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The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer - Guardian

"The timing could hardly be better. In the week that Tony Blair steps down, after 10 years in 10 Downing Street, the film that foresaw his PR-friendly style of government is finally released on DVD. The story of a slick and soulless spin doctor who becomes the people's prime minister, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is a cinematic rarity - an intelligent and though-provoking satire." - William Cook, The Guardian Guide

DCD to launch music download website

Author: Katherine Rushton
Broadcast

DCD Media is taking a second stab at making money from music content online with the launch of two new download websites.
The company will launch digitalclassicsdvd.co.uk on 14 March with around 150 hours of classical music and arts footage available to download on a buy-to-own basis.

Content includes arias sung by opera stars such as Felicity Lott, Christine SchŠfer and Thomas Hampson, and arts features such as Peter Greenaway's A TV Dante and Robert Hughes' documentary Goya: Crazy Like a Genius.

A second site, planned for launch in the second half of this year, will offer 1,500 hours of free archive footage that can be downloaded to view for a limited time, as well as paid-for streaming of contemporary live music events. The site will be a joint-venture with a privately owned internet company.

Websites mark a second move into music downloads for DCD, which began as a dotcom start-up in 1999 offering live streaming of big music events, before -diver-sifying into TV production a year later.
Since then, the company has beefed up its performance -catalogue and now owns the -largest archive of music footage in the world through its divisions Digital Classics DVD and NBD TV.

"We're going to try and attack the iTunes, Naxos-type markets," said chairman Chris Hunt. "We were eight years ahead of our time [before], which was a difficult place to be. When you do it a second time, you want to make sure you've got it right."

The download-to-own site will charge between 79p and £6.99 for arts footage, suitable to view on PCs, Macs and iPods.

In contrast, the second site will offer footage on a download-to-rent basis - free of charge for archive content and at up to £5 per view for global music events, which it will show around once a fortnight.
It will also carry advertising and offer social networking, blogging, UGC and retail elements.

"We want to make it a destination site for anyone working in that area," Hunt said.

DCD and its joint-venture partner are investing "in the millions" on marketing the site globally.