National Kidney Foundation’s Gift of Life Walk

You may notice over on the left that there’s a fund-raising widget for the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois’ Gift of Life Walk. As some of you might know (I don’t usually talk family things here on MMM but some of you I’ve mentioned this to) my youngest son was born with kidney problems and got a transplant (from me, but that’s not important) almost two years ago, when he was just one-and-a-half years old.

He’s doing great almost two years later and so we’re celebrating by helping to raise money for the organization by walking along Chicago’s lake shore on July 1st. If you feel so moved you can sponsor us by visiting this page. I – and all of us on team Evan eTc – appreciate your support, whether it be financial or best wishes.

–Chris

MMM as you’ve always wanted it – in book form

Since I’m taking a personal day and will be, for the most part, unplugging for the rest of the day, I figure this is as good a time as any to reveal the project I’ve been working on for the last several weeks.

Through Lulu.com you can now buy Movie Marketing Madness: The Book. This volume contains the MMM columns – the full campaign reviews – numbers 1 (Shrek 2) to 150 (Man of the Year). The paperback book is black and white (to keep costs down) and, at 257 pages, will set you back just $15.92.

I thought it would be fun to put all those columns together into a single volume for the sake of archiving. It does not contain the smaller blog stuff but just, as I said, the actual MMM columns I’ve written. Some are big and some are small but this is 150 columns worth of MMM goodness.

I have it in my head to offer a supplementary volume of #s 151-200 when I hit that milestone and potentially create a separate book of some of the “Best of MMM” columns that I’ve written but those will largely be decided by how well this does. Just wanted to let you know.
So check it out and decide whether you’d like to add MMM: The Book to your library today.

Comcast wants to go broken window with VOD

Comcast COO Stephen Burke has said his company has held talks with movie studios about offering movies on VOD the same day they debut in theaters, reports Reuters.

As usual the biggest pushback has come from theater owners, who see their business model as threatened from such ventures. The talks are unique in that most have previously centered around cutting the VOD/DVD window but leaving theatrical intact.

Burke says day-and-date VOD movies could cost between $30 and $50.

At first that price point seemed extremely high to me since people weren’t getting the amenities of the theater along with the film for that price. But then I thought “What amenities?” and also put it in perspective with take-out dining. If I get, say, Applebee’s To Go I pay the same for my food and am fine with that despite the fact I’m not also getting the “experience.”

So the price point is comparable with a trip to the theater for two or four people, depending on concessions. That’s got to scare the bejeesus out of theater owners. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out or if someone’s greed or stubbornness derails this process.