After Gates left, Eric, Chris and others talked on the phone and discussed what had just happened before pushing the door into Carmen Kath's bedroom.
The girl was lying on the bed looking through a document, when she sensed Eric coming in, she turned her head and smiled at the man, saying, "It's so noisy."
"It's that kind of person," Eric came over and lay down beside Carmen Kess, reached out and brushed aside the girl's blond hair, took out an earphone and stuffed it into his ear, and said, "What are you looking at?"
The headphone cable was a bit short, and Carmen moved to Eric's side, and said, "Versace's endorsement contract."
With the success of the Dior Golden Goddess advertisement, Carmen has become the supermodel with the fastest rising momentum in the past six months. She even won the cover of the most important September issue of the American version of "VOGUE". Naturally, various types of endorsements are coming.
Eric heard Versace's name and asked casually, "Women's clothing or other product lines?"
"Women's clothing," Carmen handed the contract to Eric, with a questioning look in her eyes, and said, "Paul said that I can actually wait, and maybe I can get the endorsement of women's clothing from the Sixth University. However, the conditions offered by Versace Also very good."
The so-called Big Six refers to the six luxury brands of Dior, Prada, Chanel, LV, Gucci, and CK, also known as the Six Big Blue Bloods. The styles of brands such as Versace, Givenchy, and Hermes are slightly inferior.
Eric took the contract and flipped through two pages, saying: "Actually, it depends on what your pursuit is. If you want to be stylish, you will definitely make less money. If you want to make money, you can only let go of these things. The more It is the high-end brands that are more stingy in terms of endorsement fees."
"Then I'll take it."
She pretended to be relaxed while speaking in such a tone, but she carefully glanced at the man beside her. In my heart, I hope to make more money, but I don't want to be regarded as a woman who only knows how to make money.
Unknowingly, she found herself caring more and more about what he thought of her.
Eric looked at the girl's expression, with a penetrating smile on the corner of his mouth, and said: "Actually, Versace's style is still very suitable for you, and ordinary girls can't afford their exaggerated and strong design style. At that time, you can choose a few more and show me."
Realizing that Eric had seen through her own thoughts, she shyly avoided the man's gaze, and then hummed lightly.
After a little experience of the eye game of chasing after me, Eric finally stretched out his hand to support Carmen's face and turned to himself, looking at the girl's accusing expression as if you didn't follow the rules, he said: "So, you must have Got it, I'm going to buy IMG and Elite right away."
With the girl's stubborn nature, Eric knew that if he didn't bring it up, she would never ask about it anyway.
Hearing what Eric said, her eyes flickered, but she didn't speak, just waiting for the man to continue.
Eric was suddenly attracted by the girl's sapphire-like beautiful eyes, stretched out his hand, and carefully stroked the edge of her long eyelashes, feeling a row of soft brushes sweeping quickly across his fingertips.
She feigned dissatisfaction and curled the corners of her short lips, still savoring the sudden intimacy of the man without moving. When Eric withdrew his hand, she leaned forward, then again, and finally kissed the man's lips.
September is when the four major fashion weeks are held. New York Fashion Week has ended. Carmen hurriedly flew to London the next day, and the two did not talk about IMG and Elite after that.
In fact, the scale of WM company is small after all. Even if Eric wins IMG and Elite at the same time, it will not limit the development of WM company.
In comparison, model agencies such as Ford and DNA in the same industry feel more pressure on Eric to acquire IMG and Elite at the same time. These same first-line model agencies have been firmly suppressed by IMG and Elite. Now , with the support of the huge media resources of the firefly system, it is even more difficult for them to have a bright future.
However, although the media inevitably questioned Eric's acquisition of the two major brokerage companies at the same time, until Eric finally signed the equity transfer contract with IMG and Elite shareholders, out of various considerations or fears, No one has jumped out and publicly opposed this matter.
Of course, in order to avoid unnecessary disputes that may arise in the future, after buying the two major brokerage companies, Eric also quickly dealt with some agency contracts involving Hollywood.
