THE PURPOSE OF THE TRADEVINE IS TO ENCOURAGE THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY TO READ THEIR TRADES: VARIETY, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, BACK STAGE, ETC. ENJOY LEARNING ABOUT YOUR INDUSTRY.

EACH FRIDAY, THE TRADEVINE SEEKS OUT A FEW OF THE INFORMATIVE TRADE ARTICLES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED. VISIT THE TRADE, ITSELF, FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

Hi everybody, I’m Brett Walkow of the Actors Reporter and welcome to the TradeVine. Danika Quinn is on assignment.

This week we’ve found some great articles. You don’t want to miss these. Our goal at the TradeVine is to help you stay informed and to keep up with some of the entertainment news you may have missed in the Trades, such as The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Variety, and Backstage.

The Hollywood Reporter, December 23rd, 2011 – Oprah’s wild Ride, Part II, by Marisa Guthrie and Kim Masters. As Winfrey returns on-air, her channel OWN has spent $254 million so far with low carriage fees but lots of rating woes. When Oprah went to Comcast to try to negotiate low carriage fees, the Comcast executives rebuffed Winfrey and characterized her pitch as “greedy” for an unproven network. After that, Winfrey allowed professional to attend other meetings. This rude awakening is indicative of Winfrey’s struggle to turn OWN into the kind of powerhouse she presided over during her 25 years as the queen of daytime TV. Today, major service providers including Comcast pay nothing for OWN, which is not unusual for a network with no ratings history. So far this year, OWN is averaging just 136,000 viewers per day. We’ll have to just wait and see how Winfrey’s OWN does. Good luck Oprah.

Daily Variety, Tuesday, December 20th – The article is entitled North Korea’s film fanatic, by Clifford Coonan in Beijing. The death of Kim Jong II Saturday at age 69 marks the passing of one of the truly old footnotes to cinema history. A man who built up a deep, if twisted, relationship with stage and screen. Like Adolf Hitler, who recognized the power of film and supposedly loved Disney movies, the North Korea despot was fascinated by film, and he collected 20,000 foreign pics. Daffy Duck and horror movies were among his favorites, as were James Bond films, though he was said to have been furious at the way North Korea was depicted as a totally evil state in “Die Another Day” in 2002. he produced several films himself, mostly ideologically driven historical epics, dating back as far as “Sea of Blood,” made in the 1960s.

And, Actors Reporter would like to extend congratulations to Miss Callie Thorne for her Golden Globe nomination in her role on USA Networks’ “Necessary Roughness,” produced by Joe Sabatino and Donna Dannenfelser.

Well, that’s it for the TradeVine this week. I’m Brett Walkow. Thank you very much for watching. And remember, You heard it through the Tradevine!