UBS starts U.S. entertainment sector with neutral bias - Entertainment News

* Sees cable network assets as organic growth opportunity
* Starts Time Warner, Discovery Comm, Viacom with "buy"
* Starts Scripps Networks, Walt Disney with "neutral"
Sept 21 (Reuters) - UBS began coverage of the U.S.
entertainment sector with a neutral bias and said it considers
cable network assets as one of the few organic growth
opportunities in media.
The brokerage started coverage of Time Warner Inc (TWX.N),
Discovery Communications Inc (DISCA.O) and Viacom Inc (VIAb.N)
with "buy" ratings.
"Investment in programming has been a driver of growth in
audience share over the past few years, with cable ad growth
significantly outperforming the TV networks," analyst John
Janedis said in a note to clients.
The analyst, who started Scripps Networks Interactive Inc
(SNI.N) and Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) with "neutral" ratings,
said technology is making the film business model more
challenging.
"Properly responding to these changes will be a key factor
in maintaining the health of the business model," Janedis
said.
Last week, Credit Suisse said streaming video offerings
from Netflix (NFLX.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Google TV will
catch on with consumers eager to cut the cable cord and
downgraded the U.S. entertainment sector to "underweight."
(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in Bangalore; Editing by Anne
Pallivathuckal)
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My Generation insufferable - Documentary

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Picture this: A documentary crew films an Austin-based high school senior year of nine classmates who are all so two-dimensional that the filmmakers can refer to them as "rock star" or "wallflower."
Now imagine it's 10 years after graduation, and the film crew is back, tracking down the naive nine around the country and back to Austin, where apparently most still live. Not one of them is happy: They're losers in love, adulterers, drunks, commitment-phobe slackers, have daddy issues or are raising 10-year old boys from that prom-night stand.
Who wants to spend time with these people? ABC thinks millions will, and that's the basis for "My Generation," a show with a concept so top-heavy that before Thursday's first episode is out, it's already tumbling into its own conceit.
There's no unifying center for these nine, because as in the real world, most left home. That means creator Noah Hawley ("The Unusuals") has to contrive reasons for the wanderers to return. That's not just unrealistic; it's a nightmare reminiscent of George Bailey's failure to escape Bedford Falls. On top of that, there's the documentary crew, which scares every one of the winsome, pleasant and bland characters into hiding the minute something gets juicy.
That said, there are flashes of sardonic brilliance; the "beauty queen" and "rich kid" (Jaime King and Julian Morris) have inevitably married and become wine-sniffing yuppies. They set out a plate of cold cuts for their interviewer, and when Beauty chirps, "I'm so excited to see how that salami will go with the wine," it's a surreal and hilarious moment. If only the rest of the series was so spot-on aware of its ridiculousness. Kudos also to the bad blind date who announces, "I like to read but never books."
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World of Khubilai Khan revealed in new exhibit - Arts

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - A new exhibit featuring massive statues, dragon-shaped roof ridge ornaments and art from the Yuan dynasty gives visitors a glimpse of ancient China that the first Westerners would have seen 700 years ago.
"The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art features 200 works of art. Many are being shown outside of China for the first time.
It focuses on the era spanning the birth in 1215 of Khubilai Khan, Gengis Khan's grandson and the Mongol founder of the Yuan dynasty, to its fall in 1368.
"As you enter the galleries, you'll discover the extraordinary world of Khubilai Khan, in a sense, as Marco Polo did," said Thomas Campbell, the director of the museum.
Khubilai Khan was the emperor who welcomed Marco Polo to China in 1275.
The show, which opens on Tuesday and runs through January 2, is the museum's largest exhibit about Asian art since "China: Dawn of a Golden Age" in 2004.
Two 10-foot (3-meter) tall, 8,000-pound (3,636 kg) statues of Yuan dynasty officials welcome visitors to the exhibit, which includes paintings, sculptures, gold and silver, tapestries, ceramics and religious and secular pieces meant to give visitors a flavor of everyday life.
All of the pieces illustrate a taste in ancient China for fine art, such ceramic containers for transporting wine and elaborate jewelry.
The eclectic styles reflect the unification of China under the Yuan dynasty, which Khubilai Khan founded in 1271, and the influx of artisans from across the Mongol empire. The Yuan dynasty included what is now modern day Mongolia, Tibet and North China.
"This is the culmination of many years of work, and is certainly among the most complex exhibitions ever presented by the museum," Campbell said of the show, which took seven years to organize.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborated with other museums including the Beijing Art Museum of Stone Carvings and the Palace Museum in Beijing, to assemble the exhibit. Many items are from relatively recent archaeological finds in China.
One of the most striking elements of the show is the depiction of the Yuan dynasty as a religious melting pot tolerant of Daoists, Nestorian Christians from Syria, and Indian traders, who were able to build Hindu temples.
The show includes the model of a stage, showing the enthusiasm people had for the performing arts, and the influence of ancient plays on modern Chinese opera.
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Modern Family wins best comedy series Emmy - Comedy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The rookie comedy "Modern Family" won the Emmy for the best TV comedy series on Sunday, ending the three-year reign of "30 Rock."
The show, which revolves around an extended family in Los Angeles, earlier won awards for best supporting actor and writing.
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NZ tell Comm Games organisers 'clock is ticking' - Board Games

