Hollywood Hunter

Simon returned to New York on September 5 and immediately invested in the final preparations before the filming of "American Idol".

This ABC TV network 1995 autumn blockbuster reality show will be aired on Tuesday, September 26th at 8pm. The weekly period, through the winter break, is roughly divided into two parts: the sea election stage and the competition stage. For the preliminary sea election, the competition will start next spring.

The former "American Idol" has a successful precedent for the British version, and its operation is relatively mature, and it has made a good start when it starts broadcasting.

This time the new version of "American Idol" does not have the previous popularity base, but has the huge resources support of the entire Westeros system.

Starting from Simon's idea of ​​producing this project, this version of "American Idol" was positioned as a large-scale linkage of the entire Westeros music industry, Daenerys Records, ABC TV Network, Eaglenet Portal, Ting Kobair will be involved.

During this time, Tinkerbal first won the exclusive naming rights of "American Idol" at a high price of 25 million US dollars. Not only that, throughout the first season of the show cycle, Tinkerbal will also send out 10 Ten thousand -10 digital music players.

Calculated at the manufacturing cost of 100,000 units -10, plus the naming fee, only in the first quarter, Tin Cobble is expected to invest US$50 million.

Regardless of the title fee, 100,000 externally promoted players worth US$50 million as prizes, plus the winner’s cash award and record contract, the news was just announced at the end of July, which directly detonated public opinion.

The production team was initially worried that the first season might not receive too much to apply for. As a result, in less than a month, the number of applicants across the United States through the Internet and mail exceeded 300,000. The production team had to be responsible for this The number of departments in Haixuan has tripled.

Due to the limitation of music copyrights, applicants start from the sea selection stage. The music used for performance is not selected at will according to personal preference, but must use the broadcast stock music that has been incorporated into Tincobair.The project team randomly assigned 10 pieces of music in the reply to the applicants, and indicated that the relevant music can be obtained on the Broadcast website.

Through the pre-marketing of Tinkerbeer’s 100,000 giveaways and the contestants must use the details of the broadcast stock music arrangement, not only has the music sales of the Broadcast website increased significantly in recent times, but even the players with the production capacity has been rising again. In short supply.

It's just these feedbacks that Tinkerbeer's $50 million investment is worth the money.In the absence of the previous British version of the popular base, the new version of "American Idol" started as much as the previous FOX TV network version.

What we have to do now is to maintain this good start and avoid the embarrassment of going high and going low.

In order to ensure this to the greatest extent, Simon returned from Europe to reincarnate as a micro-manager. He personally began to follow up the selection process to the lottery system development to the lighting room of the competition studio. He also deliberately spent a day scheduling four The live preview of the judges personally further tuned the four judges who have actually made sufficient preparations.

Under the indiscriminate bombing of various reality shows in the previous life, no one knows better than Simon how the judges should perform to maximize the atmosphere of the scene.

Simon also personally set up a stalk to the head of Cher's elder sister "Killing" against another actor David Kruger.

Refer to the paragraph of a '32 concerts' in memory.

Speaking of model workers, Cher is definitely one in the American Music Festival. Cher, who was born in 1946, often holds dozens of concerts every year even more than ten years later. Of course, it is not the size of the Madonna concert, but it is not. Ordinary third-rate little singer can compare.

The first season of "American Idol" will probably end at the end of May next year.

It happens that Xueer plans to hold a series of concerts while the iron is hot from June to September next year.

Several live demonstrations, the effect is very good.

Xueer is also very happy to accept this setting, after all, this will definitely make her a lot of attention to the concert next year.

As for whether it is 32 concerts or not, it doesn’t really matter. In fact, according to Cher’s workaholic level, this number is likely to be more than three months in the summer of next year. The singer has hundreds of games a year during the peak period. I have done everything in the concert.It was not accidental that the finalists gave tickets to the Golden Globe Jury Cher concert at the Golden Ball bribery election scandal, because it was too easy to buy.

If Cher has more than 32 concerts next year, it's just right, and the second season has all the pieces.

David Kruger can blame Cher clearly for 32 concerts, but actually held 64 concerts.

Of course, these are actually the end.

The key is the draft itself.

Simon's positioning of "American Idol" is a reality show, but according to his previous experience, a series of well-known singers can still be created in the previous seasons of the music reality show. He also hopes to achieve this goal in order to promote Danny The development of Lisi Records.

From the selection of judges, Simon began to make this arrangement.

The eldest sister, Xueer, is an artist under Daenerys Records, and the introduction of the other party can once again increase Xueer's popularity and stimulate the record sales of this veteran singer.

David Kruger is the producer of Backstreet Boys' first hit record. He is good at pop music record production. He can select the talents needed by Daenerys from a large number of players, and it is popular pop music. Talent.

The other two judges, Jay-z and Jennifer Lopez, put the two into the ranks of judges. Simon's original purpose was to cultivate the two as potential music seeds under Daenerys Records.

Needless to say, Jay-z's previous achievements.

As for Jennifer Lopez, although Simon has not been able to understand how the Latin queen has maintained his popularity for so many years, but with this potential, given resources can definitely reap the desired rewards.

Simon has always believed that successful people have certain qualities that make them successful.

In this world, there are always a few winners, and the luck component is great.

Therefore, it is very difficult for other people to select people who have the characteristics of successful people.

Simon's biggest advantage happens to be that some people have "sometimes" succeeded in certain things, so if they bet again, the win is very big.

While Simon focuses on preparing for "American Idol", these days, one of the most important news in the North American entertainment industry is probably to calculate that "Jurassic Park 2" officially broke the $400 million box office mark from September 1 to September. On the 7th, 14 weeks after the release, and after continuing to record 3.91 million US dollars, the cumulative box office of "Jurassic Park 2" reached 40.237 million US dollars, becoming another of the 400 million box office club members in the North American film market.

