Although 3-D movies have been around since the 1950s, DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg described them Tuesday as "nothing less than the greatest innovation that has happened for all of us in the movie business since the advent of color 70 years ago." The difference today, Katzenberg seemed to suggest, is the ability to control the 3-D product using digital technology. He made his comments at ShoWest, the Las Vegas conference of movie exhibitors. Katzenberg also suggested that 3-D movies permit theaters to offer something that is "far superior" to anything available to consumers at home. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times following his address, he observed that 3-D would likely add about $15 million in extra expenses per production but that he expected that amount to be easily recouped as a result of burgeoning attendance and increased prices for tickets

Four of the six major studios have signed deals with Access Integrated Technologies to underwrite the costs of converting thousands of theaters to digital technology over the next three years. In effect, the deal calls for the studios -- Disney, Fox, Paramount and Universal (Warner Bros. and Sony are expected to join the group as well, reports said) -- to pay theaters what they would ordinarily pay for processing reels of film and distributing them. The theaters would then apply the "virtual print fee" to the costs of new digital projection equipment until the equipment is paid off. (Each digital projection system reportedly costs $75,000.) Distributing movies using digital media costs barely a fraction of film, which averages about $3,000-4,000 per print.

The head of the National Association of Theater Owners charged Tuesday that both the owners and the studios could be earning a lot more money if the studios did not rely on an outmoded release schedule. John Fithian chastised the studios for failing to provide attractive movies throughout the year, noting that April and September are "virtually empty," because studios save their prime product for summer or the winter seasons. "They look at their calendar and wait for May and say, 'OK, now we can open our tent-pole movie.'" He said that if the studios hadn't tried to release the latest Spider-Man, Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels all within three weeks of one another, the exhibitors "could have done at least another $50 or $60 million" -- particularly if the studios had decided to open at least some of them in April. "A good movie will be successful no matter when it is released," Fithian said

The motion picture industry's battle against piracy has reached a stalemate, MPAA chief Dan Glickman suggested Tuesday at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. "We are getting more advanced in tracking the crime, and they are getting more advanced in committing it," Glickman told the gathering of exhibitors. Glickman once again claimed that the movie industry loses about $6 billion worldwide to piracy, but he offered no details on how the industry arrived at that figure.

Television will be able to dodge the recession handily, according to a study by Informa Telecoms & Media, which predicted Tuesday that ad revenue from TV would rise nearly 6 percent to $123 billion this year. An analyst for Informa predicted that a large part of that rise will be due to international coverage of the Olympic Games and the U.S. presidential elections. Broadcasters are also expected to give the Internet closer scrutiny, with most of them abandoning the subscription model and instead rely on revenue from advertising, the study said.

Fox once again ruled the roost last week, clobbering the competition as the number of contestants on American Idol continued to be whittled down. All three nights of Idol produced top ratings, with Wednesday's producing the biggest numbers of the week. Idol also helped the shows that followed it on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Moment of Truth landed in fifth place, while the new New Amsterdam came in at No. 6. Among the top ten, it was once again a big week for unscripted shows, with only the dramas New Amsterdam on Fox and Lost on ABC bucking the trend. Fox won the week with a solid 7.1 rating overall. CBS came in second with an average 5.3/9. NBC placed third with a 5.9/8, while ABC trailed with a 4.8/8.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 16.0/25; 2. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 15.9/240; 3. American Idol (Thursday), Fox, 15.0/23; 4. 20/20: The Royal Family, ABC, 9.7/15; 5. The Moment of Truth, Fox, 8.8/14; 6. New Amsterdam, Fox, 8.2/12; 7. 60 Minutes, CBS, 7.8/14.0, 8822000; 8. Lost, ABC, 7.6/12.0, 8591000; 9. Oprah's Big Give, ABC, 7.4/11; 10. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. ABC, 7.3/12; 10. Survivor: Micronesia, CBS, 7.3/11.

Beatles night on American Idol Tuesday night left rivals shouting "Help!" as together they failed to attract an audience that equaled Idol's alone. According to Nielsen Research, Idol's first hour drew a 15.6 rating and a 25 share. The second hour rose to a 17.8/27, with the final half hour clocking in 31.58 million viewers. At 10:00 p.m., NBC's workhorse, Law & Order, took over first place, but with a 6.4/11 and 9.38 million people tuning in, it lured fewer than a third of the viewers that Idol did.

Nielsen is expected to offer a new method for analyzing the television audience, one relying on the settop boxes cable companies install. In a deal with Charter Communications, Nielsen will be given access to information about 320,000 households in Los Angeles giving it second-by-second data about their viewing habits. Advertisers are expected to welcome Nielsen's new ratings model since it widens the audience sample enormously.

Pappas Telecasting Companies on Monday shut down the news programing on its Reno stations, KREN and KAZR. The KREN website published its own death notice, saying that it was due in part to the fact that "the stations didn't see adequate advertising revenues to justify the expense of the news division." Pappas President and COO Dennis Davis was quoted as saying, "It's important to be clear that this is not a performance-related issue with the KREN and KAZR staffs. The video journalists producers, anchor, and news managers have given their best efforts to produce a product that we can all be proud of."