New Faces of Synergy 2001

Everyone knows who Julia Roberts is, but getting her to star in your movie costs a lot of money. The same can go for high-profile musical acts such as Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez, whose contracts can be as flashy as their outfits.

Gradually, however, entertainment companies are discovering they needn’t necessarily wait for an established star to stroll in and sign on the dotted line; rather, the major studios can use their far-flung assets--their production divisions, publishing operations, music units, Internet presence, and perhaps especially television networks--to establish and promote talent, then funnel it through those various arms to wring out profits.

In a sense, a company can create stars--or at least widely recognizable personalities--cultivating them through repeated prime-time exposure and exploiting that popularity. It’s a 21st century variation on the old studio system, where aspiring stars were signed to contracts, then carefully marketed and crafted for public consumption.

Enter “Popstars,” which, despite modest ratings since its midseason debut, stands on the cutting edge as an Internet Age example of what can be accomplished in terms of creating--and cashing in on--new talent in the AOL Time Warner world.

An unscripted series focusing on the selection and introduction of an all-girl musical group, Eden’s Crush, “Popstars” has played on the Time Warner-backed WB network since January. (The WB is also part-owned by the Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times.)

Based on an Australian concept, the program spent several episodes documenting the audition process that boiled down thousands of applicants to the five chosen members in mid-February. Since then, the story has shifted to the band’s preparation for its debut.

Unlike similar experiments, however, all the branches of “Popstars” feed back toward the same roots. Warner Music Group will release the group’s debut single Tuesday. AOL, which acquired the Time Warner empire, is helping to promote the TV show and album--which will be released in May--to millions of online customers, a promotion that includes an exclusive window to download the new single. And with the members chosen, the WB continues to chronicle the Eden’s Crush launch, which will culminate with the broadcast of its first concert (taping later this month at the Palace in Hollywood) on April 6.

At first glance, it’s hard to see what the fuss is about--why AOL Time Warner executives are talking about “Popstars” as a model for what the merged company can accomplish. The series is by no means a major ratings hit, averaging 4.1 million viewers an episode, compared with roughly 7.5 million for the WB’s highest-rated program, “7th Heaven.”

Those viewers, however, overwhelmingly happen to be females between the ages of 12 and 34--including over half a million teenage girls, the audience that flocked to “Titanic” again and again, and a platinum-plated target when it comes to selling records for an all-girl group.

In short, the series is familiarizing millions of TV viewers with a new Warner musical act, backed by not just 30-second commercials, but literally hours of precious exposure on prime-time network television.

It’s been a heady experience for Stone-Stanley Productions, an independent production company also responsible for ABC’s “The Mole.” The produceres licensed the “Popstars” format at the MIP TV festival in Cannes, France, last April.

The company obtained all rights to the new group. WB officials immediately sparked to the concept, attempting to convince David Stanley and partner Scott Stone to skip meetings with other networks and calling again to express their interest before the duo reached the parking lot. WB Chairman Jamie Kellner (who was last week promoted to chairman of Turner Broadcasting, overseeing the company’s cable networks as well as the WB) put the pair in touch with Warner Music Group Chairman Roger Ames to facilitate the recording deal through Warner’s London/Sire Records, which signed a recording contract to release several Eden’s Crush albums.

“They deserve a lot of credit for doing something that we rarely see in our business,” says Stanley, regarding the coordination at AOL Time Warner. “Most companies can’t do this, or don’t do this.”

From that perspective, “Popstars” could provide a template for future efforts--a scenario Kellner, Ames and producer-composer David Foster freely acknowledge and are almost giddy contemplating.

“The word ‘synergy’ is so overused as a word, but it’s so underused as a process,” says Foster, who is supervising the new group and has worked with such acts as Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton. “I think ‘Popstars’ will be the first true synergistic project in the new company.”

That, at least, is the plan. Both Kellner and Ames are part of a CEO committee at AOL Time Warner that holds biweekly meetings, allowing those who run the sprawling company’s various divisions to get acquainted and dream up areas of possible cooperation.

