OCTOBER 2005

Mark Vinet blog homepage
Mark Vinet website

MUSIC & TV - Quebec's Annual ADISQ Awards by JUAN RODRIGUEZ Montreal Gazette, October 31, 2005 -- There was no grand sweep by any one artist at last night's gala honouring Quebec music, but multiple winners abounded, as did recognition of the province's thriving underground. No one dominated last night's ADISQ Gala, celebrating the Quebec music industry, but multi-Felix award winners - Les Trois Accords, Isabelle Boulay, Pierre Lapointe and Dany Bedar - abounded in a show that took pains to recognize alternative as well as mainstream artists. Broadcast by Radio-Canada from Theatre St. Denis, the gala spotlighted the final 15 of a total of 56 Felixes given away. Other awards were handed out on Oct. 24 at the more low-key event L'Autre Gala, at Metropolis.

MUSIC - Press link to view this article in this blog's Beatles section: New Beatles biography: compulsively readable history

MUSIC - Rock star wannabes go to Camp Jam by Doug Gross, Canadian Press, October 29, 2005 -- ATLANTA -- For one moment, plucking out a bluesy version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Whiskey Rock a Roller beside the man who wrote the song, Kelly Thomas felt like a rock star. The 43-year-old office manager chose a bass guitar over a car as her high school graduation gift. Now she's one of several dozen graduates of Camp Jam - a three-day chance to meet, party and play music with professional rockers. "It was just magic," gushed Thomas. Several rock "fantasy camps" have popped up in the past few years, as baby boomers who traded their electric guitars for golf clubs years ago look to rekindle their rock 'n' roll dreams. "A lot of them are the people who went down the other road," said Liberty Devitto, Billy Joel's drummer and a staff member at Camp Jam. "They were afraid to take that 'dark road' and now they're coming face to face with the people who did and getting to see for a couple of days what it might have been like." Jeff Carlisi, former guitarist with .38 Special and co-founder of the camp, said he came up with the idea in 2003. Last summer, he hosted a camp for teens in Atlanta. This year he'll host weeklong teen camps in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, as well the adult camp - dubbed Camp Jam EXP - and Camp Jam Kids for younger children. At the first adult camp in February, the youngest participant was 29; the oldest was 63. Among them were lawyers, CEOs and other executives. Carlisi said he originally included sessions on recording techniques and other music industry tips, but soon realized his campers "couldn't have cared less. They wanted to crank it up and play." At the October session in Atlanta, campers from Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, New Jersey and Connecticut were handed laminated badges with the word "artist" printed under their names. About five minutes after Thomas got hers on the first day, she was in one of the studio's soundproofed practice spaces, banging out Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing with three other people. Campers spent most of the second day the same way, jamming with fellow participants and rockers such as Carlisi, Devitto, Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King and Mark Rivera, who has played saxophone with Foreigner, Billy Joel, Peter Gabriel, and Hall and Oates. "You're playing with genius," said Glenn Zimmerman, a 52-year-old Atlanta salesman and bass player attending the camp for the second time. "It's a rare treat." The weekend camp costs $1,195 US per person. At Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp, with sessions in Los Angeles and New York City, participants pay $6,000 to $8,500 to spend a week playing with and learning from the likes of Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead and Roger Daltrey of the Who. "I'm still buzzing; I'm still smiling," Thomas said days after her experience ended. "It was far more than what I expected, it really was."

MUSIC - Cherryholmes is tops at bluegrass awards by John Gerome, Associated Press, October 28, 2005 NASHVILLE, Tenn. --The family group Cherryholmes won the top award -- entertainer of the year -- at the International Bluegrass Music Awards on Thursday. Alison Krauss and her band Union Station entered the evening with the most nominations -- 14 individually or collectively. Rhonda Vincent broke her own record by taking home her sixth straight female vocalist award. The awards are voted on by the professional membership of the International Bluegrass Music Association, the trade association for the bluegrass music industry. Fiddle player Benny Martin and singer Red Allen were also inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor. Martin who penned Ice Cold Love and the autobiographical Me and My Fiddle, is most recognized for his fiddle playing. He died March 13, 2001. Allen helped pioneer the "high lead" vocal harmony format in the 1950s. His signature songs include Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes and Whose Shoulder Will You Cry On. Allen died April 3, 1993.

MUSIC - Fogerty back in touch with his classics by David Bauder Associated Press, October 27, 2005 NEW YORK -- John Fogerty is back on Fantasy Records. Most music fans would gloss over such a small detail, but for years that simple statement was about as realistic as Neil Armstrong flying back to the moon. When the California-based record label was sold last year, it ended one of the most famously contentious artist-management relationships in music, freeing the former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman to return to the company that distributed his most famous work. Their first project together, The Long Road Home: The Ultimate John Fogerty-Creedence Collection, is a 25-song disc that pulls together his old band's hits with Fogerty's solo material, up to the anti-Iraq war song Deja Vu (All Over Again). (It's being released Nov. 1.) "There's no way to overstate how cool this is," said Fogerty. In an almost impossibly productive period (1968-71) Creedence churned out concise, often socially conscious rock hits like Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Down on the Corner, Who'll Stop the Rain and Green River. That burst of work alone earned Creedence induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Fogerty wrote and sang them all. Yet Fogerty, now 60, spent years without performing those songs because of bitterness over his feud with former Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz dating to Creedence's messy breakup in the early 1970s. Their bickering kept generations of lawyers fed. Fogerty spent years as a recluse, and his 1985 comeback album contained thinly disguised contempt in Mr. Greed and Vanz Kant Danz (renamed from Zanz Can't Dance after, of course, a lawsuit). Zaentz unsuccessfully sued Fogerty, claiming the songwriter had plagiarized himself because the comeback hit The Old Man Down the Road sounded too much like Creedence's Run Through the Jungle. The fight became heartbreakingly personal when Fogerty's older brother Tom, also a former Creedence member, took Zaentz's side. The brothers were estranged at Tom's death in 1990. The years of court time had taken such a toll that Adam Sweeting, a writer for The Guardian, wrote about Fogerty in 2000 that "it remains to be seen whether he will be remembered for his music or his lawsuits." That's why seeing Fogerty's name willingly associated with a Fantasy product is so startling. After the Concord Music Group, partly owned by legendary TV producer Norman Lear, bought Fantasy, Fogerty asked for a meeting with the new leadership. He came away feeling they respected him and his music. It also didn't hurt that Concord restored Fogerty's rights to royalties, which he had signed away decades ago to escape Fantasy. They asked for Fogerty's opinion on decisions about how his old music would be used, which had never happened since his split with Zaentz. "It's turned out to be, for me, a very, very happy, wonderful time in my life and career," he said. "Even a year ago I could not have envisioned this. The most happy thing is that I am reconnected with the music I made on Fantasy Records all those years ago, that I had basically been cut off from financially and emotionally for a long, long time." He has also recorded a DVD that will be released sometime next year, and hopes to make new music for Fantasy soon after. Most of Creedence's biggest hits appear in their original form on The Long Road Home, but he replaces a handful of older songs with live versions recorded recently. Keep On Chooglin' was replaced because Fogerty feels it is a substantially different song now than when he wrote it. He went with the live version of Fortunate Son because it's "a white-hot dose of energy," he said. The toughest call was the live version of Hey Tonight, which is primarily different because he did all the background vocals himself in the original version. His current good feelings don't extend to Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, Creedence's other surviving members, whom Fogerty also sued for performing under the banner of Creedence Clearwater Revisited. He compared them to a rattlesnake. "They bit me very badly in the same way that the old folks at Fantasy did," he said. "That hasn't changed, so I will continue to give them a very wide berth." MORE: www.johnfogerty.com

MUSIC - Record industry in freefall, says StatsCan: Sales down 20% from peak in 1998; industry cites downloading as culprit Canadian Press, October 26, 2005 OTTAWA -- The Canadian recording industry experienced its worst financial performance in six years in 2003 in the wake of bleak sales, declining new releases and a huge drop in profits, says a new study from Statistics Canada. "This overall decline in sales raises questions about factors such as illegal file downloads and swapping song files," says the study. And the Canadian Recording Industry Association replies that it's what they've been saying all along. Canadian record labels reported a little more than $708 million in sales revenue in 2003, down 17.7 per cent from 2000 and 20.5 per cent below 1998's peak. Canadian artists' sales plunged 20 per cent between 2000 and 2003 to just below $110.4 million, although their market share remained stable at about 16 per cent. That's attributable to a decline in sales by foreign artists. Total industry employment also fell, from 3,305 people in 2000 to a little more than 3,000 in '03. Graham Henderson, CRIA president, said all of this is proof that illegal music downloading by young people is causing artists and the recording companies enormous harm. "It's not great to be proven right about this," Henderson said. "But certainly this is what we've been saying for years." He called on the federal government to strengthen Bill C-60, the package of amendments to the 1908 Copyright Act that was introduced last June with the aim of cracking down on file sharing over the Internet. It also covers burning copies of CDs and films. Henderson said the report shows that the biggest sales decline is in rock and pop music, which is being downloaded in huge volumes. As a result fewer Canadian artists are bothering to release records because there's no longer enough profit in doing so. "The implications of this go far beyond economics, but to the heart of Canadian culture," says the association. Henderson cited the case of Jully Black, a popular new R&B artist who, in the first two weeks after her record was released, saw 2.8 million free download requests for it, while she sold only 15,000 records. "I can't find anyone who doesn't know who she is, but I can't find anybody who's bought her record. And that's a terrible conundrum." Henderson said Prime Minister Paul Martin promised two years ago at the Juno Awards that he would act to save Canadian cultural industries, but now they need to see the pedal put to the metal. "The StatsCan survey is a clarion call, it's a wakeup call." The survey cited other factors as well, including overall competition for the entertainment dollar, from the likes of video games and movies. However, it found Canadian-controlled companies suffered smaller declines in sales than their foreign counterparts. Sales of music-themed DVDs and video cassettes more than doubled during the period in question. Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor of law and technology and regular critic of anti-downloading laws, has cited the practices of big box retail stores like Wal-Mart where retail discounts have had a major impact on pricing. "The pricing pressure remains evident as sales by volume are up in Canada in 2005, yet revenues have declined," Geist says on his website. But Henderson said academics like Geist don't understand the business. The culprit, he insisted, is downloading, not Wal-Mart, and the solution is good legislation that eliminates mass confusion over what's right and what's wrong. And he added parents could help by putting their foot down by telling their kids: "Not in my home." The Sound Recording Survey is a census of the sales and releases of all known record labels.

