National Lampoon Launches In-House Audio Label and After Disney's 2Q outperformance, some signs of caution

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City of Industry, CA --(www.USEquityNews.com)-- 05/27/2008 - Media entertainment industry alert provided by U.S. Equity News. National Lampoon, Inc. (AMEX: NLN), the most widely recognized brand in comedy, today announced that it has launched an audio label, forming National Lampoon Records. This move expands the build of the company's owned content library, and follows the company's recent success in developing, producing, and distributing its own feature film library into all areas including theatrical, home entertainment, television, and digital markets. "This is another step in the evolution of the company. National Lampoon continues to be a leader in the comedy world, and we are excited to be expanding our owned and controlled library along with building additional distribution throughout all media," stated Daniel Laikin, National Lampoon Chief Executive Officer.


Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ: RENT) today announced that Video On Demand (VOD) viewing increased by 59% compared to the same timeframe last year. The data gathered from Rentrak's subscribing multiple system operators (MSOs) showed consumers increased their time spent viewing VOD programming by 185 million hours versus the first quarter 2007. The quarterly VOD playtime data is part of the expanded information that will be included in Rentrak's State of VOD report that will be issued in June. Rentrak's Q1 2008 data also shows a 36% increase in the amount of VOD content available to consumers.

When Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) second-quarter results beat Wall Street's expectations earlier this month, enthusiastic analysts sounded few notes of caution and investors pushed the media giant's stock up nearly 3 percent in one day. However, an analyst downgrade, stock sales by two top Disney executives and a strong but softer-than-expected domestic box-office performance by "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" have undercut some of that optimism and raised the possibility of weakness ahead. After the earnings release, analysts were most reassured by the strong performance of Disney's parks and resorts, which are considered most vulnerable to a downturn in consumer spending.

EPIC Corporation (OTC: EPIO) (the "Company"), a multi-media communications and broadcasting company, announced that two shareholders have returned 15 Million shares of EPIC's common stock to the Company and the shares have been cancelled and returned to authorized but unissued shares. The issued and outstanding shares of the Company is now 11,262,023 shares. The Company, in exchange for the cancellation of the shares, agreed to issue the shareholders shares in the newly formed EPIC Communications Corp., a majority owned subsidiary of the Company, which is to become the multi-media communications and broadcasting operating company.

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