Live Veggies!

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 22, 2002

The Florida Citrus Commission, which oversees the department, has approved $470,000 to help promote the drink -- called the Ruby -- at trendy clubs and bars across the country and sweeten the juice's stodgy image. The target market? Young, single, urban women like the Sex and the City characters Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. The Ruby campaign also includes a Web site dedicated to the cocktail, a promotional trip to Las Vegas next month and a partnership with SKYY Vodka so company representatives can pitch the drink to bars and pass out recipe cards. The agency also hired actresses Aida Turturro, Karen Duffy and Talisa Soto to promote the Ruby in two test markets - - Chicago and Miami's South Beach -- in appearances on local TV shows, and at nightclubs and restaurants.

Leave it to the affiliates?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Television networks donate an average of 15 seconds per hour for public service advertisements, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Less than one-tenth of those ads come during prime-time. Nearly half of the time networks turn over to public service ads -- 43 percent -- come between midnight and 6 a.m.

The future in film?

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has launched an online movie delivery pilot, the first time a major Hollywood studio has offered the public feature film downloads over the Internet. MGM teamed with CinemaNow, an Internet cinema distributor, for the 30- day trial that features two motion pictures. "The idea is to throw it out there and see what happens," said Stacey Studebaker, a spokeswoman for MGM Home Entertainment.

MGM and several other leading studios already "stream" some of their films over the Internet. But this endeavor will also give consumers the option of downloading copy-protected digital video files. The downloads will offer higher quality playback but be programmed to prevent copying and will be playable for only 24 hours.

As part of the trial, MGM will test CinemaNow billing and security software. Not only will customers be limited to a 24-hour viewing window in the MGM test, but electronic locks in the software will be tested. MGM will be anxious to see whether hackers succeed in bypassing the security software. MGM is testing the waters cautiously with its latest venture. Of the two films the studio is putting forward, one was a box-office flop. The other has already been gathering dust in home video for years. What's the Worst that Could Happen? starring Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito. It cost about $45 million to make and only earned $32 million before debuting on video in December. The Man in the Iron Mask rode star Leonardo DiCaprio's Titanic success to a modest $57 million box-office success in 1998, but has been out on home video for nearly three years.

MGM and CinemaNow will charge from $1.99 to $5.99 to view each film, depending on the connection speed and whether a viewer opts to stream or download the content from CinemaNow's site.