It’s a long way from heading the Walt Disney Co., but Michael Eisner is getting back in the media game.
Eisner is behind two recent deals cut by San Diego-based Veoh Networks Inc. The most recent is a partnership with celebrity-focused US Magazine to create an entertainment show accessible on both Veoh’s site and Usmagazine.com, creating a new player in the burgeoning celebrity news genre.
It’s the second sizable deal this month brokered by the former Disney chief, who has a sizable stake in Veoh (the company raised $12.5 million in venture financing last year from Eisner, Spark Capital and Time Warner) and has spent the year since his Disney departure primarily on the lecture circuit.
Just prior to the US deal, the Internet television company announced that it would team with Hollywood’s United Talent Agency to create an online resource for digital content submissions.
The US partnership will launch in February. Under the deal, US will provide exclusive video for the site, which will be powered by Veoh’s technology. Users will also be able to submit their own videos.
Executives from Wenner Media LLC, which owns US Magazine, Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal, said Eisner brought the idea for a partnership to them last summer, and serious discussions began in August.
“When we began talking about the deal, Michael (Eisner) was clear he thought Veoh needed to partner with a smaller private company that could respond quickly,” said Gary Armstrong, Wenner’s chief marketing officer. “Wenner is just that; we have a short reporting structure if I see something we need to get done I can go right to (chairman) Jan (Wenner) and we can move quickly.”
Armstrong said Eisner, who stepped down as Disney chairman a year early after a bruising battle with Roy Disney, was “very involved” in setting the details of the partnership.
Wenner currently has a Web site team of nine people and is adding four staff positions to handle the additional work, Armstrong said, though he was careful to emphasize the company is not scaling back the magazine’s print presence.
“We are absolutely not backing away from traditional media,” Armstrong said. “This is just another opportunity for advertisers to reach our valuable audience of young affluent women.”
According to Nielsen Net Ratings, Veoh ranks 15th in visitor count among online video sites, with 520,000 unique visitors last month.
All involved are hoping Eisner’s current project fares better than his short-lived CNBC talk show, “Conversations With Michael Eisner.”
Crowded House
After years of dividing L.A.’s dwindling house/electronica music audience between three main Saturday promotions, one of the long-running event promoters is leaving its home of seven years and merging with a former competitor.
Spundae, a house-music night held Saturdays at the Hollywood nightclub Circus, is merging with Avaland at the Avalon, another Saturday-night player in the house music space. That will leave Giant at Vanguard, which is held at various sites, as the lone remaining major rival.
“Both nights were competing for the same DJs and the same crowd,” Spundae’s Peter Beckers said in an e-mail. “This way we can collaborate and use combined marketing efforts. The L.A club scene has only so many patrons. This market is just not big enough for three huge clubs.”
Financial aspects of the deal were not disclosed, but Spundae is receiving monetary compensation and has a non-compete agreement on Saturday nights in Los Angeles. Spundae promoters will also use Avalon to host its events whenever possible.
The arrangement appears to have been blessed by some of the local music scene’s movers and shakers. Under a deal reached this month, local radio station KCRW (89.9 FM) will broadcast its “Nocturna” program live from Avaland on some Saturdays.
The electronica competition was at one point fierce. Promotion events like Giant, Spundae, Godskitchen and Avaland vied for the club crowd on Saturday nights with well-known international DJs who spun wall-thumping beats. Crowds between 1,500 and 2,500 attended events put on by Spundae, or Giant as it was known initially.
There was a major crowd drop-off in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, however, and only a few “super clubs” survived. Avaland alone continues to draw crowds of around 2,000.
The deal has benefits for both Avalon and Spundae. The best DJs are very loyal to certain promoters, and three-year-old Avaland will be helped by Spundae’s booking power. Spundae can now offer its top-tier talent a more attractive venue with a larger capacity and better sound system.
Steve Adelman and John Lyons’ Avalon the remodeled space that was formerly the Hollywood Palace is a newer, glitzier venue compared to the older, warehouse-style clubs like Circus. And the club’s custom Avalon EAW sound system, developed by Lyons, is a big bonus for crowds and DJs alike. The speakers have become a major source of business for Lyons. They’ve been installed at local clubs including Hyde, LAX and Area, as well as Las Vegas’ Jet and Tao and many others worldwide.
Elements of Spundae, which started in the Bay Area almost 15 years ago, will remain. The promoters still have locked-in nights in Las Vegas on Thursdays and San Francisco on Fridays and will host some L.A. events.
“The alliance means we have the strength of booking power and routing across three major cities and three nights,” Beckers said.
Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.
