It’s Where You Finish That Counts

It has been seven years since SoundScan started bringing reliable data to the national pop music charts, but lots of industry insiders are still trying to figure out just how to read those weekly figures. The tendency has been to look at first-week sales with the same weight as in the movie industry, where a film’s fate is pretty much sealed by its initial seven-day total. Those first-week figures can tell a lot about an album’s potential, especially in the case of veteran artists. But touring, videos and a string of singles can often generate interest in an album long after it has hit the stores. A classic case: the last Sheryl Crow album. After the singer’s 1993 debut album, “Tuesday Night Music Club,” sold more than 3.8 million copies in the U.S., Crow was written off by many in 1996 as another ‘90s “one-hit wonder” when her second album, “Sheryl Crow,” only sold about 72,000 copies its first week. But the collection went on to sell more than 2.2 million copies, establishing Crow as one of the solid commercial fixtures in contemporary pop. So what should we expect from SoundScan when Crow’s new album, “The Globe Sessions,” enters the chart Wednesday? “We are expecting the new album to play out along the same sales lines as the last one--a top 10 debut with sales of around 70,000 to 80,000 and then a steady build over the next year,” says Al Cafaro, CEO and chairman of A&M; Records. “I think people in the industry are beginning to realize that the challenge in the music business isn’t just what you do first week, but what you do over the life of an album and a career.”

NBC Hoping That ‘Crime’ Will Pay

Two years ago, NBC’s made-for-TV movie lineup leaned heavily toward what are derisively known as “women in peril” films, with titles like “Her Costly Affair,” “She Cried No” and the unforgettable “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?” This season, encouraged by its success with special-effects-laden miniseries based on “Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Odyssey,” NBC is aiming higher, with a fanciful new “Alice in Wonderland,” Oscar nominee Peter Fonda in a 19th-century version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and a movie about the life of Albert Einstein, with Richard Dreyfuss in the title role. The first indicator of how those projects might be received will come Sunday, when NBC airs “Crime and Punishment,” a new version of the Dostoevsky novel starring Patrick Dempsey and Ben Kingsley. Conventional wisdom says such literary properties don’t translate into big ratings, but CBS has found otherwise with its Sunday movies, and “Crime” producer Robert Halmi Sr. (who also oversaw the aforementioned NBC miniseries) insists they can. NBC at least thought TV critics required a little prodding to get into the spirit: The network’s promotional packet included not only a videotape and the novel itself, but Cliffs Notes as well.

A Small Film With a Big Message

Call it a love story for the ‘90s. A young woman with a new boyfriend in her life learns that a past lover is dying of AIDS. How she deals with being HIV positive and struggles with prejudice and ignorance she encounters along the way is at the heart of “Touch Me,” a small-budget, independent film from Devin Entertainment that will begin a one-week run Friday at Landmark Theaters’ Westside Pavilion. Directed by H. Gordon Boos, the film stars Amanda Peet and Michael Vartan as the lovers whose relationship is tested after she discovers she is HIV positive. The movie also features former Olympic diver Greg Louganis, who himself is HIV positive. Producer Greg H. Sims said the idea of making a contemporary love story about a girl-next-door who finds out she is HIV positive has been something he has wanted to do for some time. “It opens up the illness to a group of people who have never seen it before outside of television movies, whose approach is much more ‘disease of the week,’ ” Sims said. “It’s very much about living in the late ‘90s. It takes us up to the present day, where people are not necessarily getting a death sentence, although I think people are being lulled into a false sense of security believing ‘We don’t have to worry about AIDS anymore,’ which I think is not the case.” With support of private investors and encouragement from people at AIDS Project L.A., the film was shot in Los Angeles and won positive reviews when it was shown at the Toronto Film Festival last year. But releasing independent films these days, Sims said, is tricky business. Financial turmoil overseas has caused demand for American films to plunge this year. “It’s decimated the business,” Sims said, although he holds out hope that markets will rebound in the next six months to a year. Sims said he is nevertheless happy with the outcome of the movie. When he first passed the script around Hollywood, he said, actors were calling up wanting to be in it. “Some people read the script, called us up and said, ‘Whether I get the job or not, I’m going to get an AIDS test.’ ”

--Compiled by Times staff writers and contributors