Category: media

“Last year ABC sold commercial time in the Academy Awards show for as much as $1.8 million for a 30-second ad. Now, with the recession in full swing on top of five consecutive years of declining Oscar ratings, ABC has had to lower its rates. Individual spots have been selling for $1.4 million to $1.7 million.”

“Stations across the country are finding fewer dollars in their tote bags as governments trim costs, corporations and foundations pull back on sponsoring programs or give one-time gifts, and individuals examine which expenses they’ll shed.”

Despite pressure on the networks to diversify, the lead characters in all but a handful of prime-time scripted shows this season are white — and usually young and affluent. In contrast, reality programs consistently feature a broader range of people when it comes to race, age, class and sexual orientation.

“In the last two weeks, as media companies have unveiled their quarterly earnings, in many cases showing dismal losses, studio chiefs and Wall Street analysts have been debating whether consumers, having been forced by the recession to break themselves of the DVD-purchase habit, will resume buying discs after the wider economy recovers. And there are other storms on the horizon.”

“As long as the particulars of Academy voting are suppressed, we movie lovers will find Oscar Night less exciting as we watch it, less likely to lodge in our collective memory. Hollywood is supposed to be the best at creating drama, suspense, thrills — at putting on a great show. If we knew not only who the winners were, but by how much they won, the Oscar show could be the Super Bowl of movies.”

“It’s hard not to be cynical about this, but if you look at the glacial pace with which the federal government has moved in all things concerning the transition, we were immediately concerned as soon as it was clear that the coupon program was unable to process coupons….”

The spluttering economy, of course, is to blame: the almost-bankrupt General Motors has given up buying ad slots, as has Dove soap and L’Oréal Paris while American Express, usually a big spender, has bought only one slot.

“The national board’s vote was 73 percent to 27 percent against the proposal, the guild said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Studio negotiators demanded a contract that ran through 2012, rather than three years from the last expiration in June 2008, the guild said.”

“After years of watching [film] production lured away by government incentives, California’s gotten into the game by approving a five-year $500 million tax credit program. … California’s program, which goes into effect July 1 with a cap of $100 million annually, will likely strike at the heart of the New York production industry.”

“There is wireless internet service available in most any upper Egyptian coffeehouse for a handful of piasters. In Turkey, I paid the equivalent of a buck for an hour of Internet service in a dusty Anatolian town near a bunch of Greek ruins. … But in the middle of the busiest part of the most industrialized city in this state, it still costs $500 for the use of a high-speed phone line for four hours to cover that lumbering old two-toed sloth, the Academy Awards.”