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) still planned to send a team to the Delhi Commonwealth Games but warned organisers on Friday "the clock was ticking" for them to get their house in order.
The NZOC board had been discussing whether to send the team after its president Mike Stanley and secretary general Barry Maister returned from a whistle-stop visit to Delhi to inspect facilities following scathing criticism of athletes' accommodation by team chef de mission Dave Currie.
The NZOC had already delayed the arrival of athletes into the village until September 28 in the hope issues ranging from leaky plumbing to Internet access would be rectifed. The first athletes and team officials were supposed to arrive on Saturday.
"The situation we found was inexcusable and unacceptable," Stanley told a televised news conference on Friday. "There is no doubt about that.
"By delaying the athletes' arrival what we have done is give the organisers time to get their house in order. We fully expect that will be the case.
"Planning for the team to go to Delhi will continue and we will monitor the situation ahead of the athletes' arrival next week.
"It is now up to the Games organisers to provide satisfaction to the implementation of the Games plans and we will continue our assessment (of that)."
Stanley said that some areas of the village were of high quality but some of the residential towers had caused problems.

� Continued...
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When some of the most influential figures in emerging markets finance spoke to a group of Reuters editors, they were asked about top picks for growth beyond the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.� Blog�
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It has debt levels to die for and huge amounts of oil, but economically it’s lagging and political concerns remain. Speakers at a Libyan trade and investment forum this week saw the North African country as a mixed bag.� Blog�
If Guinea can pull off free and fair elections this weekend, it will lay the foundations for what could be one of Africa’s most unexpected and significant good news stories.� Blog�
Africa is providing a lot of fine material for the London theatre these days.� Blog�
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My Generation creator gives TV survival tips - Tv Series

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - ABC's upcoming documentary-style drama "My Generation" will face heavy competition when it premieres next Thursday at 8 p.m., going head-to-head with CBS' "The Big Bang Theory," NBC's "Community," the CW's "The Vampire Diaries" and Fox's "Bones."
Creator Noah Hawley shared with The Hollywood Reporter five survival tips for a fierce fall TV season ahead of the series premiere.
1. ADDING A MYSTERY ELEMENT
"My Generation" centers on a group of high school classmates who were the subjects of a documentary in 2000. When the filmmaker returns in 2010, their lives aren't exactly what they had envisioned.
"Inherent in this 10-year gap is a mystery," Hawley said, noting that there has been a "sea change" of events in that time frame. "The overachiever in high school who 10 years later is a surf bum. What happened?"
That also means turning the cameras on the filmmaker. "Who is this person and why did she follow these people? Why has she come back 10 years later?," Hawley said. "You have to humanize that person -- especially the more dramatic these people's lives become. You don't want to feel like this person is invading their privacy, like it's the paparazzi or something."
2. TAKING THE TIME FOR CHARACTER EXPLORATION
"Because we have this filmmaker who can go out and solve these mysteries, we can avoid character exposition where you have these scenes where people have to tell you what happened to them," Hawley said. "I can show you. I never have to tell you."
It's a device mockumentaries like "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" have successfully employed, allowing the audience to get invested without being force-fed plot points.
"There's something really satisfying as a writer (when) you can avoid what network TV does: the information dump," Hawley explained. "A character who says, 'I'm not going to talk about my dad.' He doesn't have to."
3. FEATURING POPULAR BANDS AND GUEST STARS AS APPROPRIATE
Some TV shows rack up a long list of guest stars, but there won't be any stunt casting here. Instead, the right people will be spotlighted in the appropriate capacity.
"Because of the documentary format, I shy away from actors who are too recognizable. I will say that we do have Jaime King, who plays a girl who went to Hollywood to try to be an actor and was there for five years," Hawley said. "Who knows who she dated or what project she was in that we'll play around with."
He did tease that King's character, who appeared on Season 2 of "The Bachelor," "maybe had a famous boyfriend" and that real bands will appear on the show.
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Why Everything Wireless Is 2.4 GHz - Radio Stations