MUSIC - Usher Launches New Label (US Records / BMG) Ooctober 25th, 2005 CanWest Interactive -- R&B star Usher's record label will release its first material next month - three years after its foundation. The film soundtrack to romantic comedy In the Mix, which features the hitmaker starring alongside Chazz Palminteri and Emmanuelle Chriqui, marks US Records formal debut. It has taken so long for Usher to launch the label because he has been nurturing his signed artists. BMG North America chairman Clive Davis says, "(Usher's) priorities were finding the right artists and then waiting until he strongly believed they were ready." The In The Mix soundtrack will act as a sounding board for the US Records roster of acts including rapper Rico Love, R&B group One Chance and solo singer Rayan. Usher, who is credited as writer/producer on the project, only contributes one song, saying, "I didn't want to take all the light. (US Records acts) can hold their own. They don't need me on all their songs."

MUSIC - "How To Get A Record Deal" What you need to know about A&R Departments by Paul Irvine © 2002 Sanderson Taylor, Toronto -- Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there lived a group of musicians who believed themselves ready for world domination of the musical sort. Keenly unaware of their massive egos, they set forth from their dingy rehearsal space ready to connect with destiny. They had walked for quite some time when Frank the guitarist said, “Hey guys, we need a plan. I’m getting hungry and my rent is almost due.” They all agreed. But what to do and where to go? “Let’s talk to my friend Gwen,” said Jimmy the drummer, “she works in a record store, she’ll know what to do.” When they arrived at Gwen’s record store, they found her staring into a glowing crystal ball. She had a mystical air about her. The guys were very impressed. Gwen told them that, “to achieve world domination of the musical sort, you must first get the attention and commitment of the A&R person at a record company.” “But how do we do that,” asked Billy the bassist. “It’s easy,” said Gwen, “just write the kind of undeniable hit songs that instantly capture the public’s imagination, record a killer demo or indie album, sell a few truckloads of your indie CD, tour like crazy selling out every club that you play, engage a brilliant manager and sit back and wait; the A&R rep will be knocking at your door.” “But we don’t have time for that, we want to be famous right now,” Johnny the singer exclaimed. “Well, why didn’t you say so,” said Gwen. “In that case, just close your eyes, click your heels together three times and repeat after me, there’s no place like the top-of-the-charts, there’s no place like the top-of-the-charts, there’s no place…”A&R people. Who are they? Where do they come from and what do they really want? To the newly signed recording artist, still aglow from doing the deal, the A&R person is a mythical deity that will scribe their name in stars across the night sky and guide them through a career that transcends space and time. To the unsigned recording artist who just received his 10th record company rejection form letter (he now has enough to paper one wall of his bedroom) the A&R person is an inconsiderate, pompous shmuck who never returns calls or emails and knows nothing about “real” music. But ask an A&R person who they are and they will most likely tell you, they’re just normal people who love music and are trying to do a job, as best they can. A&R stands for Artists and Repertoire. Generally speaking, the record company A&R person will find and develop new talent (i.e., recording artists) for their company. They will assess the commercial potential of the recording artist on behalf of their company. They will offer advice and direction to the artist with regard to song selection, record and video production, promotion and touring. To shed some light on the role of this mysterious gate-keeper, I spoke to Allan Reid, Sr. VP, A&R, Universal Music Canada, and Parkside Mike, Executive VP, A&R, Aquarius Records in Montreal, two of Canada’s hardest working A&R reps. PI: Would you agree that a record company lives and dies by its A&R decisions? Allan Reid: “Well, yes and no; I think the difference in Canada is that the multi-nationals are very much repertoire sources but, even more so, they’re marketing and distribution companies for international repertoire. Obviously, artists like Shania Twain, Eminem, U2 and hundreds of others are hugely important to us as far as our business goes, but, I think what really defines a record company is a company that can attract and find talent, develop talent and ultimately break it either on a regional or national level, then hopefully on an international level. It’s satisfying to have a multi-platinum Eminem record but it’s way more satisfying to have a “gold” Sarah Harmer record.” Parkside Mike: “Completely. The good thing at Aquarius is, I’ll spearhead a project but we really do a consensus thing ‘cause we’re such a small group. Anyone can bring something to the table and we’ll go over the pros and cons of each project and then figure out if it’s right for Aquarius.” PI: How does a potential new signing finds its way into your hands? Allan Reid: “There’s a lot of different ways. We at Universal do accept unsolicited material, meaning that we’ll take any demos that come in off the street. It’s a long, labourious process going through the thousands of demos we get. We’ve got four guys in our department who are filtering material all the time. But more often than not, the artists that end up getting signed come through a contact. Usually they have already done something themselves in the sense that they have developed their songwriting; they’re not in a rush to get to the record company. I find that the really great artists just do what they do and eventually we find out about them. Probably more than anything else we find out through other artists. People who are out touring will say, “Hey, I had this band open up for me in Vancouver, they were great.” I think other artists are one of our best A&R sources. Managers, agents, club promoters, lawyers; they come from all different areas.” PI: Do you prefer finding the artist as opposed to the artist sending you demos and calling you? Parkside Mike: “Yes totally, 100 percent. Although I’m relatively new to the A&R community, I’ve never heard of someone just putting an unsolicited demo in the mail and getting signed. I would suggest that if a band wants a record company, if they don’t know someone, whether it be a booking agent, a club promoter, a studio manager, if they don’t know someone that knows the A&R community, then they’re probably not ready yet for a record company. That’s a generalization, and there’s obviously exceptions to every rule, but most of the people that we work with come from some kind of contact. A&R has contacts everywhere: the publishing world, the studios, law firms, managers, booking agents, or even friends who go to shows and say, “Oh, I saw this great band you’ve got to check them out”. Rather than getting a package, I much prefer getting an email with a link to a website with MP3s or streaming and some live footage. You can tell a lot about a band from their website. I prefer to communicate via email - it’s not as stressful as getting a lot of calls in one day.” PI: The prospective signing is on your radar screen - you like their demo. What’s the balance between their ability to cut it on record and their ability to deliver a strong live show - or is it a bit of everything? Allan Reid: “I think it’s a bit of everything. I know for me personally, I’m a big fan of an artist who can come up and sing their songs. Whether that’s acoustic guitar or piano – just sitting there translating their music or if it’s full-blown show. For me and I think for most A&R guys the first thing is the song. It’s finding a great song. Then it’s the vehicle that delivers that song – the voice. Is it a unique voice, is there a character to it and is there a character to the music as a whole. And then it starts coming down to charisma and what we call the “it” quality - is that person a star? You know, that’s easier said than done. You see that person when they walk into a room - you can tell they have something.” PI: Given how A&R has over the years moved toward artists that write their own material, is it still a function of your department to source new songs to be recorded by your artists? Allan Reid: “Yes, absolutely. I find that the majority of the artists that we work with nowadays prefer to cut their own material and that can be a bad thing as well as a good thing. I think most of us prefer to have artists that can pen their material ‘cause it’s tough finding great songs. It’s very hard to go to a publisher and say, “Hey, we’re looking for one of your best hit writers to give us a track”, when there’s a number of other artists internationally also competing for those kind of songs. So you look to find artists who have a team either with them, within a band; or it’s one sole person in the group that can write. But it’s definitely important. It’s not mandatory, but it certainly helps when you’re trying to find material.”Parkside Mike: “Not really with the type of bands that we work with ‘cause we’re doing mainly rock stuff. We have some joint venture labels that are venturing into different kinds of music. A&R would be done by the other side of the joint venture. The bands that I tend to work with, normally they should have great songs to begin with – I see myself more as a facilitator of situations where I get a band and I try and find the right situation for them. Because we’re a small company, I tend to product manage my bands afterwards as well. I try to think five steps down the road as opposed to just making a great record. I try and think of making a great record but then, you know, what are we going to do for a video, who are they going to tour with, what opportunities are coming up over the next year, what bands are on the rise that fit similarly with them and can we make contact with them early to trade off on tour dates.” PI: Parkside, what was your initial A&R involvement with Serial Joe? Parkside Mike: “Their record was halfway done when I started working on the project. They recorded the first album over March break and I went out to Vancouver with Kim Clarke-Champness, who was one of their managers, to mix. But, my first real thing was we got them on Edgefest. I went to Toronto where they were rehearsing and I had these visions that Edgefest was going to be a tough crowd for them. So we came up with this plan to try and win over the crowd at Edgefest and at least not get pelted by bottles and stuff. I ended up donning a Mexican wrestler’s mask for the tour and jumping around on stage to divert the bottles away from the band so they could play. Every show I would come out with a video camera and I would egg the crowd on. I have tattoos and I was wearing this muscle-shirt and shorts so I looked like this tough guy and it sort of gave them this air of credibility for that tour. We wound up selling the most records on the tour ‘cause our single was peaking at the right time. We had the longest line-ups at the autograph tent and I don’t think it was because I was wearing a Mexican wrestler’s mask, but at least the guys weren’t bloodied from people throwing stuff at them when they went to sign their autographs.” PI: How important is the “team”? If an artist you’re considering doesn’t have management or a lawyer or an agent, would that dissuade you or lessen your interest in that artist? Allan Reid: “It won’t dissuade us or lessen our interest, but what we all realize is that before a record comes out, that team is essential. The manager is going to be the most important relationship an artist ever has in their career. That person will touch every aspect of that artist’s business relationships and often even personal relationships; they’ll be very, very close to the artist - more than anybody else. So that’s probably the most important decision an artist could ever make. And equally then come lawyers, record companies, publishers and agents; there’s all different people who are going to have different relationships with that artist and before any record comes out and launches into the public, those relationships should somewhat be formed or at least introduced because (as an artist) you’re going to need different members of each one of those teams to help you be successful. The A&R person is only one piece of the puzzle that the artist will need to be successful. You can have a successful career without an agent, without a manager, without a lawyer, or without a record company - it can be done. Ani Defranco has done very well on her own, but that’s the exception to the rule. The more prepared you are as an artist the better - reading things about the music business and understanding the business is essential to being successful. Be prepared. That way you don’t get ripped off or burned along the way.” PI: What is the quality of demos that you receive? Is it high quality or is it a lo-fi home recording or is it all across the board? Allan Reid: “With the advent of computers and home recording abilities, demo quality has soared. It really has gotten far, far better. We’re basically getting finished masters more often than we are getting demos. It just eliminates some of the guesswork for the A&R guys. What you have to understand as an artist is if you’re sending your music in to an A&R person, lawyers, agents, managers, whatever, they’ve got boxes and boxes of demos and tapes sitting there and if you’ve got the ability to make a really good sounding demo, when they put that demo on next to the one they just listened to, they’ll weigh that decision. It’s a hard thing not to; you listen to a singer/songwriter with just an acoustic guitar on a cassette, then you drop on someone’s CD that’s got full production behind it, the songs will sound better; sonically they’ll sound better. The song may not be any better but the sonics are. It just takes a bit more of the guesswork out. As an A&R person you can always imagine things sounding any certain way - oh we can do this kind of arrangement or we can bring this producer in.” PI: How do you deal with the “Unreachable / Ivory Tower” stigma attached to A&R reps? Allan Reid: “You know, there’s a misconception out there, at least I think there is, that A&R people are hard to approach. I don’t believe that at all. Maybe it applies in some other companies. I know at Universal, we’re normal everyday people who love music and we’re very busy ‘cause yes, there’s a lot of people trying to get to us and get a hold of us and we get a lot of packages, but, it’s as easy as running into us at a club downtown. You know, it’s a small business and once you’re in the circle of working musicians and working artists and getting to know who’s out there, it’s as easy as just asking. Go and hang at the Horseshoe (Toronto) on Tuesday night and you’ll meet all the A&R people; they’re all there. The job of an A&R person is to filter through the best of it and get to what they’re looking for as quick as they can. They’re not there to provide a critique service to artists; they’re there to find music for their company”. PI: So unless you see a diamond in the rough, you really can’t spend time… Allan Reid: “Well it’s hard as you get about two thousand submissions in a year, but the opportunity to sit and give feed-back is there, with artists you might want to keep getting material from. But you can’t spend an hour on the phone with a lot of artists who put a demo in that you just don’t see as right for your company. That’s one of the hardest things to explain to an artist when you’re passing on their music - it’s not to say we’re the be-all-end-alls, and if we say your music’s not right for us doesn’t mean it’s not good, it’s not that at all. At that point in time it could simply be it’s not right for our company; we’re heading in this certain direction; we’re looking for these kinds of signings; you need more time. There’s lots of things that could be causing us to say no. It doesn’t mean that the actual quality of the music or the songwriting is bad, but, sometimes it is.” PI: Do you only sign music that you personally like or do you remove your personal preferences in sourcing talent for your company? Allan Reid: “Absolutely (I only sign music that I like). If you’re signing with a record company and the A&R person is signing you because what you do is trendy and doesn’t really love it and doesn’t have a true vision for it, if there’s bump in the road somewhere along the way in your career, you’ll know it, and it’ll be hard for you because there won’t be that core belief of someone going, “I don’t care what anyone else says, I love this artist”. You need that inside your own record company because when you bring an artist in, the job only begins. You now have to go convince the rest of the company. You have to go make a great record with the artist and then you have to go work it through the marketing and promo departments and publicity and sales departments.” PI: How important is radio in exposing your artists? Allan Reid: “Radio is still, I think, by far the most important factor in exposing artists to the mass populace. And it’s a great revenue source for the artist in their performance (royalty) income. Having the exposure on radio, having a hit single at radio, makes a huge difference.”Parkside Mike: “If it’s a rock or pop band, then yes, obviously radio is important. But, if it’s someone like our new signing, Antoine (not from Sky), it’s not as important. We just have to figure out how to get it to people and hopefully radio will jump on. Canadian radio is increasingly harder to break an act on – to satisfy Canadian Content, they can play Nickelback and Sum 41 forever and that’s all you hear, but there are other artists trying to come up and make some waves at radio as well.”PI: Any suggestions / guidance for the unsigned artist trying to connect with an A&R rep? Parkside Mike: 1- “Consider playing shows with bands that are well-known and established. I have a lot of friends who work in clubs and I’ll usually hear about this band or that band through them.” 2- “Get into festivals such as North by Northeast or Canadian Music Week.” Allan Reid:1- “Take your time, develop your music, take it as far as you possibly can, and if you can develop a live following, go do that before even approaching a record company. The bands that go out there and create a buzz on their own, we don’t wait for their demos to arrive, we’ll go looking for them. We’ll hear about them. If you’re putting 500 people in a club in London, we’ll hear about that. It’s a lot more exciting to record company A&R guys to be searching music out than being sent music. It’s a better position for the band to be in, having someone call and say, “Hey, I’m trying to get a hold of your music,” than it is you sending it in and waiting eight months to get a response.” 2- “Make sure you’ve got great songs. Not just because your best friend or your parents tell you it’s good, but maybe you’ve already taken it to the local radio station and got it on the air and had it compete directly against all the other great repertoire that’s out there.” 3- “Do your ground work, get educated. Understand the business. It’s a business. Yes, it’s great to go and play music and do your thing, but, if you’re going to go out and enter the world of record companies and managers and agents and lawyers and promoters - understand the business. You’ll be far more successful if you do.”So there you have it. Many thanks to Allan and Parkside for taking the time to speak with me. Given the space limitations of this article, I could only provide you with a fraction of their wisdom and insights. In closing, I offer a word of caution from an ancient prophecy that reads, “He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” In other words, if you’re knocking on A&R’s door and the door opens, you’d better be ready! Alternatively, you could wait for A&R to come knocking on your door. And if that doesn’t work, just close your eyes, click your heels together three times and repeat after me, there’s no place like the top-of-the-charts, there’s no place like the top-of-the-charts, there’s no place… [The general information contained in this article is not intended as a substitute for skilled legal advice on specific contractual matters.]

