Category: media

Its feminist raison d’etre notwithstanding, Gloria Steinem’s new radio venture is awash in fluff. “GreenStone, as Ms. Steinem explained in a CNN interview last week, is predicated on the notion that women have abandoned radio, and the talk format specifically, because it is ‘too hostile and argumentative and crazy’ and because women are ‘not nearly as hostile and argumentative.’ … GreenStone too easily obliges the idea that debate is just a synonym for bad manners, and in doing so suggests that the only corrective to invidious discussion is no discussion at all — or, rather, lots of little discussions about hosiery and slumber parties.”

The deal offers Warner content streamed over YouTube. It comes “days after Universal Music said it was considering legal action over sites such as YouTube. A royalty-tracking system has been developed by YouTube to detect when videos on the site are using copyrighted material and work out how much Warner is owed in advertising revenue.”

“The Dove Foundation is a Grand Rapids, Mich., nonprofit with Christian roots, and its ties to Hollywood are growing so deep these days that its opinion can send a movie back to the editing room before its release. Weeks before ‘Everyone’s Hero’ was released, the film’s production company, IDT Entertainment, hand delivered a copy to the Dove Foundation. When Dove staff told IDT that the ‘Oh, my Gods!’ in the film might offend the 1.9 million people who consult the foundation’s reviews, IDT changed each ‘Oh, my God!’ to ‘Oh, my gosh!’ “

“Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell says he never saw a study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage.”

A film pondering the assassination of George Bush has won the top critics’ prize at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Death of a President, directed by Gabriel Range, was chosen ‘for the audacity with which it distorts reality, to reveal a larger truth,’ said a statement released by the festival.”

It used to be that new network TV shows got a few weeks (even a season) to find out if they could attract an audience. No more. Some shows even get canceled after their first episode…

Ten years after Congress passed a law which led to ever-greater consolidation of America’s radio and TV stations by giant multinational corporations, a former FCC staffer is claiming that the regulatory agency suppressed a 2004 study which concluded that the consolidation was hurting the quality of local TV news. “The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.”

The Motion Picture Association of America, which, among other things, issues age appropriateness ratings for every film released widely on American screens, operates with a level of secrecy generally reserved for international espionage organizations. A new documentary attempts to blow the lid off what the filmmakers see as an irresponsible and arbitrary process through which serious films are made or broken by their ratings. “The board’s members seem to have it in for independent films and hold scenes of sex, especially gay sex, to far more stringent standards than they do acts of violence.”

Political films have dominated this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Also: “The gift lounges are reportedly eerily unpopulated this year, ever since the IRS announced that stars must declare gifts from award shows – which sometimes total thousands of dollars in swag – as taxable income.”

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival stirred controversy even before it began over the overtly political (some would say savage) nature of some of its featured entries. But Manohla Dargis says that to focus on the loudmouths is to miss the more important (and more subtle) politics of TIFF’s best films.