Category: media

The latest installment in the Indiana Jones film franchise hasn’t hit theaters yet, but the Internet critics already have their knives out. “Movie studios increasingly tend to protect their biggest bets from advance showings… Bad notices could keep the more ambivalent moviegoers from attending and thwart a truly huge box office haul.”

“It is a festival that sometimes appears to be suffering severe personality disorder, uncertain whether it exists to celebrate art or commerce. When the two worlds collide, confusion often ensues. Parties and photo opportunities risk distracting attention from the once-important fact that there are films to be shown.”

An aspiring Canadian filmmaker “launched a Web site earlier this year to raise C$1 million ($988,457) and is selling frames of his yet-to-be-made film over the Internet for C$10 a piece. In return, investors will receive a credit in his movie, advertisement rights on his site and a cut of the profits if the film makes money.”

“Negotiations between Hollywood studios and the Screen Actors Guild were dashed Tuesday when contract talks ended on a bitter note, fueling anxiety over the prospect of another strike. After three weeks of talks, studios walked away from the table, saying that negotiations were ‘thrust into reverse’ by what they called ‘unreasonable demands’.”

So the movie Iron Man sold $100 million in tickets its opening weekend. Okay. But the video game Grand Theft Auto IV grossed $500 million in worldwide sales its first week.

“When things went wrong, the networks had no idea how to fix them because they have been relying on aging business processes and stubborn, viewer-unfriendly practices for ages. Those need to change.”

US TV ratings are down considerably, even after striking writers came back to work. But while it’s convenient to blame the strike for the slippage, the strike is not solely to blame…

In recent weeks, universities have seen a huge increase in the number of complaints about illegal student downloading from the Recording Industry Association of America. But colleges say they have seen no increase in network traffic, and are questioning the legitimacy of the RIAA complaints.

“Though studio ad spending in newspapers has stabilized recently, it’s still way lower than it was just two years ago. According to the Newspaper National Network, studios spent $880 million on newspaper ads last year, down from $1.5 billion in 2005. While that huge drop has hit some papers hard, the fact that the bleeding has slowed of late is encouraging.”

“This new paradigm will feature advanced set-top boxes — courtesy of the cable industry’s hush-hush Project Canoe initiative — that will, the cable biz hopes, deliver on its long-touted promise of precisely targeting ads to individuals based on taste and lifestyle just like Internet advertising does.”