MUSIC - The Western Canadian Music Awards by Jennifer Selk, Dose 21oct 2005 -- Boy will be appearing at the Western Canadian Music Awards (WCMA) — a three day festival that kicks off today and culminates in the awards presentation Sunday night. It's the primary event hosted by the Western Canadian Music Alliance and features an intensive conference, a youth career day, a music festival and two different awards shows that honour the achievements of people behind the scenes in the music industry as well as the outstanding achievement of Western Canadian recording artists. Boy is just one of more than 100 live acts that will perform among the likes of more well-known bands such as 54-40 at various venues in downtown Vancouver throughout the festival. The whole point is to bring together industry professionals (from musicians, to promoters, to entertainment lawyers) from across Canada and the world. Previous year's nominees have included The Weakerthans, Michael Bublé, Nelly Furtado, Nickelback, and Sarah McLachlan, so Boy is following in some successful footsteps, even if they're unconcerned with winning.

MUSIC - Warner Music Wins Copyright Suit October 18, 2005 AP -- A local arm of U.S.-based Warner Music has won a lawsuit against a Chinese karaoke firm that played its music videos without permission, state media said today (Oct. 18).Warner Music Hong Kong, a subsidiary of New York-based Time Warner Inc., won an award of 12,000 yuan ($1,500), the official Xinhua News Agency said.The Kunming Intermediate People's Court in southern China ordered that Haoledi Music Entertainment Co. Ltd. immediately stop playing Warner Music's songs at its karaoke parlors across China, Xinhua said.It didn't say when the verdict was delivered.Warner Music Hong Kong also filed suit in Beijing last year accusing another karaoke chain -- Taiwan-based Partyworld, which has branches in mainland China -- of illegally using its videos.Karaoke is hugely popular in China. The music often comes from illegally copied recordings, with no fees paid to copyright holders.China's trading partners, including the United States, have repeatedly demanded that Beijing do more to stamp out rampant piracy.

MUSIC - Independent label sues Sony BMG on payola claim October 19, 2005 (Reuters) - Independent U.S. record label TSR Records has sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment, alleging that one of the world's largest music companies unfairly dominated radio play lists through bribery, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The suit, filed on Tuesday with the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, followed Sony BMG's announcement in July that it would pay $10 million to settle a New York State probe, agreeing to stop "pay-for-play" practices, known as "payola", to help secure radio airtime for songs. Tarzana, California-based TSR was seeking unspecified monetary damages and attorneys' fees, claiming independent labels were systematically excluded from radio play lists and that Sony BMG violated federal and California antitrust laws, the report said. Officials at Sony BMG could not be immediately reached for comment, but the report said the company would not comment on pending litigation. A spokesman in Tokyo for Sony Corp. said he had not heard about the case. Its German partner Bertelsmann (BMG)was not available for comment.

MUSIC - Royalty Fees Rise For Canadian Radio Stations Oct. 19, 2005 by Larry LeBlanc, Billboard, Toronto -- Canadian broadcasters have slammed a decision on Friday (Oct. 14) by the Copyright Board of Canada--a federal government regulatory tribunal--that significantly boosts royalty fees that Canadian radio stations have to pay to the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), and to the Neighbouring Right Collective of Canada (NRCC) for the use of their music in the years 2003 to 2007. Rates will vary according to a station's advertising revenues. Under the new rates, radio stations playing music will continue to pay the performing rights society SOCAN 3.2 per cent of their first $1.25 million ($1.06 million U.S.) in annual revenues and $100 ($84.72 U.S.) to the music industry collective NRCC. Annual revenues over that amount increases from 3.2 to 4.4 per cent for SOCAN, and from 1.44 to 2.1 per cent for NRCC.Music stations that play less music will see an increase in their rate from 1.4 to 1.5 per cent of the station's annual revenues for SOCAN, and from 0.64 to 0.75 per cent for NRCC.In total, according to the Board, the new rates are expected to generate a little over $55 million ($46.62 million U.S.) for SOCAN and NRCC. The old rates would have generated approximately $44 million ($37.30 million U.S.). In the Board's decision, it noted that the SOCAN royalty rate had remained unchanged for the last 25 years and had not been reexamined for almost 50 years. The Board further noted that the current rate was too low and undervalued the role music contributes to the radio industry and that the amount and manner in which music is used by commercials has helped radio to create significant efficiencies. In the decision Claude Majeau, Secretary General of the Board emphasized that, "Over the last several years, the Board alluded to the possibility that music on commercial radio might be undervalued. The evidence presented as this hearing allowed the Board to confirm that impression."A statement from Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the national voice of Canada's private broadcasters, described the decision as "both aberrant and unreasonable." "These massive and historic rate increases are entirely unjustified, and are nothing more than a tax on efficiency, innovation and good programming," says CAB President and CEO Glenn O'Farrell. Counters Paul Spurgeon, VP Legal Services & General Counsel of SOCAN. "We have worked to have the rates increased for over 25 years and the Board's decision and acknowledgment that the previous rates undervalued music's contribution to the radio industry is very reassuring."The CAB is reviewing all courses of action to challenge the Board's decision.

MUSIC - ASCAP awards Canadian Press, October 19, 2005 NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- Kenny Chesney won the ASCAP Voice of Music Award at the performing-rights organization's annual country music awards show. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is among three U.S. performing-rights organizations that represent songwriters in licensing music and collecting and distributing royalties from play on radio and in television, films, ads and other media. Chesney performed his song I Go Back at the 43rd Annual ASCAP Country Music Awards at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on Monday night. "First and foremost, I consider myself a songwriter," Chesney, 37, said in accepting the honour. His new album, The Road and the Radio, will be released next month. Previous recipients of the award, given to songwriters whose music gives people's lives a voice through song, are Garth Brooks, Amy Grant, George Strait and Diane Warren. Craig Wiseman was named ASCAP's songwriter of the year for singles that include In a Real Love, Live Like You Were Dying, Rough and Ready and That's What It's All About. ASCAP named Live Like You Were Dying, a Tim McGraw hit on which Wiseman shares writing credit, its song of the year. Wiseman has written or co-written 90 charted singles and 13 No. 1 country hits throughout his career. This was his second ASCAP songwriter of the year award. ASCAP's songwriter/artist of the year is John Rich of duo Big & Rich, who co-wrote Here for the Party, Holy Water, Redneck Woman, Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) and When I Think About Cheatin'.

