Category: media

Sixteen Democratic senators have appealed to President Bush to remove Kenneth Tomlinson as head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “We urge you to immediately replace Mr. Tomlinson with an executive who takes his or her responsibility to the public television system seriously, not one who so seriously undermines the credibility and mission of public television,” wrote the senators.

The Writers Guild of America wants to unionize workers who create TV reality shows. “Unlike a sitcom or drama, a reality show doesn’t often employ ‘writers.’ Instead, people with titles such a ‘field producer’ or ‘story producer’ make sure each episode follows a script that’s often conceived in advance. In other cases, editors have the job of finding dramatic story lines in hundreds of hours of tape. Producers might boil down 400 hours of footage to create a single 44-minute episode of a show.”

“AMC Entertainment Inc., the No. 2 U.S. movie theater chain, on Tuesday said it will buy its next-largest competitor, Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corp., to compete with market leader Regal Entertainment Group . “

For the first time, BBC Radio 1 will be broadcast in America. BBC has signed a deal to be carried on satellite radio. “Radio 1 will be heard on Sirius, which offers around 120 commercial-free services for a subscription fee. “

NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin says its regrettable that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting thinks it needs two ombudsmen to watchdog politics. “The appointment of the CPB ombudsmen has, indeed, accomplished something: It has sown doubts (or reinforced existing ones) among many listeners (and viewers) that there is something fundamentally wrong at NPR and PBS. But these doubts are based on impressions, innuendo and hearsay evidence. Questioning the practices of journalism is always a good thing. But declaring a priori that there is bias, as Mr. Tomlinson has, contradicts the high standards of public broadcast stewardship that CPB has always advocated.”

The actions of Corporation For Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson continue to come under fire as further details of his partisan political activites come to light. The latest revelation, that a supposedly independent researcher hired by Tomlinson without the approval of the corporation to investigate supposed liberal bias in PBS’s newsmagazine, Now with Bill Moyers, “worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist,” is being investigated by CPB’s inspector general. Meanwhile, one sitting U.S. Senator is openly calling for Tomlinson’s resignation.

As public broadcasting ramps up its fight against a hostile Congress that recently voted to slash 25% of its government subsidy, some observers say that PBS and NPR are coming dangerously close to crossing a “lobbying line” that could cost them public support.

You can blame poor plotlines, online piracy, those infernal ads, or anything else for it, but the fact remains: fewer people than ever are going to the movies these days. “Compared with last year, box-office receipts have been down every weekend since late February; the last time comparable business was off for such a long span was in 1985. This summer’s movie season has been especially brutal. North American theater attendance from early May to June 19 was off nearly 11% from a year ago, tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. estimated Monday… Although the final accounting for 2005 releases cannot yet be determined, their domestic runs indicate the prospects are decidedly dim.”

Will the ubiquitous iPod become obsolete in the face of new cell phone technology? At least two companies are hoping so, as they gear up for the release of a major direct-to-phone music service next year. The companies, Napster and Ericsson, say the service will allow users to download music directly to their phones, or to transfer collections back and forth between the phone and a computer. Of course, phones are getting awfully bulky with features these days, what with all the cameras and games and ring tones and videos, and a lot of consumers still seem to want a phone that just makes phone calls, and an MP3 player that just plays music.

A new series of ads intended to combat online piracy in the UK is taking an interesting approach: encouraging viewers to see more films in the theatre, “the way they are meant to be seen.” The hope is that reacquainting viewers with the higher quality of theatrical projection will make them less likely to download bootleg copies of the film made available online. The ads will begin running in theatres as trailers to summer blockbuster movies within a few weeks.