Category: media

Criticism is mounting over privacy concerns at Apple’s online iTunes music store. The iTunes site collects information on users in order to recommend tracks other than those already purchased, and Apple says that it doesn’t keep the information or use it for other purposes. “Privacy advocates complained that Apple had not done enough to warn people about the information that was being collected, nor what was being done with the collected data.”

Last week’s Consumer Electronics Show offered lots of whiz-bang ways to get electronic entertainment. A utopia? Or a maze of tech problems? Tech heavyweights such as Intel, Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp all showed off networking systems, but none of those systems are designed to work together. The resulting problems are similar to miscommunication between people who speak the same language but different dialects — sometimes they might understand each other perfectly well, but at other times they might not.

The top radio station in LA in December? KOST-FM. Why? For the holidays it played wall-to-wall Christmas music. “It was the fifth consecutive year that the Clear Channel station had switched to an all Christmas music format in the weeks preceding the holiday, but this was the first time the station had so dominated the ratings.”

It’s taken as a given that the big movie awards shows are a big deal. But will they stay a big deal? “With the supply of awards shows now outpacing the demand, viewership for the really big ones — the Golden Globes, the Emmys, the Grammys — has been declining for some years, and let’s not forget that fewer and fewer people feel strongly enough about movies to pay to see them in theatres.”

PBS president Pat Mitchell is leaving the network to head up the Museum of Television & Radio. “Mitchell has been PBS president since March 2000. She was the first woman as well as the first producer and journalist to hold the position. Before that, she spent eight years as executive in charge of original productions for Ted Turner’s cable networks, where her documentaries and specials received 37 Emmy Awards and five Peabody Awards.”

It’s always been an article of faith among movie and TV critics that you don’t reveal a big plot twist before the audience has a chance to see it for themselves. But what to do today, in a world of on-demand media in which some viewers will go berserk over a critic’s “spoiler,” even if it comes weeks or months after the show in question first aired? Joanna Weiss is sick of all the whining: “Well, I contend that what happens on TV the night before constitutes news, and is thus fit for a newspaper. That’s not to say we can’t be nice and offer a small grace period… But beyond that, facts are fair game.”

The UK has the most illegal downloads of TV shows. There’s no legal downloading system. Now there’s a proposal for TV producers. “They would have a set amount of time, called a ‘primary window’, in which to distribute the show. There would be a second period, or ‘holdback window’, during which broadcasters could restrict what the show’s producers do with it.”

“In a year when box office receipts were down 5 per cent at mainstream theatres, Imax Corp. saw ticket sales climb 35 per cent in 2005. Much of that increase was driven by the conversion of several Hollywood films to its giant screens.”

“Box office may be down, but sales of iPods, Xboxes, cellphones, MP3 players, TiVos and plasma screen TVs are going up. Make that … skyrocketing. People are spending more time every year with entertainment — nearly every new consumer electronics gadget exists to provide it. But with today’s entertainment coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes, two-hour movies are simply no longer the first-choice package.”

The Producers’ Guild is limiting the number of producers eligible for Oscar credit. “Making the grade is important because it’s the only way the phrase ‘Oscar-winning producer’ will end up in your obituary should your film win. For the guild, it means playing bad cop, which seems appropriate given that’s what producers are often forced to do when making a film. But the organization has a bigger agenda in trying to rein in the proliferation of unearned producer credits on movies, which studios give away like freebies just to stroke egos.”