Category: media

Fox plans to start selling movies and TV shows for downloading. “Movies will sell for about $20 and TV shows for $1.99 an episode. Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store already sells many television shows, including “24” and others from Fox, for $1.99 apiece, but those can only be played on the company’s market-leading iPod devices or through its iTunes software on a computer.”

A growing number of people say they prefer playing video games to watching TV. The study reports “that 31 percent of the over-18 set preferred the games to TV for whiling away a spare hour. Watching movies at home fared better, with 21 percent choosing games instead, but going to the movie theater did slightly worse with 35 percent.”

When satellite radio was launched several years back, providers XM and Sirius crowed that they would fill the void left by increasingly consolidated corporate radio, featuring formats and genres virtually ignored on the terrestrial dial. And for a while, that’s exactly what they did. But lately, Sirius and XM have begun to sound suspiciously alike. More alarming is the fact that each service has been quietly dropping music formats that fail to garner a large audience – exactly the sort of pandering to the masses that satellite was supposed to alleviate.

What constitutes music theft? As it turns out, the legal reality of copyright enforcement is miles away from what most younger consumers believe to be stealing. Many consumers who would never think of downloading music without paying for it believe that there’s nothing wrong with copying a few songs for a friend. But the law says otherwise, and that disconnect worries the recording industry.

What do the kids want? Answer that question, and a world of marketing consultants and entertainment execs will beat a path to your door. In fact, it can be so difficult to judge the preferences of the young that those manufacturing the cutting edge entertainment devices of today frequently discover tomorrow that no one cares. Case in point: the rush to release all manner of TV shows, movies, and other viewable media in a form viewable on cell phones and iPods. As it turns out, young people just aren’t interested.

In an effort to promote homegrown productions, the Chinese government has banned foreign-made cartoons from prime-time television schedules. “Foreign cartoons, especially from Japan, are hugely popular with China’s 250 million children and the country’s own animation studios have struggled to compete. Communist leaders are said to be frustrated that so many cartoons are foreign-made, especially after efforts to build up Chinese animation studios.”

“The San Francisco International Film Festival, approaching its 50th anniversary, has received a three-year grant from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The grant, totaling $150,000, has been awarded to only two festivals in past years: the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival.”

Video games have largely replaced violent movies and rap music as the primary target for groups intent on protecting children from what they see as damaging influences. Worse, when gaming isn’t being blamed for everything from obesity to school shootings, the mainstream media largely ignores it entirely. So how can the industry remake its image and appeal to the wider culture? “That reflects the biggest, broadest problem facing the game industry today: in the United States, at least, playing video games just isn’t normal.”

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center opened strong in the U.S. on Thursday, taking in $4.4 million in box office receipts despite renewed terror fears. “Meanwhile the movie’s marketing plans will not be changed, despite the alleged plot to blow up US airliners. Studio executives had considered scaling back advertising for the film in light of the news, but decided against it.”

Is TV so bad that it’s headed for total cultural irrelevance? Kira Cochrane thinks it might be. “Not only has crap TV become much, much worse, it is no longer interspersed with the necessary quality TV, a vaguely classy amuse-bouche to savour before heading back to the sea of rubbish… While I have never agreed with the argument that TV is inherently depressing, I have started to suspect that it leads you to depression through a slightly circuitous route.”