HOLLYWOOD NEWS SERVICE TO LAUNCH ON ION

There’s a new entrant into the crowded field of Hollywood news reporting on TV. The Wall Street Journal reported today (Wednesday) that Jay Penske’s PMC media company, which owns Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com, is teaming with the ION Television network to produce short-form features on topics ranging from celebrity scandals to box-office reporting that will air not only on ION’s TV affiliates, as so-called interstitials between programs, but also on some 10,000 elevator screens in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco and in taxicabs across the country. Finke herself will provide voiceovers for many of the features (she is notoriously camera-shy) and personalities from other Penske online properties, including Bonnie Fuller of HollywoodLife.com and Michael Ausiello, of TVLine.com, will also contribute to the package. In an interview with the Journal Penske indicated that the features will be timely and will include breaking news items. In the case of important news stories, he said, the segments could interrupt regular programming on ION.