Archives: December 2012

In the summer of 2010, LA freelance video editor Matthew Freund put together a mash-up of the many different film and TV scenes shot at downtown LA’s Quality Cafe. The piece got some nice pick-up at Gawker, Huffington Post and elsewhere, educating a legion of readers about just how ubiquitous this shooting location had become.

A cracked.com contributor decided it was time for a refresher this past Friday and judging by the millions of page views registered for “6 Places You’ll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie,” it was a good call. The West 7th Street establishment once doubled as both a diner and shooting location, but in recent years it has been used exclusively for filming. It ranks sixth on the Cracked countdown of all-purpose filming locales, followed by Vasquez Rocks and more.

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A rousing radio rags-to-riches story is being celebrated on the cover of the January 7 issue of Radio Ink magazine. Earning the trade publication’s 2012 “Executive of the Year” honors is Univision Radio president Jose Valle (pictured):

Valle, who started out as a receptionist at KTNQ [1020 AM] and KLVE [107.5 FM] in Los Angeles, is now responsible for 70 radio stations in 16 of the top U.S. Hispanic markets and five stations in Puerto Rico, leading 1,100 Univision employees. And among the stations Valle now runs are KTNQ and KLVE, where he once answered the phones.

Valle joined Univision in 2010 after serving as president and general manager of flagship Telemundo TV station KVEA and overseeing LA’s Spanish-language independent KWHY station. Prior to that, he was VP/GM with of KXTX-TV Dallas.

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Reuters reporters Ronald Grover and Liana B. Baker had the scoop last Friday about New Year’s Eve being the day LA Times parent company Tribune Co. would finally, officially emerge from a four-year bankruptcy. This morning at 4:42 a.m. PT, LAT reporters Walter Hamilton and Joe Flint added circumspect confirmation in the paper’s own pages:

The company sought Bankruptcy Court protection in December 2008 after an $8.2 billion leveraged buyout by real estate magnate Sam Zell saddled the company with $12.9 billion in total debt just as advertising revenue was collapsing…

Despite the financial travails of the newspaper industry, Tribune remained profitable throughout the bankruptcy. It built cash reserves of more than $2.5 billion as of November 18, according to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing this month.

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The beat will remain pretty much the same for entertainment journalist Matt Donnelly. But the Web traffic will be much larger, the reader comments harsher and there will now be, with any story, the walk-down-the-hall option of a synergistic TV appearance.

The Ministry of Gossip celebrity blogger got the official sendoff last night from boss Christie D’Zurilla and other LA Times colleagues, who all wished him the best of luck with new employers Yahoo! omg! and omg! Insider. The re-branded, cross-platform version of syndicated entertainment TV news magazine The Insider officially debuts January 7.

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In terms of what Seth MacFarlane is truly in for February 24, 2013 at the Dolby Theatre, there is no better primer than the second half of this clip from Billy Crystal‘s recent appearance on Larry King Now.

The ten-time Academy Awards MC says everything is working against the host in those opening minutes, including the fact that the lights are on. “As a performer, I hate seeing the audience,” Crystal says. “I especially don’t like seeing the biggest stars in the world looking at me, going, ‘Please be good.’ And if you’re going to make a joke about so and so, I definitely don’t want to see them.”

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It’s been a while since there has been any real public skirmishing between The Hollywood Reporter and Nikki Finke‘s Deadline. But lo and behold, in this quietest of holiday weeks, another small chapter in the PMC-Prometheus rivalry is being written.

At issue is whether a 9:55 p.m. PST December 27 story by Deadline’s Pete Hammond about troubles with Academy member online voting had more than a little to do with a longer, more exhaustive 2:58 p.m. PST December 27 story about the same topic by THR‘s Scott Feinberg (headline displayed above). From our vantage point, it would certainly seem so.*

It looks as if, after the THR item hit, Hammond’s marching orders were to produce a version of his own, pronto. The shame of it is that an acknowledgment of the Feinberg piece in his post would have in no way denigrated the overall impact. In fact, it would have made for a more interesting Deadline item if Hammond had specifically bounced off the Hollywood Reporter article, challenging and contrasting what he has been hearing with what Feinberg reported.

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As The Guardian‘s head of media and technology Dan Sabbagh reminds at the end of his brief but very fun summary of some widely disseminated upside-down coverage of Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment being stripped of billions of YouTube channel views, “partial facts + total conspiracy = extra Web traffic.”

His main target is cross-town rival The Daily Mail, but there are dozens of other outlets that also got the story wrong. This despite that fact that on December 21, Billboard reporter Alex Pham laid it all out as plain as a Rihanna-Chris Brown NBA courtside sighting. There were no “fake” YouTube channel views; rather, the reason the music labels had their counts adjusted downwards was because of something much more mundane. Per Sabbagh’s wrap-up:

Universal and Sony have, since 2009, been moving their music videos away from their YouTube channels and over to Vevo, the music industry site the two companies own with some investors from Abu Dhabi. YouTube, meanwhile, thinks that is only right to count channel video views for videos that are still actually present on the channels – which means that whenever YouTube got round to reviewing the music majors’ channels on its site, a massive cut was always going to be in order…

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Ever since a re-launch in 2002, EatingWell‘s circulation has been steadily climbing. Its acquisition by Meredith in 2011 doubled its readership, and a slew of brand extensions gave the brand custom publishing divisions and a spin-off military magazine. So, landing a byline in the mag means you’re well on your way to establishing a relationship with the editors, who assign projects to freelancers for EatingWell Media Group’s other properties too.

“We’ve been able to grow because we’ve been at the forefront of the healthy eating movement. These days everyone wants delicious meals, but they also want food that’s good for them and that they feel good about eating,” said editorial director Lisa Gosselin. “We’ve also found more and more people are interested in other areas of our focus, what we call ‘origins’ — meaning, where does our food come from? How is it produced? Is it healthy for individuals, the environment and communities? We like to say that the experience of coming to EatingWell should be like going to your local farmers’ market: You are always going to learn something and come away with something fresh, interesting, delicious and surprising.”

For more info on what to pitch, read How To Pitch: EatingWell. [subscription required]

Never mind that the LA Clippers have now won more 2012-13 season games in a row than the Lakers have won games, period. Until further notice, the purple and gold remain the SoCal basketball brand with the largest international reach.

To wit, KPCC reporter Ben Bergman‘s piece today for Take Two about the pair of broadcasters transmitting every Lakers game in Korean. The purple and gold are the first NBA team to have all their games available with Korean SAP, although it’s put together a fair distance from Staples Center:

Whether the Lakers are home or away, Paul Lee and his broadcast partner Young Don Lee call the action from El Segundo, deep inside the spacious headquarters for Time Warner Sportsnet and Deportes…

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In the space of a few days this time last year, film critic Alonso Duralde went from tweeting about the vile acts of an LA arsonist, to revealing he had become a victim of carport incineration, to thanking the public at large for donations to cover the purchase of a new vehicle. As such, his experiences stand as one of the more unconventionally heartwarming news stories of 2012 involving an LA journalist.

But there were others. Here are nine more such items from this reporter’s FishbowlLA docket:

Josh Groban Serenades KCRW DJ Anne Litt
The ditty sounds as good today as it did when we first heard it.

Beverly Hills High Student Cracks Obama Press Corps
Look for this guy in the White House press conference room circa Hillary Clinton‘s second term.

KTLA Reporter Uses Old iPad to Report About New iPad
A wonderful example of field reporting iNGENUITY.

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