Category: media

MTV, that pop culture juggernaut of the last three decades, is finally, blessedly, culturally irrelevant. “There was a time in the 1980s and ’90s when the channel had the ballast to send an act to the top of the Billboard charts, but ‘American Idol’ is the new boss. There was a time when the word ‘clip’ meant an MTV video with artistic and commercial punch, but now the word refers to the virals that ricochet through YouTube. And there was a time when a band had no future without MTV exposure, but now a MySpace page or a position on iTunes is more essential. When it comes to the buzz biz, MTV is out of the loop.”

The heavily promoted (but critically unpopular) Spider Man 3 smashed box office records this weekend with its US release, raking in $148 million in two nights while playing on more than 4,200 screens (also a record.) The previous record for an opening weekend was $136m, set by last year’s Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

At a time when many public television stations are cutting back on local programming, LA’s KCET is taking the daring approach of dramatically expanding its local reach in an effort to draw in new audiences. “KCET’s proposal is just the sort of programming public broadcasting needs to keep government funds, a small but significant portion of its budget, from shriveling.”

At a time when major Hollywood movies are pirated and sold on street corners even before their theatre debut, Sony’s anti-piracy measures seem to have protected Spiderman 3.”Sony’s multimillion-dollar security plan seems to have worked. Although the studio admits that bootleg copies of ‘Spider-Man 3’ could be available for sale and download as early as this weekend, the studio appears to have blocked the release of any illegal copies before the film landed in theaters.”

“That virtually unnoticed 1990 decision, by the guild’s board of directors, to funnel more than 90 percent of American writers’ foreign earnings to big studios and other fat cats, mirrors an old practice struck between screenwriters, actors, directors and the studios in the 1940s shortly after the WGA, Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild were born — and conceded authorship of the movies they created to the studios.”

The fastest-rising radio station in Washington DC is a Spanish-language station called El Zol. “El Zol seems to benefit from favorable demographics, limited competition and a big signal. People of Latino descent compose only about 11 percent of the area’s potential radio audience (Arbitron measures only people 12 and older), but El Zol nearly has this market to itself.”

“A bipartisan group of House of Representatives lawmakers said Wednesday that they had written the presidents of 19 colleges and universities asking their officials to complete an expansive survey on the use of their campus networks for illegal downloading of copyrighted music, video or other digital content. The institutions were singled out because they had received the largest number of copyright infringement notices from the recording and movie industries.”

The movie theatre business has been lagging for several years. But suddenly there seems to be business interest in investing in theatres. “The financial community’s strong interest reflects confidence in the long-term growth of the theater business. In the short term it’s always cyclical, but in the long run this is a growth industry.”

“Latino advocacy organizations upset about filmmaker Ken Burns’s forthcoming PBS documentary on World War II have stepped up their campaign against the film, pressuring two corporate sponsors to remove their support.”

With CD sales continuing to tank, the latest attempt to stave off digital defeat is to let consumers burn their own custom, in-store CDs. “New machines, available from at least five different companies and now in operation in more than 150 record stores, Starbucks, book stores and big-box electronics stores across the country, allow consumers to pick 15 or so singles from various artists and burn them onto a CD.”