Category: media

Emmy-bashing is high sport. “So why should viewers care? After all, like every entertainment award, the Emmys are as much a commercial creature as an artistic one. The broadcast and cable networks support them because they generate free publicity and Emmy-boasting promotions. Yet for all their flaws, the Emmys are still the medium’s most important public recognition of good work — and that should matter to any viewer who wants to see good work encouraged.”

“Movie studios once felt confident they had at least two weekends to sell as many movie tickets as possible before toxic buzz would undermine their multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Hollywood executives now say that the proliferation of movie-related e-mail, Internet blogs and text messaging has reduced that window to mere hours, as the quick decline of last weekend’s heavily promoted ‘Snakes on a Plane’ proved.”

American police have arrested a man for broadcasting a Hizbollah channel that the US Treasury Department has classified as a terrorist ntity. “Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday on allegations that his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New York-area satellite customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.”

AOL will begin selling movies online, in a deal with major studios. “The partnerships, announced Thursday, represent AOL’s latest efforts to become the destination for online video as the company tries to offset revenues it expects to lose from a recent decision to drop subscription fees for many high-speed customers.”

“However you look at it — by ratings, quality or excitement — this was a dismal summer for your TV set. Hot-weather hits were few, and even shows that could be classified as hits didn’t exactly set summer on fire.”

Construction of a new $173 million home for the Toronto Film Festival is expected to begin next year. “Festival Centre — its official name will be determined in the next 12 months — will contain five theatres, the largest containing 548 seats, the smallest 80… as well as a soaring lobby, a library, a ticket office, an art gallery and an education centre, among other services. ‘Ours will not be a multiplex, though we thought a lot about them, what they do well and what they don’t do well’.”

Stars still sell movies. “But the traditional — and often extreme — deference shown A-listers is changing along with the economics of Hollywood, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s public eviction of Tom Cruise from Paramount Pictures’ back lot. The Internet is growing fast as an entertainment channel, and the cost of producing blockbusters is rising almost as quickly. That emboldens studio chiefs working for publicly traded companies to challenge the fickle power of the most popular stars.”

Iranian movie theatres are enjoying a boom, “fueled largely by a greater number of homegrown romantic comedies, which have lured people back to the big screen. Movie theaters took in more than $2 million between March and May this year, up 100 percent from the same period last year, the state cinema authority Farabi reported.” (the tickets cost only $1).

Twenty-five years ago Pac-Man was a pop culture phenomenon. “There have been other pixilated paragons: the Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Lara Croft, Sonic the Hedgehog. But none have had the cultural tunami effect of the Pac-meister. Pac-Man provided an entirely new way of interfacing with technology: an emotional one.” So why hasn’t the video game industry been able to replicate Pac-Man’s success?

Movie box office revenues are expected to be up 7 percent over last summer, generating $3.9 billion. “Ticket revenues for 2005’s summer were $3.6 billion, which was down 8.5 percent from summer 2004’s record $3.95 billion, making it the worst box-office showing in four years. Attendance, the number of people buying tickets, for summer 2006 is estimated at just over 582 million, up nearly four percent from last year’s 564 million, which was off a whopping 11 percent from the previous year.”