M-G-M vs. $MGM

Posted on November 12, 2010 by David McKee

There’s been much confusion involving the (actual) insolvency of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer vs. the (urban legend) bankruptcy of MGM Grand Mirage Resorts International, so The Onion gets in on the act. Let’s not forget all the overseas players the Green Monster scared away with its original entryway, one of the several miscalculations that got the Strip leviathan off to a wobbly start. As for M-G-M’s financial troubles, they’ve paralyzed the James Bond and Stargate movie franchises, thereby tipping the studio’s two most reliable cash cows.

Rearranging the deck chairs. After thoroughly trashing whatever remained of the newspaper’s credibility, Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick and Editor Thomas Mitchell have been rewarded for their performance by being shunted aside. GM Allan Fleming has also hit the bricks. (Their increasingly hysteria-tinged defenses of Mason-Dixon‘s epic fail in this year’s R-J funded election polls smacked of desperate men feeling the deck slipping away beneath their feet.) The elevation of Director of Advertising Bob Brown to the publisher’s chair merely ratifies the obvious; he’s been the power behind the Bonanza Road throne for some years. Both Frederick and Mitchell will continue to rail against Tin Lizzies, Mr. Edison’s light bulb, flying machines and those confounded flickers from their rocking chairs on the paper’s editorial page, ensuring Las Vegans of years of entertainment to come. As for the business side of things, it will be interesting to see what becomes of the kamikaze wave of Righthaven lawsuits — spending thousands to make hundreds –that have turned the R-J into The Newspaper That Must Not Be Cited.

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