“The purpose of [those meetings] is to do things like ‘Popstars,’ ” Kellner says.

For his part, Ames calls the WB tie-in “a huge running start” for the group in terms of record sales and “absolutely a dream come true.” Asked how much money the music division would have to spend to provide a new act a commensurate launch, Ames says, “You couldn’t do it. [Even] if you could buy all the advertising in the world, there’s the difference between advertising and editorial, and this is editorial.

“You’re seeing this thing come together. People are actually invested in the group, whether they’re going to make it or not make it. There’s a whole drama element you couldn’t buy with advertising.”

While they declined to put a dollar figure on it, the media time involved could easily be valued at $20 million or more, depending on how one calculates it, with an added bonus.

“The people watching the show are really rooting for the girls just because of what they’ve gone through to get there,” Kellner says.

Admittedly, television’s role instilling value in new properties--from albums to “South Park” paraphernalia--is hardly a new development. The Monkees, after all, followed a similar course in 1965, giving rise to an NBC series and selling millions of records.

Stanley witnessed the same phenomenon in the early 1980s during a stint at MGM, which produced the NBC series “Fame.” Based on the movie, “Fame” delivered so-so ratings but launched several successful soundtracks featuring music created for the show.

Recognition of television’s power as a marketing tool by the current breed of multifaceted entertainment giant has occurred in stages. “Survivor,” in an act of prescience, bound its participants under agreements that limited their freedom to make individual deals giving CBS and the producers approval over subsequent projects. These new “stars” thus found themselves serving CBS’ promotional machine, including a goodwill tour of CBS programs--”The Early Show,” “The Late Show With David Letterman,” even various prime-time series--to pump up ratings.

At the same time, the recent wave of unscripted programs has demonstrated TV’s enduring ability to create instant personalities, from “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” pinup Darva Conger to “Survivor” Richard Hatch to the actor wannabes on Fox’s “Temptation Island.”

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Even more noteworthy, perhaps, was ABC’s nondescript boy-band TV series “Making the Band,” which, despite lukewarm ratings, helped make history as the group that resulted, O-Town, became the only new artist ever to have its first single, “Liquid Dreams,” debut at No. 1 on the pop charts last year.

That said, the O-Town bonanza was diffused among many partners, including MTV, which produced the TV program; Lou Pearlman, who assembled the band; and record executive Clive Davis, whose new label, J Records, released the album.

Both “Making the Band” and “Popstars” also reflect an appetite for the inner workings of entertainment--the chance to expose the process and turn that into entertainment itself. A parallel foray into this territory is “Project Greenlight,” a contest to select a screenplay that will be shot as a low-budget Miramax film.

A staggering 7,300 scripts were submitted via the Internet before a winner, Pete Jones, was chosen. Production on the movie--scheduled to begin this spring, with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as executive producers--will be chronicled by a documentary crew as the basis for an unscripted HBO series.

The plan is to premiere the “Greenlight” TV show in January, with the movie opening in April. “You would have built-in promotion . . . [and] a built-in core audience,” notes Billy Campbell, president of Miramax Television, adding that the movie will “give someone out there the opportunity to realize their dream,” even as the TV show makes potential filmgoers privy to the ups and downs of that experience.

Of course, consumers can go about their day blissfully unaware the program they are watching is serving a dual purpose, from the prime-time specials ABC runs to promote Disney’s newest animated film to the “news reports” that function as thinly veiled advertising for prime-time shows.

Though such united efforts have often been easier to achieve in theory than practice, clearly no media behemoth has more tentacles to make it happen than AOL Time Warner, whose empire also includes multiple cable channels and a publishing unit with such entertainment-oriented magazines as People and Entertainment Weekly.

“Everywhere you look we have a platform, whether it’s Teen People or taking the girls internationally,” Ames says. And though both Kellner and Ames quickly stress sister magazines operate under an arm’s-length, “church-state” relationship, as Foster observes, “Certainly they’ll take your call, because it’s part of the family.”