Many models often have casting agencies in Hollywood, just like Diane Kruger. In the past two years, her achievements as an actress have faintly surpassed her modeling career. For this kind of artists whose models and actors develop in two lines, the two major brokerage companies have also begun to draw up relevant contracts in order to straighten out the possible conflicting agency terms.
Moreover, Eric is actually not too worried about disputes in this area.
After all, unless someone is deliberately causing trouble, he doesn't believe that any model will jump out and cause trouble regardless of his career. Whether it is in the fashion industry or Hollywood, with the current strength of the Firefly system, even if it is a supermodel, it is absolutely easy for Eric to completely disappear from the industry.
After winning the two major brokerage companies, Eric's business in New York was basically over, and he flew back to Hollywood in mid-September.
At the same time, after negotiating with Eric again, Microsoft also quickly launched a counterattack against the Firefly system, asking Yahoo to stop the continued promotion of the Mini Music Store device on the grounds that the Mini Music Store device was suspected of infringing Microsoft's patents on the operating system.
However, compared with a series of core patents held by the Firefly system, the evidence for Microsoft's lawsuit is only some marginal patents related to software shape design.
The difference between the two is equivalent to the foundation load and tile decoration of a house. A house cannot be built smoothly without a foundation and load-bearing, but decorations such as external tiles seem insignificant. Even if it is out of season, it can be replaced at any time.
Therefore, Microsoft's lawsuit is not very offensive to the Firefly system.
On the contrary, without the core patent authorization of the Firefly system, At-Home could only shut down its own search engine tool and advertising distribution system, and Microsoft's Zune player was also doomed to fail to be released smoothly.
Moreover, in the face of Microsoft's lawsuit, Firefly also responded immediately.
Firefly Investment publicly announced that it will spend 500 million US dollars to increase its shareholding in Apple to about 30%.
In the past two years, although with the return of Jobs, Apple's operations have improved, but overall it is still unsatisfactory, and the market value has never exceeded 3 billion US dollars. With the Nasdaq crash some time ago, Apple's market value once again hit the bottom of 2 billion US dollars.
Therefore, when Firefly Investment publicly announced the news, it has easily absorbed about 7% of the stock from the open market again, making Firefly Investment's shareholding in Apple increased to 19%. Moreover, these 7% of the stock only cost Firefly 150 million US dollars of investment.
Although Apple's stock price rose sharply after the news was announced, Jobs was on the verge of a formidable enemy. He called Eric directly to inquire about the intention of Firefly Investment, and habitually threatened to resign, demanding that Firefly Investment should not interfere with Apple's business. manage.
Eric really didn't have any idea of getting involved with Apple until the necessary time.
However, Eric did not hide his intentions from Jobs, and admitted that the Firefly system needed Apple's patent support in the operating system. Although very dissatisfied, Jobs agreed to license a series of patents licensed to the Windows system to Firefly Electronics at the same time.
In fact, it's not that Eric didn't think about continuing to support Apple to develop on its original track. However, after careful consideration, Eric gave up the idea. The root cause is Jobs.
Jobs is a very talented person, there is no doubt about it, but at the same time, Jobs' stubbornness will largely affect the smooth development of Apple.
In Apple's original historical development track, Jobs can be said to have 'leaved' Apple twice, once by the board of directors, and once because of death. The obvious fact is that although Jobs has laid a solid foundation for Apple both times, Apple's profits have exploded after Jobs' departure.
Take the former iPod series of players as an example. Apple released this product in 2001, but due to Jobs' stubborn closed policy, only allowing the iPod to run on the Apple operating system, it wasted nearly four years. .
It wasn't until 2005, when Jobs failed to hold back the unanimous opinion of the board of directors and management and announced that the iPod was open to the Windows system, that the sales of this product finally began to explode. But at that time, with the popularization of portable electronic devices such as music phones, the iPod had already missed the best opportunity for expansion, and even began to decline.
