Chapter 840

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

This autumn reality show of ABC TV network in 1995 will be broadcast at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 26. It is divided into audition stage and competition stage with the interval of winter break. The autumn stage is the preliminary audition stage, and the competition will begin next spring.

Once "American Idol" because of the British version of the successful precedent, the operation has been very mature, the broadcast has made a good start.

This time, the new version of "American Idol" does not have the popularity foundation, but has the resources support of the whole westero system.

Since Simon came up with the idea of making this project, this version of "American Idol" has been positioned as a large-scale linkage of the music industry of the whole westero system, in which Denise records, ABC TV network, igritt portal, tincobail company, etc. will participate.

Before the early stage of the project, tincobail won the exclusive naming right of "American Idol" with a high price of 25 million US dollars. In addition, in the first season of the program cycle, tincobail will also send 100000 iplayer-10 digital music players through voting and lottery.

Based on the manufacturing cost of 100000 iplayer-10, plus the naming fee, tincobail will invest $50 million in the first quarter.

Not to mention the naming fee, 100000 iPlayer players worth US $50 million were publicized as prizes. In addition, the winner's cash award and record contract were announced at the end of July, which directly ignited public opinion.

The television department initially predicted that it might not receive too many applications in the first quarter. As a result, in less than a month, the number of applicants across the United States through the Internet and email channels exceeded 300000, and the production team had to urgently expand the number of audition departments by three times.

Due to the copyright of music, from the audition stage, the music used for performance is not selected according to personal preferences, but must use the music that has been incorporated into tincobail's broadcast stock. The project team randomly selected 10 pieces of music in the reply letter to the applicants, and indicated that the relevant music can be obtained from the broadcast website.

Through the early marketing of tincobail's 100000 sets of iPlayer gifts and the detailed arrangement that participants must use broadcast's stock music, recently, not only the music sales of broadcast's website have increased significantly, but also the iPlayer players whose production capacity has been climbing have become in short supply again.

Just these early market feedback, dincobail's $50 million investment is worth the money. Without the popularity of the British version, the new version of "American Idol" starts no less than the fox version in Simon's memory.

What everyone needs to do now is to keep this good start and avoid going from high to low.

In order to ensure this to the greatest extent, Simon returned from Europe and re incarnated as a micro manager. He personally began to follow up all aspects, from audition process layout to lottery system development to lighting and machine seats in competition studio. He also specially spent one day arranging live rehearsals for four judges to further train the four judges who had already made sufficient preparations.

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

Simon also set up a "tit for tat" stunt for Xueer's big sister with another hero, David Kruger.

Refer to the passage of a "32 concerts" in my memory.

Xueer is definitely a model worker in the American music circle. The old singer born in 1946 will often hold dozens of concerts every year even after more than ten years. Of course, she is not as big as Madonna's concerts, but she is not comparable to ordinary third rate singers.

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

Just as Cher plans to hold a series of concerts from June to September next year, Simon directly uses the "32 concerts" passage, suggesting that whenever Cher and David Kruger have a dispute over whether a player is shortlisted or not, they should take "I will hold 32 concerts next year" as their more professional and authoritative refutation.

Several live demonstrations, the effect is very good.

Xueer is also willing to accept this setting. After all, it will definitely increase her attention in next year's concert.

It doesn't matter whether it's 32 concerts or not.

According to Xueer's workaholic level, this number is likely to be only a few more in the next three months of summer vacation. The singer has done hundreds of concerts a year at her peak. In the bribery scandal of the Golden Globe Awards in those years, it was no accident that the shortlisted presented tickets for the Golden Globe Award judge Cher's concert, because it was too easy to buy.

If Xueer's number of concerts next year is more than 32, it's just right. The second season's episodes are all available.

David Kruger can bitterly accuse Cher of holding 64 concerts when she said it was 32 concerts, and so on.In addition, the choice of competition songs is full of tricks.

Once "the voice of China", a "high song", the atmosphere of the scene burned directly, and the audience rating soared. If we change to the lyrical and low euphemistic "yijianmei", we will definitely not try to achieve this effect.

These are actually the last stanzas.

The key is the draft itself.

Simon's positioning of "American Idol" is a reality show. The audience thinks what they see is "true" and the key is "show". In fact, it is performance. However, according to previous experience, music reality shows usually produce some singers with fairly good reputation in the first few seasons, and he also hopes to achieve this goal, so as to promote the development of Denise records.

From the selection of judges, Simon began this arrangement.

Xueer, the eldest sister, is an artist of danielis records. Pushing her out can once again boost her popularity and stimulate the sales of this old singer's records.

David Kruger is the producer of backstreet boy's first popular record. He is good at making pop music records. He can select the music talents dannilis needs from a large number of players, and he is a popular pop music talent.

The other two judges, Jay-Z and Jennifer Lopez, joined the judges as supporting roles. Simon's original goal was to cultivate them as the potential music seeds of Denise records.

Jay-Z's achievements need not be mentioned.

As for Jennifer Lopez, although Simon can't figure out how the Latin Diva has maintained her popularity for so many years, since she has such potential, giving her resources will surely bring her desired return.

Simon has always believed that successful people have certain qualities that can lead them to success.

In this world, there are always a few successful people, and they have a lot of luck.

For others, it's very difficult to pick someone who has the characteristics of a successful person.

Simon's biggest advantage is just to know that some people and things "have" been successful. If he makes another bet, he will win a lot.

