Category: media

Canada’s CBC television has announced it is canceling three critically-acclaimed series. “Cancellation of three CBC series without naming replacements is a short-sighted decision that will cost hundreds of jobs and imperil Canadian English-language TV drama, the union representing Canadian actors said yesterday.”

Changes of ownership of movie studios can have dire consequences for movie projects in production. “In the wake of two massive show business deals — Sony’s $4.9-billion pact with MGM and Disney’s $7.4-billion purchase of Pixar Animation Studios — the production and development on three movies have been terminated, while two finished films have been shelved with no immediate plans for release.”

Some Netflix customers are slamming the company for “throttling” them. The company has been slowing down shipments of movies to customers that its computers identify as heavy renters…

“An Oscar has always been as much about commerce as about art; it ups an actor’s asking price and box office appeal. These days the trophy itself can mean cold cash as a collectible, worth up to $50,000 for a “common Oscar,” as experts call the technical and tangential awards, and from several hundred thousand dollars to $1.5 million for those bestowed upon famous films and actors. The trade in vintage Oscars through publicized auctions and an underground market has become a parallel universe as competitive and bitter as the annual acting derby itself.”

“Video has jumped the shark, escaping the bonds of cable, dish, disc or cassette. Every media company from AOL to Zenith is scrambling to sign deals with programmers, allowing consumers to find and purchase nearly any form of moving image to play over any device.”

The 30-second TV commercial is old news. Now product placement rules. Over “the last three years, the number of placements, including the new integration, jumped 30% to 108,261 last year. NBC ranked highest with 7,470 instances of a product being shown on its reality show The Contender alone and an additional 3,009 placement shots on The Apprentice.”

While many news organizations have been reducing staff, National Public Radio has been on a hiring campaign. “The NPR news operation has added 50 journalists in the past three years, raising the total from 350 to 400. Ten years ago NPR had six foreign bureaus; it just opened its 16th, in Shanghai, putting it in the running with major national news organizations. The New York Times and CNN both have 26, the Los Angeles Times has 22, the Washington Post has 19.”

One of the great mysteries of modern Hollywood is why so many gay actors continue to maintain sham marriages and insist that they are heterosexual in what may be the most devoutly liberal enclave in the U.S. Now, one openly gay actor is publicly accusing the film industry of being unwilling to cast gays in leading roles. Ian McKellen, who is best known for his role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, says that “It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she’s lesbian.”

Sources at the Federal Communications Commissions are saying that the current investigation into “payola” – the illegal practice of paying radio stations or DJs in exchange for airplay – may be the largest such operation in American history. “Several of the largest radio conglomerates in America – the corporate owners of FM radio stations across the nation – are within the scope of the FCC probe, which was triggered by the two year long pay-for-play investigation by [New York Attorney General Eliot] Spitzer.” Hundreds of individual stations across the country and the record companies representing some of the world’s biggest pop stars are also being probed.

The Federal Communications Commission has reversed itself and come out in favor of allowing cable TV consumers to choose the channels they want to receive. “The latest report also said in most cases subscribers would save 3 percent to 13 percent on their bills under a la carte. It noted that earlier assumptions that a la carte would lead consumers to watch two hours less of TV — and thus decrease revenue for cable TV companies and increase costs — lacked factual support.”