Disney Marvels at Potential Profit from Merger

It’s safe to say when Walt Disney Co. announced its purchase of Marvel Entertainment Inc. and its 5,000-strong character stable for US$50 a share earlier this week it was going after Captain America of the Avengers and not, say, Captain Britain of Team Excalibur.

Now, before all the Captain Britain fans get up in arms (you know who you are) the fact that Marvel’s top brands — Spider-Man and the X-Men — are already spoken for is just one of several reasons why, for Citi analyst Jason Bazinet, the deal will be a bad one for the House of Mouse.

“This deal looks smart on paper, but over the long run we suspect this will be viewed as [Robert] Iger’s first major mistake as CEO,” Mr. Bazinet said in a note to clients.

Strategically, it certainly makes sense. Disney has media properties that target just about every demographic except the 10- to 18-year-old male. Marvel fills that niche nicely, while also remaining relevant to the even more lucrative 18-49 male set. The recent surge in the sales of the Iron Man dvd shows that Marvel characters have some pull.

However, Mr. Bazinet has issues with the price Disney paid. Considering Marvel itself has not aggressively repurchased shares when it traded above US$27, he figures Marvel has pegged fair value for its stock at about US$35. This means Disney has devalued its own shares by about US$1.21-billion.

As well, both Time Warner and Universal walked away from movie deals for Iron Man and the Hulk respectively in recent years, forcing Marvel to produce them on its own.

“The decision of other major studios to walk away from Marvel’s lesser known characters casts a long shadow over this pending transaction,” he said.

When it comes right down to it, Marvel just has too many of its lucrative properties tied up.

The Very First Television Shows

The first television sets were part electrical and part mechanical, consisting of spinning discs that replicated the action of a larger spinning disc in the studio. The first moving images - of a ventriloquist’s dummy - were transmitted by Scot John Logie Baird in 1925.

In 1927 the first tv show was aired. It was a demonstration by Bell Telephone
Labs and AT&T with contributions from various executives of these companies
and a speech by the secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover.

This was followed by many ad-hoc broadcasts from Whippany, N. J. These were
experiments and were picked up by just one tv set - at Bell Laboratories, New
York City. These broadcasts consisted of images transmitted using radio waves
and sound transmitted via cable. They were not entertainment shows - just
a few engineers and scientists testing out the new medium.

The first shows that aired to the public were those of WRGB (known officially
as W2XB but popularly known as WGY’s Television). Broadcasts were
beamed locally to Schenectady, N.Y. This happened to be the home town of
television (and radio) pioneer Ernst Alexanderson. Schenectady was also the home
of just four television receivers. The early WRGB broadcasts usually consisted of a
person sitting in a chair not doing very much except the odd hand or face
movement or a drag on a cigarette. In fact, watching people smoke cigarettes
seems to have been the main feature of early tv test transmissions!

The first scheduled tv shows, and from what I can make out, the world’s first
regular tv shows were farming and weather bulletins aired twice a day, 3 days
per week on WRGB. These broadcasts were simply extensions of the output of radio
station WGY. The first remote location broadcast, or outside broadcast, took
place in 1928, once again by WRGB. The subject of this broadcast was Governor Al Smith’s
acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination for office President of the United States.
Due to inclement weather, the ceremony was switched from outside to an indoor
location and the short notice didn’t allow enough time to test the lighting and
equipment. Hence the resulting live pictures were of poor quality. Meanwhile, in
Wheaton, Maryland, Charles Jenkins’ W3XK transmitter started tests followed by
regular programs in July 1928.

These broadcasts were never really meant or designed for wide public consumption,
however, some enthusiasts managed to build crude receivers and got to enjoy the
output. Charles Jenkins’ estimated that W3XK had an audience of 20,000.

Many incorrectly quote the BBC’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth from
1930 as being the first broadcast play, but it was actually The Queen’s Messenger,
written by J. Harley Manners and directed by Mortimer Stewart. This was aired on
WRGB in 1928.