MUSIC - What Music Label Scouts Look For: Inside the Mind of an A&R Representative essay by Jake Sibley, EvO:R-Pedia -- I recently had the opportunity to appear as a panelist at the Nashville New Music Conference, an annual meeting which provides career-building seminars for musicians. With you folks in mind, I attended every seminar I could and took so many notes my hand almost fell off. One of the presentations was given by a panel of A&R representatives, including Sharon Fitzgerald, an A&R rep for Columbia Records, and Bubba Smith, a rep for Word Entertainment, a Christian music company that distributes through Sony Music. Here's the advice they had to offer for artists interested in a major label contract. Where Are the Talent Scouts?No matter where you are, A&R people are lurking nearby. Fitzgerald emphatically repeated this point. "Columbia has scouts everywhere," says Fitzgerald. "There is not a city that isn't being watched. If you make some noise, we are going to hear about it." You think you need to play a big show to get seen? Not true, says Fitzgerald: "I can't tell you how many shows I've been to where there were less than 10 people in the place." In fact, she found one of the artists she recently signed in a dive "where there were three other people in the audience, and they weren't even paying attention. But this kid was a star, and I knew it." Getting NoticedSo the scouts are out there...what can you do to catch their ear? Fitzgerald explains that radio airplay is not critical, due to the dramatic changes in the radio industry that I've discussed below. So don't spend too much energy banging on closed doors. Creating a local impact through live shows and word of mouth is the way to go. "We watch crowds very closely," says Fitzgerald, "to see their reactions to an artist." Bubba Smith agrees: "When they play live, how does the crowd react? It's not about whether I like the music or not. I have to push aside my own biases and personal taste and look at how the crowd is reacting." Local insiders can help too. "Club owners love to talk, and they know more than anyone who is bringing in the crowds," Fitzgerald says. Where else do the scouts get tips? The staff at indie labels - "Yeah, we call them, we talk to them," says Fitzgerald. Sales numbers recorded by SoundScan are also a good way to get noticed. (Learn more about using bar codes to have your sales tracked by SoundScan.) Fitzgerald further reports that many bands are now being found through the Internet. She mentioned DemoDiaries.com and EarFood.net as two of her favorites sites. (Click "Online Promotion" at left for related resources.) Coming TrendsAccording to Fitzgerald, boy-bands are on the way out, and the labels are looking for music with a little more substance. "Christian music has snuck into the mainstream, and is still coming," she says, citing under-the-radar Christian acts like Collective Soul, Creed, and P.O.D. Especially after September 11th, Fitzgerald believes that a lot of the fluff will fall by the wayside in favor of "a guy with a guitar who really has something to say." Demos With the growing availability and dropping prices of professional recording tools, it's becoming increasingly important to put together a quality product. "Demos are sounding good," says Fitzgerald. "I'm getting stuff people did in their bedrooms that sounds amazing." Still, the demo is primarily an indicator of the artist's live potential. Smith's first criterion when listening to a demo: "Do I want to go see this person live?" Fitzgerald agrees: "There is no way I'm going to take a band [with a great demo] and a mediocre performance and put that in front of my boss. I don't care what the demo sounds like, you better get up there and wow me." The Truth About Radio "College radio is no longer important," says Fitzgerald, "especially for the popular music styles that majors are looking for. After the late 80's, college radio began shunning 'radio-friendly bands,' which is exactly what the majors want." Meanwhile, commercial radio has been reduced to a near monopoly, and tremendous influence is required to get a track on the air. Fortunately, labels understand that commercial airplay is nearly impossible for local bands to achieve. Fitzgerald begs artists not to make the mistake of "believing that each radio station writes it's own playlist. Four companies run almost every single major radio station [in the U.S.]. That means there are basically four people who decide what gets played in this country." The same is true across the pond. "There is no free radio in Europe," says Fitzgerald, who worked in Europe for Sony Music. Promotional Scams You know all those "promotional companies" that offer to include you on a major compilation or shop your stuff to the majors for a "reasonable" fee? "In over four years in A&R," says Fitzgerald, "I've never had any of those people hand me anything." Avoid the scams. Flat, up-front fees are no good - if they really believe in your music, they'll work for a percentage of future profits. A&R (Artist & Repertoire) This term is usually used in the phrase "A&R representative." A&R representatives are the staff at record labels that are responsible for scouting new artists and then (to some extent) helping develop those artists after a recording contract has been signed. The phrase is left over from early in the music industry when the A&R position involved selecting both the musicians (artists) and the music (repertoire) for any given recording. The most glamorous aspect of an A&R job is locating new talent. A&R reps spend a significant amount of time weeding through the masses of aspiring artists for a few diamonds in the rough. They are responsible for visiting clubs and other live performances to evaluate the potential of new, unsigned acts. They may also search for new talent by listening to demos and watching videocassettes of perfomances by unsigned artists. In some cases, A&R reps will attempt to attract signed bands from other labels, either by offering an appealing contract after the band's original contract expires, or by actually buying out the existing contract. In addition to identifying artists, A&R reps search for songs for the artists they have signed. There are several potential sources which must be evaluated: works by the artists themselves, works by the label's staff songwriters, works submitted by independent songwriters, and past hits which might be re-arranged and re-recorded by a new artist. EducationAlthough a college degree is not required for A&R positions, record labels typically give preference to degreed applicants. Since A&R work requires a special combination of skills, however, some labels (particularly indies) are willing to overlook education in favor of natural ability. Students interested in becoming A&R representatives should consider course work in subjects related to marketing and communications, such as promotions, advertising, and marketing. College degrees in communications provide a strong foundation for work as a an A&R representative. ExperienceSince A&R Representative is such a prestigious title, competition for the positions is fierce, even by the notoriously cutthroat standards of the music industry. Consequently, candidates typically must have prior experience in the music industry, preferably at other record labels. A good first step into getting this experience is successfully completing a music internship. Required Skills: Ability to spot real potential in raw talent - Ability to predict popular trends - Excellent verbal communications and negotiating skills - Comfortable and outgoing socially - Willing to go long hours

MUSIC - Eminem publisher chasing ring-tone loot Associated Press Wednesday, October 05, 2005 Detroit -- Grammy-winning rapper Eminem's publishing companies have filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop his songs from being used as cellphone ring tones. In the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Mich.-based Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated are seeking a court order to prohibit five companies from selling Eminem song ring tones on the Internet. Lawyers for the rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, said they also plan to sue karaoke companies that sell Eminem songs without getting the proper licences. "This is a big business. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year," said Howard Hertz, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. The companies named in the suit are Colorado-based Cellus USA, Georgia-based FanMobile, New York-based Nextones.com, New Jersey-based MyPhoneFiles and New Jersey-based MatrixM LLC.

MUSIC - Bronfman Fires Back at Apple: The duet between Apple and the music industry struck a sour note as the industry takes aim at Steve Jobs. R.Herring September 23, 2005 -- The gloves are off in the battle between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the music industry over the price of downloaded songs. On Thursday, one of the music industry’s highest-profile executives responded publicly to Mr. Jobs’ charges, made earlier in the week, that they were “greedy” when they requested a price hike for downloaded songs. At an investors’ conference in New York, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said the price of downloaded songs should vary depending on the popularity of the songs and the artists. He called Apple’s across-the-board $0.99-per-song charge unfair. “There’s no content that I know of that does not have variable pricing,” said Mr. Bronfman at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia investor conference. “Not all songs are created equal—not all time periods are created equal. We want, and will insist upon having, variable pricing.” Mr. Bronfman’s remarks came in response to Mr. Jobs’ statement on Tuesday blasting the music industry for pushing for an increase in the price of downloaded music, saying their demands, if met, would serve to encourage piracy, which has eaten into the industry’s profits. “To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer,” said Mr. Bronfman. “Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past.” Songs, Not Albums - Many believe that Apple’s model of picking and buying individual songs is much more consumer-friendly than the traditional retail model of buying an album or CD with seven songs, of which the consumer might be interested in only one or two. “Instead of spending $15 for a CD, you buy two cuts for two bucks. That’s a lot of money left on the table,” said Joe Nordgaard, managing director of Spectral Advantage, a strategic consulting firm. “The traditional model with premium pricing has been so lucrative for the music industry. When they cut the deal with Apple, they did not realize what they had done. Now they want out.” Mr. Bronfman said the music industry should not have to use its content to promote the sale of digital music devices for Apple or anyone else, and not truly share in the profits. “We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,” he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only. “We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders,” added Mr. Bronfman. “We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple, and others.” Jonathan Hurd, vice president of Adventis, a Boston-based consultancy, believes that the music industry is in the throes of a major sea change and it will take more time for it to absorb those changes. “The music industry is making a transition away from CDs to online music, but that transition is probably going to take five more years,” he said. “Steve Jobs likes the simplicity of a single $0.99-per-song price because simplicity is good in the early stages of a market. Both sides are posturing for their upcoming negotiations.” Apple CEO resists "greedy" music companies seeking download price hike by Laurence Frost, Associated Press PARIS -- Apple boss Steve Jobs vowed Tuesday to repel "greedy" record companies' demands for higher music download prices, warning that any such move would encourage piracy. Jobs, speaking before the opening of the Apple Expo in Paris, said some music majors were pushing for an increase in prices on Apple's online iTunes Music Store. Apple's co-founder and CEO said record companies already earn more profit from songs sold through iTunes - cutting out costs of manufacturing, marketing and returns - than from those sold on CD. "So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said. As their contracts with Apple come up for renewal, music companies are seeking to improve their take from sales through the U.S. iTunes site, which charges 99 cents per song. Prices are typically higher in Europe, Japan and other regions. Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Computer Inc. launched its Japanese iTunes site in August without Sony BMG's music catalogue, as negotiations dragged on. Observers say the same issues are likely to surface in talks between the two companies on their U.S. sales, and Warner Music Group Corp. is also reportedly seeking price increases. Warner Music and Universal Music Group declined to comment. Sony BMG and EMI Group PLC did not return calls. Jobs indicated he plans to stand firm. "Customers think the price is really good where it is," he said. "We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say, 'You can buy these songs legally for a fair price,'" he added. "But if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses." Industry analyst Philip Leigh, who runs U.S. market research firm Inside Digital Media, said record companies were smarting over their loss of control as online customers cherry-pick favorite hits. "A full CD might have only three or four popular songs," Leigh said. "Now that the consumer's able to buy each song individually, they don't have to buy the whole CD, and the labels are concerned that this will result in lower revenues." But as long as Apple controls the market for music players and paid-for downloads, Leigh said, "it's going to be very difficult for the labels to avoid dealing with Steve Jobs on his terms." Apple's iTunes accounts for 82 percent of legal downloads in the United States. The company has sold more than 500 million songs online and about 22 million iPod digital music players. Ted Schadler of Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research said studies showed consumers would pay more for the most popular tracks. But he agreed with Jobs that any move to raise prices could backfire. Among Internet users aged 12 to 21, Schadler said, about 50 percent share tracks illegally, while just 6 percent buy online and don't share. "This is a minority phenomenon," he added. "Why would you do anything to put a kink in that?" The latest, smallest iPod incarnation, the Nano, wowed consumers and technology experts at its Sept. 7 launch. It also helped offset disappointment with the ROKR, the first iTunes-equipped cell phone, unveiled the same day by Apple and Motorola Inc. Launched just as handset makers and U.S. cellular operators are gearing up to market a new generation of music-playing phones, the ROKR was criticized for its limited 100-song memory, slow PC connection and inability to download songs over the mobile network. Jobs played down the phone's cool reception and hinted that better handsets were in the pipeline. "I could imagine other products in the future," he said. "It was a way to put our toe in the water and learn some things." But mobile operators' charges are likely to remain an obstacle to growth of music downloads over expensive 3G high-speed networks, Jobs said. "We're working on that too, but I'm not so sure it will be successful." Apple remains on track to equip its Mac computers with Intel Corp. microprocessors from June next year, Jobs also said. The company announced the switch to Intel chips on June 6, ending its long-standing relationship with International Business Machines Corp.

Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia

Music Industry Association of Newfoundland

BOOKS - Creators shocked at Lemony Snicket sales (children's books) by Anne-Marie Tobin Canadian Press October 25, 2005 TORONTO -- As Daniel Handler and his editor, Susan Rich, laugh together and share anecdotes about how they launched A Series of Unfortunate Events, it's apparent that they're both still somewhat gobsmacked by their success. The Lemony Snicket books have sold 46 million copies, and the total is ballooning every day with the release this month of the 12th book in the series, The Penultimate Peril. "It's changing very quickly now," says Rich of the total number of books flying off store shelves. "I believe we sold a couple yesterday," is the rejoinder from Handler, who admits to a tired arm after signing copies. "Oh yes, isn't it awful? Signing so many books. No one suffers like me," he says gleefully. They work together long-distance now, but a recent stop by Handler in Toronto has put the pair in the same room -- the Snicket alter ego and Rich, a Winnipegger who studied at McGill and got a master's in children's literature in Boston before their serendipitous meeting of the minds in New York City. Handler had written The Basic Eight, a novel for adults and "I was being rejected by a total of 37 publishers," he says. "And I was simultaneously being rejected by Simon and Schuster, where I was laid off," Rich says. "She was an unemployed editor and I was an unpublished writer," he interjects. "We were failures," she adds. As they relate the story at the HarperCollins office in Toronto where Rich is now based, their enthusiasm for how it all turned out is infectious. "She read The Basic Eight and she said 'Well, I don't think this can be published by a children's publishing house but I think you ought to consider writing something for children,' " says Handler. "I had an idea and the idea began to gnaw at my brain." When Rich was hired by HarperCollins she urged Handler to tell her if he had any thoughts for a book. He was convinced his idea -- a series of books written under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket -- was "terrible," but arranged to meet her at a bar to discuss it anyway. "I thought I'll tell her my idea and then she'll say 'You're right, it's a terrible idea for you to write for children.' But at least..." he says. "At least we could drink," Rich interrupts, and the pair are laughing once again. "In the morning she called me and she said 'I'm stone cold sober sitting at my desk and I still think it's a good idea,' " Handler says. "And I wrote down the first chapter of The Bad Beginning and summaries of the first three books and she went in to HarperCollins and I received a contract to write four books. And I remember this so clearly 'cause I said to my literary agent that I only gave them ideas for three books, and she said 'They're never going to publish four of these.' She thought the idea was so dreadfully dark that there was no way." Indeed, the stories are dark. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are orphaned when their parents die in a house fire, and the trio go from one dangerous adventure to another in an effort to escape the clutches of Count Olaf and his evil cohorts. Handler, who grew up in San Francisco and moved back there after his New York stint, says he read voraciously as a child. The personalities of the three children "came naturally to me," says Handler, who's now a dad in his mid-30s with an almost-two-year-old son. "My sister was something of the boss of me, even though she's my younger sister, so that made sense to me that the boss would be my sister, or would be a girl," he says. "I guess I'm something like Klaus because I read all the time. I don't have the sort of photographic memory for trivial details that Klaus has. I have no mechanical abilities whatsoever (Violet's talent). And I scarcely ever bite people (a Sunny trait). So I guess I'm most like Klaus." "I just tried to design characters who would be able to withstand the various calamities that I would throw in their path. And so far they have." And children in more than 40 countries are lapping them up, including those who packed a Toronto church one evening last week for a reading by Lemony Snicket. You might expect that the 800-plus people in attendance would be devastated that Snicket was a no-show -- that it would be a dreadful event in their young lives, to anticipate seeing but then not meet their favourite author. Instead, they laughed, hooted and clapped as Handler played the accordion, sang a song and gave a dramatic performance to explain that Snicket was indisposed because a creature with big teeth had bitten him in the armpit and paralyzed him "from the armpit down." "I thought he was very funny," said seven-year-old Meleah Bennett. "He talks like Lemony Snicket." "Very funny, and fun, really," said Emily Washburn, 9, of Cobourg, Ont., adding that the Lemony Snicket books are "exciting." During the interview, Handler said he found it "inexplicable" that the books, aimed mostly at preteen readers, have caught on the way they have. "I didn't do any market research or pedagogical study or anything. I just thought it would be interesting to tell that kind of (dark) story. And I've been continually stunned that there are so many people who find that thing as interesting as I do." Certainly, life has changed since the first book came out in the fall of 1999, when Rich "was able to wrestle a party budget of $200." "We had a party in my apartment, where Daniel broke some mirrors, and we set up a ladder over the door and some black cats around, made it a very bad luck party. And quite a low budget party," she says. Recently, they found themselves at the Bologna Book Festival and a HarperCollins party for their international publishers in a castle with lots of Italian delicacies. They couldn't help but make some comparisons. "And nice as my New York apartment was..." says Rich. "It was no castle!" finishes Handler. Filmgoers were introduced to the Baudelaires when the Paramount film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Jim Carrey as Count Olaf, came out last Christmas. "It was just interesting to see what somebody would do with it," says Handler. "I sort of wish there were nine different versions of the movie one could look at. I'd love to see a Guy Maddin version." After setting his latest book at the Hotel Denouement, Handler is now winding up the series, writing the 13th and final instalment. And what does he tell fans who might have trouble believing it? "I would remind them that something terrible could happen to the author at any moment, and so it might end at 12," he says. Will he miss the characters? "I'm sure I will. I've spent a great deal of time with them," he says sombrely and seriously -- perhaps for the first time in the interview. But then the levity returns: "They might miss me more than I'll miss them... 'Why have you forsaken us?' "

BOOKS - Massive deal for book on Warren Buffett by Hillel Italie Associated Press, October 21, 2005 NEW YORK -- A bidding war for an authorized biography of the "ideas" of billionaire Warren Buffett has been won by the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc. Tentatively titled The Snowball: How Warren Buffett Collected Friends, Wisdom and Wealth, the book is scheduled to come out in 2008. Several publishers were interested and a representative close to the deal said it was worth more than $7 million US, although not as much as the reported $10 million to $12 million for former President Clinton's My Life. Former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch reportedly got $7.1 million for his bestseller, Jack: Straight From the Gut. The Snowball will be written by Alice Schroeder, a former insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley, where she met Buffett. This marks the first time a book will be written with his co-operation, but the contract was negotiated with Schroeder. "Our deal is with her. She is the author," Bantam president and publisher Irwyn Applebaum told The Associated Press Wednesday through spokeswoman Barbara Burg. According to a statement issued Wednesday by Dell, the book will focus on Buffett's business strategies. It will be based on the "thousands of hours" Schroeder spent with Buffett and on "unprecedented access to his files, friends and associates." The 75-year-old Buffett is considered of special interest both for his personal wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine at $40 billion, and his folksy style. Buffett is known as the man who built a 1956 partnership of four relatives and three close friends into a holding company worth about $100 billion. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns insurance, soft drink, candy, furniture, restaurant and carpet firms. Yet Buffett is also known to wear sweat pants and sweat shirts in his spare time. He is a longtime fan of hamburgers, french fries and Cherry Cokes, and enjoys bridge and playing the ukulele.

BOOKS - Publishers join authors in suing Google by Hillel Italie Associated Press, October 19, 2005 NY -- Just weeks after a leading authors’ organization sued Google for copyright infringement, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has also filed suit against the search engine giant’s plans to scan and index books for the Internet. Under the Google Print Library Project, millions of copyrighted books from five major libraries — including the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library — will be indexed on the Internet unless the copyright holder notifies the company by Nov. 1 about which volumes should be excluded. A few sentences from each book would be viewable, but could not be printed or downloaded. Google has called the project an invaluable chance for books to receive increased exposure. The library project is an offshoot of the Google Print program, for which publishers voluntarily submit copyrighted material. But in papers filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the publishers association sought a ruling that would support an injunction against illegal scanning and cited the “continuing, irreparable and imminent harm publishers are suffering… due to Google’s willful (copyright) infringement to further its own commercial purposes.” The suit named five publishers as plaintiffs: McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group USA, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons. The suit seeks recovery of legal costs, but no additional damages. Google, in a statement issued Wednesday, called the legal action “short-sighted” and said the project was a “historic effort to make millions of books easier for people to find and buy.” “Creating an easy to use index of books is fair use under copyright law and supports the purpose of copyright: to increase the awareness and sales of books directly benefiting copyright holders,” David Drummond, Google’s general counsel and vice-president, corporate development, said in the statement. The Authors Guild, which represents about 8,000 writers, filed a class action suit for copyright infringement last month. Besides an injunction, the guild is seeking monetary damages. Patricia Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said Wednesday that the publishers’ lawsuit followed months of negotiations with Google. “We spent so much time on this I think half of our board ended up having trouble with their families because of cancelling vacations,” she said. Publishers worry that Google is scanning entire books, even though just a limited amount of material will be displayed online. The library project’s Nov. 1 deadline, Google’s so-called “opt out” provision, was established over the summer in response to such concerns. But Schroeder said Wednesday that the company still wrongly placed the burden on copyright holders. By contrast, publishers don’t object to the larger Google Print program because nothing would be used without explicit permission. Google has countered that it does not need permission for the library project and calls the “opt out” clause a courtesy. Google’s Drummond said through spokesman Nathan Tyler that even after Nov. 1, copyright holders can request that material be removed. The Google controversy reflects a general debate over the Internet and copyright law. Even the publishers association acknowledges that the project could benefit the book industry, if rights are respected. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow made his most recent book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, available for free last summer on the Internet, believing that the promotional value greatly outweighed any lost sales. Schroeder noted that viewpoint, but cited two reasons for still objecting to Google’s program. “First of all, it sets a dangerous precedent. If you allow Google to do it, you allow anybody to do it. It’s going to be an impossible task for copyright owners to defend themselves,” she said. “Secondly, the whole principal of copyright law is that you get to decide if it’s good for you. Why should Google get to decide? Earlier this week, Google announced a version of its print program was now available in eight European countries, including France, Germany and Spain.

