Bizmology |
- UK music sales: live trounces recorded
- Eldorado Gold is Fortune’s fastest growing company. Really?
- The Dark Tower’s adaptation is bold and risky
- The Burkle/Barnes & Noble Battle
| UK music sales: live trounces recorded Posted: 09 Sep 2010 02:59 PM PDT
The retailer’s Ireland and UK sales plummeted nearly 14 percent during a 19-week period ending Sept. 4 compared to the prior year. World Cup or otherwise, entertainment retailers are feeling the pain this summer as physical CD sales continue their ever-downward trend. Consumers continue to pull back on their discretionary purchases. Protracted economic instability and double-dip blues tend to push record, DVD, and other like media spending on the back burner. Interestingly, at least in the UK, the live music sector seems to be making up for losses suffered in the recorded music segment. For instance, HMV’s live concert segment rose 8 percent during the same period it reported its store losses. And live music is given props for the country’s 5 percent gain in overall music sales. The UK differs from other markets in a significant way: festivals. Those Brits love their music festivals nearly as much as they love soccer, as evidenced by continued strong growth at Glastonbury, Leeds, Reading, and Latitude. The US live sector has fared far worse, with a 17 percent drop in revenue among the top 100 tours for the first half of the year. That said, here’s hoping that retailers in the UK and abroad can rightly pin their hopes on a reinvigorated holiday sales season to make up for the dog days of summer. Now, can anyone tell me if Monday Night Football affects US retail entertainment sales? ~ Photo by Axel Bührmann, used under a CC-Share Alike license. |
| Eldorado Gold is Fortune’s fastest growing company. Really? Posted: 09 Sep 2010 11:36 AM PDT Fortune thinks the fastest growing company right now is Eldorado Gold. Fortune editors picked 99 others, but what lands them on that list — high revenue and EPS growth, don’t tell the whole story.
Using Hoover’s to build a list of contact’s based on the Fortune list revealed another interesting point: four educational institutions made the fastest growing list. Among them is DeVry. Folks are retooling as they hunt for work. |
| The Dark Tower’s adaptation is bold and risky Posted: 09 Sep 2010 11:20 AM PDT
Sources are reporting that Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment have completed a deal that will allow them to produce Stephen King’s epic novel series The Dark Tower. Here’s the experimental part: they’re not only adapting the books into a trilogy of feature films, they’re producing a supplemental television series that will be sandwiched in between each film. The mammoth undertaking will be led by the Oscar-winning team behind A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard is directing the first film and is directing the first season of the television series. Akiva Goldsman (he’ll always be the writer of the execrable Batman and Robin to me) is scripting the first film and the TV series’ inaugural season. To be honest, this announcement is stunning for me. I enjoyed the Stephen King novels as much as the next guy (or gal), and the rich depth of material certainly warrants this kind of monumental treatment. But can it be done? Right now I’m trying to imagine the logistical nightmare of filming/adapting/casting/producing three films along with 12 to 22 yearly episodes of television. The film crew plans on saving money by using the same actors/sets/production crew for both the films and the TV episodes. That’s great, but what about timetables? Each medium has its own set of complex logistical problems. Movie release dates are not always set in stone and can easily fluctuate. We’ve also learned the hard way that writers’ strikes and other work stoppages can quickly throw a monkey wrench into any ongoing production. Producing a television series is a long, arduous grind. Will the same actors and crew be ready to jump into the next required feature film? Can you really get each medium lined up perfectly to be in sync with the other? I guess we’ll find out. But hey, I’m optimistic. Let’s say they work it all out, and the schedule is immune to any major problems. What if the first movie bombs or doesn’t perform like it should? What if the second movie bombs or the television ratings are down and advertisers pull out? The noble experiment crumbles like a deck of cards. I really don’t mean to sound negative or pessimistic. These are just major questions the studio heads have all asked themselves and their accountants. In the years to come, I’ll gladly be one of many viewers glued to my local movie screen and non-flat (sigh) TV screen. I have never been able to resist the chronicles of King’s stoic gunslingers, evil sorcerers, and slow mutants. I just hope I get to watch them all the way to the end, as their adventures unfold successfully — on both film and television. That still sounds weird in my head. |
| The Burkle/Barnes & Noble Battle Posted: 09 Sep 2010 10:43 AM PDT
The missive was sent in advance of the company’s annual meeting of shareholders on September 28th. It recommends that investors vote for its slate of nominees and reject Burkle’s hand-picked minions, which includes Burkle himself. The bookseller suspects that Burkle and the Los Angeles-based investor, Aletheia Research & Management, which own about 19% and 16% of B&N’s shares, respectively, are maneuvering to form a “total control bloc” by acquiring only an additional 16% of its shares in the open market. B&N points out that Burkle and Aletheia have a history of following each other’s lead in acquiring stakes in companies, and believes they did just that in its case. At Hoover’s our editorial staff routinely scours proxy filings for information including executive salaries and biographies, the composition of corporate boards, significant ownership stakes and relationships, and more. Indeed, I recommend that investors and researchers looking to better understanding a company carefully read the proxy. When a proxy battle breaks out and things turn ugly, they often make for entertaining as well as informative reading. The battle between Burkle and B&N reminds me of Target Corp’s 2009 skirmish with activist investor William Ackman (see previous post), which ended in an embarrassing defeat for Ackman and his hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. Whether B&N’s management will succeed remains to be seen. But if this fight is anything like the one between Target and Ackman, the acrimony and mudslinging is just beginning. The next three weeks should be pretty interesting. So stay tuned. ~ Photo by Bruce Turner, used under a Creative Commons license. |
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Bizmology Part 1
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