Money Digest - August 15, 2006

Spielberg tops

Steven Spielberg topped the Forbes magazine list of the highest-paid celebrities in the world, based on their earnings per minute. According to Forbes, Spielberg earned about $340 million last year, or $647 per minute. Second on the list was shock jock Howard Stern, who made $588 a minute, followed by director George Lucas at $458 per minute. Rounding out the top 10 are Oprah Winfrey ($454 a minute), Jerry Seinfeld ($194), Tiger Woods ($174), "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown ($170), Jerry Bruckheimer ($165), "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling ($145) and "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf ($136).



AOL pickup

Time Warner Inc. said Monday that its AOL unit has acquired Userplane, a company with technology for allowing operators of Web sites to create their own chat forums. AOL, which has 43 million users of its instant messaging service, did not reveal financial details of the acquisition. Userplane said it has licensed its technology for use at about 100,000 Web sites and some of its key customers include News Corp.'s MySpace and IGN, as well as Date.com. Userplane and its 12 employees will continue to be based in the Los Angeles area, the companies said.



Abrams tops LN

Live Nation Inc. on Monday named Michael Abrams president of Live Nation Studios. Abrams was executive vp product development at the company, which owns and manages live event venues. He will oversee transforming 120 venues and festival sites in the U.S., Canada and Europe into next-generation wired studios and also be responsible for developing distribution opportunities to deliver live entertainment content for new platforms.