BOOKS - Canadian Library Association (CLA) Book of the Year for Children - Established 1947. A medal presented annually to the author of the best children's book published in Canada. The author must be a citizen or resident of Canada. More info: www.cla.ca

BOOKS - National Book Awards finalists by Hillel Italie Associated Press, October 12, 2005 NEW YORK -- E.L. Doctorow's The March, his novelization of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's bloody Civil War campaign, and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir of grieving her late husband, were among the nominees announced Wednesday for the National Book Awards. Two of the country's most revered poets, John Ashbery and W.S. Merwin, were also finalists. The 78-year-old Ashbery was chosen for his collection Where Shall I Wander and Merwin, also 78, for Migration. Between them, they have received 12 nominations for the NBA and one award, for Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Walter Dean Myers, whose blunt descriptions of street life have led to frequent efforts to remove his books from libraries, was a nominee in the young people's category for Autobiography of My Dead Brother. He was a finalist in 1999 for Monster. Winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be announced at a Nov. 16 ceremony in New York, with Garrison Keillor hosting and honorary medals going to Norman Mailer and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The list of finalists was read Wednesday by John Grisham, at the former home of fellow Oxford, Miss., author William Faulkner. Doctorow's novel, a bestseller almost universally praised by critics, stood out in a year of disappointments in fiction, with Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days and Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close among those failing to meet expectations. Doctorow, author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and other acclaimed historical novels, won the National Book Award in 1986 for World's Fair. This was his fifth nomination, but first since 1989. Other fiction finalists this year were Mary Gaitskill's Veronica, Christopher Sorrentino's Trance, Rene Steinke's Holy Skirts and William T. Vollmann's Europe Central, an 800-page novel, including footnotes, about Germany and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. Didion was nominated in non-fiction for her book about the loss of her husband and fellow author John Gregory Dunne, who died two years ago of a heart attack. Like The March, Didion's memoir has been celebrated by reviewers and sought after by readers, with more than 150,000 copies now in print, according to publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Also cited for non-fiction: Alan Burdick's Out of Eden, Leo Damrosch's Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jim Dwyer's and Kevin Flynn's 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers and Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains. At least two notable releases were bypassed: David McCullough's 1776 and J.R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar. In poetry, finalists besides Merwin and Ashbery were Frank Bidart's Stardust, Brendan Galvin's Habitat and Vern Rutsala's The Moment's Equation. Young people's nominees included Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks, Adele Griffin's Where I Want to Be, Chris Lynch's Inexcusable and Deborah Wiles' Each Little Bird That Sings. The awards, now in their 56th year, are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, a non-profit organization that uses money raised by the ceremony to fund its educational programs, such as a summer writing camp at Bennington College in Vermont. MORE: http://www.nationalbook.org/

BOOKS - Harold Pinter wins Nobel literature prize by Matt Moore Canadian Press, October 13, 2005 -- STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- British playwright Harold Pinter, known for his distinctive juxtaposition of the brutal and the banal in such works as The Caretaker and The Room, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The Swedish Academy said Pinter was an author "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms." In its citation, the academy said the 75-year-old playwright was one who restored the art form of writing plays. His works include The Room, The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter and his breakthrough work, The Caretaker. "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles," the academy said. Pinter is the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul won it in 2001. The son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was born in London on Oct. 10, 1930. Pinter has said his encounters with anti-Semitism in his youth influenced him in becoming a dramatist. The wartime bombing of London also affected him deeply, the academy said. The academy's announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism's most important holiday. Dubbed the most influential British playwright of his generation, in recent years he has turned his acerbic eye on the United States and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield. Dark and peopled with unfortunates, Pinter's idiom was so distinctive that he got his own adjective: "Pinteresque." His characters' internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in order to survive. Usually enclosed in one room, they organize their lives as a sort of grim game and their actions often contradict their words. Gradually, the layers are peeled back to reveal the characters' nakedness. In addition to plays, he has written for the cinema, penning such screenplays as The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Accident, The Servant and The Go-Between. Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl said Pinter was overwhelmed when told he had won the prize. "He did not say many words, in fact he was very happy," he said. Last year's winner, Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek, drew such ire that a member of the academy publicly blasted his colleagues for picking her. Knut Ahnlund, 82, who has not played an active role in the academy since 1996, resigned Tuesday after he wrote in a signed newspaper article that picking Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation. The academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to advance the Swedish language and its literature, has handed out the literature prize since 1901. To date 102 men and women have received the prize, including France's Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined the 1964 prize. On the Net: www.svenskaakademien.se www.nobelprize.org

BOOKS - Nobel prize in literature by Karl Ritter Canadian Press, October 11, 2005 STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- The Swedish Academy, which will reveal the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, has been shaken by the resignation of one of its members in protest at last year's decision to give the award to Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. "Last year's Nobel prize has not only done irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art," Knut Ahnlund wrote in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. "After this, I cannot even formally remain in the Swedish Academy. As of now, I consider myself an outsider." Ahnlund, 82, has been a member of the academy since 1983, but has not actively taken part in its activities since 1996. His resignation was not expected to affect this year's prize announcement. The winner will be announced on Thursday in the Swedish capital, the Swedish Academy said Tuesday, ending a week-long wait. The academy, which has awarded the literature prize since 1901, surprised many Nobel watchers when it did not announce the prize last week. The rest of this year's Nobel Prizes have already been announced. The Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, dismissed the importance of Ahnlund's resignation, saying Ahnlund has not taken part in the academy's work since 1996. The academy has 18 members made up of writers, scholars and historians. Each member has his or her own chair. "Since then his chair has been vacant, with the exception of three or four casual visits, mostly on holidays," Engdahl was quoted as saying by Swedish news agency TT. Calling Jelinek's writing "a mass of text that appears shoveled together without trace of artistic structure," he questioned whether the academy members had read even a fraction of her work. In last year's decision, the academy cited the "musical flow of voices and counter-voices," in Jelinek's writing. Most of her works are known for jolting readers with their frank descriptions of sexuality, pathos and conflict between men and women. The academy has 18 members appointed for life. Two of them, Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten, left in 1989 in protest against the academy's failure to express support for Salman Rushdie following the fatwa, or religious edict, issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Favourites for this year's 10 million kronor ($1.3 million US) prize include Canada's Margaret Atwood, Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates and Somalia's Nuruddin Farah. Other writers touted as possible winners include Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, known as Adonis; Korean poet Ko Un; and Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.

BOOKS - Rowling, King, Stewart take Quills awards by Hillel Italie, Associated Press, October 12, 2005 NEW YORK -- J.K. Rowling, Jon Stewart and Stephen King were among the winners Tuesday night of the first annual Quills Awards, people's choice book prizes better known so far to the industry than to the public. Rowling, author of the multimillion-selling Harry Potter books, won for book of the year and best children's chapter book for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. "You've made a sleep-deprived mother very happy," Rowling, mother of a baby girl, said in a videotaped acceptance speech. Other winners included Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair for general fiction and David McCullough's 1776 for history/current events/politics. Stewart's America (The Book) won for best humour book and for best audio book. Stewart gave a brief monologue at the beginning of the ceremony but, in a comic twist, later was unavailable to accept the prizes, apparently having left. King and Stewart O'Nan won in the sports category for Faithful, their chronicle of the Boston Red Sox's 2004 season, when the baseball team broke a decades-long jinx and won the World Series. The Quills include 19 categories, ranging from history and general fiction to sports, cooking and business. In month-long voting that ended Sept. 19, fans picked their favourites by visiting the Quills website, quillsvote.com, and filling out e-ballots. The winners were revealed at a black-tie ceremony hosted by NBC news anchor Brian Williams and featuring Stewart, Kim Cattrall and Robert Klein. Martha Stewart had been also been expected, but cancelled at the last minute, citing a scheduling conflict, Quills officials said. An edited version of the ceremony will air Oct. 22. Fourteen NBC stations have committed to televising it. The awards, organized by NBC-TV and Reed Business Information, which issues Variety and Publishers Weekly, were started this year as a way of getting the public more interested in book prizes. Rowling, Jon Stewart and other writers were chosen by a panel of booksellers and librarians and were required to meet one of several possible criteria, such as an appearance on the best seller list of Barnes & Noble or a starred review in Publishers Weekly. There are no cash prizes. But the Quills can hardly claim a broad mandate with readers. According to comScore Networks Inc., which tracks the Internet, the Quills site attracted so little web traffic during the voting period, fewer than the threshold of 25,000 unique visits per week, that it can't even offer an exact number. Quills founder and chairman Gerry Byrne acknowledged in a recent interview that the new awards were not on "everyone's fingertips," but he said he was nonetheless pleased by the response. "We weren't expecting a grand slam home run the first time around," Byrne said. "We wanted a solid line-drive single, and that's what we got."

BOOKS - The Sea wins Booker prize by Catherine Mcaloon Canadian Press October 11, 2005 LONDON -- Irish author John Banville's novel, The Sea, which follows a man who returns to an Irish seaside town to confront traumatic memories, beat favourites to win Britain's top literary honour, the Man Booker Prize. Banville's offering trumped Julian Barnes, former winner Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith to take the prize, worth the equivalent of $88,000 US, at an awards ceremony Monday night in London. Banville, who was considered an outsider to claim the prestigious award, triumphed after a debate among judges, who had been torn between his work and Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go. Chair of judges John Sutherland, who cast the deciding vote, said it was an extremely difficult decision. "In an extraordinarily closely contested last round, in which the judges felt the level of the shortlisted novels was as high as it can ever have been, they have agreed to award the Man Booker Prize to John Banville's The Sea, a masterly study of grief, memory and love collected," Sutherland said. "These are six extremely different novels, all of them good in a very different way." Banville previously made the Booker shortlist in 1989 with his novel, Book of Evidence; he lost out to Ishiguro's The Remains of The Day. The Sea, Banville's 14th novel, is narrated by Max Morden, a middle-aged arts historian, who, mourning the death of his wife, returns to the Irish seaside town where he spent a summer childhood. It is there that he confronts a traumatic event that has haunted him since childhood. Barnes had been considered the favourite for the prize for his book, Arthur and George, a historical novel based on a piece of real-life detective work by Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Never Let Me Go, a novel about childhood by Ishiguro also was considered a strong contender, as was On Beauty, the third novel by 29-year-old Smith, who has twice been on the long list for the prize. The Accidental by Ali Smith and A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry rounded out the shortlist. The field for this year's Man Booker was considered one of the strongest in recent years. Big names from the 17-book long list who failed to make the cut include previous winners Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. The prize, which is open to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth of former British colonies, was founded in 1969 and long known as the Booker Prize. The award was renamed when the financial services conglomerate Man Group PLC began sponsoring it three years ago.