By John Herman
You live your life at 2.4 GHz. Your router, your cordless phone, your Bluetooth earpiece, your baby monitor and your garage opener all love and live on this radio frequency, and no others. Why? The answer is in your kitchen.
Before we charge too far ahead here, let’s run over the basics. Your house or apartment, or the coffee shop you’re sitting in now, is saturated with radio waves. Inconceivable numbers of them, in fact, vibrating forth from radio stations, TV stations, cellular towers, and the universe itself, into the space you inhabit. You’re being bombarded, constantly, with electromagnetic waves of all kind of frequencies, many of which have been encoded with specific information, whether it be a voice, a tone, or digital data. Hell, maybe even these very words.
On top of that, you’re surrounded by waves of your own creation. Inside your home are a dozen tiny little radio stations: your router, your cordless phone, your garage door opener. Anything you own that’s wireless, more or less. Friggin’ radio waves: they’re everywhere.

Really, it’s odd that your cordless phone even has that 2.4-GHz sticker. To your average, not-so-technically-inclined shopper, it’s a number that means A) nothing, or B) something, but the wrong thing. (“2.4 GHz? That’s faster than my computer!”)
What that number actually signifies is broadcast frequency, or the frequency of the waves that the phone’s base station sends to its handset. That’s it. In fact, the hertz itself just just a unit for frequency in any context: it’s the number of times that something happens over the course of a second. In wireless communications, it refers to wave oscillation. In computers, it refers to processor clock rates. For TVs, the rate at which the screen refreshes; for me, clapping in front of my computer right now, it’s the rate at which I’m doing so. One hertz, slow clap.
The question, then, is why so many of your gadgets operate at 2.4 GHz, instead of the ~2,399,999,999 whole number frequencies below it, or any number above it. It seems almost controlled, or guided. It seems, maybe, a bit arbitrary. It seems, well, regulated.
A glance at FCC regulations confirms any suspicions. A band of frequencies clustered around 2.4 GHz has been designated, along with a handful of others, as the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands. “A lot of the unlicensed stuff — for example, Wi-Fi — is on the 2.4-GHz or the 900-Mhz frequencies, the ISM bands. You don’t need a license to operate on them.” That’s Ira Kelpz, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, explaining precisely why these ISM bands are attractive to gadget makers: They’re free to use. If routers and cordless phones and whatever else are relegated to a small band 2.4 GHz, then their radio waves won’t interfere with, say, cellphones operating at 1.9 GHz, or AM radio, which broadcasts between 535 kHz and 1.7 MHz. The ISM is, in effect, a ghetto for unlicensed wireless transmission, recommended first by a quiet little agency in a Swiss office of the UN, called the ITU, then formalized, modified and codified for practical use by the governments of the world, including, of course, our own FCC.
The current ISM standards were established in 1985, and just in time. Our phones were one the cusp of losing their cords, and in the near future, broadband internet connections would come into existence and become magically wireless. All these gadgets needed frequencies that didn’t require licenses, but which were nestled between the ones that did. Frequencies that weren’t so high that they sacrificed broadcast penetration (through walls, for example), but weren’t so low that they required foot-long antennae. In short, they needed the ISM bands. So they took them.

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Y tu mama tambien duo join Will Ferrell comedy - Comedy

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, who worked together in "Y tu mama tambien," are joining Will Ferrell in "Casa de mi padre," a Spanish-language comedy that will be told in an overly dramatic telenovela style.
The story is being kept under wraps, but it will feature English subtitles. Garcia Bernal plays a family friend; Luna is Ferrell's brother.
Also joining the cast are Genesis Rodriguez as Ferrell's love interest, Pedro Armendariz Jr., Hector Jimenez and Adrian Martinez. "Funny or Die" veteran Matt Piedmont is directing.
Ferrell is serving as a producer. NALA Films, an arm of the investment firm run by Televisa scion Emilio Diez Barroso, is fully financing the picture.
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TEXT-Nice Systems gets deal with Delhi police - Radio Stations

