“FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing that the agency has the authority to impose stricter regulations over the industry based on a 1984 law that gives FCC more clout if cable subscription exceeds 70 percent of the households where service is available.”
Category: media
Why There Are No More Movie Stars
“What you get in movies now is, with some important exceptions, one close-up after another. Part of the reason why stars became stars in the earlier era is that the camera didn’t jump from face to face, but remained steadily trained on the social situation.”
Racial Jokes Proliferate On US TV
“Jokes about race and racial tensions are suddenly all over television, or more precisely, all over comedies that pride themselves on tweaking convention and political correctness.”
Advertisers Fret About TV Writers’ Strike
“So far, the strike has forced only late-night talk and comedy shows into reruns, since their material must be freshly scripted every day. But when marquee shows like “The Office,” “Desperate Housewives” and “24” halted production, the supply of ready-to-air prime-time hits came under threat – and that has been unsettling to advertisers.”
Internet Radio That Beats All
“Radio is, of course, the great survivor medium, a century old and still occupying more hours in the average American’s week than network television–and just about every other type of entertainment, too. But given what’s out there for free, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would bother to pay for a satellite subscription.”
Survey: Young Europeans Prefer Internet To TV
“Almost six out of 10 West Europeans now regularly access the Internet and, for the first time, young people are more likely to go online for most days of the week than turn on the television, according to a new survey.”
First UK Town To Switch Off Analog TV And Go Digital
“Around 25,000 households will need Freeview, satellite, cable or broadband installed in order to watch television. Analogue TV will be switched off in the rest of the UK by the end of 2012.”
Writers’ Strike Affecting Campaigning For Oscars
While the labor dispute with movie studios and television networks already has disrupted TV schedules, it is starting to affect a less public — but nonetheless critical — part of the Hollywood economy: Academy Awards campaigning.
Hollywood Writers Strike Based On Fear
“Whenever a new technology has arrived, Hollywood has seen it as a grave threat to prosperity, whether it was the coming of talkies, the growth of television or the arrival of the VCR, the greatest gravy train of all, which the studios immediately attempted to sue out of existence. The studios didn’t crumble — they reinvented themselves and continued to prosper.”
Florida Newspaper Readers Protest Cutting Movie Critic
“Readers reacted strongly to recent news that they would no longer see three longtime columnists in the paper. The movie critic, it turns out, held unusual sway in the region.”