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The furor over the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident contrasts differences between how broadcast and cable networks are treated by the FCC. “What you’re seeing now is an effect of intense competition from cable. Because of the fact that there isn’t a regulatory regime that impacts their content, they have these award-winning shows that are very — let’s call them `edgy.’ And what it’s done is force networks to try to have edgier programming, but up to a line, and I think that tension is increasing very rapidly. The inequitable regulatory regime is causing that to happen. There’s concern that if you’re trying to get at the four broadcast networks, you have to get at the 104 other channels too. Because they’re all just clicks on a clicker right now for the vast majority of the public.”

This is the year of the woman director in Hollywood. But where are the black women directors?

A new PBS movie about the Medicis plays out like a cheap mafia yarn. “This is reenactment history, with a soundtrack of ominous and sinister music, and a voice-over (by Massimo Marinoni) that tells, in rasping and tremulous tones, a story of epic clashes of personality and temperament. Hyperbole wins the day. Everything is always a first, or unprecedented, or without equal. The Medici, who were very much of the Renaissance, are essentially given credit for the Renaissance. The actual stuff of history, the complex wars that kept the military forces of France, Spain, the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire in endless, internecine conflict, are compressed into unintelligibility.”

Mainstream media companies are battling digital piracy. But perhaps they would do well to look at the pornography industry, which has “always been among the first to exploit new technologies, including the VCR, the World Wide Web and online payment systems, is finding novel ways to deal with the threat of online piracy as well. The mainstream entertainment industry, some experts say, would do well to pay attention.”