Category: media

TV-based conventions used to be limited to Star Trek and other sci-fi programs that obsessed fans built their lives around. But these days, the culture of TV/movie obsession has broadened considerably. Does LebowskiFest sound like your thing? What about a Napoleon Dynamite convention?

“Forever on the prowl for the next big thing in movie piracy, the motion picture industry is zeroing in on small and increasingly-powerful mobile-phone cameras that might be trained on theater screens… Hollywood is also watching for digital cameras capable of taking video. Last week a Virginia teenager pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawfully filming a motion picture after being nabbed capturing 20 seconds of Transformers with a Canon Powershot camera. She’d recorded the brief action scene to show her little brother later.”

“These new sites, all of which are ad-supported and transmit video with peer-to-peer technology, are seeking to move beyond YouTube by improving video quality, attracting professionally produced content and expanding the viewing experience — which is to say: to be more like TV.

Audiences are dwindling. “TV is losing its most coveted viewers to the Internet. In a recent IBM survey of more than 2,400 households in the United States, the U.K., Germany, Japan, and Australia, 19 percent of consumers said they spent six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, yet only 9 percent reported spending the same amount of time watching TV. Sixty-six percent reported viewing one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.”

“A maple-leaf logo has been added to Canadian CDs in Japan since 2004 as part of an ambitious campaign to create a distinctive Canadian brand here. And while revenues for Canadian pre-recorded music are collapsing at home, Japan is emerging as a crucial market for many Canadian performers, from top-name singers to smaller independent bands.”

“Two disc-sniffing dogs assisted Queens County and Motion Picture Association of America authorities to ferret out the alleged culprits, who became the nation’s first to be hunted by black Labrador retrievers trained to sniff out polycarbonate and other chemicals in optical discs”

“CBS’ new reality venture, which placed 40 children on a New Mexico ranch without any contact with their parents, has become a flash point in a television genre actors and writers have long blamed for taking jobs from them.”

In the UK “more people went to the cinema last month than in any month for the past 40 years. Bad weather, a procession of big budget sequels and the lack of big sporting events were the most obvious causes of the surge in attendance.”

“Summer movies had started to acquire a bad name among critics and viewers, with studios using the quieter months of July and August to tuck away films that stank. But this year there has been a noticeable glut of blockbusters, and the audience has responded in kind.”

“China’s media regulators have banned reality TV shows that feature plastic surgery or sex-change operations, after some viewers complained they were “horrifying and sickening.”