CTV purchases The Hockey Theme
CTV Inc. has acquired the rights to The Hockey Theme in perpetuity, the network announced Monday.
The agreement was reached with Copyright Music & Visuals, which was unable to renew a deal with CBC Sports.
CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore said he was disappointed but not surprised the song was shopped elsewhere.
"The two sides were so far apart and there was so much bad blood that we knew a deal would be difficult," he said. "The reality is it takes two sides to do a deal and we tried everything we could to do a deal.
"We offered arbitration, mediation we offered to meet their price. On Friday, when it came right down to it, we never got a response from them on our latest offer and find out, in the meantime, they appeared to be negotiating with CTV."
Moore said CBC had negotiated for 14 months but to no avail, and that the agency was asking for $2.5 million to $3 million for use in perpetuity.
"If they got that from CTV, we would never have been able to get there," Moore told CBC Newsworld. "It is not a responsible price for us.
"If that is the price CTV wants to pay, it won't be the first time nor will it be the last time, probably, that they outbid us for something. They have a lot more profits than we do."
The song had been used on Hockey Night in Canada since 1968.
"Hockey is a game, it's not a song," Moore said. "We have the No. 1 sports property in Canada.
"I don't expect one less viewer to tune in on Saturday to watch Hockey Night in Canada. They will continue to watch their favourite team."
According to a release, CTV said it agreed to a deal with Copyright Music & Visuals after Friday's deadline with CBC passed.
The agency represents the song's composer, Dolores Claman, who was born in Vancouver.
"The song has a long and storied history in Canadian sports, and has become ingrained in the hearts and minds of hockey fans across the country. It is an iconic tune, embraced by Canadians everywhere, and we felt it was imperative to save it," said Rick Brace of CTV Inc.
Moore said he was surprised a rival network would purchase something so inextricably linked to the Hockey Night brand.
"It's a constant commercial for our network," he said.
Lawsuit complicated negotiations
Earlier on Monday, CBC Sports had said it planned to bring in noted sports and entertainment lawyer Gord Kirke in a last-ditch effort to bring about a mediated resolution.
Complicating the bid for a settlement was an outstanding lawsuit filed against the CBC in late 2004 surrounding its use for ringtones and downloads.
Moore said CBC wanted to resolve that issue along with the song's future use, but that representatives for Claman wanted to keep them separate.
Claman, 80, has written about 2,000 jingles over her career, including the Ontario theme A Place to Stand, which she co-wrote with her husband, Richard Morris.
"I am very moved by how so many Canadians have taken the hockey theme to heart. We are so pleased the song has found a new home," said Claman, who now resides in Britain.
Before Kirke's involvement was announced, CBC Sports announced plans to launch a new national contest in conjunction with Nettwerk Music Group to find a new theme song.
Canadians will be invited to write and record an original song for Hockey Night in Canada, with fans and a jury of experts to choose the best new composition.
"I think it'll help us get a new demographic," Moore said. "The theme that we had was a great theme. [But] it was 39 years old. Maybe it's time for something else."
The son of Stompin' Tom Connors said Monday his father is open to licensing his famed hockey song to CBC as a replacement.
"If they want to use The Hockey Song, it's a good song, whether Tom sings it or not," Tom Connors Jr. said. "There's other versions out there.
"Even if they wanted to commission some other band, like a big [name] band if they wanted to do more of a Hockey Night theme, everything is open for negotiations, of course. That's the business we're in."
New CD Releases, June 10: Alanis Morissette, My Morning Jacket, and Lil Wayne
Alanis Morissette "Flavors of Entanglement"
You oughta know--at least if you're a big fan--that Alanis Morissette is ready to deliver her seventh studio record, which follows 2004's "So-Called Chaos."
Morissette has certainly kept busy in recent years. In addition to recording and touring--including a co-headlining stint with Matchbox Twenty--the vocalist has collaborated with the likes of Ringo Starr, the Dave Matthews Band and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Last year, her YouTube parody/cover of the Black Eyed Peas' hit "My Humps" was one of the top downloads of '07, according to a press release; the video has been viewed more than 12 million times.
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My Morning Jacket "Evil Urges"
The psychedelic-tinged alt-rockers return with their fifth studio album. This time around, however, the band is reportedly adding some new twists to its already popular mix.
My Morning Jacket has dosed its regular lava lamp-friendly Southern rock sound with funky beats and synthesizers on "Evil Urges," a work that follows the 2005 studio effort "Z" and the 2006 live album "Okonokos."
As expected, these road warriors, acclaimed for delivering wild rides on the concert stage, will support "Evil Urges" on tour. After performing at Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival on June 13, the band will crisscross North America through mid-October.
