Category: media

What does it mean for a film to win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival? “The Palme d’Or has very little effect on business in the United States, very little. There have even been cases when the Palme d’Or winner went unsold here for years.”

More than 50 percent of Britons have access to digital radio. “BBC digital radio made large gains – rock music station 6 Music now has 359,000 listeners, and comedy channel BBC7 has 621,000. Radio 2 maintains its position as the UK’s favourite station. However, its audience of 12.9 million is down by 389,000 on last year.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has bought majority interest in the Documentary Channel. “CBC bought the 53 per cent stake held by Corus Entertainment Inc., adding to the 29 per cent stake it already owned in the digital channel. The National Film Board of Canada holds another 14 per cent of the channel, which was launched in September 2001 in the first group of digital channels available in Canada.”

“Film censors said the musical score was too ‘tense’ for young children and ‘bone-crunching’ sound effects accentuated the onscreen violence to an unacceptable level. The British Board of Film Classification went ahead and awarded the film – which contains a series of bloody murders and scenes of a monk flagellating himself -a 12A-certificate only after the producers made significant changes to the audio content.”

Police in Cannes are planning a two-hour strike during the upcoming Film Festival. “They aim to draw attention to a dispute over working conditions and the use of contractual staff and are demanding that the head of town security, Guy Heron, be sacked.”

“Unlike middle-class U.S. consumers, poor people in Mexico can’t afford to go to the movies, or even buy or rent authentic videos or DVDs. The typical cost of a movie ticket is 50 pesos (about $5), and more than half of Mexico’s workers earn less than $13 a day.” But even poor Mexicans can afford to spend 10 pesos on pirated movies sold on the streets…

Director Ron Howard has rejected calls from Catholics to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the film adaptation of The DaVinci Code informing audiences that the story is a work of fiction. The Catholic sect Opus Dei, which is fictionalized in the book and depicted as a murderous secret society, had asked for the disclaimer. Howard’s reaction: “It’s not theology. It’s not history. To start off with a disclaimer … spy thrillers don’t start off with disclaimers.”

“Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence M. Small defended the Smithsonian’s television development deal with CBS/Showtime Networks yesterday, saying the agreement was not reached in secret and that restrictions in the contract would affect only a very small number of filmmakers. The Smithsonian will not release the contract; it will not even say how long it runs. Filmmakers have raised questions about the new policy, which can bar independent commercial documentary makers from more than incidental use of Smithsonian materials.”

An appeal will be filed in the copyright case that pitted The Beatles’ record label against Apple Computer. The computer company this week won the right to continue selling music through its iTunes music service, but the rock group (which has a long-standing copyright agreement with the company due to the previous existence of the group’s Apple Corps record label) says that the ruling was “curious” and points out that the judge appeared to be in the thrall of Apple’s technological offerings. The judge’s ruling declared that Apple was selling “data transmissions” through iTunes, and therefore was not violating the agreement.

For decades, the BBC has ruled the roost when it comes to arts programming in Great Britain. But competition looms in the form of a Rupert Murdoch-owned satellite channel called ArtsWorld, and this month, the channel will begin broadcasting in Hi-Definition, a change which has some predicting a new (and popular) wave of arts programs with unrivaled sound quality.