Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner at last nights Academy Awards. The Indian coming of age tale took home 8 Oscars last night, including Best Picture and Best Director. Other notable winners include Kate Winslett for Best Actress (The Reader), Sean Penn for Best Actor (Milk) and Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor (The Dark Knight).
While Hulu has pulled its content from competitor TV.com, the new CBS venture is claiming that embedding the Hulu player on their site is "well within its rights." While CBS may have the right to embed the video player, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar noted that it was the wish of the content providers, not the distributor, who wanted the content removed. Content was also removed from the streaming TV site Boxee.
After the AMPTP put its final, best and last offer on the table, the Guild rejected it. The vote came Saturday night with 73% of SAG members voting to turn down the offer. So far the new negotiating team on the side of the Guild has yet to yield a positive outcome.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz announced she will begin company wide managerial reorganization at Yahoo. The CEO, who has been in office roughly six weeks, will consolidate departments in order to increase efficiency and cut costs. The search company, who is trying revamp itself, is also in need of a new CMO, as well as other senior officials.
For the third time in 6 months, Nick Denton, editor of Gawker Media, will have to fold another site. This time the news affects Defamer, a Hollywood entertainment blog, which will cease to exist as a fully functioning site, rather a column on the Gawker homepage. Denton, who had been trying to shop the site, had trouble finding buyers, noting "Scale matters -- both for marketing to readers and advertisers. The dream of micropublishing is dead!"
Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net