The Walt Disney Company is working on an app that would stream ABC programming to the tablets and phones of cable and satellite subscribers, Brian Stelter reports. ABC would be the first of the American broadcaster to provide such an app, and it is likely to result in a mixture of awe and fear from other networks. Disney already has streaming apps for content from ESPN and the Disney Channel, but special complexities exist for networks like ABC because of older contracts with companies that produce its shows and local stations, which might feel threatened by the app. It is not yet clear what the app would mean for online streaming services like Hulu, which does not require viewers to subscribe and has grown increasingly marginalized as its parent companies (including Disney) seek more lucrative revenue streams.
An array of British newspapers on Tuesday protested an attempt to impose stricter curbs on them, Stephen Castle and Alan Cowell write. The agreement announced by lawmakers on Monday creates a system under which newspapers would face a tough regulatory body that could order corrections be published prominently and impose large fines on publications that breach standards. The deal enshrines the regulator’s powers in a royal charter, the same document that governs the BBC and the Bank of England. The newspaper society, which represents 1,100 newspapers, said that the possibility of fines of up to $1.5 million would prove “crippling” for their struggling publications.
Much of the entertainment world’s metabolism has sped up, but major film productions often still lurch forward at a zombie’s pace, Michael Cieply reports. A case in point is the forthcoming “World War Z,” a zombie movie to be released in June that seems timely given the success of undead fare like AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” But Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to the novel “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment in 2006, just one example of a Hollywood system that mires its biggest films in an ever-lengthening process. Whether these delayed releases make films miss the mark is an open question, but it is a fact that this year the release schedules feature at least eight high-budget films that were conceived five to 14 years ago.
Marriott International is using the release of the new movie “42,” about Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color line, to promote its loyalty program for African-Americans, Jane L. Levere reports. The campaign involves a Facebook contest, special screenings of the film and promotion of “42” on hotel room TVs, among other initiatives, and marks the first time Marriott has done niche marketing for the program, called Marriott Rewards. Apoorva Gandhi, vice president for multicultural markets and alliances at Marriott International, said that the movie was a good fit because it matches Marriott’s fundamental values (interestingly enough, Marriott Rewards also has 42 million members globally).
The media truism “if it bleeds, it leads,” appears to be undermined by social networks, John Tierney writes. A number of different studies show that social media users are more likely to share uplifting stories, perhaps because they are more concerned with how stories make their friends feel than a traditional media company. One study on the dissemination of thousands of articles from The New York Times Web site found that readers were more likely to share articles they found exciting or funny, or that inspired negative emotions like anger or anxiety, but not ones that just left them sad. But the more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared.
The BBC confirmed plans to sell the Lonely Planet travel guidebooks to a reclusive American billionaire on Tuesday, drawing internal scrutiny for losing public money on the sale, Eric Pfanner writes. BBC Worldwide sold Lonely Planet for £51.5 million, or $77.3 million, far below the £130 million that the BBC paid for Lonely Planet. At the time of the purchase the BBC talked about extending Lonely Planet into digital channels, an area where traditional guidebooks face stiff competition from travel Web sites.
Air New Zealand has enlisted Bear Grylls, the bug-eating, urine-drinking adventurer best known for the survival show “Man vs. Wild,” to liven up that pariah of in-flight entertainment, the onboard safety video, Bettina Wassener reports. The airline’s video features Mr. Grylls running, crawling and rappelling. At one point he leaps into a raging river to demonstrate the efficacy of the plane’s life jackets. These attempts to spice up the safety-spiel are a relatively new development, with Virgin America one of the first companies to try in 2007.