Disney’s sports cable network ESPN last week partnered with Nielsen Co. to measure how consumers use media across a variety of platforms, including TV, the Internet and digital mobile devices.
The collaboration will include the first deployment of Nielsen’s TV/Internet Convergence Panel, the new integrated sample of households used to measure TV and Internet use within the same home. Panel members will have their television viewing measured by Nielsen’s People Meters and their online usage measured by Nielsen/NetRatings’ Internet metering technology. The sample will be assembled from a combination of sources, including newly recruited homes and existing TV panelists who are leaving the National People Meter television sample.
As part of the initiative, Nielsen will link its television and Internet measurement to the ESPN Sports Poll, a syndicated tracking survey of U.S. adults and teenagers that monitors general fan profiles, viewing habits, event attendance and sports industry trends.
Getting ‘Lost’
The Sci Fi Channel and G4 have secured off-network cable rights to ABC’s Emmy-Award winning, hit series “Lost” from Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The deal gives both G4 and NBC Universal’s Sci Fi rights to existing episodes of “Lost,” which the networks will debut in primetime in fall 2008, extending through all six seasons of the series.
Sci Fi plans a four-hour primetime stack of the hit drama beginning in the fall of 2008. The channel’s executives are hoping that the weekly mini-marathons of the popular drama will keep viewers engaged with the ongoing storylines.
Both networks bought some Web rights, too. Los Angeles-based G4 Media Inc. is adding interactive updates to the series, which will offer audiences a variety of ways to participate during each episode.
Merger at Disney
Disney’s two credit unions have officially merged, leaving Mouse House employees with one large Burbank-based option for their banking services.
The merger between the company’s Vista and Partners credit unions has been expected since early this year. The two had developed separately; one in Anaheim, for Disneyland employees, the other in Burbank, to serve the studio’s and Disney’s Orlando staffers.
Each has more than 100 employees. The one large organization has more than $750 million in assets, eight branches in Florida and California and more than 100,000 members.
No management or staff layoffs are expected, and no branches will close. The new credit union will take on the Partners name. The credit union will be headquartered in Burbank. John Janclaes, now president of Vista, will be president of the newly formed credit union.
KRBV-FM going portable
Radio One Inc., the nation’s seventh largest broadcaster and which serves African American listeners, signed a five-year deal with Arbitron Inc., which measures radio listening audiences. It will participate in Portable People Meter ratings for 15 markets, including Los Angeles.
The company owns or operates more than 70 radio stations in more than 20 markets, including more than 40 stations serving the top 20 African-American radio markets.
Early this year, Radio One re-branded its Los Angeles station, which had slipped in the ratings, from rhythm and blues style programming on what was once called KKBT-FM to urban adult contemporary on what is now KRBV-FM (100.3), “V100.”
The agreement includes Portable People Meter ratings services in 15 top-50 markets and a continuation of the diary-based ratings services in one market.
Arbitron announced third quarter 2007 earnings last week that were down from last year as a result of higher costs related to the switch to the new Portable People Meter ratings measuring system. Net income was $17.2 million or 58 cents a share, compared to $20.2 million or 69 cents a share in the prior year.
AFM’s World Vision
Phat Phish, an Indian entertainment company, is bringing something other than the typical Bollywood song-and-dance fare to Hollywood.
The company will make its debut at this year’s American Film Market, which kicks off on Oct. 31 and is produced by L.A.-based Independent Film & Television Alliance, a trade association representing producers and distributors of independent motion pictures and TV programs. Phat Phish is selling two films: “Frozen,” a black-and-white film that was the only film from India to be part of the official discovery competition in the Toronto Film Festival. The second film is “The Fakir of Venice,” a black comedy about a con man hired to find a fakir who can bury himself in the sand for an installation art project in Venice.
This year is the 28th installment of AFM, a popular marketplace where production and distribution deals are closed. Over AFM’s eight-day run, more than $800 million in deals are expected.
Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225, or at [email protected].