(The following was issued by Israel's Nice Systems Ltd
(NICE.O) (NICE.TA)):
Sept 13 - NICE Systems Ltd (NASDAQ: NICE), the worldwide
leader of intent-based solutions that extract insight to impact
business performance, reduce financial risk and ensure safety
and security, today announced that India's HCL Security, NICE's
strategic partner and the project's prime contractor, will be
implementing NICE's integrated security solution at India's
Delhi Police.
NICE will enable Delhi Police with an integrated command,
control, coordination and communication center (C4i) solution to
meet operational requirements for the upcoming October 2010
Commonwealth Games 2010 and beyond.
Delhi Police selected HCL-NICE consortium through
competitive bidding in anticipation of the 2010 Commonwealth
Games to manage and enhance the police response to security
events.
The Commonwealth Games is a multi-sport event with
participants representing the fifty-four independent states that
are members of the Commonwealth of Nations.
The Delhi Police will implement the NICE solutions to fuse
data from multiple systems and sensors, dispersed across 45
sites throughout the city, including sporting venues, metro
stations, markets and police stations.
The pre-integrated NICE solution is based on NICE Situator,
NICE's situation management solution. NICE Situator offers broad
interoperability with many third party solutions for video
analytics, video surveillance systems, Tetra (Terrestrial
Trunked Radio) IP network for public safety, and GIS, among
others.
This approach delivers a single, holistic operational view
and enhances real-time response by automating procedures, as
well as information sharing.
The NICE solution also enables comprehensive debriefing by
full reconstruction of an event and response to it, leveraging
NICE Inform incident information management solution and NICE
screen encoders for screen capture of the command and control
room's inputs during security events.
A senior officer at Delhi Police said, "We are proud that
Delhi is hosting this year's Commonwealth Games. At the same
time, this means that our police force has the great
responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of our
visiting athletes, international and local government officials,
and millions of sport fans.
"To achieve these goals in the most professional and
reliable way we selected HCL-NICE consortium, which was the only
vendor who could provide us with an open solution that enables
situation management that integrates with such a great number of
security systems, providing us with real-time capabilities for
handling security events throughout the entire city, should they
occur."
"We are pleased to have been selected for this project and
help the Delhi Police protect the participants and attendees of
the 2010 Commonwealth Games, as well as the Delhi residents
beyond the games," said Israel Livnat, President, NICE Security
Group.
"The city of Delhi will be responsible for the security of
attendees and participants from all over the world at the
force's command and control center and headquarters, making this
project all the more important for representing the Delhi Police
professionalism and leading edge capabilities.
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Nevada eyes big political gamble - Casino

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Like many Nevadans, hairdresser Helen Elgas is trying to decide between the devil she knows and the devil she doesn't, and the future of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hangs in the balance.
Sitting in the shade of a strip mall on West Sahara Avenue, miles from the casino towers that symbolize Las Vegas, Elgas is not happy with Reid. But she isn't sure she can bring herself to vote for his challenger, former state assemblywoman Sharron Angle, either.
"I think Harry Reid should be taken out. I'm not sure Sharron Angle could do any better," said Elgas, 47, a registered Republican.
"He's not helping any more - he's one of the good old boys," said Elgas, who like many Americans is fed up with the political establishment as the economy falters.
"She's a dingbat," Elgas added.
A few years ago, Las Vegas laughed at the idea of a downturn in Sin City, and the Strip boomed as economic cracks appeared nationwide. But when Las Vegas fell, it fell hard.
High rollers disappeared, construction cranes ground to a halt, and the state of 2.64 million set new records -- for the highest unemployment and foreclosure rates in the nation.
Enter Sharron Angle, founder and former teacher of a one-room K-12 Christian school turned politician, who has dumbfounded much of the state with her hard-line positions on small government.
A favorite with conservative "Tea Party" activists, Angle was only 2 percentage points behind Reid in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.
Forty-six percent of likely voters in Nevada said they would vote for Reid if the election were today, while 44 percent chose Angle. The margin of error for likely voters in the poll was 4.6 percentage points, making Reid's lead even more tenuous.
Reid, running for a fifth term, is a staple of politics in Nevada. But people have been moving into the state so quickly that many voters have no idea what he has done for Nevada.
The state's population has nearly tripled since he was first elected to the Senate in 1986. Meanwhile, the median home price in Las Vegas is less than half its 2006 peak, leaving builders unable to compete with the glut of foreclosures.
Fighting for his political life, Reid is using negative ads starring Angle herself. In one, Angle says she would not have voted to extend unemployment insurance and adds "we really have spoiled our citizenry."
In another, reporters say she proposed phasing out the Social Security retirement system, although she has also said she wants to pay the amounts already promised in benefits.
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Lady Gaga, Katy Perry lead MTV Europe nominations - Music

