Rev New Media, a digital publisher that owns popular celeb gossip site Hollyscoop.com, has a new look.
The Studio City company recently redesigned all of its sites as well as launching sports-themed TheFumble.com. It will announce the launch of cooking site TheSavory.com later this month.
The idea is to expand Rev’s audience beyond the millennial women who frequent its flagship Hollyscoop.com, said co-founder and Chief Executive Raymond Attipa.
“We want to broaden the audience,” Attipa said.
Still, he noted, “Hollyscoop has a pretty significant male audience of undercover gossip readers.”
He expects the sports site to bring in more male visitors.
Hollyscoop, which launched in 2006 as the first of Rev’s sites, had 2.2 million unique visitors in May, according to Web traffic firm Comscore. Its advertisers include movie studios and TV networks.
The idea now is to attract major sports brands as advertisers on TheFumble. The cooking site is looking for ads from luxury brands. The ads are sold through digital publishing and advertising firm Alloy Digital of New York.
Hollyscoop and Rev’s other Web properties, music-focused Stereotude.com and fashioncentric ModaMob.com, were redesigned about a month ago.
Rev’s studio got a facelift as well, making room for shooting on multiple sets and for group interviews. Its studio had previously been limited to filming a single on-air host in front of a green screen.
Rev’s videos are posted on its sites as well as YouTube as well as the sites of content partners such as AOL. The shows include “The Lowdown With Diana Madison,” which features interviews with celebrities such as Kendra Wilkinson from “Girls Next Door.” Diana Madison is a co-founder of Rev, which now has about 20 employees.
Attipa said he’s looking to expand to about 15 sites. Other plans include selling more advertisements in-house to boost margins.
Festival Firsts
L.A. concert promoter Goldenvoice – known for staging the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival – is trying out a new kind of festival in downtown Los Angeles, using venues owned by parent company Anschutz Entertainment Group.
Goldenvoice was planning to take the strategy for a spin with the first-ever BET Experience, a three-day event that was to be held June 28-30 at L.A. Live, with performances by Beyoncé and Snoop Dogg at Staples Center, comedy performances from the likes of Mike Epps at Club Nokia, and celebrity seminars and an awards show.
Rick Mueller, president of Goldenvoice’s California operations, said the setting made it a new undertaking. But he said the format certainly got people interested. Some 45,000 ticket buyers plunked down anywhere from $39 to $4,000 to see some or all of the events.
Mueller said the BET Experience would return for at least two more years and Goldenvoice will take a look at staging other festivals that could fit the downtown landscape.
“We’re trying to do more of these kinds of festivals,” he said. “We’ll see how we can apply it to a new kind of creation.”
Back to School
Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management will begin offering a certificate in film and television finance this fall.
The M.B.A.-level coursework includes classes on the fundamentals of finance applied to film and television deals, government sources of funding, slate financing deals and debt financing.
Classes will run from Sept. 23 through 26 and will cost $3,695, with a discount for early registration at the Malibu campus.
The course is designed for producers, accountants, attorneys, financial analysts and others in the entertainment biz.
The program is run by Craig Everett, assistant professor of finance and associate director at the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project, an investment research program.
Bible Business
“The Bible” is still a big draw, this time on DVD.
The miniseries boasted big ratings when it aired on History Channel earlier this year. Now, its home entertainment sales have surpassed 1 million units, according to the distributor, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment in Century City.
Those numbers span purchases made for Blu-ray and DVD discs as well as digital viewing through Fox’s DigitalHD digital store. Fox said “The Bible” is the best-selling TV miniseries of all time for those platforms.
Next up for the series is its international TV debut, followed by its release in the overseas home entertainment market.
“‘The Bible’ series is fast becoming a national treasure, and next we roll it out around the world,” said co-executive producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett in a statement.
Staff reporter Jonathan Polakoff can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 226.