Not only that, after the main ticket office in the world was basically opened, as of early September, the global box office of "Jurassic Park 2" also reached $632 million.

Therefore, when North America broke through the $400 million mark, the global box office of "Jurassic Park 2" also officially bought the $1 billion mark.

One billion US dollars has always been a very important checkpoint in Hollywood movie box office. Before this, many movies such as "Jurassic Park", "Batman: Moments of War" and so on regretfully stopped at less than 1 billion US dollars, the only breakthrough This threshold is the end of last year’s Batman trilogy "Batman: The Rise of the Dark Knight."

Now, "Jurassic Park 2" is not only the second global $1 billion blockbuster in North American film history, because important ticket warehouses such as France and Japan are still in the early stages of release, and this super blockbuster is expected to be more Further, the impact of more than 1.1 billion US dollars will eventually exceed the global 1.135 billion US dollars of Batman: The Rise of the Dark Knight last year.

On the other hand, news of GE's contact with Time Warner has gradually spread in the circle.

Did not put on the table.

However, what should or should not be known, many people already know.

The most direct evidence is that after the disastrous box office failure of "Future Water World" at the end of July, Time Warner's stock price plummeted, but it began to rise since mid-August. As of September 8, the last trading day of the first week of September, Time The total market value of Warner has reached 20.7 billion US dollars.

According to the news from Terry Semel, Time Warner executives and a number of important shareholders hope to be able to sell this company, but the price difference with GE is very large.

You should know that Time Warner at this stage is just a group of fixed assets in the fields of film, television, publishing, etc., with a total value of 32 billion US dollars. The stock price slump in recent years has basically been dragged down by the debt after the merger and " A black swan like Future Water World.

In real calculations, Time Warner's overall operating conditions have always been positive.

Therefore, the psychological price of Time Warner's first shareholder is that GE's quotation cannot be less than 30 billion US dollars.In comparison, the offer by Jack Welch has never exceeded 25 billion US dollars.

Once Time Warner's market value exceeded 100 billion US dollars during the peak period of the Internet bubble around 2000, mainly after the promulgation of the "Telecommunications Act" in 1996, the value of Time Warner Group's cable TV operating system increased significantly.Because the new "Telecommunications Act" lifted the operational restrictions between cable TV, the Internet and traditional telephones, the market vigorously advocated the integration of the three networks, and Time Warner also adapted to the current situation to use its own cable TV system to carry out network access services, thus promoting the The market value has been greatly improved. Later, AOL merged with Time Warner. Steve Case not only watched Warner’s media and entertainment assets, but also Warner’s own cable TV operation network. These hardware packages can be used as AOL networks. Service supplement.

This time, the Clinton Administration’s Telecommunications Act is still in the making, and with the big butterfly Daenerys Entertainment, the situation after the merger of Time Company and Warner Brothers has not been too good.Although Time Warner’s cable TV operating network, Warner Communications, is also quite popular, lacking the support of the Telecommunications Act, AOL has already taken the lead in the field of Internet service providers, and Time Warner’s share price has not taken off. .

However, $30 billion, at least in Simon's view, is really not expensive.

If possible, the Westeros system is happy to continue to swallow Time Warner Group.

Of course, this possibility does not exist.

Winning the Metropolitan ABC Group is already the extreme that the Washington authorities can tolerate.

Simon stayed in New York until September 10th, and returned to the West Coast the next day. In the new week, the preparation for the still-present Igreat IPO officially began.

According to the strong performance gains that have been maintained for the past half a year, the management of Igret and the underwriters have adjusted the price of the issuance twice in a row. As of the road show, Igret's IPO price was finally determined to be US$35, which was higher than the original US$30 Increased by 16%.Based on the issue price of $35, Igrid’s IPO valuation officially exceeded $150 billion, without considering the green shoe mechanism that might be triggered, with a total financing amount of $18.6 billion.

The IPO valuation of 150 billion US dollars and the total financing amount of 18.6 billion US dollars have all created a new record for global stock market IPOs.

Although Igrid’s strong monopoly growth has made most investors full of confidence in this company’s IPO, but because the company’s valuation and financing quota are too large, the voice of declining is also endless. In a recent NBC "Today Show" interview, Tiger Fund founder Julian Robertson said that Igrid’s IPO was a completely irrational listing operation and also publicly stated that the new technology bubble has reached At the peak, Tiger Fund will short-list a series of Westeros technology companies after Igreat is listed.

In the past, the Tiger Fund, which is the same as the Soros Quantum Fund, exceeded US$20 billion after the 1997 Southeast Asian economic crisis. However, it was precisely because of Robertson’s misjudgment of technology stocks that he bet on shorts before 2000, which eventually led to Tiger funds with a size of more than US$20 billion are directly liquidated.

After following the Tiger Fund to attack the British Pound and the Mexican Lira, the size of the Tiger Fund has also exceeded 8 billion US dollars at this stage, and the hedge fund tycoon Julian Robertson also has considerable reputation on Wall Street.

Simon just did not expect that before the Asian economic crisis broke out, Robertson had already begun to look at the decline of new technology industries in advance.

Regarding Robertson’s position, the Westeros system did not respond publicly, but Cersei Capital’s hedge funds began to prepare themselves.

Creating a large-scale economic crisis requires several years of layout. Now some hedge capital in North America has begun to lay out in Asia, and Cersei Capital is no exception.Hedging is a zero-sum game, and some people make money only when others lose money. Since Julian Robertson gave up the long-term layout of Asia and can’t wait to play, Simon certainly doesn’t mind eating all the 8 billion dollars in the other party’s hands.