The U.S. pop princesses are both shortlisted in four categories -- best pop act, best song, best female act and best video. Completing the nominations for Lady Gaga is best live act and for Katy Perry "best world stage performance."
Elsewhere in the nominations list, rapper Eminem has four nominations including best song, best male act, best hip hop and best video for his Rihanna collaboration "Love the Way You Lie."
British stadium rockers Muse, along with Thirty Seconds to Mars, Linkin Park and Kings of Leon, find themselves up against "Prince of Darkness" Ozzy Osbourne in the best rock category.
Pop phenomenon Justin Bieber, Ke$ha, B.o.B, Plan B and Jason Derulo are nominated for best new act.
Perry and Linkin Park are confirmed to perform at the annual event, one of pop music's biggest nights outside the United States.
Following is a list of the main nominations for the MTV Europe Music Awards, to be held in Madrid on November 7.
- Best Rock: Kings of Leon; Linkin Park; Thirty Seconds to Mars; Muse; Ozzy Osbourne
- Best Pop: Lady Gaga; Usher; Katy Perry; Miley Cyrus; Rihanna

� Continued...
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Carson Daly show revamps to focus on music - Music

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - With the debut of its 10th season on September 20, NBC's "Last Call With Carson Daly" is overhauling its format to become predominantly focused on music, offering live performances, behind-the-scenes artist segments and spotlights dedicated to emerging acts.
"Before we ditched the studio, we'd been locked into that kind of late-night feel: monologue, then a desk thing, then the lead guest," says Daly, who started out as a VJ on MTV's "TRL" and as a DJ at KROQ Los Angeles. "Music has always been kind of an afterthought in the world of late night, which was a dumb thing for me since it's the epicenter of who I am. This new format enables us to include music wherever we want."
Among the acts that will be featured on upcoming episodes are Alberta Cross, the Walkmen, Japandroids and Broken Bells. "Carson's like, 'If we can do an entire half hour on music, that's what we want to do,'" says Davis Powers, music booker for "Last Call." "Certainly we'll program it where if it's a big-name act, they can take the whole half hour. But our main goal is to program our half-hours as music-heavy as possible so you're getting variety and different types of content."
Aside from reality TV shows, music-centered programing is almost nonexistent on network TV. While IFC's "360 Sessions" and select episodes of Sundance Channel's "Iconoclasts" provide cable viewers an in-depth look at recording artists and their work, this sort of programing rarely appears on the broadcast networks.
The music-centric format was tested during the show's ninth season, under the auspices of new executive producer Stewart Bailey, who previously worked on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." Guy Oseary also remains as "Last Call" co-executive producer.
"I have to give (Bailey) a lot of credit for this -- I feel much more comfortable and in my element, and not like I'm playing the part of a late-night host," Daly says. "I'm out in the real world and I get to organically talk about music."
Besides taking "Last Call" into its 10th season, Daly also serves as DJ for KAMP-FM Los Angeles. In addition, Daly will continue to host NBC's "New Year's Eve With Carson Daly."
A segment of the show, "Spotlight," focuses on emerging or underexposed artists; among those to be featured include Jay Electronica, Big Freedia and Tift Merritt.
"All the other traditional late-night shows are feeling the pressure of booking what is on the charts -- the top 10 acts -- and they all fight for it," Daly says. "We have a young staff that's passionate about music. To me, the power is in the diversity."
Powers says he's working with all the major Los Angeles music venues, including the Coliseum, to set up live shoots to incorporate into the "Last Call" slate. "Our approach to shooting artists in a live setting is ambitious," he says. "(We've already) featured Lily Allen at the Wiltern and the xx at the Palladium."
While the promotional power of a 1:35 a.m.-2:05 a.m. time slot is more limited than that of a show airing in prime time or during the traditional late-night slots, ratings for the show average 873,000 viewers per night, according to Nielsen Media Research, compared with 1.6 million on average for the season to date for "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," which precedes "Last Call" on NBC.
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Facebook gets movie treatments as social media hits high - Movies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Facebook hits the silver screen this fall with two movies coming out within weeks of each other at a time when social media is at an all-time high.
Independent documentary "Catfish" and glitzy Hollywood feature "The Social Network" couldn't be more different. But both could very well be two sides of the same coin.
"We've gotten to a point where it's time to reflect on it," said "Catfish" filmmaker Ariel Schulman.
"'The Social Network' shows us how we got here. 'Catfish' shows us where we're at."
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world with over 500 million active users. Sites like MySpace, microblogging site Twitter, and Tumblr are also thriving, creating an intricate online world where everything from dating websites to video game communities have users who put their personal lives out on public display.
As "Catfish" illustrates, not everyone on these sites is who they say they are.
"Catfish", which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, follows Nev Schulman, a photographer who falls in love with a girl on Facebook. Over time, their romance blossoms and they begin to text and talk on the phone.
When Nev, his brother Ariel and their friend Henry discover some startling revelations, they set off on a road trip to meet the girl in person.