BOOKS - Montreal's McAdam wins first-book award (First Novel Award) by Anne-Marie Tobin Canadian Press October 7, 2005 TORONTO -- Montreal writer Colin McAdam has been nominated for a few book prizes -- including the Governor General's Literary Award -- since his debut novel hit stores more than a year ago. On Thursday, he finally won one -- the 2004 First Novel Award -- for Some Great Thing, the dramatic story of a homebuilder and a city planner, set in Ottawa against a 1970s backdrop. "I prefer winning," McAdam said with dry humour after receiving the $7,500 prize at a luncheon in Toronto and a $750 gift certificate from Amazon.ca, a sponsor of the prize which is handed out in concert with Books in Canada. McAdam, 34, is a Canadian who grew up in Hong Kong, Denmark, England and Barbados; for his high school years he lived in Ottawa. He and his Australian wife, writer Jaclyn Moriarty, travel to her home country frequently. Possibly because of his peripatetic existence, the book was not really set in any particular city when he began writing. "I wrote about 100 pages before deciding this is Ottawa, this is Canada," McAdam said in an interview. "And I think the more I grounded it here the more excited I was about writing about Canada... I had been living at that point sort of 10 years overseas and yearning for a bit of Canada." When he first began piecing together one of his characters for the book, McAdam said he was working on a PhD and "hating it. "I started banging away at that voice one night at the college computer with all these little English undergraduates screaming around me, and I just started coming up with this voice that swore a lot and then I decided, well, maybe that's a builder," he said. But I thought of plastering for some reason, and just stuck with it. I really don't know why that came to me." At the time, McAdam was headed toward a life of academia, perhaps as a professor, but Some Great Thing has changed all that. "It's a lot more fun," he said of being a full-time writer. "It doesn't compare at all. It puts life back into books, which I was losing, from studying." The other finalists for the First Novel Award were David Elias for Sunday Afternoon, Ibi Kaslik for Skinny, Arthur Motyer for What's Remembered and Catherine Safer for Bishop's Road. Judge Bill Gaston called McAdam's book one of the best novels he's come across in a while. "It's a courageous book taking many risks, not all of which succeed perhaps. But it's energy is such that we are eager to forgive," he said. Another judge, Michael Winter, noted its "very aggressive beginning." "What confidence," he said. "It's like being thrown into the deep end of the last half of a series of confessions. This gambit pays off." Sarah Jane Gunter, manager of Amazon.ca, noted a nomination for this award gives promising young writers a lot more exposure. "The winner joins a pantheon of famous Canadian writers -- Michael Ondaatje, Nino Ricci and Mary Lawson have all won the First Novel Award -- and so to be included in that company and to be cited as writing at that calibre is tremendous for a new author," she added. Meanwhile, McAdam is working on a new novel after quite a few false starts.

BOOKS - Harlequin buys up BET Books assets Canadian Press, October 07, 2005 TORONTO -- Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. has purchased the assets of BET Books, the publishing arm of the U.S.-based Black Entertainment Television, the company announced Thursday. The new ownership deal is expected to close Nov. 30. Financial details were not released. The addition of BET Books, a leading publisher of African American women's fiction and the imprints Arabesque, Sepia and New Spirit to the Harlequin portfolio will enhance the position of Harlequin within a strong growth segment in the American book market. "This acquisition supports a key strategic initiative for Harlequin of offering greater breadth in publishing niches that can create future growth for the overall Harlequin franchise," said Donna Hayes, publisher and CEO. Harlequin is the global leader in series romance and one of the world's leading publishers of women's fiction, with titles issued worldwide in 25 languages and sold in 94 international markets. It produces over 115 titles monthly and publishes more than 1,300 authors from around the world. Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corp. BOOKS - Epic novel sparks big-bucks bidding war Associated Press October 4, 2005 NEW YORK -- An untitled, 1,225-page epic set in India and billed as a combination of The Godfather and a Victorian Gothic novel will be released next year by HarperCollins after a bidding war involving six publishers. "It's an extraordinarily compelling page turner that also happens to be a major work of literature," HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham told The Associated Press on Monday. A source close to the negotiations said the deal was worth $1 million US. Author Vikram Chandra's previous books include Red Earth and Pouring Rain and Love and Longing in Bombay. He worked seven years on his current novel, which centres on organized crime in modern Mumbai and takes on "religion, politics, money, corruption, idealism, family, loyalty, and betrayal," according to a HarperCollins statement released Monday. Chandra's novel ranks among the longest fiction works in recent years, although a book published last summer, Paul Anderson's historical novel Hunger's Brides, topped it at 1,300-plus pages. Such girth may appear a commercial risk, but, like Gone With the Wind, Gandhi and other marathon movies, length can be an advantage, giving the project the aura of an "event," a mountain to climb. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy and Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost are among the 1,000-page novels that have made bestseller lists. "I think those books do have the same feeling as the big movies," Burnham said. "You know you're going to get lost in this world. A shorter book can't quite do that."

FILM - Is sky really falling for Disney animation? by Jamie Portman CanWest News Service October 28, 2005 BURBANK, Calif. -- Randy Fullmer and Mark Dindal are so gung-ho about their new movie, Chicken Little, it's easy to forget how high the stakes really are as its Nov. 4 release date approaches. Some would say that in their hands rests the very future of Disney's legendary animation division. That's because their retelling of the beloved fable about a chicken who keeps insisting the sky is falling marks a crucial turning point for the studio. This is Disney's first fully computer-animated feature film, and it reflects the studio's determination to prove to the world it can succeed in this technology without Pixar, the pioneering CGI company whose partnership with the Mouse yielded such phenomenal hits as Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles. It is also arriving at a time when this partnership is on the verge of dissolving. So there's a lot riding Nevertheless, history and tradition do weigh heavily on this project. Fullmer and Dindal are chatting with reporters in the Disney animation building, a place offering constant reminders of 70 years of achievement in the development of classic hand-drawn animation. But along with the mementoes of Snow White, Pinocchio and The Lion King there are also sketches and storyboards for future projects like Rapunzel, American Dog and Meet The Robinsons -- all of them signalling Disney's plunge into the waters of computer animation. It was a controversial move when Disney shut down its historic classic animation division, reduced its staff by two-thirds and saw some of its famous animators depart because they were not prepared to attempt a switch to CG techniques. The studio argues the decision was necessary because of the disappointing performance of such recent traditional animation projects as Treasure Planet and Home On The Range and because of the staggering success of CG projects like Toy Story and -- from rival studios -- Shrek and Ice Age. In effect, a company which had built its reputation on hand-drawn animation was being forced to reinvent itself. "It's like a battleship changing course," studio boss Richard Cook told Time Magazine recently. "It takes a while, but we're moving in the right direction."

INTERNET - Internet helps indie radio spread out Gene Johnson Associated Press, October 27, 2005 SEATTLE -- Before dawn on a rainy Friday, John Richards totes a stack of CDs and a paper cup of coffee into the booth at KEXP. On the wall, yellow-headed pins stuck in a world map mark the origin of song requests: Baltimore. Boston. Baghdad. The clock hits 6 a.m., and the DJ's catchy, gentle theme song -- written for him by local folk singer Damien Jurado -- implies what listeners might hear: "I'll take hip-hop, with a side of punk rock, some country western to go...." Next up, Stone Roses, followed by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. In the past few years, commercial-free KEXP has transcended its meagre 4,700-watt signal, embracing and even creating Internet technology to emerge as a national indie music tastemaker. With a very few other like-minded stations, it's enjoying a word-of-mouth popularity boom even as Americans are listening to less conventional radio. "They're proving, if people would really look, that listeners want compelling music, that they'll buy it, that they'll support it," said Steve Nice, who represents the band Idlewild, which recently played at KEXP. "It's not about some stupid Arbitron rating." In spring 2004, about 26,000 people listened to KEXP online every week -- more than any other Internet radio station in the country, according to Arbitron's now-defunct Internet broadcasting service. This year, that number has jumped to 50,000, with large clusters of listeners in New York, where KEXP broadcasts live twice a year; Chicago; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C. Listeners are giving the non-profit station a projected $1.7 million this year, nearly $1 million more than they gave in 2003. As Richards went on the air that rainy morning, Microsoft employee Peter Thompson was listening on the Internet in Redmond, just across Lake Washington from Seattle but beyond KEXP's weak signal. Two thousand miles east, in Columbus, Ohio, Pat Leonard was slipping on headphones at his cubicle. In Rhode Island, Cynthia Reed blasted the station all morning in her work room at the Providence Public Library. For many listeners, buying music they've discovered on KEXP is like buying organic produce from local farmers. Others need help filling their iPods, but commercial stations play the same bands over and over. "I listen because radio in D.C. is horrendous," says Timothy Anschutz, who heard about KEXP from a friend in Philadelphia, who heard about it from a friend in Boulder, Colo., who heard about it from a friend in Brooklyn. In 2000, KEXP became the first station to offer uncompressed, CD-quality audio live over the Internet. In 2001, at the request of KEXP DJs, University of Washington engineers invented CD players that could connect to the web to retrieve song and band information, which could then be transferred to a real-time playlist at www.kexp.org. The next year, the station began offering a streaming archive of all programs from the past two weeks, as well as all of KEXP's hundreds of in-studio performances. This summer, KEXP began offering hour-long podcasts featuring unsigned bands and became the nation's first terrestrial station to provide a low-bandwidth stream for cellphones and handheld devices. Richards heard recently from one fan who had plugged his phone into his car stereo and was driving around Gainesville, Fla., listening to KEXP. But the technology is just a way to spread KEXP's music, and the station's format hasn't changed in the past two decades, says executive director Tom Mara. Back then, KEXP was KCMU, a decidedly less professional UW station, founded in 1972 and closely linked to Nirvana, Mudhoney and Seattle's burgeoning rock scene. Richards got his DJ shifts in the mid-'90s by simply showing up when no one else would. Things changed dramatically in 2001, when KCMU partnered with Paul Allen's Experience Music Project and became KEXP. Allen, Microsoft's co-founder, gave the station new equipment, off-campus digs and agreed to cover operating losses through 2005. In 2002, the music museum paid for 52 per cent of the station's budget. This year, it covered six per cent. By next year, KEXP should be in the black. At most commercial stations, the music is chosen by programming directors, not DJs. At KEXP, the DJs choose what they play, with a few limitations: Certain bands are in rotation, and a local band must be played at least once an hour. The station's dozens of volunteers dedicate themselves to helping discover bands. The DJs consider themselves curators and aspire to juxtapose songs in a way that illuminates them. "It's all about creating context for the music," says afternoon host Kevin Cole, who resembles an audio Iron Chef with his long hair pulled back as he flips through CDs trying to find the perfect next song. "Take Clap Your Hands Say Yeah -- if you can mix that into some early Talking Heads, you can see, 'Oh yeah, that's what's going on here.' " Jeff Castalez, president of Cast Management and Dangerbird Records in Los Angeles, gushes over KEXP for playing his bands -- most recently, the Silversun Pickups -- when no other stations will. "They're keeping this hopeful notion of what music is supposed to be about alive," Castalez says. "There's a greater connection between the listener, the artist and the station. Everyone is alive and doing well." MORE: www.kexp.org www.xpn.org minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/thecurrent/ www.kcrw.org

