Category: media

“Stage actors love theater. Film actors see movies. Musicians dig concerts by their fellow musicians. But TV performers just don’t seem to catch much TV, according to an unofficial survey spanning years of interviews I’ve had with them.”

“A ruling published Wednesday by the High Audiovisual Council, the French broadcast authority, bans such programming in an effort to protect the very young from what it described as the harmful effects of television.”

“At a time when pay-TV services are supposed to grow, Dish Network, operator of Echostar,actually lost 25,000 subscribers last quarter. Why? The competition is fiercer than ever. Satellite providers aren’t just competing against each other, they’re competing against former partners — such as AT&T and Verizon, both of which are rolling out premium television services.”

“The Hollywood talent agency International Creative Management agreed on Tuesday to pay $4.5 million to settle an age-discrimination suit brought by TV writers, the first of 23 such class-action cases to be resolved.”

“What’s been the biggest single influence on attitudes to war and peace during the last few decades? Sure ain’t schools civic lessons or Tony Blair’s speeches. However, the cavalcade of Star Wars films, together with their associated TV and radio series, novels, videogames, comic-books and other miscellaneous spin-offs, could perhaps lay claim to the title.”

“The channels, reflecting contemporary and classical programming, will run alongside its existing HD Channel. From October, Sky Arts 1 will feature contemporary shows, such as live rock concerts, while Sky Arts 2 will show opera and other classical art content.”

“Pew said the results show an increasing shift toward online news consumption, but that there is now a sizable group of a more engaged, sophisticated and well-off people that use both traditional and online sources to get their news.”

Pandora — practically the poster child for online radio — says it will shut down if royalty rates enacted in March of 2007 are not altered soon.

SAG leaders have so far been unwilling to do so, or to seek the authorization of members to call a strike. Many industry watchers doubt SAG could muster the 75 percent majority needed to back a walkout, in part because of lingering fatigue from the writers strike.

“Each week, in its ongoing campaign to become sillier and more perplexing, the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Rating Administration (MPAA and CARA for short) contributes another series of film ratings, along with reasons, briefly (or “momentarily”) stated, for those ratings.”