Category: media

“The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced that video games are as important to popular culture as film and television. As a result, what it regards as “one of the principal contemporary art forms” will be rewarded with a beefed-up British Academy video games awards in October.”

Spanish language TV in the US is big. “Catering to the country’s growing Latino population — 40 million and counting — Univision now challenges ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, especially in big coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami, occasionally beating them in the ratings with its sexy, soapy prime-time shows. Any new owner would have to wrestle with the shifting dynamics of the company’s audience. More Latinos are American-born and English-speaking, and their tastes in television are changing more quickly than Univision’s shows.”

French legislators have withdrawn a plan that would have imposed a flat fee for music and movie downloads. “Radical legislators had proposed setting a fee on internet usage that would allow users to download both movies and music for a fee of about eight euros ($11) a month. The fee would be used to reimburse artists. The idea was heavily opposed by recording studios and film associations around the world who said it would rob them of income.”

Canada’s third political party (the New Democrats, or NDP) is calling for changes to the CBC’s governance structure, with the intention of ending the tradition of choosing the broadcaster’s chief executive through patronage.

The legal battles are continuing between two Montreal-based film festivals, each of which wants to be known as the city’s signature fest. The longtime director of the Montreal World Film Festival alleges a widespread conspiracy to ruin him and kill off the festival, and the fact that he appears already to have won the war hasn’t stopped the seemingly endless parade of lawsuits.

“The nation’s fourth-largest radio company, Entercom Communications Corp., traded airtime for gifts and payments in a payola scam that included formalized programs to sell airplay to record labels, according to a suit filed Wednesday by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. The suit’s most serious allegations focus on Entercom’s ‘CD Preview’ and ‘CD Challenge’ programs, in which radio executives allegedly solicited payments to improve a song’s position on national airtime charts.”

The lawsuit over producer credits for the Oscar-winning film, Crash, may seem like nothing more than a lot of Hollywood insider bickering. But there are a number of underlying issues at stake, and not all of them have to do with the vanity of movie people. Among other things, “[the] suit has raised a real issue for debate within Hollywood about the confidential arbitration process.”

Ever since TiVo took over the American television landscape, there has been an explosion of homemade versions of the personal video recorder that do most of the same things TiVo can do, but cheaper, and without a monthly subscription. However, a new round of “digital rights management” legislation threatens to make all but the “official” recorders obsolete, and Hollywood is pushing hard for passage.

“2005 marks Pixar’s 10th year as a public company and, I’m pleased to report, our most profitable year ever,” Pixar chairman and chief executive Steve Jobs said.”

The University of Michigan is investigating the school’s public radio and TV stations after the recent departure of two key staffers. “U of Michigan administration and campus police say they have launched investigations of Michigan Public Media, the umbrella organization for Michigan Radio, Michigan Television, the Flint-based public TV channel broadcasting as WFUM-TV, and the Michigan Channel, a cable affiliate.”