Artisan Signs Content Deal With New DVD Magazine
Technology
by Christopher Keough
Artisan Home Entertainment, a subsidiary of Santa Monica’s Artisan Pictures Inc. has signed on as the first studio to offer content for ViMagazine, a new monthly DVD-format magazine to launch this summer.
The $10 million deal with consumer electronics maker Vialta Inc. gives Vialta access to Artisan’s library of more than 7,000 titles. Artisan gets licensing fees and an undisclosed investment from Vialta.
ViMagazine, which works only on Vialta’s new DVD player that connects to the Internet, will contain up to 14 hours of feature films, cartoons, documentaries, lifestyle programming and music. The DVD will feature some free content, as well as content available on a rental or purchase basis.
Everyone who buys Vialta’s new ViDVD will get several free issues of ViMagazine; after that, ViDVD owners can subscribe by mailing in a subscription form and billing information, such as a credit card. Each new DVD magazine will contain some free entertainment, as well as material that can be “unlocked” on a rental or purchase basis. The system records that activity and bills the customer the next time the machine connects to the Internet.
The ViDVD is a multimedia DVD player that plays DVDs, MP3s, music CDs and other audio and video formats. It also accesses the Internet through a 56k modem and can show digital photos on TV and play karaoke discs.
Vialta, based in Fremont, is led by Didier Pietri, former president of ABC Pictures and opened an office on Sunset Boulevard late last year.
Maximizing DEN
An unmitigated disaster when it went out of business in May 2000, Digital Entertainment Network’s creditors could still salvage something if Dean Georgopoulos is able to auction off the company’s intellectual property.
Georgopoulos was hired by the company’s bankruptcy trustee last summer to find someone to purchase 6,500 hours of programming that DEN’s investors spent $30 million to produce.
Georgopoulos is based in Century City, but his work has been done at film festivals stateside and in Europe. DEN produced 27 different programs, most of which have between 10 and 50 episodes.
Faced with a wild burn rate, a sex scandal and an aborted IPO, DEN disintegrated about a year after it launched with the promise of being the first new-media success story.
Interest in what’s left has been heavy, Georgopoulos said. He divided the property into 42 lots and is taking bids on any of them and all of them. “Ideally, someone would buy everything and turn DEN back on,” he said, though he added, “It’s not something I expect.”
Curious parties include cable companies, telecommunications companies and “entertainment conglomerates,” he said. Bidding closes March 10. Top three bidders for each lot will meet in bankruptcy court in Los Angeles to have a final auction in front of a judge, he said.
Creative Name Change
Creative Planet is no more. The company changed its name to Movie Magic Technologies Inc.
The change reflects the reliance on Movie Magic, a suite of software applications that performs scheduling and budgeting tasks for movie industry types.
Creative Planet spent the last several months selling and spinning off aspects of its business to concentrate on the software. Newly appointed Chief Executive Kelyn Brannon-Ahn also sliced payroll by whacking close to 300 of its 365-person staff and downsizing its office space to 13,000 square feet from 90,000.
With the name change, all that’s left to complete the turnaround that Brannon-Ahn undertook last summer is to break even, which she promised to do by the end of the year.
Stamps.com Recovering
Just-released fourth quarter results show Santa Monica-based Stamps.com Inc. to be on a collision course with profitability. The Internet postage company reported a loss of $300,000 (1 cent per diluted share) in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a loss of $68.4 million ($1.41) for the like period a year earlier. Fourth quarter revenues were $4.5 million, vs. $5.3 million.
The results, announced Feb, 12, were met with a yawn by investors, who had widely expected the narrowing gap. Shares closed at $3.85 the day of the announcement, off 5 cents from the day before.
Staff reporter Christopher Keough can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 235, or at
[email protected].