� Continued...
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Tech Industry Ramps Up FM Chip Opposition - Radio Stations

Putting FM receivers in cellphones and other mobile devices has suddenly become a hot potato on Capitol Hill.
A coalition of six technology industry associations dispatched letters to the chairmen and ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees urging them not to craft legislation that would mandate FM receivers in mobile devices.
The idea for the mandate originated as part of a compromise between the National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America. Those groups are, respectively, the key opponents and proponents of instituting performance royalties on music airplay.
Persuading congress to mandate FM tuners in phones would give both radio stations and music artists access to larger audiences, and provide consumers with another mobile content option.
That said, the technology industry isn't happy about being put in the middle.
“Calls for an FM chip mandate are not about public safety, but are instead about propping up a business which consumers are abandoning as they avail themselves of new, more consumer-friendly options,” the associations wrote. “It is simply wrong for two entrenched industries to resolve their differences by agreeing to burden a third industry -- which has no relationship to or other interest in the performance royalty dispute -- with a costly, ill-considered and unnecessary new mandate.”
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Montague, Ryan Launch Shop - Entertainment News

Former JWT North America leaders Rosemarie Ryan and Ty Montague have finally unveiled their new agency, which, by design, will collaborate with other shops to develop new brands, businesses and brand messaging.
 
The venture, called Co:, opens with four partners: Montague, who's in charge of content; Ryan, heading up brand strategy; Neil Parker, leading business strategy; and Richard Schatzberger, head of technology experience.
 
In a statement announcing the launch, the new agency identified some 42 creative shops, studios, consultancies and media entities that it plans to engage on behalf of clients. These include Big Spaceship, Campfire, Collins, Cunning, Horizon Media, Naked Communications, Medialink, Creative Feed and Cool Hunting.
 
"We call it a brand innovation studio because we are taking our structural cues from the evolving entertainment industry -- an industry built around a talent model that is much more fluid [and where] the right talent is brought together at the right moment to get the right outcome," said Ryan, in a statement.
 
Montague added, "Today and in the future, success for clients is driven by two things: superior talent and the ability to effectively collaborate."
 
At WPP Group's JWT, Ryan was North American president and Montague was N.A. co-president and chief creative officer. They left the agency earlier this year, eager to strike out on their own after years of working within a major holding company.
 
Co:'s other partners have both client-side and agency experience. Parker has worked as a management consultant and within IBM's corporate strategy group; most recently he was global head of strategy at Omnicom Group's Wolff Olins, a brand consultancy. Schatzberger comes from Bartle Bogle Hegarty, where he was director of creative technology; earlier in his career, he worked in interaction design and product innovation at Motorola.
 
The new shop plans to add a fifth partner, with the title of chief commercial officer, to manage a co-ventures practice.
 
Ryan and Montague planned to open their agency with at least two clients. But the new shop's launch statement and Web site do not name any accounts.
 
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Sky Deutschland shares up after cap hike details - Tv Series

FRANKFURT, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Shares in German pay-TV
channel Sky Deutschland (SKYDn.DE) rose up to 3.5 percent on
Monday, a day after the group set the subscription price of its
rights issue at 1.05 euros ($1.34) per share.
News Corp (NWSA.O), which holds a 45.42 percent stake in the
group, will partially backstop the capital increase so that its
shareholding does not exceed a level of 49.9 percent.
The subscription period starts on Tuesday and is due to run
until Sept. 27.
Sky Deutschland, formerly known as "Premiere", said it will
issue close to 270 million shares. At the given price, this
would equate to total additional capital of around 283 million
euros.
Shares in the group, currently valued around 1.0 euros
apiece, were outperforming the 0.4 percent stronger German
mid-cap index .MDAXI, trading 3.2 percent higher at 0843 GMT.

