Category: media

“In case you’ve ignored the sounds of rising panic rippling over Hollywood lately: The networks and studios have been negotiating a new contract with the union representing TV and film writers, and . . . let’s just say it’s not going well. If it happens, a strike could wind up being even more damaging than the infamous 1988 writers’ walkout, which academics and other observers have generally characterized as a lose-lose.”

“Language is a singular spoke in a larger societal wheel of complaints about television and pop culture in general that includes racy sexual content and unrelenting violence as well… Nonprofit groups such as the Parents Television Council are pressuring lawmakers to find a way to broaden their powers over the medium in hopes of steamrolling, even rolling back, what they consider the disturbing trends.”

“The past two decades have seen a marked shift in local television news across the country, away from in-depth coverage and toward speed and spectacle. Broadcast news, envisioned in the early years of television as a means of enriching civic life, has – according to politicians, media watchdog groups, and many TV journalists themselves – degenerated into lowest-common-denominator entertainment. But a study published earlier this year – the most exhaustive ever conducted of local television news – suggests that the industry has severely underestimated its audience.”

An Inconvenient Truth didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize – Al Gore did. But the former veep’s smash-hit documentary certainly played a large role in bringing global attention to climate change, and many credit it with helping to effectively end the debate over the existence of the problem. So how did a low-budget film concept based on a speech Gore had been giving since the 1980s evolve into a global warning?

“Some 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West are widely expected to give their leaders authority to call a strike at any time after the Oct. 31 expiration of their contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Meanwhile, both sides — with back-channel help from lawyers, agents and other players who want to keep Hollywood working — are struggling to reboot a bargaining dynamic gone awry.”

“Even within the inhibited boundaries of mainstream culture, transgender characters have long drawn fascination. They’ve figured in guest turns on medical dramas and legal shows, or wound their way into network casts in ways that strained credulity… Transgenders are becoming even more visible. But not so three-dimensional.”

More than £160 million will be spent on music and video downloads in the UK this year, according to a forecast. That’s up more han 45% from last year.

“Audiences would see the effects of a lengthy strike on television first because of tighter production timetables. Even then, they probably wouldn’t notice the absence of prime-time favorites before early 2008.”

Why has October become such a prime month for the release of great independent films? “Studio specialty divisions like Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax, Fox Searchlight and Paramount Vantage are in full stride this time of year, having used the bounce of film festivals in Toronto and New York to begin positioning their films for the Oscars.”

A Colombian TV game show called “Nothing But The Truth” has been canceled after a contestant confessed to hiring someone to kill her husband. “On the Colombian version, dollar-desperate contestants confessed everything from drug smuggling to homosexual prostitution before a studio audience packed with unsuspecting loved ones. It drew high ratings and spurred a boom in polygraph usage among private companies trying to screen employees and protect themselves from infiltration by Colombia’s well-organized mafias.”