As for the later iPhone, it is not difficult to imagine that if Jobs had not passed away, with his stubborn character, Apple would never make such flexible changes when the trend of smartphones becoming larger screens became more and more obvious. Continue to adhere to the 3.5-inch small screen strategy.
Then, in the era of rapid development of smart phones, the industry obviously will not give Apple another four years to change its concept like the iPod. Once the Apple mobile phone continues to adhere to the small-screen strategy, and the Android system catches up from behind, the final result can only be that the iPhone mobile phone will gradually become a high-end niche electronic product like other Apple products.
In the final analysis, Jobs' character was destined for his success, but he was also destined for his failure.
With Eric's return to Los Angeles, the fall curtain of the 1999 TV series also kicked off.
The main feature of ABC TV network this autumn is "American Idol", which has been carefully prepared for a year.
Speaking of it, although the British version of "Pop Idol" has been successful, at the beginning, the executives of the ABC Group were not so confident about whether "American Idol" could adapt to the North American market environment. Some executives have also proposed moving the first season of "American Idol" to a summer slot in June, so that if the show fails in the ratings, the damage won't be too severe.
Eric also knows that the traditional four major public TV stations have become more and more conservative. In fact, this is mainly because the top management of the TV network is worried about the failure of ratings and takes responsibility. After all, the failure of a key promotion program often means that the next For two seasons the network's ratings were down at some point.
Of course, Eric would not accept the conservative strategy of the TV network executives, but insisted on putting "American Idol" in the fall. Now that the big boss made the final decision in person, there were much fewer voices of opposition.
In any case, even if it fails, the responsibility will be borne by Eric himself. Even if an executive is to be blamed, if he wants to take the blame for the BOSS, there are not too few people who are willing to do so.
However, the ratings performance of this singer selection reality show finally exceeded many people's expectations, even better than Eric imagined.
The series premiered on September 16. Due to the sufficient publicity in advance, the number of viewers of the series exceeded 19 million. Moreover, the subsequent ratings data of the first episode did not show the traditional downward trend, but went up all the way.
In the end, the first episode of "American Idol" averaged 22.3 million viewers, and reached 26 million towards the end of the first episode.
Although it failed to create the ratings miracles of the two reality shows "Who Will Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor", in recent years, the cable TV network has continued to expand and continue to erode the market share of the public TV network. A reality TV show with more than 20 million viewers is definitely very successful.
At the same time, the success of "American Idol" also successfully made up for the loss of ABC TV network's popularity due to the end of "Friends".
Although the ratings of two popular series "Survivor" and "ER Story" have also begun to decline in recent years, the rise of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "American Idol" is enough to make ABC The ratings data has reached the forefront of the four major TV networks.
With the release of "American Idol", the popular autumn dramas of the entire Firefly system TV platform have also begun to return to the top.
Lifetime TV's three major hits "America's Next Top Model", "Sex and the City" and "Project Runway" all maintained very impressive ratings. Series such as "Desperate Housewives," "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" and "Beverly Girls" also performed well on several MGM-owned networks. After the return of the new season of "The Sopranos" on FFM TV, it once again created a new high in ratings.
In addition, the new Showtime TV series "Shameless", which has been highly anticipated by the Firefly system, finally went live on September 21.
The number of viewers for the first broadcast of "Shameless" was finally 1.7 million. As a TV series on a premium cable station, such a ratings performance has also reached a satisfactory level.
Moreover, "Shameless" also quickly became the focus of criticism.
You must know that before "Shameless", the mainstream dramas of North American TV stations basically reflected the life of the mainstream middle class in the United States, and the number of dramas that directly portrayed the state of the low-level people with a very low proportion of American society was very small.
At the same time, "Shameless"'s blatant description of the values of low-level people who have almost no traditional concept of right and wrong in order to survive also has a very strong impact on many people.
Perhaps this kind of performance is too violent. Although the critics' evaluation of the series itself is mainly positive, most film critics also hold an unabashedly critical attitude towards the values expressed in "Shameless".