"Shares were already hit hard after the first announcement
of the upcoming capital increase. Additional impact should thus
be limited," traders from the Alpha brokerage wrote, adding that
shares may move closer to the subscription price.
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Top UK comedy award goes to English comic - Comedy

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Britain's top annual comedy prize, the Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award, went to England's Russell Kane at an Edinburgh Fringe festival ceremony on the weekend for his show "Smokescreens and Castles."
The award for best comedy newcomer on the Fringe was won by 31-year-old London comedienne Roison Conaty, while the Spirit of the Fringe award went to 20-year-old American Bo Burnham, who has accumulated an audience of millions from his YouTube internet comedy broadcasts from his Boston bedroom.
Awards' producer Nica Burns said Kane, 30, from Westcliffe-on-Sea in Essex, "takes the audience by storm with his boundless energy and enthusiasm."
In his new show he "explores self, family, and the consequences of his Dad buying their council flat" in the apartment block nicknamed The Castle. The Sunday Times described the show as "bold, defiant...Shot through with vulnerability."
Conaty, from Camden in north London, told Reuters her experience on this year's Fringe had been "life changing in terms of doing a show every day ... I've learned so much."
She made her debut solo in the show "Hero, Warrior, Fireman, Liar."
The tall, mop-haired Burnham, who started his YouTube comedy exploits four years ago, was also short-listed for the best comedy award.
The awards were announced by star comedian Al Murray, who won the best comedy prize in 1999, and last year's winner Tim Key. Burns said the judging panel had seen 418 shows and attended nearly 1,200 performances over the past three weeks.
The Fringe, the world's largest annual showing of the arts, has fostered a galaxy of stars of theater, film and comedy since its inception alongside the city's International Festival in 1947.
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Oprah Winfrey and McCartney top new Kennedy Center Honors - Arts

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey and former Beatle Paul McCartney top the list of show business luminaries to be saluted for their contributions to U.S. arts and culture at this year's Kennedy Center Honors.
Rounding out the roster of 2010's honorees announced by organizers on Tuesday are country music legend Merle Haggard, Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman of "Hello Dolly!" fame, and dancer-choreographer-director Bill T. Jones.
Recipients of the 33rd annual awards will be feted at a December 5 gala event attended by U.S. entertainment and political glitterati at the opera house of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will welcome the honorees to a White House reception. The five recipients will be saluted with tributes and performances by peers at the Kennedy Center later in the evening.
The CBS television network will broadcast the Kennedy Center gala, which has become a highlight of Washington's cultural calendar, on December 28 as a two-hour special.
"The Kennedy Center celebrates five individuals who have spent their lives enriching, inspiring and elevating the cultural vibrancy of our nation and the world," Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein said in a statement.
The naming of Winfrey, one of the most influential and highly paid women on television, comes as she prepares to end her popular weekday talk show in 2011 after 25 years on the air, to focus on the launch of her own cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, a Los Angeles-based venture she formed with Discovery Communications Inc.
Winfrey, 56, also plans to debut a new evening program called "Oprah's Next Chapter" she will host from different venues around the globe on OWN.
Her original program, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," is broadcast from Chicago and airs in more than 140 countries. It ranks as the top-rated U.S. daytime talk show.
Although Winfrey's influence and work extends to motion pictures, books, magazines and live theater, she is one of the few Kennedy Center honorees over the years who made their name primarily in television. Others have included Carol Burnett, Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson and Lucille Ball.
Winfrey's immediate reaction to being named a Kennedy Center honoree, according to The Washington Post, was: "Wow-zee!"
In a statement of his own, McCartney, 68, paid tribute to the slain U.S. president for whom the Kennedy Center and its annual honors are named.
"President Kennedy was such an icon for us in the Sixties, and his presidency was so inspiring for so many people that it is a great pleasure for this kid from Liverpool to receive this honor," the singer-songwriter, knighted as Sir Paul, said in a statement.
The Beatles' first U.S. visit, a few months after Kennedy's November 1963 assassination, is widely hailed as the start of the so-called "British invasion" that swept America's pop music scene, changing the face of rock 'n' roll and launching a 1960s cultural phenomenon.
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Recession creates new trend in fashion shopping - Fashion

