Category: media

“During the 2004-2005 television season, members of average American homes collectively spent 8 hours and 11 minutes per day watching TV. (The season ran from Sept. 20, 2004, to Sept. 18, 2005.) The figure – 2.7 percent higher than last year and 12.5 percent above viewing levels a decade ago – represents the greatest amount of time being spent watching TV in American homes since Nielsen began measuring national audiences in the 1950s.”

Hollywood movies had a great September, rebounding from a dreadful summer slump. “Amid 19 weekends of diminished box office — a record stretch that started in late February and ended in early July — many said they believed a cultural sea change was underway. Among the theories: People preferred to consume their entertainment in the comfort of their homes, whether watching DVDs on super-sharp plasma screens, surfing the Internet or playing video games.” The real reason? Movies nobody wanted to watch.

When she was 10 years old, Sarah Polley starred in Terry Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”. Seventeen years later she recalls the experience as terrifying, and, upon hearing that Gilliam is shooting another movie with a young Canadian actress, writes to tell him of her traumas back then.

In the wake of the dual hurricanes that battered the U.S. Gulf Coast, television and its stars have suddenly become all about helping out. You can hardly flip a channel without coming across some sort of benefit or helping hand effort. But Paul Brownfield says that there’s something profoundly disturbing about the charitable handout offered by television: after all, the networks and stars parading so publicly could easily have helped out quietly like everyone else, but then American wouldn’t have been able to see them helping. And really, that’s the important thing.

“After eight years of pitching and persuading, the first New York Television Festival opened Wednesday with the backing of TV Guide, such networks as NBC, Fox, MTV and Comedy Central, and powerhouse agencies like William Morris. Participants are an eclectic lot that includes a former NASCAR racer and a metalworker in Madison, Wis. Most found out about the event online or at one of three launch parties in New York, Los Angeles and London earlier this year. As the first event of its kind, the television festival represents an initial step toward creating an alternative way to develop programming outside the studio and network system. But it remains to be seen whether the five-day event has the potential to remake the television industry the way Sundance and other film festivals affected the movie industry.”

Google, the search-engine-turned-internet-juggernaut, is finalizing plans to begin streaming TV programs online. The company has “already signed up a channel in the United States to provide programmes for its Google TV station and is in talks with the BBC to broadcast its shows. [Google] hopes to build up a massive online database of programmes that can be searched and watched from any computer, with users able to search for episodes of any show from broadcasters who sign up to the service. It will also let British viewers watch hit television shows from the US months before they are shown in the UK.”

“Dreamworks SKG, the movie studio founded by a trio of entertainment moguls including the director Steven Spielberg, has called off talks to be bought by NBC Universal for about $1 billion… The failure to reach a deal was thought to have resulted from disagreements over the price and Mr Spielberg’s reluctance to give up the independence that he has enjoyed at DreamWorks, which allowed him to work with competing studios.”

The Vancouver International Film Festival launches tonight, and the centerpiece won’t be a movie, but the “luxurious, state-of-the-art, 175-seat theatre” that is making its debut at the festival this week. “In addition to providing practical opportunities for year-round programming as well as working space for filmmakers, a film archive and artistic partnerships, the centre is important symbolically in that it gives cultural and physical prominence to the serious type of cinema the society offers.”

Filmmaker Albert Brooks is accusing Sony Pictures of cowardice in refusing to release his latest work, saying that studio execs are terrified of public reaction to the title, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Brooks insists that, despite the title, the film satirizes “American ignorance of the Muslim world and [does] not touch on religion.” Sony argues that it passed on the film “on its merits,” and says that Brooks is “manufacturing controversy.” Sony raised some liberal hackles a couple of years back when it declined to release Michael Moore’s controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.

The management of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has presented a new contract offer to its locked-out workers, attempting a compromise on the issue of so-called “contract workers,” who work on a part-time basis and do not receive benefits. But the union representing the locked-out employees is sticking with its position that any increase in contract workers is too big, and they add that their solidarity on the picket line is not wavering a bit, even after seven weeks out of work.