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Lil Wayne "Tha Carter III"
The troubled rap star, who tangled with the law earlier this year when drugs and a handgun were allegedly discovered on his tour bus, will now attempt to garner some positive headlines for his musical endeavors.
To help accomplish that feat, Lil Wayne is releasing "Tha Carter III," the third and final album in the so-called "Tha Carter" trilogy. The disc boasts an impressive lineup of guest contributors and producers, including Kanye West, The Alchemist, Cool & Dre and others.
The man born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. is currently in the midst of an 11-city swing in support of "Tha Carter III." The trek will wind up with a June 28 date in Sunrise, FL.
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Emmylou Harris "All I Intended to Be"
The country/bluegrass vet is set to drop her second offering on the Nonesuch imprint. "All I Intended to Be" follows last year's five-disc career retrospective, "Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems," which features previously unreleased material, demos, studio tracks and collaborations, as well as 2006's "All the Roadrunning" with Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler.
Having already toured this year with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller on the "3 Girls & Their Buddy" trek, Harris is now conducting her own headlining tour. The outing is currently scheduled to run through a July 31 date in San Diego, CA.
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N.E.R.D. "Seeing Sounds"
The hip-hop troupe, which features Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, returns with a follow-up to 2004's "Fly Or Die." N.E.R.D. is currently supporting "Seeing Sounds" on the road as part of a Kanye West-led super-bill that also includes Rihanna and Lupe Fiasco.
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More new releases:
Priscilla Ahn, "A Good Day" (Blue Note)
Walter Becker, "Circus Money" (Mailboat)
Gene Clark, "Silverado '75-Live & Unreleased" (Collector's Choice)
DJ Tiλsto, "In Search of Sunrise, Vol. 7" (Black Hole)
Jakob Dylan, "Seeing Things" (Sony)
The Fratellis, "Here We Stand" (Interscope)
James Hunter, "The Hard Way" (Hear Music)
Jethro Tull, "This Was" (Capitol)
Montgomery Gentry, "Back When I Knew It All" (Sony)
Plies, "Definition of Real" (Atlantic)
Martha Wainwright, "I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too" (Zoe)
Cassandra Wilson, "Loverly" (Blue Note)
Dan Zanes, "Nueva York!" (Festival Five)
Soundtracks and scores:
"The Incredible Hulk" (Marvel)
It's presto, change-o as new iPhone is unveiled
LOS ANGELES Wouldn't it be cool if you could use your cellphone to monitor activities in your home, say, to zoom in for an audio/video check of the baby's room while you were at work, or even adjust the heat?
Or how about going to a theme park and checking your phone to discover if other friends are there, and arrange a meeting place?
Consumers and reviewers alike gushed about its compact, futuristic design and sensitive touch-screen. But even its biggest fans have had one persistent chief complaint: The iPhone's Internet network from partner AT&T was too slow.
So get ready for iPhone 2.0: On Monday Apple (AAPL) is widely expected to introduce a zippier version that will operate on both a faster AT&T network, and speedier networks internationally. The price also will rock: $199, according to people with knowledge of the matter, down from the current $399 and $499.
Sources declined to be cited by name or affiliation because Apple and AT&T haven't authorized anybody to speak publicly about pricing until after Monday's announcement. The $199 price is being subsidized, though USA TODAY could not confirm details.
According to sources, the new Apple device will be available in Apple and AT&T stores beginning this summer.
For consumers, the shift to 3G will be akin to going "from dial-up to broadband," says Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.
A new iPhone could go a long way toward fulfilling Apple CEO Steve Jobs' prediction that he'd sell 10 million iPhones in its first 18 months. So far, Apple has sold just over 5 million phones. Analysts who follow the company think a lower price and new international markets make it a sure bet that another 5 million will be snapped up this year.
Apple stopped taking orders for the iPhone in May, presumably to make way for the new model. Sales could substantially beef up Apple's bottom line, Munster says. Apple reported revenue of $24.0 billion in 2007. Munster sees sales growing to $34 billion this year, and $46.9 billion in 2009, thanks to the iPhone.
Beyond the new hardware, the biggest buzz around the iPhone this week will be the new uses being dreamed up for it. The software add-ons have the potential to turn the iPhone into the pocket computer of the future, as essential, Apple hopes, as the keys in your pocket or purse.
The iPhone economy
Apple's sold-out Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco is the setting for Monday's iPhone lovefest, where software developers will convene to hear about the new iPhone. They're eager to hear CEO Jobs talk about how they can participate in what independent analyst Richard Doherty calls the "iPhone economy."
Earlier this year, instead of controlling everything that went on the iPhone, Apple released what's called an SDK for "software developer's kit" a road map that allows programmers to create applications for the iPhone. The first of those outside programs is expected to be released Monday, and made available on the iPhone and iPod Touch the iPod that's just like the iPhone, except without a phone.
