If entertainment and digital convergence hasn’t gotten enough exposure, it will soon. Live Nation Inc. is putting on an event that’s part gaming expo, park rock tour.
The Beverly Hills event and digital distribution company is producing the fourth iteration of the Nintendo Fusion Tour, pushing both the video game and console maker’s newest products and live music from breaking bands.
The tour, headlined by emo-rock band Hawthorne Heights, is visiting some 40 cities nationwide from Sept. 27 and Nov. 11.
Each tour stop showcases new and to-be-released Nintendo games and affords gamers a sneak peek at Nintendo’s Wii console and the hot-selling Nintendo DS Lite part of Nintendo’s ongoing interactive marketing push.
“Video games are as important to the pop culture landscape as music,” says George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications for Nintendo of America.
The tour includes performers Relient K, Emery, Plain White T’s and The Sleeping. Never heard of them? Just wait. Previous Fusion headliners include Fall Out Boy and Evanescence.
The tour will be in Los Angeles this week at the Wiltern Theater.
Live Nation, which owns, operates and has booking rights for 153 venues worldwide, produced about 30,000 events last year. It recently sold off its SFX Baseball division as well as its SFX Television and SFX Events artist management divisions.
The sales are all in line with a strategy to focus on its core business: live music concerts, venue management and Web site brand development, according to chief executive Michael Rapino.
One drawback for the organizers: The tour is limited to venues with enough lobby space to accommodate the displays and demos.
The Horror
It’s that time of year again, and some cable operators are offering up an appropriate variety of visual fare as a Halloween treat: scary movies.
Cable nets are getting in on the horror action by launching entire channels dedicated to the genre. The genre is typically a great way for studios to make money, since the scary movies tend to be cheap to make and are highly profitable. There’s always something wicked on the table (and eventually in the broadcast pipeline, too) consider such recent titles as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” and “Saw III.”
Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Pictures Television and Comcast Corp. are launching Fearnet on Halloween, available over the Internet, wireless platforms and cable systems’ video on demand.
The alliance could be a monstrous one: Comcast is the world’s largest cable distributor and Sony and Lions Gate both have sizable horror content offerings to pull from.
Despite the well-timed launch, Fearnet wasn’t the first one to the party. The Horror Channel, owned by New Jersey-based Terrorvision Television, got into the hunt earlier this year. And last week, it announced a deal to provide its creepy content to Akimbo Systems.
Rainbow Media Holdings Inc. also distributes fright-themed Monsters HD as part of its Voom HD suite of channels.
Angel Deal
LFP Broadcasting LLC, parent company of Hustler TV, just announced an agreement with adult entertainment studio Elegant Angel.
Under the broadcast-only deal, Hustler TV will distribute the Elegant Angel’s large catalogue of adult entertainment content through cable and satellite video on demand and pay-per-view platforms. The deal is one of several exclusive, multi-year contracts secured by Hustler TV recently to add to its huge pool of adult content including programming adult studios like TeraVision, Studio A and Red Light District.
Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at
[email protected]
or (323) 549-5225 ext. 225.