It must be noted that in those early days television screens were about 3
inches by 3 inches. So small, in fact, that most output consisted of a person’s
upper body. “Radio with pictures” is what it was called, and that was
not far off! The images consisted of varying shades of pink or brown, depending
on the illumination used. The presenters and performers would often need to wear
dark lipstick and green makeup so that their features would not be bleached in
the extremely bright studio lights. True color television came later. The
spinning discs were eventually replaced by all-electric systems. All tv shows,
including dramas, were live to air - there was no videotape or digital recording
in those days!

These pioneering broadcasts were effectively experiments (and were licensed
as such by the federal government). Most viewers were either wealthy and curious
or were hobbyists. It is unlikely that television had any real worth as an
entertainment or information medium in these early days. The extent to which
television could expand and could be networked was severely hampered by a lack
of a national standard for telecasting. There were also many technical
difficulties not least with the revolving disc system. It wasn’t until the
forties when these issues had been ironed out that tv took off in earnest.

The rest, as they say, is history, but a very rich history indeed. Have a look
at bygonetv.com and you see what I mean.

Vernon Stent is the marketing consultant to http://www.bygonetv.com,
specializing in old tv shows.

They Shoot Horses - Horses In Motion Pictures

Notwithstanding Rin Can Tin can and The Thin Man series’ Asta, the positron emission tomography film achieved its canine calvary in the Lassie movies. Its feline apotheosis came in That Darn Computerized tomography. (1965) and its porcine pinnacle in Babe (1995). The finest PET film of wholly, meanwhile, is Ken Loach’s Kes (1969), the story of a working-class English youth whose miserable existence is briefly illuminated when he heals and trains a wounded falcon. The movie theater’s about enduring pets, though, ar neither flesh and blood nor animatronic. In the Hanna-Barbera cartoons executive-produced by Fred Quimby at MGM ‘tween 1940 and 1957, the brutal domestic skirmishes of Turkey cock and Kraut achieved a transcendent visual harmony that has never been equalled.

No matter however many multiplication Krauthead, atop a model locomotive, mightiness bear down on Gobbler (squirming on the railroad track wish a silent moving picture heroine), or many modern times Tom turkey power cause Boche to shatter care a vase, at that place is as practically death-defying love as in that location is hate betwixt computerized tomography and mouse. Their violent, obsessive codependency, largely uninterrupted by world and requiring no dialogue, is almost matched by that of Sylvester and Tweety, and yet this duo’s was an unfair interaction that left the judicious viewer wondering, Why, oh, why couldn’t that ugly lisping computed tomography just for one time sink his teeth into his sanctimonious fiddling partner’s neck. Like the tragic Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester is one of Hollywood’s great losers, the Sisyphu s of pusses, doomed forever to roll metaphorical rocks up hills.

Such cinematic indignities less easily visited on nondomesticated animals, whose wildness invariably evokes a state of grace that human race–those in King Kong (1933) and the John Huston-similar elephant hunter played by Clint Eastwood in White Hunter, Blackness Heart (1990), for instance–can only destroy. But even humanity rich person barely challenged the mystical hegemony of the Equus caballus, the noblest and almost filmable of animals, and the all but ritualistically solemnifled in movie house. (An exception being the collapsible nag ridden by Lee Marvin in 1965’s Computed tomography Ballou.) It was horses, of course, that originally put the movement in move pictures: Model T Fords looked ungainly and locomotives cumbersome, and both looked slow beside the horses that carried the outlaws in The Great Train Robbery (1903) and the Klansmen in The Birth of a Nation (1915). The authenticity of the Western depended on horses more than any other factor, as, indeed, the settling of the West had done, though it took B Westerns to shuffle stars of such reliable four-legged friends as Trigger, Topper, and Champion. Rudyard Kipling in one case wrote, “4 things greater than things / Women and Horses and Might and Warfare,” a sentiment partly echoed by Harry Ferdinand Julius Cohn, astute boss of Columbia University Pictures until 1958, who said that movies “about” horses and women (except that the ill-mannered used an unprintable term for the latter). He surely would wealthy person approved of Sony Pictures (Capital of South Carolina’s current incarnation) opening Kim Basinger and Elisabeth Shue pictures and Charlie’s Angels alongside two cavalry dramas in 2000.