TV - Canadian Media Guild The Canadian Media Guild is a democratic trade union, duly recognized and certified under federal and provincial labour legislation. We currently have nearly six thousand members, all of whom work in the Canadian media. The major employers with whom we have collective agreements are the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada (CBC/SRC), Canadian Press/Broadcast News (CP/BN), Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and TVOntario (TVO). We also have several hundred members who work at CBC on a freelance basis. Our members hold a wide variety of jobs. They are the announcers who read the news on CBC and TVO; Guild members also determine and create the content of the programs themselves. They are administrative support staff, information technology professionals, camera operators, photographers, and customer service representatives. Much of what you see in your daily newspapers, on television, radio or new media sites comes to you thanks to the hard work of CMG members. The CMG is one local of The Newspaper Guild Canada (TNG Canada). TNG Canada is in turn affiliated with the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which has a membership of over six hundred thousand workers across North America. Our mission is to advance the interests of our members through collective bargaining. As a union, it is our goal to promote the best working environments possible in order for our members to have satisfying, rewarding and sustainable careers. We believe strongly that Canadians will have access to higher-quality information and entertainment if the people creating it have stable and fair employment conditions. Contact info: 144 Front Street West, Suite 300,Toronto, Ontario (CANADA)M5J 2L7Phone: 416-591-5333 or 1-800-465-4149Fax: 416-591-7278Email: guild@interlog.com

TV - NBC Wants lucrative Thursday night back: Longtime Ratings Reign Appears Over by BILL CARTER, October 24, 2005 New York Times -- The night that defined NBC's dominance in prime-time television for two decades is now a CBS principality, with that network winning the only audience that NBC cares about - adults between the ages of 18 and 49. Last season NBC lost the overall Thursday audience in every ratings category for the first time since it began broadcasting "The Cosby Show" in 1984. The significance of winning Thursday night is all about money. It is, by far, the biggest night fortelevision advertising because many advertisers who need to do big weekend business - starting with movie companies, but also including car companies and fast food restaurants - will pay a premium to reach viewers on Thursday night, the last big night oftelevision before the weekend starts. Leslie Moonves, the CBS chief executive, said last spring that taking control of Thursdaywould mean hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenues for his network. Yesterday he said that strategy had paid off with CBS adding about $400 million more in revenues this year.

Montreal's Imavision wins MIPCOM 2005 DVD documentary Prize Organised in collaboration with the DVD Association (DVDA, USA) and the International Video Federation (IVF, Belgium), Imavision wins the MIPCOM 2005 DVD documentary prize for the boxset "Insectia". MIPCOM is the world's audiovisual content market - International Film and Programme Market for Television, Video, Cable and Satellite in Cannes, France. Imavision.com is the Direct Marketing division of Imavision Distribution. Imavision has been distributing television programing and series from around the world for more than 15 years.

TV & INTERNET - The Death of Television: Will the Internet replace the boob tube? by Adam L. Penenberg, Wahington Post Oct. 17, 2005 -- The television of the future will provide entertainment on demand; whatever, whenever, and wherever you want. It will be far superior to TiVo, which only lets you record the programming that your cable or satellite company offers. It will outshine Apple's new video iPod—who's going to watch an hour-long drama on a 2.5-inch screen, anyway? And it will be far more grandiose than even that Qwest ad from the late 1990s, where a motel clerk tells a traveler that he can watch "every movie ever made, in every language, any time, day or night" from the comfort of his room. You'll not only be able to watch every film, but also every TV program, news show, documentary, music video, and video blog, and all of it will be playable wherever you go. Great, you think: Thousands of channels, millions of choices, and still nothing worth watching. Nevertheless, "nonlinear TV"—watching the tube on our schedule, not the broadcasters'—is our destiny. The revolution will not be televised, however, until the companies that funnel the content into our homes figure out how to control it. The best advice for now: Study the music industry and do the exact opposite. When Hollywood and cable executives look at the record companies, they see an industry in decline. What they should see is a business that failed for too long to offer its customers what they want: portability, searchability, and the chance to buy the two songs you like without the 10 you don't. Music companies, fearful of piracy, dragged their heels on offering digital downloads, so their customers made it happen themselves via Napster, Kazaa, and the like. Rather than create a legal and lucrative alternative, the record industry has launched a flurry of lawsuits against its own customers and continued to blame piracy for falling CD sales. Meanwhile, Apple's iTunes Music Store has sold half a billion songs since April 2003. When users can download only the songs they want at 99 cents a pop, the industry's traditional business model—charging a high price for a heavily promoted, shrink-wrapped product—gets obsolete pretty fast. The reason Hollywood and the television biz haven't yet read from the same script is bandwidth. While a typical music file takes a minute or two to download on a fast connection, a full-length movie can take hours. Hence there was little demand for downloads of Shrek, especially with the advent of TiVo and the various digital recording schemes that cable companies offer. But this has started to change with the emergence of a peer-to-peer distribution system called BitTorrent. Once you've downloaded the BitTorrent software, you can grab files from users who already have the stuff you want on their computers. With peer-to-peer music swapping services, downloading is a lot faster than uploading, which creates digital traffic jams when users swap the same file. While it doesn't make much of a difference when users trade music, it does when swapping extremely large files like movies and TV shows. BitTorrent gets around this built-in bottleneck by letting you take small pieces of the file from different users. The more popular the episode, the more people save it to their hard drives, and the faster the download. Of course, this isn't legal now. It isn't exactly illegal either, since BitTorrent does have legitimate purposes—you can swap any file using the BitTorrent protocol, not just copyrighted movies. The Motion Picture Association of America and the TV networks would probably have a hard time suing it into the ground like the music industry did with Napster. What they should do is co-opt it: Follow Steve Jobs' lead and charge $1.99 per episode, using BitTorrent as a distribution pipeline. Even if Bram Cohen, BitTorrent's creator, won't stand for this, media conglomerates could set up a network of servers that holds all of their programming and use BitTorrent to distribute the content to consumers—for a price. What's Cohen going to do? Sue them for copyright infringement? Although it's impossible to stamp out piracy, Apple has shown that consumers will pay for music if it's available. All Hollywood has to do is make it an easy, fun, satisfying experience. Many networks have started to experiment with putting their shows online. Before ABC cut that deal with Apple to sell episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives, MTV (which is owned by Viacom) had already put 8,000 music videos on the Web. MTV Overdrive also includes highlights from Total Request Live and online-only outtakes and commentary for shows like Laguna Beach. The channel's recent acquisition of Internet video service iFilm likely means it will add more content in the months to come. And it's all free, paid for by advertisers like Toyota and Procter & Gamble. (The appeal is stifled somewhat, though, since unlike with real television you can't channel-surf away from the ads.) The audience for MTV Overdrive isn't huge yet—according to an MTV spokesperson, about 73 million total viewers have tuned in to the TV version of Laguna Beach as compared to 6.3 million who've watched the online programming. I'd bet that a good amount of people who've tried Overdrive haven't become repeat visitors. The biggest problem is quality. Streaming video, with its lag times, skips, and disconnections, is just not ready for prime time. Until it can offer the reliability of analog and digital cable, it won't look like anything but a weak sister. The networks don't have to distribute programming via streaming video, however. Television viewers don't watch most content in real time. They see it well after it has been shot and edited. West Coasters also typically watch Desperate Housewives three hours later than East Coasters. The only content that necessarily has to be seen in real time is breaking news and sports. People will tolerate iffy quality if the news is important enough. For all the rest, Hollywood and TV should forget about streaming video and provide digital downloads of movies and TV shows. Otherwise, consumers will figure out a way to get them without paying for it—and they'll be sorry.

FILM - Hollywood's Hard Times CBS Broadcasting Inc. Oct. 16, 2005 -- For as long as man can remember, observes CBS News Sunday Morning contributor David Pogue, the world has swayed to certain inexorable rhythms: First the winter, then the spring. First the infant, then the child. First in theaters, then, four months later, on DVD. But, suggests Pogue, brace yourself: That last part is about to change. In coming months, you're going to see movies coming out on DVD, on television, and in theaters, all on the same day. "Has Hollywood completely lost its mind, I mean, more than usual?" Pogue asks. It's a long story, he says, that starts with Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "We track and analyze the box office and what's going on with movies, on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis," Dergarabedian explains. And, notes Pogue, he knows better than anyone how many people aren't buying movie tickets these days. "The summer of 2005 wound up, down, in terms of attendance, around 12 percent down," Dergarabedian reports. "And that's a huge downturn from the previous summer." That would make 2005 the third straight year of declining attendance, Pogue points out. What's causing the slump? There are all kinds of theories, Pogue says: Maybe the movies were especially bad this year. Maybe iPods and the Internet are eating up our leisure time. And maybe the movie theaters are suffering from the rise in popularity of home theaters. After all, Pogue reminds viewers, when you watch a movie at home, there's not a bunch of commercials before the movie starts, you don't have to pay eight bucks for the popcorn, and there's never some idiot talking on their cell phone during the movie. James Theobald, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Theo Kalomirakis Theaters, a leading designer of high-end home theaters says, "Ten years ago, we used to do anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen theaters a year. And now we can do anywhere from 60 to 100 theaters a year. "We really try to design rooms that harken back to a time when movie palaces were really a destination. … You know, nowadays, some of that's lost. You go to a local multiplex, and it's a square box." His company's home theaters, Pogue observes, are anything but square boxes. Says Theobold, "We had a client who had us recreate a Tuscan village." John Fithian is president of NATO (No, not that NATO!), the National Association of Theater Owners. As you can probably guess, the movie theaters he represents aren't exactly thrilled about the rise of the home theater. "The cinema-going experience," Fithian says, "is a cultural, shared experience. It's teen date night. It's parents getting away from their kids. It's the kids getting away from their parents. You notice when other people in the audience are laughing or crying or being bored. It's very much a cultural, out-of-the-home, shared experience." And what does the home-theater industry think? "There is," concedes Theobold, "to a certain degree, something that you do take from listening to other people watch a movie on a large scale, in a commercial space. But you know, I think that's something that most people can really get over." Of course, Pogue points out, movie theaters aren't sitting still. They've got all kinds of ideas for fighting back, like letting you order gourmet food and alcoholic beverages. "What they're trying to do, I think, now, is make going to the movies a destination, an entire ev