Cuppacafe

I was chatting with Walt earlier today and told him that a dispute between ABC and my local cable provider (Cablevison) has caused ABC to cut the feed as of midnight this morning. According to ABC it is Cablevisions fault, and (you guessed it) Cablevision, it is all ABC's fault.

The Disney Co., which owns the ABC network, cut off service to the city's 3.1 million Cablevision customers after the two sides failed to reach a deal.

ABC officials acted on their threat to pull the channel unless Cablevision agreed to pay a rights fee to offer the top-rated station to its subscribers.

"Cablevision has once again betrayed its subscribers by losing ABC7, the most popular station in the tri-state area," Channel 7 president Rebecca Campbell said in a statement.

Cablevision blamed the stall in negotiations on Disney CEO Bob Iger.

What this mostly means to ABC customers, is that they won't get to watch the Oscars tonight. Fortunately, I live in CT, and we have a local ABC Affiliate (WTNH in New Haven), and can still access the feed through them.

Needless to say, this is (obviously) a short-term fix, and, well, something is going to have to be done.

Personally, I'm a little suspect, as since ABC is still essentially a "broadcast" channel, the Federal Government has decreed that the broadcast belongs to the public and should be free, so how can ABC pull the feed. An interesting question since the FCC doesn't control cable programming.

The $40 million that ABC is asking for from cablevision is actually rather interesting given as how its parent company (Disney), is renown for being the living embodiment of it's tightwad character, Scrooge McDuck.

The Perfessor

If you spray white actors with enough yellow tan makeup, apparently people will assume they're from Persia.

But then again I thought Robin Williams' genie in ALADDIN shouldn't have been "blue", either.

Meanwhile, enjoy this overly busy trailer for the next installment in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie franchise:

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in HD

Trailer Park | MySpace Video

So, just when you thought it was save to go back into the waters of the Marvel/Disney deal, the Heirs of Jack Kirby toss us a curve ball, by claiming that they are seeking to re-claim Jack’s rights to many of the Marvel characters that he had a hand in creating. Well, just the other day, it seems that they added a knuckle ball to their oeuvre, and are adding none other than Spider-Man to their list of 45 copyright claims.

Yep, it seems that, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter:

The heirs of Jack Kirby aren't merely trying to wrest control of such iconic superheroes as Spider-Man, Hulk and X-Men from Marvel and its new, possibly nervous owners at the Walt Disney Co.

We got our hands on two of the 45 notices of termination served under the Copyright Act last week on Marvel, Disney, Sony, Universal, Fox, Paramount and others, and the demands are potentially much broader than has been reported.

The copyright termination notices pertaining to Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are written to recapture control of most of the well-known characters in each mythology, to the extent that Kirby contributed to them.

Now you may ask how Kirby’s heirs are able to make such a claim, well Lee himself has given them the right:

Lee has gone on record (more than once) naming Ditko, not Kirby, as the character's co-creator, and Ditko's account of Kirby's involvement tends to support that argument:

Kirby had pencilled five pages of his Spider-man. How much was pure Kirby, how much Lee, is for them to resolve.

The splash was the only one with a drawing of Spider-man. A typical Kirby hero/action shot. But the costume is what is important... I'm uncertain about the abstract chest design. The closest thing to it is the one on Ant-man. Kirby's Spider-man had a web gun, never seen in use. The only connection to the spider theme was the name.

This stuff just keeps getting better and better.

The Perfessor

Yeah, this didn’t take long, and I’m sure that there is more to come, but hey, let’s have some fun ‘til the Mouse’s Lawyers shut us down.
follow the link to see several very cool Photoshopped Marvel Disney Images.

The Perfessor

So we’ve been discussing the Marvel/Disney deal, but (as someone brought to my attention), there just might be a (superhuman) fly in this ointment. Watch the following (sound required):

I had all but forgotten this chapter in Stan’s history, but apparently others remember.

The Perfessor

So, with the ink hardly dry on the Marvel Disney deal, the lawyers are tuning up their briefs. According to a blog post in The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog:

But now, no sooner than the ink has dried on the deal, comes a lawsuit. According to Bloomberg, a Marvel shareholder sued in the Delaware Chancery Court alleging that Marvel directors failed to conduct an appropriate sales process. The plaintiff, shareholder Christine Vlatos, is seeking a court order barring the deal as well as unspecified damages. (Complaint not available.) Marvel did not immediately return a call to Bloomberg.

The post goes on to say...

“It sounds like a Revlon claim,” said Chiappinelli, referring to the 1986 Delaware Supreme Court decision Revlon v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings. “Under Revlon, directors have a duty to try to get the best price for their shareholders. They don’t have to get the best price, necessarily, just an obligation to try to get the best price.”

Who knows where this will lead, but I’m thinking that someone is going to need a good lawyer.

Someone who won’t be distracted by the razzle-dazzle of corporate law.

Someone who won’t be blinded by the lure of big bucks.

Someone who will fight for truth, Justice, and the...o wait, that’s the other company, I guess we’ll have to settle for this guy to my right.

The Perfessor

You've thought it, you've heard about it, now see the results in action!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/9/2/

The Beat has a good collection of thoughts and links on the Marvel-Disney buyout

John Carbonaro was once asked by a producer at Disney about the availability of Thunder Agents, and from that point forward, John lusted after the possibility that Disney would buy the Thunder Agents, and being Disney, do them right. They never worked out a deal. Later, I told John that Tad Stones (the producer of some animated shows at Disney that initially contacted John, and at the time was going great with Disney with successes with Darkwing Duck and others) had been part of the purge of 2D creative staff, so "Disney" was no longer interested. (Years earlier, "Disney" had also seen a proposal for the animated version of the Thunder Agents back when Marv Wolfman had the license for the TA.)