DreamWorks Animation reported an $82.7 million loss in the fourth quarter after taking an $87 million write-down related to the flop “Rise of the Guardians,” Brooks Barnes reports. DreamWorks shares dropped 1.3 percent in regular trading and less than 1 percent in after-hours trading. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the company’s chief executive, said there would be layoffs of around 350 of the company’s 2,000 employees.
An adorable and widely disseminated YouTube clip that appeared to show a pig rescuing a goat struggling in water was, in fact, carefully staged, Dave Itzkoff reports. The video was shared on Twitter by Time magazine and Ellen DeGeneres; broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show and its “Nightly News” program, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Fox News. (Brian Williams, anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” said “we have no way of knowing it’s real” when the video aired.) The video was staged for “Nathan for You,” a show that will debut on Comedy Central on Thursday. Nathan Fielder, the show’s host, said that the media attention was completely unexpected. “If we were trying to pull an elaborate hoax on the news, I think we could have pushed further,” he said.
Twitter hashtags tied to TV shows saturate many broadcasts, allowing stars and producers instant feedback. Shows are now working to close the feedback loop and incorporate those instant responses on the air, Brian Stelter reports. For instance, “American Idol” will start using Twitter to poll its audience on Wednesday and will incorporate the results into a “fan meter”; the show’s producers hope it will engage younger viewers and encourage people to watch live so that their Tweets are added to real-time results. The most successful way to combine social media and television appears to involve true interactivity rather than “talking to” an audience, said Mark Ghuneim, a co-founder of Trendrr, a company that tracks online chatter about TV shows.
Bounce TV, a network that features programming developed for African-American audiences, is hiring new ad-sales employees and opening a New York office after selling commercial time to blue-chip marketers like General Motors, McDonald’s and Johnson Johnson, Stuart Elliott writes. Bounce TV reaches 77 million American television homes and 86 percent of African-American television homes, Jonathan Katz, its chief operating officer, said. The moves also come after Nielsen began to measure viewership and issue ratings for the network.
ABC News is shoring up its political coverage with a few high-profile hires, Dylan Byers reports on Politico. ABC News’s president, Ben Sherwood, has been courting political reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times and other outlets to strengthen the network’s Washington bureau after several departures. The network announced the hiring of New York Times political reporters Jeff Zeleny and Susan Saulny this week, which may be an indication that it plans to change the nightly news broadcast’s focus from human interest pieces to more political fare. ABC News’s political coverage already has a strong online presence, through its partnership with Yahoo News, Mr. Byers writes.
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