"Opening the pot of gold to developers is as important as the iPhone itself," Doherty says.
Once Apple approves a piece of software from an independent developer, it provides distribution via a new "App" store on the iPhone and iPod Touch and takes a 30% cut of revenue. "This means that anyone, whether you're 14 years old or 40, if you're a large company with 300 employees or a guy in a garage, has access to Apple's customers," Doherty says. "You don't have to make a presentation to a series of different handset manufacturers or wireless carriers. This is unheard of in software."
Access to the iPhone App store means that "we have a way to reach millions of consumers," says Darren Vengroff, the co-founder of Pelago, which developed Whrrl, a social network application.
Whrrl takes the online review phenomenon and marries it to the iPhone. The idea is that if you're searching for a restaurant, with a few clicks you can see which ones your friends who are also Whrrl members recommend. Whrrl is currently available for two BlackBerry phones and the Nokia N95.
The iPhone App store will "get so much traffic," adds Paul Dawes, CEO of iControl Networks, another iPhone developer. "It's not random traffic, but consumers who are actively looking for our types of applications."
The iControl application is the aforementioned home-monitoring system, or as Dawes calls it, "next-generation home security." With iControl, a device is plugged into your home network and connects to security panels, webcams and home-automation devices, allowing the homeowner control away from home. You can keep up with the action while at work on your desktop, or with the iPhone out in the field.
The iControl monitoring system is sold via home-security companies and a monthly subscription, but the iPhone application will be available for free.
Video game company Sega, best known for the old Sonic the Hedgehog video game, wowed attendees at a March meeting for developers when it showed off the Super Monkey Ball game for the iPhone.
There's no joystick controller for the iPhone to move the characters from left to right, so developer Ethan Einhorn came up with a novel idea: Just move the phone up or down, left or right, and the characters respond to the movement.
"What's great for a company like ours is that Apple has already defined the iPhone as a place to acquire and enjoy entertainment," Sega's Einhorn says. "Video games are the next natural step."
Earlier this year, legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (which had a role in funding Google, Amazon and AOL) started what it calls the "iFund," a $100 million pot looking to invest in iPhone application start-ups.
Kleiner Perkins invested in both iControl and Pelago, and is actively looking at 50 other start-ups, partner Matt Murphy says.
"We received about 2,000 proposals so far, and that's more than a factor of 20 of what we would have received from the general mobile sector," Murphy says. "What Apple has done is brought a lot of entrepreneurs off the sidelines. They feel 'open mobile' is here."
Historically, if you had an idea you wanted to sell to the mobile industry, you had to pay a visit to Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. All have huge customer bases, but their phones work on different wireless systems. This requires a programmer to construct the program in different ways.
Apple isn't the only company pushing open mobile. To great fanfare earlier this year, Google introduced "Android," which it describes as a new wireless operating system that can be used with multiple carriers.
Google has been shy about releasing much Android information, but says we'll see phones in the second half of the year.
Unlike Apple, which produces its phone and has AT&T as the wireless network customers have to work with in the USA, Google is reaching out to many. Wireless manufacturers HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung are all participating in Google's "Open Handset Alliance," along with carriers Sprint, T-Mobile and Japan's NTT DoCoMo.
A home run?
When the iPhone was released last year, eager consumers waited on line for days to get a crack at buying one of the first ones. A year later, Apple says it's sold over 5 million iPhones.
That pales in comparison with competitors. Windows Mobile, which provides software for phones from HTC, Samsung, Palm and others, says it will sell 20 million phones this year.
About 1 billion cellphones are sold every year. No. 1 manufacturer Nokia, for instance, sells more cellphones in a week than Apple has shipped to date. According to researcher Gartner, Nokia sold 435 million cellphones in 2007. Munster says the "real verdict" on the iPhone's success hasn't been reached. "The numbers are too small to call a home run."
Charles Golvin, an analyst at market tracker Forrester Research, says iPhone's impact has been felt by the entire wireless industry, which has been trying in vain for several years to sell lucrative add-on data plans.
"They have done a very poor job marketing these services," he says. "What Apple and the iPhone did was really communicate in a very simple way what the data plan could do for you. It's the Internet, but on your phone."
With a data plan, consumers pay an additional monthly charge usually $15 to $25 for access to the Internet on their phones, adding greatly to the carrier's bottom line.
Golvin says handset competitors such as LG, Sony Ericsson and Nokia are "really blatant" about how their new phones are clones of the iPhone. "The iPhone has raised awareness of what's possible."
