brown
Another big-budget disappointment this weekend, with Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim earning an underwhelming $38.3 million to take third place at the box office in its opening weekend. The flashy aliens vs. robots flick cost $190 million to make and received strong reviews , the Hollywood Reporter reports. Conversely, Adam… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Rick Munarriz, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Netflix is in a good groove these days.
Goldman Sachs bumped its target on the shares from $125 to $184 on Thursday, encouraged by Netflix’s widening addressable market — not just the 84.2 million U.S. homes with broadband connectivity, but the fact that Netflix is now a viable subscription option for those embracing Web-enabled mobile devices.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tooted his own company’s horn on Thursday, pointing out in a Facebook status update that the service delivered 4 billion hours of content through the first three months of the year.
Then we have a catalyst that has yet to play out. Hemlock Grove — the latest show that will be exclusively available on Netflix for the time being — begins streaming next weekend. After February’s wildly successful House of Cards, if Netflix can nab another magnetic property, it will be that much harder for folks to cancel subscriptions between programming lulls. Netflix will have proved itself worthy of scoring magnetic content, and the comparison’s with Time Warner‘s HBO will be even more apropos.
Is Netflix on the same level as HBO? Not exactly. As anyone knows who has seen House of Cards available as a DVD preorder on rival Amazon.com , Netflix is often merely paying for exclusive streaming rights or just the benefit of carrying a particular show first. If it’s a hit, it may very well be made available through other outlets down the line.
But what if we don’t get that far with these next shows? What if Hemlock Grove isn’t scary? What if Arrested Development‘s fourth season next month isn’t funny?
We may not be dealing with hypothetical questions here.
“Weird can be good, but this isn’t intentionally weird so much as it is plain bad,” reads a scathing Hollywood Reporter review of Hemlock Grove from Tim Goodman.
Let’s be fair here. Goodman also panned the similarly creepy American Horror Story, the sleeper gothic horror hit of 2011 where the Harmon family moved into a haunted house — and paid the price.
“Unlike the Harmons, watching what goes on in that house even once is enough to know better than to go back again,” he concluded.
He was wrong then. The show fared well on FX and went on to have a second season. Maybe he’s wrong this time, too. Then again, maybe it’s better for Netflix if Goodman is right. Netflix will have some duds on its hands. That’s inevitable.
Amazon is in the process of greenlighting a bunch of pilots. It will then see which ones are fit to bankroll complete seasons for based on the streaming audience’s initial reaction. However, even that hurdle won’t guarantee that Amazon won’t have some clunkers of its own.
Netflix has more money to spend than anybody else on streaming content, because it can justify the content land grab as it spreads it around its 33.2 million streaming accounts worldwide. However, when a show falls
From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/13/what-if-netflix-has-a-flop-on-its-hands/
By Evann Gastaldo In the wake of star Shain Gandee‘s death , MTV has decided to cancel reality series Buckwild —and producer JP Williams is not happy about it. “This is the network that has shows about teen pregnancy,” Williams told the Hollywood Reporter last night. “They’ll stick by a show that allows you…
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Polly Davis Doig 
By Evann Gastaldo 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By The Huffington Post News Editors
“The face of the new CNN” debuted with rocky ratings during his first week.
“The Lead,” the new show anchored by Jake Tapper, premiered with huge expectations on Monday. New CNN chief Jeff Zucker hailed Tapper as one of the key assets in his reinvention of the network.
In its first four days, though, Tapper’s show struggled to maintain the ratings from its predecessor, “The Situation Room.” Tapper came in third from Monday through Thursday, with his first show drawing 400,000 viewers. As the Hollywood Reporter noted, it averaged a 50 percent drop from “The Situation Room” in the coveted A25-54 demo, as well as a 42 percent drop in total viewers.
By John Johnson 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Polly Davis Doig 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
By Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Stupidity is contagious. It gets us all from time to time. Even respectable companies can catch it. As I do every week, let’s take a look at five dumb financial events this week that may make your head spin.
1. I think Icahn
Carl Icahn didn’t become a billionaire by making dumb mistakes, but his move to rattle the cage at Dell has all the makings of a disaster.
Dell received a $24.2 billion offer to take the company private last month, but Icahn feels that the buyout price of $13.65 a share is too low.
Simply being unhappy isn’t enough for Icahn, obviously. He’s an activist at heart, so he’s taken a stake in the fading PC maker and threatening “years of litigation” if he doesn’t get his way.
What’s his plan? Well, no one has offered to top the $24.2 billion offer, but Icahn is proposing — if the deal doesn’t pass — for Dell to pay a special dividend of $9 a share. Dell obviously doesn’t have that kind of money, so it would have to take on new debt to make it happen.
Really?
Dell’s behind the times, and it’s too late in a world that has eased up on PCs over the past two years. Analysts see revenue slipping again this year, with profitability taking an even bigger hit. Taking on more debt is the last thing that Dell needs right now.
2. Fumbling away an opportunity
DIRECTV may not realize that its exclusive deal with the NFL to air every regular season game in its entirety is perhaps the only reason why it’s able to command such a lofty premium over rival satellite television and most cable providers.
Speaking at Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference in Florida this week, DIRECTV CFO Pat Doyle — as retold in Hollywood Reporter — said that the company is weighing changes to its NFL Sunday Ticket when it comes up for renewal.
The NFL is likely to command a princely ransom when the current deal expires in 2015, and Doyle said that the satellite television giant is considering striking a cheaper non-exclusive deal with the football league or dropping the package altogether.
Yikes. Maybe Doyle is merely negotiating in public, but at a time when live sports programming is about the only thing keeping many homes from cutting the cord with pay TV providers, it would be a devastating blow for DIRECTV to lose the one thing that sets it apart from everybody else.
3. Letting the bed bugs bite
In a week when the market was rallying to fresh all-time heights, shares of Select Comfort hit a new 52-week low after posting a disappointing sales update.
The company behind the Sleep Number air-chambered mattress warned that sales have been soft since the beginning of last month. Unlike its beds, there’s little that Select Comfort can do to adjust that firmness.
“We believe this is a short-term issue associated …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Evann Gastaldo 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home