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If the prospect of cozy sibling arrangements sounds potentially unsavory--the idea of television masquerading as promotion for ancillary products, or vice versa--Kellner and the others are unapologetic, perhaps because consolidation of the entertainment industry has seemingly made such tie-ins unavoidable.

The whole point of the newly merged AOL Time Warner’s CEO gatherings, Kellner notes, is to “create relationships where people can cut through [the mentality of] ‘What’s in it for my division?’ . . . and just get into thinking, ‘AOL Time Warner shareholders deserve a good return on their investment, what’s the best thing we can all do together?’ I think the company’s heading in that direction.”

While the WB reaches a smaller audience than the major networks, its appeal to teenagers becomes especially valuable given the secondary streams of revenue its programs can generate.

The WB has already been active in using music as a marketing tool, running the names of featured songs within its dramatic programs at the conclusion of teen-oriented series such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “Dawson’s Creek,” which adopted Paula Cole’s Warner record “I Don’t Want to Wait” as its theme music.

“ ‘Dawson’s Creek’ pretty much broke Paula Cole,” Ames says.

“All our dramas are just laced with music, because of our demo,” adds Kellner. As for whether there is an incentive to feature Warner-backed labels within WB shows, Kellner quips, “We would prefer selling Warner records over Sony records.”

So for Eden’s Crush audition survivors Ana Maria Lombo, Rosanna Tavarez, Ivette Sosa, Nicole Scherzinger and Maile Misajon, the selection gave way to a remarkable promotional whirlwind. In addition to cutting an album and shooting a music video, they were flown to New York for photo shoots and appearances on WB affiliate WPIX and “Live With Regis and Kelly”; shot an episode of the WB’s “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” (to play in May, when the album is released); attended the Grammys; and conducted an AOL online chat--all in February alone.

KTLA, the local WB station owned by Tribune, has also showered attention on the band during its newscasts, including features on its 10 p.m. news and “The KTLA Morning News.” Entertainment newsmagazines have joined in, among them “Extra,” distributed by Warner Bros.’ syndication arm.

This isn’t to say elaborate cross-promotional opportunities are without risk. For starters, Eden’s Crush makes its debut squarely under the media spotlight, with all the attendant expectations that implies.

The frenetic pace also meant assembling the music even before the singers were chosen. “With all the blessings that came with this synergistic project, there were complications,” Foster says. “How do you go to the best producers and writers on the planet and say, ‘We want your best song,’ and they say, ‘Who’s it for?’ and we say, ‘We don’t know.’ . . . It presented a really unique group of problems.”

Bands are created all the time, adds Ames, “but we’re doing it publicly . . . in the full glare of network television.”

Indeed, with media giants orchestrating the creation of a band in what amounts to a new-product launch, the idea of friends plunking out songs in a garage seems an almost quaint throwback to an era when there were three networks, and companies still marketed eight-track tapes.

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How long Eden’s Crush stays in the public eye remains to be seen. The WB is still considering various options, which range from continuing to follow the group in episodic form to running periodic specials--among them a chronicle of its first stadium tour. And whatever happens with this act, the parties feel comfortable knowing that if the formula works, it won’t be difficult to replicate. Stone-Stanley, in fact, is already contemplating future seasons that would focus on the formation of new groups in different musical styles.

“If we went out and said, ‘Tomorrow we want to do another group,’ we would have another 2,000 girls lined up outside the studio dying to get on television,” Kellner says.

In that respect, the new studio system can keep plugging fresh faces into its machinery. Yet for all the weapons in AOL Time Warner’s marketing arsenal, Foster points out one final constituency still needs to cooperate and line up for the massive promotional buffet being fed them when that inaugural single hits the radio.

“The phones need to light up,” Foster says. “That’s the one thing you can’t buy. You can take them to the water, but you can’t make them drink it. If those phones don’t light up when this record plays, then we’re back to square one. And that cannot be bought.”