I was hesitant to see Alice in Wonderland in the theaters because I’m such a fan of the original and not really a big Tim Burton fan, so since I watch movies on demand on direct tv all the time, I chose to wait for it. I’m glad that I did.
Johnny Depp as the Madhatter was something that everyone should see. I loved how he portrayed my favorite character in the original movie. He was brilliantly funny and captured the essence of the Madhatter. Helena Boham Carter portrayal of the Red Queen was terrific. I knew that she would do a fantastic job because the role suits her.
I originally thought that Tim Burton would make Alice in Wonderland similar and dark like his other movies and I didn’t want to see that because when I think of Alice in Wonderland, I always see bright colors and beautiful imagery. However, Tim Burton brought that same element to his version of Alice in Wonderland which I am very thankful for.
I knew that this version of Alice in Wonderland would be nothing like the original for a few reasons, including the director and the fact that it’s not a cartoon for children. I think that they did a wonderful job on the animations and the costumes were fabulous. However it did stray from the original in ways that I was not expecting but I won’t say it was bad because overall, I thought the movie was a good watch.
In flush times, television stations are accustomed to 30 to 40 percent profit margins. But the recession is goring even these cash cows with a 14 percent drop in advertising revenue in the first quarter of this year compared to last at Bay Area TV stations, analysts say.
Ad revenue took an even bigger tumble at Bay Area radio stations, with a 27 percent decline during the same period.
The main culprit is the imploding auto industry, which provides from 20 percent to one-third of the advertising revenue for broadcasters. With General Motors and Chrysler announcing plans last week to close 1,900 dealerships during the next year, it will take years for advertising levels to recover at TV and radio outlets. “And when it does return, it will be different,” said Robin Flynn, senior analyst at SNL Kagan, who recently conducted a nationwide study of advertising on radio and TV stations and projected the 14 percent TV decline.
“All advertising-driven media have been hit hard by the recession, not just newspapers,” Flynn said. “So companies are really trying to get creative to make up for that revenue.”
Spot TV ads drop
Broadcasters in top-10 markets like San Francisco are generally still profitable, Flynn said. Outlets in large markets are more dependent on national advertisers, so they’ve taken a bigger hit than broadcasters in smaller markets. In the first quarter of 2009, spot TV advertising by the top 200 Bay Area retailers dropped to an estimated $58 million from $62 million the year before, according to regional TV estimates by TNS Media Intelligence. And Bay Area radio stations – which collectively reach 5.5 million listeners a week – saw advertising revenue decline 27 percent in the first part of the year, according to a regional study by Miller Kaplan Arase Co.
“Never seen it this bad. Never,” said Mickey Luckoff, president and general manager of KGO-AM, who has been at the station more than three decades, much of that time with the news-talk broadcaster on top of the ratings chart. “It’s as close to a depression that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
The downturn is even hitting new-media sites, with advertising down at some political blogs nearly 50 percent in this post-election year, and 10 to 20 percent at entertainment blogs, analysts said.
