Category: media

“[The] Texas-based concert, radio and billboard giant Clear Channel Communications announced Tuesday that its Chicago music operations will now be called Elevated Concerts… Chicago remains one of the few major markets in the United States that still boasts a powerful local concert promotion company,” and many musicians and venues prefer any alternative to working with the monolithic Clear Channel. That poses a problem for the company, and the Chicago name change is being seen as a test of whether Clear Channel’s image as a near-monopoly can be pushed under the carpet. If it works, you can expect more of the same in other cities across the U.S.

“The company has been hurt by a 19-week Hollywood box-office slump during the spring and summer that is now working its way into the rental market. The company said industry weakness should continue in the third quarter before the video release schedule improves in the fourth quarter.”

A new study says that instead of glamorizing smoking, movies showing characters smoking makes them less desirable. “The study concluded that villainous characters are actually more likely to be smokers than heroes – 36 per cent of bad guys were smokers, trumping the 21 per cent of admirable characters who smoked.”

Last month Disney closed the last of its hand-drawing animators studios. “Of course, future Disney features will not be made by robots but by skilled human animators working with a different kind of tool. But the demise of hand-drawn animation at Disney is a sad and significant cultural watershed that deserves a proper mourning rather than a brief P.R. notice.”

When Hollywood legends Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen joined forces in 1994 to form Dreamworks Studios, the company was predicted to become the most important force in the American movie industry in decades. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way, and these days, Dreamworks is widely considered to be a prime example of a company that really never lived up to its potential.

“The best-kept secret in Hollywood, especially from Wall Street, is that the movie studios’ biggest profit center is not theatrical movies, or even DVD sales; it is TV licensing. If the details of the profits remain clouded to outsiders, it is no accident.”

Action movies – long a summer Hollywood summer staple – have been dying at the box office this summer. “In this year of the missing moviegoer, perhaps no genre has proven as perilous as the old stalwart of action, where the failures tend to be colossal, and the red ink runs in rivers.”

“As far as I can tell, film is one of the few artistic mediums to rejoice in utter failure. No one revives hack 18th century opera or hangs paintings by Rembrandt’s butcher. But just try to rent a copy of “Battlefield Earth. The cult of bad movies doesn’t revolve around big-budget disasters so much as the penny dreadfuls of mid-century American cinema, the discreditable, low-budget horror movies peopled with attacking 50-foot women, killer shrews and aliens with zippers down their back. You’ve got to love any film in which Martians wear Timex watches. What makes these films so watchable?”

Many thought a decade ago that the big movie moguls of the day would be running the world by now. “They shipped billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions in profit to their parent companies, but, with the notable exception of Michael Eisner, they did not have much to show for it in return. Instead of using the leverage of cash flow and profit to take over their owners, they were leaned on year after year to come up with still more. They created a new version of Hollywood, but failed to master the corporate intrigues that would let them rule not just the studio lot, but also the business world beyond.”

“No studio would stop making action films when they fail. Yet, films with minority casts – or movies about race – constantly have to prove themselves. It’s the emotional investment by behind-the-scenes talent that will eventually make the difference.”