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. recession has changed how people shop for fashion, with an eye for special pieces rather than trusty wardrobe basics, and top retail buyers say this trend is likely to last beyond an economic recovery.
As Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week begins in New York on Thursday, fashion directors from such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus say they will be on the lookout for eye-catching collections to wow customers.
After a dismal 2009, retail sales have improved every month for the past year, but consumer confidence has been slow to recover and is only half as strong as at the start of 2008. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity and is considered critical to the recovery.
"We have seen a change in the way that customers shop as a result of the economic climate that we have been in, and I see that trend continuing," said Colleen Sherin, fashion market director for Saks.
"Women are not necessarily looking for basics ... they're looking for wow pieces, something that inspires more of an emotional reaction," she said. "They are looking for value. They're looking for quality at a price."
Even classic, basic pieces such as a white shirt are being reinterpreted to appeal to customers, with perhaps a dramatic new collar or interesting cuff details, Sherin said.
More than 90 designers will show at New York Fashion Week's new headquarters on Manhattan's Upper West Side, up about 50 percent from the last two seasons in February and September. Countless more show in other venues around the city. The New York shows are followed by shows in London, Milan and Paris.
"SHE WANTS FASHION"
The semi-annual event generates more than $770 million a year in economic activity in New York, where fashion is the second-largest industry behind finance. New York is home to more than 800 fashion companies, employing 175,000 people, generating $10 billion in wages and $1.5 billion tax revenue.
Ken Downing, fashion director at Neiman Marcus, said while the outlook for the U.S. economy appeared to be improving, customers were still selective when buying fashion.
"She's being very thoughtful when she's purchasing," he said of shoppers. "Even at the most challenging moments in the economy, she was interested in trend.
"She's not interested in basics ... she wants fashion," he said. "The customer continues to respond to what is new and what she does not have in her wardrobe."
While designers are showing collections for next year's spring and summer that won't be available in stores for months, the industry wants to lure shoppers to spend now with a second annual "Fashion's Night Out" on Friday.
The retail initiative launched by U.S. Vogue editor Anna Wintour aims to get people shopping. Designers and department stores will to lure customers by holding in-store parties with celebrity guests and musical performances.
"The idea of 'Fashion's Night Out,' is really to create excitement in the shops," said designer Diane von Furstenberg, who is president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. "We just want people to shop."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference opening Fashion Week on Wednesday that people always need clothes and that diversity in fashion means there was "an opportunity to be well-dressed no matter what your economic situation."
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I'm Still Here an entertaining hoax - Celebrities

VENICE (Hollywood Reporter) - Give up acting? Casey Affleck's energetic directorial debut, "I'm Still Here," basically scotches the idea that Joaquin Phoenix has retired as an actor to become a hip-hop artist, revealing it all to be an elaborate media hoax, albeit one that has seriously altered the actor's real-life image over the last year and a half.
This sporadically engrossing mockumentary, which gets better as it rolls along, must have been planned way back before Phoenix bombed on "Late Show with David Letterman." Or is part of it for real?
At the film's Venice press conference on Monday, which Phoenix failed to attend, Affleck continued to suggest that he had shot a straight documentary, against much evidence in the film itself.
The fact that an audience can watch the film to the end and not be completely sure where reality ends and playtime begins is a tribute to Affleck's skills at mimicking documentary tropes: the handheld camera, badly framed images, the mishmash of news reports and YouTube clips. It is also a backhand compliment to Phoenix's thespian abilities and courage. But it may leave viewers with too much head-scratching uncertainty when it opens in English-speaking territories next week. Audiences who drink their documentaries straight beware: this is one potent mixed cocktail.
Daring to look nasty, vindictive, self-centered and ridiculous, Phoenix surrenders all privacy to his brother-in-law Affleck's invasive cameras. They follow him into hotel rooms and into bed, voyeuristically watching while he uses recreational drugs, entertains two New York hookers and falls apart at the seams.
Deciding to turn rapper out of the blue, Phoenix begins pursuing Sean "Diddy" Combs cross-country in the hope of doing a record together. But when he finally gets into Combs' recording studio with a homemade CD of his songs, the rapper quickly realizes what the audience already knows: that Phoenix's artistic talents lie elsewhere. "Why do you want to do hip-hop?" Combs asks in wonderment.
Shattered by Combs' reaction, Phoenix goes on "Letterman" in a catatonic state. Belittled and mocked by his host, he inspires tenderness for the first time; but the show sends his popularity plummeting.
Like a wounded animal, he takes out his frustrations on his assistant Anton (played by actor Antony Langdon) and his manager Larry. Then he remembers the wisdom lecture imparted by his friend Edward James Olmos, who compares his career to a drop of water that runs from the top of the mountain to the valley, disappears into the ocean, then evaporates and returns to the top once again. Joaquin takes it as the truth about his life.
Though the first half of the film keeps the viewer guessing about what's actually going on, it is paradoxically when the tricks and mirrors are forgotten that the film becomes funny and enjoyable as an engrossing character study. It finally becomes possible to gaze beyond Phoenix's four-letter words and manic ranting and at the man himself.
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