Staff Additions
Photomag Sound & Image, which is PostWorks, New York’s midtown Manhattan boutique, has brought on board general manager/audio mixer Bill Ivie, mixer/sound designer Billy Gardner, and executive producer Andy Rando. Ivie co-founded Parallax Audio Productions, New York, the in-house audio department of Betelgeuse Productions. Gardner comes over to Photomag from Parallax as does Rando, who was most recently that shop’s musical director….
Frank Devlin has been named executive producer of music/sound house Tonal, New York. He had been in a VP/exec producer capacity at Version2, New York….
Sound Lounge, the New York shop known for providing audio services to the advertising industry, has diversified into feature films. The studio has hired mixer Tony Volante, a veteran of more than 50 theatrical motion picture mixes, including Cinderella Man, for which he served as Foley mixer. Volante’s other feature credits include The Missing, Coffee and Cigarettes and Welcome to the Dollhouse. Besides securing Volante, Sound Lounge has added a state-of-the-art mixing suite to its Manhattan facility….
R!OT Atlanta has hired Brian Anderson as audio production manager. Anderson formerly served as operations manager at POP Sound, Santa Monica. At R!OT Atlanta, he will schedule and oversee sessions for the facility’s recently expanded audio post department, as well as be a liaison between the studio’s clients and its technical staff……Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More