Producer Mark Ciardi (Million Dollar Arm, Secretariat, Invincible, Miracle, The Rookie), Tom Duterme (former executive at YouTube, Google) and William Chang and Ash Vasudevan (of Edge Venture Capital and co-creators of The Million Dollar Arm contest and reality show) have joined forces to form Aspire Entertainment.
The new venture’s mission is to create aspirational stories about characters who overcome adversity. The company will provide scripted and unscripted premium original content to assorted distribution platforms, while maintaining a strong presence in feature film production.
Ciardi recently produced Disney Pictures’ Million Dollar Arm and his company, Mayhem Pictures, specializes in inspirational sports stories. Chang, and Vasudevan, were portrayed in the movie as the real-life creators of the Million Dollar Arm, India’s talent-hunt contest for Major League Baseball pitching prospects. On the set of the “Million Dollar Arm movie, Chang and Vasudevan forged a close relationship with Ciardi that eventually led to discussions about launching a new kind of content company.
Ciardi brings his knowledge of Hollywood to Aspire, Chang and Vasudevan their vision of technology intersecting with media and entertainment and venture capital. Duterme, an ex-YouTube/Google exec responsible for strategy and corporate development for YouTube, among other ventures, has broad knowledge and global perspective of new and expanding distribution platforms.
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