Category: media

“A comedy called — with intended irony, but not in the way that it has worked out — ‘Nobody’s Watching’ has been available on YouTube for about two weeks. As of yesterday it had been downloaded more than 300,000 times by a growing legion of fans. Most remarkable of all, the talk that the show has generated has already caught the ears of executives at several networks, some of whom are wondering if maybe this is a virus they might enjoy getting infected with.”

“After abandoning theaters in worrying numbers last summer, American moviegoers are returning to the multiplex, steadily if slowly. Through the first 25 weeks of the year, domestic box-office revenue — helped by a boost in ticket prices — was up nearly 5 percent, to $4.6 billion, though it still trailed 2004, according to the tracking company Exhibitor Relations. Movie attendance was up about 1.65 percent to 699 million for the first 25 weeks, after a sharp decline the year before.”

Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth. “But where does that leave truly older audiences, fossils over 50 or 60 or even 70? To Hollywood these have been the perennially invisible men and women. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting.”

Members of the US Congress are demanding to know why a Christian-themed movie was rated PG. “House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and other lawmakers are demanding explanations after hearing complaints that the movie ‘Facing the Giants’ was rated PG instead of G due to religious content. The Motion Picture Association of America claims the controversy arose from a miscommunication with the filmmakers. It says religion was not the reason for the rating.”

It’s actually a minor change. “Entries in the foreign language category are no longer required to be in the official language of the country submitting the film. Any language or combination of languages is acceptable, as long as the dominant one is not English.”

In the first half of this year “video purchases are down 3.6 percent, to $7 billion, while rentals fell 3.9 percent to $3.9 billion. Studio executives aren’t surprised, saying that the now-mature DVD business has become increasingly product-driven.”

The CBC is planning to pre-empt its flagship national network news show one day a week in the fall to make room for an American “reality” show. “What’s so revealing about this whole affair is that it shows just how out of touch the CBC is with, er, reality. It’s like the people who run the CBC live in some sort of alternate universe, where the normal rules that govern television programming don’t apply.”

A BBC mini-series about the Asian tsunami has angered victims for the disaster. “Thai survivors and relief workers say they were most angered that the crew chose to re-enact the disaster – complete with dead bodies and overturned cars – on the main road through Khao Lak that was devastated by the giant waves. Others were upset the crew chose to put up flyers throughout the tsunami-hit region, saying victims were needed as extras.”

America’s public radio stations are losing audience. “Listening to locally produced music slid first, but other categories also lost momentum—even network news, which has fueled pubradio’s audience growth. Listening is measured in billions of listener-hours per year.”

Ontario’s public broadcaster TVOntario will be getting a major makeover in the next two years, courtesy of the provincial government. An additional CDN$25 million has been allocated to TVO for the express purpose of refocusing its mission on education. The channel (not affiliated with CBC, Canada’s nationwide public broadcaster,) will also be permitted to “use a portion of the much-needed government funds to replace its antiquated television cameras with digital equipment.”