Category: media

Comcast had made a deal with NBC to make NBC’s programming available on demand. “The deal makes available top prime-time and late night programs from the NBC broadcast network, as well as popular shows from NBC Universal’s USA, Bravo and Sci-Fi cable channels.”

Hollywood veteran Fred Fuchs, who served as head of Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio, has been hired as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s new executive director of arts and entertainment programming. He arrives at the CBC as pressure is mounting on Canadian broadcasters to focus more on homegrown content and less on American imports.

Hollywood is all abuzz over the latest notion in consumer marketing – bringing a movie to DVD while it’s still available in theatres, and sometimes even launching the two simultaneously. But while consumers may cheer the idea, there’s one significant group of players in the movie biz who couldn’t be more against it: theatre owners. They believe that simultaneous DVD release will cripple their business, and they’re using all their clout to nip the idea in the bud.

The FCC has canceled a quarter of the fines it recently leveled. A change in heart? Policy? Nope. “The Indiana stations that had aired CBS’s Without a Trace that included the objectionable scene of teen-sex party, aired the broadcast at 10 p.m. in the Central and Mountain zones when indecency broadcasts are protected, rather than at 9 p.m. when the broadcast could be fined (the indecency “safe harbor” is 6 a.m. – 10 p.m.).”

“Some skeptics have predicted that today’s increasingly diverse media landscape will render campus radio stations — long known for eclectic fare — obsolete. After all, many students have traded their stereos for computer speakers, forsaking FM radio for iTunes and song swapping. But, college stations with a tradition of strong listenership, are finding a bigger audience online, broadening their reach and their influence.”

“These days, apparently, the human condition on broadcast TV does not include any sexual behavior. Following sweeping Federal Communications Commission indecency decisions two weeks ago that resulted in proposed fines of more than $4 million against more than 125 TV stations, the WB has snipped every last sexy interlude from a pilot version it had already approved.”

Canadian broadcasters are spending more money on buying American shows than they are on Canadian shows. “Last year we were shocked that so-called Canadian private broadcasters spent four times more on U.S. programming than they did on original Canadian drama. Now we’re appalled to learn that in 2005, they spent almost five times more. The system is clearly broken.”

A lawsuit against producers of “Brokeback Mountain points up “an uncomfortable contradiction in the specialty divisions owned by the major studios. That is, movies are budgeted as though they were in the independent world, often squeezing every nickel out of actors, directors and production staff, who cut their fees to near nothing for the privilege of making a picture they are passionate about. When it comes to releasing the film, however, the “arthouse” divisions can take advantage of the deep pockets of their studio parents, frequently spending tens of millions of dollars to promote a movie to glory or box office success in the award season. There is a trap in there somewhere…”

This is not the first time the movie business has been threatened by technology. “In the 1950s, as today, theaters were under siege, their audience being lured away by a dazzling new technology. Today’s competition comes from the Internet, computer games and home entertainment centers. Then the enemy was television. “How do you compete with free?” theater owners moaned, the same mantra we’ve heard from record executives complaining about unauthorized file sharing. My response has always been the same: You’ve got to embrace the future.”

French TV has its first black news reader. “So are France’s mainstream channels becoming more, well, colourful? Up to a point. ‘It’s a step forward but there’s still a huge gap between the reality of French society and how it’s represented on television’.”