Category: media

The president of Fox TV entertainment is complaining about new “indecendy” rules for broadcasters, calling them vague and “difficult to manage.” “Last month, US President George Bush signed a law increasing the maximum fine for airing unsuitable material tenfold to $325,000 (£175,000). ‘None of our business plans are designed to take on such huge fines’.”

American airlines have discovered that the quality of inflight entertainment figures in how passengers choose their airline. “After the price, the overall quality of in-flight service and a comfortable seat, then the in-flight entertainment is next in importance in a long-haul premium flight.”

“A far cry from its midcentury pop culture zenith, when youngsters would defy their parents by listening to transistor radios under the bedsheets, AM is nevertheless a vital, vibrant and profitable force in the universe of audio entertainment even as it battles its image of having too much talk and commercials.”

“Crash” won this year’s Best Picture Oscar, cost only $7.5 million to make, and earned $180 million at the box office. So why aren’t the creative talents who made the movie getting rich?

“Can it be? Programmers have heard the clamor for smarter, more literate television, and they have responded. (Disclaimer: Nobody is saying all these shows will hold up past the pilots, but a significant number of pilots are better than ever.)”

“Some people say that the film industry has more to fear than just being late to the party. If the Net begins spawning films — and not simply helping to market or deliver them, as has happened to date — studios’ grip on the business of putting pictures on screens may be challenged. Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience.”

Your movie cost $100 million-plus? I can fund that. But that $60 million movie? Not so much. “Filmmakers have been complaining for years that they can’t get studio support for midlevel movies — films with a budget between $25 million and $80 million. Although they have created indie divisions for small-budget films, the studios’ emphasis has turned to high-concept films, an increasing number of which have budgets that quickly top $100 million — and a handful more that double that figure.”

What kind of TV does the Boston Globe TV critic have? “My TV is the size of a large throw pillow, and it’s as fat as last year’s Kirstie Alley. It protrudes from both the front and the back of its wooden table, and it refuses to blend in with the pictures on the walls. With a pair of chintzy, trebly stereo speakers popping like dormers from its plastic sides, my TV takes an equal-opportunity approach to the aural experience. That means it makes a Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott movie sound as magical as, say, Brookline Access Television. For the record, I dug out my elusive tape measure and learned that my TV screen is but a mere 20 inches.”

For years, TV critics have carped and moaned about the lack of “intelligent” drama on American TV, and fans of supposedly smart shows have mounted petition drives just to keep their favorite low-rated show on the air for a few more episodes. Apparently, Hollywood has been listening all this time. “Can it be? Programmers have heard the clamor for smarter, more literate television, and they have responded.” Of course, whether anyone will be watching is another matter.

The iPod is king of the digital music world at the moment, and its share of the downloading market is so huge as to make any challenge seem Quixotic. But Microsoft is in the process of testing a portable player that it believes will seriously cut into Apple’s market share. “Microsoft has long coveted the market for handheld entertainment devices as the market for its core desktop software products becomes saturated.”