Category: media

Researchers have come up with a formula to write the perfect sitcom. “There are long-standing golden rules for sitcom, but our findings bring them down to this single equation. Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognisability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V) and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).”

The 500-channel universe is old news. Video-on-demand? Been there, done that. TiVO is standard viewing equipment for at least a chunk of the populace. And could television be on the verge of yet another major paradigm shift? You’d better believe it: “Once upon a time, you found TV. Now TV will find you. We’re already watching in elevators, bars, airports, banks, dentist chairs, on street corners. Soon, more of us will be watching on cellphones, in cars, on newfangled wireless gadgets, and if this keeps up, on a tiny matrix implanted into our bionic retinas.”

The New York-based Museum of Television and Radio has accepted the resignation of its president and laid off a dozen employees as it attempts to cope with fiscal problems that have plagued the institution for the past several years.

“As consumers turn away from traditional advertising, tech marketers are picking up the slack by weaving lots of gadgets into the fabric of TV shows and movies. The net, video games and ad-skipping DVRs are forcing marketers to focus more attention on branded entertainment.”

“The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History has withdrawn its co-sponsorship of a showing later this month of a film that supports the theory of “intelligent design.The museum said it would not cancel the screening of the film, “The Privileged Planet,” but would return the $16,000 that the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes a skeptical view of the Darwinian theory of evolution, had paid it.”

Even as Hollywood ramps up its attempts to shut down BitTorrent, the high-volume peer-to-peer file sharing system that is allowing users worldwide to illegally download and share movies and television shows, some in the industry see serious upside to the technology. Specifically, BitTorrent has created cult followings for many foreign TV shows that would otherwise have almost no chance of getting any notice from America’s market-driven broadcast industry. Besides, say supporters, Hollywood already uses peer-to-peer networks to create buzz about their latest products, so the lawsuits and pronouncements of doom are ringing fairly hollow.

“A key lawmaker has complicated the movie industry’s push for a law to restrict consumers’ ability to redistribute digital TV content over peer-to-peer networks and the internet at large. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, has indicated that he opposes inserting a broadcast flag measure in his newly introduced digital TV bill, which would set a 2008 hard deadline for broadcasters to give back their analog spectrum.”

Since the explosion of the Internet more than a decade ago, archiving the history of the new medium has become one of the biggest challenges for those inclined to try it – web sites come and go with alarming frequency, and today’s revolutionary site could be tomorrow’s passé pile of HTML code. Now, with podcasts the latest technology to burst onto the trend-heavy tech scene, one man has made it his mission to archive as much of the online amateur radio as he can get his hands on. Not that he’d actually bother listening to the vast majority of it, you understand…

For the first time, Fox won the network ratings race for a season. More significant though, is that the total network TV audience staying steady this season for the first year in a dozen. “The broadcast networks in general had virtually the same number of prime-time viewers this season as they had in 2003-04, which is significant because viewership had dropped every year since the 1993- 94 season.”

“Often racier or more violent than their big-screen counterparts, unrated DVDs usually outperform the less-explicit version. Pouring new life into a movie franchise, they’re a valuable marketing tool — particularly effective with the 18-to-34-year-old demographic, the heaviest home video users.”