Set in Namibia, next month’s Running Free, directed by Sergei Bodrov and produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear, 1989), promises to be a handsome horse cavalry-and-boy saga in the mold of The Black person Stallion (1979). In the fall comes Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses, which, if it satisfactorily renders Cormac McCarthy’s coming-of-age novel, should reek nicely of remudas, leather, dung, and cowboy sweat. It’s asking too a lot, perhaps, that it should smell a footling of Red River (1948), the greatest and nearly adult of operas.

Jack Palone www.nutritionproduct.net

Married With Children (Season 2) DVD Review

First premiering in April 1987, Married With Children became a staple of the growing Fox Network’s original prime time programming, paving the way for further original creations such as The Simpsons. The total opposite of what a TV family should be, the original working title for the show was Not The Cosbys (a reference to the perfect family atmosphere of the popular 80’s sitcom The Cosby Show). Paving the way for ABC’s Roseanne, Married With Children more than lived up to its working title, chronicling the pathetic life of a Chicago shoe salesman and his equally dysfunctional family…

Married With Children follows the exploits of the Bundy family, a dysfunctional trailer-park trash family living in American suburbia. The family is headed by Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill), a shoe salesman who’s lewd, crude, sarcastic, and completely dissatisfied with his life as a loser. Al’s wife Peg (Katey Sagal) spends her days watching Oprah and spending what little money Al brings home (she’s also Al’s greatest source of annoyance). Al and Peg’s lives are complicated by their children, Kelly (Christina Applegate), a beautiful yet stupid teenager, and Bud (David Faustino), a sex-starved adolescent. With neighbors Steve (David Garrison), Marcy (Amanda Bearse), and Jefferson (Ted McGinley) dropping in on a regular basis, Al’s dreams of a normal family life or a spare moment to relax are continually interrupted by the tortuous reality of his mediocre existence…

The Married With Children (Season 2) DVD features a number of hilarious episodes including the season premiere “Poppy’s by the Tree” in which the Bundys head off on their version of a family vacation. While at a sleazy motel in Dumpwater, Florida, they cross paths with a serial killer who loathes tourists. When the killer kidnaps Peg, it’s all up to Al to save her life… Other notable episodes from Season 2 include “Born to Walk” in which Al fails the test for his driver’s license renewal on the same day that his ditzy daughter Kelly passes, and “Build a Better Mousetrap” in which Al nearly destroys the Bundy household in pursuit of an invading rodent…

Below is a list of episodes included on the Married With Children (Season 2) DVD:

Episode 14 (Poppy’s By the Tree: Part 1) Air Date: 09-27-1987
Episode 15 (Poppy’s By the Tree: Part 2) Air Date: 09-27-1987
Episode 16 (If I Were a Rich Man) Air Date: 10-04-1987
Episode 17 (Buck Can Do It) Air Date: 10-11-1987
Episode 18 (Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Part 1) Air Date: 10-18-1987
Episode 19 (Girls Just Want To Have Fun: Part 2) Air Date: 10-18-1987
Episode 20 (For Whom the Bell Tolls) Air Date: 10-25-1987
Episode 21 (Born to Walk) Air Date: 11-01-1987
Episode 22 (Alley of the Dolls) Air Date: 11-08-1987
Episode 23 (The Razor’s Edge) Air Date: 11-15-1987
Episode 24 (How Do You Spell Revenge?) Air Date: 11-22-1987
Episode 25 (Earth Angel) Air Date: 12-06-1987
Episode 26 (You Better Watch Out) Air Date: 12-20-1987
Episode 27 (Guys and Dolls) Air Date: 01-10-1988
Episode 28 (Build a Better Mousetrap) Air Date: 01-24-1988
Episode 29 (Master the Possibilities) Air Date: 02-07-1988
Episode 30 (Peggy Loves Al, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) Air Date: 02-14-1988
Episode 31 (The Great Escape) Air Date: 02-21-1988
Episode 32 (Im-Po-Dent) Air Date: 02-28-1988
Episode 33 (Just Married… With Children) Air Date: 03-06-1988
Episode 34 (Father Lode) Air Date: 03-13-1988
Episode 35 (All in the Family) Air Date: 05-01-1988

About the Author

Britt Gillette is author of The DVD Report, a blog where you can find more reviews like this one of the Married With Children (Season 2) DVD.