Showtime, which has shied away from music concerts throughout the last decade, is coming back with a bang, signing Jay-Z to perform a live, one-hour performance as lead-in to a heavyweight fight featuring Mike Tyson.
Jerry Offsay, president of programming for Showtime Networks, said the scheduling of the concert is part of a new push to go beyond traditional scripted series and movies and produce original reality series, magazine shows, animated programs and live events.
Making music
The Jay-Z concert, which takes place Feb. 22 in Memphis, is the first of what Offsay hopes are a number of live music specials down the road. Offsay declined to comment on financial terms, but one source said the Jay-Z concert will cost about $1.5 million, covering both performer fees and production costs.
Offsay said that record companies are gung-ho about getting their artists on cable, particularly as a tie-in to the release of an album. Showtime has an advantage over pay-per-view, he said, "because more people will be exposed to a concert." Showtime reaches about 13 million homes, and the network offers multiple repeats of its concerts, he said.
Plenty of punch
Although Tyson's career suffered a jolt in June when Lennox Lewis knocked him out, that fight harvested $103 million, making it the highest-grossing event in the history of pay-per-view. The Feb. 22 fight, if Tyson defeats opponent Clifford Etienne, could serve as the catapult to a rematch with Lewis this summer.
And following classical audience-flow strategy, Offsay will follow the Tyson fight with the premiere of Showtime's reality series "Family Business," which follows the daily life of a schlep named Adam Glasser who, with his mother and his "cantankerous" cousin, produces and distributes porno movies.
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