Category: media

“The CBC told employees Wednesday it will cut about 800 jobs in an effort to save $171-million amid a flagging economy that has seen advertising revenues plummet. The cuts needed to balance the public broadcaster’s budget for 2009-10 are expected to hit CBC Television hardest, but both television and radio audiences will notice a reduction in news content as well as programming of current affairs, drama, music and special events. Repeats will become more frequent to fill the void.”

Peter Morgan, the screenwriter of The Last King of Scotland, The Queen and Frost/Nixon, has written and will direct “The Special Relationship, an HBO film which focuses on the rapport between [Tony] Blair and Bill Clinton.” Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore will portray the Clintons, with Michael Sheen as the former PM.

“With its lingering debt problems resolved for now, Blockbuster is pinning some of its hopes on a digital future. The struggling video rental chain will announce a partnership with TiVo on Wednesday to deliver Blockbuster’s digital movie library over the Internet directly to the televisions of people with TiVo digital video recorders.”

“Usually around this time the Motion Picture Assn. of America formally issues, with much fanfare, its annual entertainment industry report on the prior year.” So why no report yet on 2008, which was a record-breaking year? “Turns out that’s the problem –insiders say MPAA topper Dan Glickman doesn’t want to publicly tout the health of the box office during the economic crisis. Nor does he want to give Washington politicos ammunition.”

“While the very phrase ‘product placement’ elicits jeers and hisses in the TV and movie worlds, on the web something surprising has been happening: Branded content is emerging as not just a promising way to make money, but as creatively viable as well. … [I]n some cases, the show can be the brainchild of the advertiser itself.”

“In a marketing culture so perfectly calibrated that experts can predict what’s in our fridge by the car we drive, why is it that what women want in a movie is still considered mysterious? We clearly aren’t unreadable consumers (Seriously. They know what milk you buy), so it’s odd that every woman I know has a movie appetite that includes more than ‘chick flicks’ (though we love those too), when for years nobody seemed to know it.”

“At a time when newspapers, magazines and TV news continue to lose readers and viewers, at least one part of the traditional media has continued to grow robustly: National Public Radio. The audience for NPR’s daily news programs, including ‘Morning Edition’ and ‘All Things Considered,’ reached a record last year…. The favorable audience data, however, hasn’t spared NPR from the budget woes that are affecting almost every news organization in the nation.”

“It is all too easy for a female actor to find herself cast as the mother of someone who once played her boyfriend as soon as she blows out the candles on her 35th birthday cake. This has long been an accepted fact of Hollywood life…. But last weekend, Hope Davis finally broke ranks to admit she was somewhat ‘peeved’ when she was recently offered a role playing the mother of Johnny Depp,” who was born in 1963 — the year before Davis.

“There are more film festivals today than any Caltech astrophysicist can count. Not surprisingly, the ranks are starting to thin, an inevitable consequence of not only festival glut but also the deteriorating economy.”

“According to the box office tracking service Media By Numbers, movie attendance in the first quarter of 2009 is up 12 percent over the same period last year. The box office gross for the same period was $2 billion, a 14 percent jump from 2008.”