Tagged With: Time

Entertaindom.com has become the first casualty of the AOL Time Warner merger. As part of overall company trimming, Entertaindom will fold up operations on February 1st. The content from the site will most likely be combined with series on the Warner Bros. Online site. How many employees will lose their jobs is yet to be known. However, insiders say that over the next few weeks there will be major cuts throughout Time Warner. Already 400 staffers have been cut from news division CNN. The completion of the merger has long loomed over Entertaindom.

On Tuesday August 8, 2000, David Spades new animated series, SAMMY, made a lackluster debut in the bottom of its 8:30 pm time slot. Despite a decent lead-in by a rerun of 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN, the new primetime toon drew only 4.1 million viewers and a 1.8 rating/6 share for adults 18-49. The long shelved series follows the reunion of a newly famous son and his deadbeat dad. How long will the series last only time can tell. The last two heavily hyped primetime toons, GOD THE DEVIL & BOB and CLERKS, never made it past six episodes combined.

Time Warner chairman, Gerald Levin, announced that the company has reached a "agreement in principle" with Disney about the carrying of Disney cable stations on Time Warner operating systems. The recent dispute over the price Time Warner would pay for the cable networks led to Time Warner aggressively pulling ABC from its cable system. This action quickly drew heat from regulators and the public, who had service interrupted during sweeps week specials of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?

On Tuesday, May 2, 2000, Swatch, a world leading watch producer, and AtomFilms, a leader in Internet entertainment, announced a partnership to seek independent creative talent for an animated Swatch "Internet Time" ad campaign. The jointly organized competition is open to Flash animators from around the globe. Winners will help Swatch develop an Internet communication campaign. Peter Fonda, two-time Academy Award nominee, will join Swatch and AtomFilms as one of the advisory judges for the contest.

Entertaindom.com president and CEO Jim Moloshok, executive VP Jim Banister and third-in-command Jeff Weiner will be exiting their Time Warner posts in the upcoming weeks. The dot-com trio has already moved out of their offices and has stopped participating in the day-to-day operations of the company. The walk was spurred by Time Warner's increasing lack of interest in the entertainment site they launched in November of 1999 as their impending merger with America On-line plows ahead.

With the AOL merger coming near, Warner Bros.' Entertaindom.com employees are threatening walkouts and blackouts of the site. Reuters reported that staffers are angry with parent company Time Warner's lack of interest in Entertaindom as the America On-line deal is coming to a close. Hopes of Internet-made millionaires at the fledgling entertainment site were dashed when Time Warner called off the planned spin-off of Entertaindom as a public stock. In addition, the amount of previously agreed-upon Time Warner stock that Entertaindom employees will receive continues to drop.

ATOMFILMS, a leader in next-generation entertainment, announced that JOHN

MARCOM, former President of Time Inc. International, will join as the new

senior VP of worldwide revenue and media strategies. In his new role,

Marcom will coordinate worldwide on-line and off-line sales of AtomFilms'

growing library of short-form entertainment. During his stint at Time Inc.,

Marcom oversaw a catalog of more than a dozen national and international

news, business and lifestyle publications. Joining Time Inc. in 1993,

Salsa Distribution has put together a deal that will create a new Jim

Henson programming block entitled MUPPET TIME in Panama. FETV will air

MUPPET TIME starting January 3, 2000 in a deal that lasts 2 years. The

block will include the MUPPET SHOW, MUPPETS TONIGHT, MUPPET BABIES,

FRAGGLE ROCK and JIM HENSON'S ANIMAL SHOW.