Simon personally followed up the final stage of preparation for "American Idol". These days, the most important news in the North American entertainment circle is that the domestic box office of "Jurassic Park 2" officially broke the $400 million mark. From September 1 to September 7, the 14th week of its release, after continuing to earn $3.91 million, the cumulative domestic box office of "Jurassic Park 2" reached $402.37 million, Become one of the few other 400 million box office club members in the North American film market.

Moreover, as of September 7, the global box office of Jurassic Park 2 has reached 632 million US dollars after the world's major ticket stores have basically opened.

When North America broke through the $400 million mark, "Jurassic Park 2" officially entered the $1 billion threshold at the global box office.

One billion US dollars has always been a very important gateway for Hollywood film box office. Before that, many films, such as Jurassic Park and Batman: the moment of war, regretfully stopped at less than one billion US dollars. The only one that broke through this threshold was Batman: the rise of the dark knight, the ending of last year's Batman trilogy.

Now, "Jurassic Park 2" has not only become the second global blockbuster in the history of North America with $1 billion, because important ticket stores such as France and Japan are still in the early stage of release. This super blockbuster is expected to go further and hit the global box office with more than $1.1 billion, which is likely to exceed the $1.135 billion of last year's "Batman: the rise of the Dark Knight" Global box office.

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

It's not on the table.

However, many people already know what they should know and what they should not.

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

According to the news from Terry Semel, the top management of Time Warner and the important shareholders all want to sell the company, but the price difference with Ge is very big.

At the present stage, Time Warner Group is only a fixed asset in the fields of film, television and publishing. In recent years, with the market recovery and constant appreciation, the total value of Time Warner Group has reached US $32 billion. The downturn of Time Warner's share price is basically due to the debt drag after the initial merger, the infighting among the top management of the group and the failed investment such as future water world The effect of vitamin C was not obvious.

In real terms, the overall operation of Time Warner has been developing in a good direction.

Therefore, the psychological price of Time Warner's main shareholders is that GE's offer should not be less than $30 billion. Jack Welch's offer, by contrast, is no more than $25 billion.

There's a big difference of five billion dollars between the two.

's Time Warner, whose market value exceeded 100 billion dollars in the peak of the Internet bubble around 2000, was largely promoted by the Time Warner Cable operating system after the promulgation of the Telecommunications Act 1996.At that time, the new "telecommunication act" cancelled the operation restrictions between cable TV, Internet and traditional telephone, and the market vigorously advocated the integration of three networks. Time Warner also used its own cable TV system to carry out network access services, which promoted the substantial increase of market value. After the merger of AOL and Time Warner, Steve case was not only interested in it Warner's media and entertainment assets, as well as Warner's own cable TV operation network, can be used as a supplement to AOL network services.

This time, the telecommunications bill of the Clinton administration is still in the making, and the situation after the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Bros. has not been very good under the disturbance of Denise entertainment. Although Time Warner's cable TV operating network, Warner communications, is also booming, lacking the support of the telecommunication act, and AOL has taken the lead in the field of Internet service providers, Time Warner's share price has not taken off.

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

If possible, westrow is happy to continue to swallow Time Warner.

Of course, this possibility does not exist.

Winning the metropolitan ABC Group is the limit that the Washington authorities can tolerate.

Simon stayed in New York until September 10. The day after he returned to the west coast, the IPO of igritte, which had been long prepared, officially began its roadshow.

According to the strong growth rate of performance in the past half year, the management and a group of underwriters of igrit adjusted the IPO price twice in a row. As of the beginning of the roadshow, the IPO price of igrit was finally set at $35, 16% higher than the initial $30.

According to the issue price of 35 US dollars, the IPO valuation of igrit officially exceeded 150 billion US dollars, regardless of the possible trigger of the green shoe mechanism, and the total amount of financing was 18.6 billion US dollars.

The IPO valuation of 150 billion US dollars and the total amount of financing of 18.6 billion US dollars have all created the scale record of IPO in the global stock market.

Although igritte's monopolistic strong growth has made most investors full of confidence in the IPO of the company, because of the huge enterprise valuation and amount of financing, there are a lot of bad voices.

in recent years, Julian Robertson, the founder of the hedge fund in the hedge market, said in an interview with NBC today show that IPO was a completely irrational listing operation, and openly publicized that the new technology bubble has reached its peak. Tiger Fund will be short of a series of vistle tech enterprises after listing on igritt. Stock.

In the past, the Tiger Fund, which was as famous as Soros quantum fund, had a scale of more than 20 billion US dollars after the Southeast Asian economic crisis in 1997. However, it was because of Robertson's wrong judgment of technology stocks that he wantonly bet short before 2000, which eventually led to the direct liquidation of the Tiger Fund with a scale of more than 20 billion US dollars.

Following Quantum Fund's attack on Pound Sterling and Mexican lira, the scale of Tiger Fund has exceeded 8 billion US dollars at the present stage, and Julian Robertson, the hedge fund boss, also has a considerable reputation on Wall Street.

Simon just didn't expect that the Asian economic crisis has not yet broken out, and Robertson has started to see the decline of new technology industry ahead of time.

For Robertson's statement, westrow system did not make a public response, cersei capital's hedge funds are ready to go.

To create a large-scale economic crisis requires years of layout. Now some hedge capital in North America has begun to operate in Asia, and cersei capital is no exception. Hedging is a zero sum game. Only when someone loses can someone make a profit. Since Julian Robertson gives up his long-term plan for Asia and can't wait to play, Simon doesn't mind eating all the $8 billion he has in his opponent's hands.