British beauty Billie Piper is Showtime's Belle de Jour
LICKFOLK, England - On an early summer evening, Billie Piper is sitting in the back garden of a pub near her country home.
She's talking about sex and a city girl the London-based professional escort Belle, whom she portrays in the Showtime series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," premiering 10:30 p.m. EDT June 16.
"I was thinking it was quite racy for America," says Piper as she ponders just how the series will come across in the U.S.
In the United Kingdom, it aired last September and was blasted in the media for glamorizing prostitution.
"I thought it was a side to prostitution that we are not normally exposed to, and I thought there was a story worth telling there," Piper says in defense. "I kind of knew it was going to cause a bit of an uproar, especially because I was playing the part. People are always so used to me doing children's shows or family drama."
As a teenager, Piper became a star in England in 1998 with the chart-topping pop song "Because We Want To." And she has been a popular subject for the British tabloid press.
She was previously married at 18 to popular DJ Chris Evans. Now 25, she's married to Laurence Fox, who plays Detective James Hathaway in "Inspector Lewis," airing on PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery" beginning June 22 (9 p.m. EDT).
Piper and Fox married on New Year's Eve, about a year after meeting while acting together in the play "Treats," and they recently moved from London to the country.
Piper has had recurring roles in the popular sci-fi series "Doctor Who," and has starred in several British made-for-TV movies. Yet never has the actress revealed more of herself than in the sexy "Call Girl."
The series is based on the Belle de Jour blog, which was written by a young woman who enjoys being a sex worker yet pretends to family and friends she's just Hannah, a legal secretary.
Doubts have been raised about whether Belle really exists or whether the blog was simply the fictitious concoction of some clever minds.
However, Piper says: "I met her and she was quite a character and she was the most useful part of my research."
"I started asking really simple, mundane questions like `What's your favorite song?' `What kind of films do you watch?' Often those very simple details can be really useful. They tell you a lot about the human side of things," says Piper, explaining that because Belle's way of life was "so far removed from anything I know, I had to make her more human in my head."
She also consulted several other professional escorts and went to their apartments "where all these intimate moments take place" to see "step by step, how it's done."
How it's done, of course, meant strong language and nudity. But Piper counters criticism by saying that's just part of the acting challenge of honestly portraying the lifestyle.
Showtime is running the eight half-hour episodes uncut as part of an hourlong block with the fourth season of the hit series "Weeds."
Undaunted by the media criticism, Piper has begun filming a second series as Belle, and a third series has been ordered. But she may soon need a body double, she says, because she's pregnant.
Jessica Alba gives birth to baby girl
LOS ANGELES - Add "baby guru" to Jessica Alba's resume.
The "Love Guru" co-star and her new husband, Cash Warren, are new parents, her publicist Brad Cafarelli said Monday in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The 27-year-old actress gave birth to a healthy baby girl Honor Marie Warren on Saturday, Cafarelli said. He didn't provide further details.
Alba and Warren became engaged in late December following her announcement that she's expecting a baby with Warren, 31. They met on the set of the 2005 film "The Fantastic Four," which costarred Alba as the Invisible Woman and employed Warren as a director's assistant.
Outside of motherhood, this summer Alba joins Mike Myers in "The Love Guru" and will play a lingerie saleswoman who helps turn a loser's life around in "Meet Bill." Earlier this year, FHM readers magazine readers rated Alba the No. 3 sexiest woman alive (with "Transformers" star Megan Fox claiming the top spot).
What kind of mother will Alba be?
"I don't want to be my child's best friend," she recently told Fit Pregnancy magazine. "I want to be a mom. But I do want my child to come to me when they have problems and need to talk, so it's going to be about treading that line."
Alba's recently appeared in "Awake," "Good Luck Chuck" and "The Ten." She first gained fame as an action star on TV's "Dark Angel."
Charity run by Hathaway's boyfriend investigated
ALBANY, N.Y. - The state is investigating the charitable foundation of Anne Hathaway's boyfriend, a spokesman for the attorney general said Monday.
Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri, 29, who dates the "Devil Wears Prada" star, heads the Follieri Foundation, a charity whose work includes vaccinating children in Third World countries.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is heading the probe, Cuomo spokesman Matt Glazer said. He said he could not comment further on the ongoing investigation.
The Foundation has not filed IRS tax disclosure forms required from charities, according to a review of records by the Associated Press.
The New York Post, which first reported the investigation, said Hathaway was previously on the foundation's board of directors, but it was unclear when or for how long.
"There is an investigation going on that does not involve Anne," said Stephen Huvane, Hathaway's publicist, in an e-mail. "She is no longer a board member of the Follieri Foundation. Other than that we will not be commenting."
The number for a Follieri at his Manhattan apartment was disconnected.