Showbiz Sandbox 400: The Long, Slow Death of Barnes & Noble

February 19, 2018

As Barnes & Noble loses an ever increasing number of customers to Amazon, the largest bookstore chain in the United States continues struggles to remain a viable business, if not relevant. Now comes word the retailer has cut 1,800 workers representing all of its full-time in-store staff. Should this last ditch effort to stay in business fails, the publishing industry is in for a world of hurt.

Meanwhile, “Black Panther” roared into theaters, shattering records as it came out on top of this week’s worldwide box office, despite Chinese New Year releases earning over half a billion dollars. Will the success of a big budget movie with a minority cast change the culture of Hollywood and the kinds of projects it chooses to make?

The BAFTA Awards were held on Sunday, reinforcing what everyone is saying about this year’s Oscar race: the acting categories look to be locked in stone, but Best Picture is still up for grabs.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news with special guest Karen Woodward, including television producer Ryan Murphy’s rich deal at Netflix, musician Justin Timberlake’s upcoming tour is a huge hit even before tickets go on sale and why MoviePass is in the news yet again.

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Showbiz Sandbox 114: Hollywood Overflows With Streaming Content Deals

August 1, 2011

Digital distribution of television shows, movies and music has become quite trendy in Hollywood. Not a week goes by that companies such as Netflix, Spotify, Hulu and others aren’t in the news cutting some sort of deal with a big studio, television network or record label. This past week retail giant Amazon and online video portal YouTube made big additions to their streaming content libraries while Fox decided to limit those who could view their shows online. We provide a rundown of all the recent announcements and what they might mean for you, the consumer.

We are also joined by Roger Goff, an entertainment attorney with Wolf, Rifkin, Shapiro, Schulman & Rabkin. He helps us understand a few recent lawsuits filed by television producers, especially one in which the producer of “American Idol” is suing Fox over not being made an executive producer on the upcoming reality series “X-Factor”.

Speaking of legal issues, it turns out the NBCUniversal Comcast merger wasn’t as much of a done deal as everyone thought. A federal judge is threatening to hold up approving the union claiming it may not be in the “public interest”.

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