Category: media

“It came long ago to the worlds of music (“American Idol”), moviemaking (“Project Greenlight”) and fashion design (“Project Runway”). Now reality television is finally tackling the art world, one of the last creative frontiers still unvisited by the genre’s camera crews, harsh judges and hordes of contestants hoping to turn a little fame into a lucrative career.”

Less than two months into Minnesota Public Radio’s grand new experiment – a non-commercial progressive rock station where DJs pick the music, local artists are prominently featured, and eclecticism is the rule – Twin Cities music fans have become slobbering devotees of the new station, known as The Current. Even more astonishing, the station has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from listeners without a single traditional over-the-air public radio fund drive (DJs occasionally remind listeners to pledge money at MPR’s website). But some in Minnesota are wary of the new presence, mindful of MPR’s expansionist agenda and the network’s history of bullying smaller stations out of existence.

The most venerable public broadcaster in the world will be getting a major behind-the-scenes overhaul under the terms of a new British government plan. The BBC will continue to be funded through revenue raised by the UK’s mandatory television license fee, but a new trust will replace the company’s board of governors, and will be directed to look into other methods of funding. The BBC will also be directed to buy programs from independent producers, and not to engage in a ratings chase with the UK’s for-profit broadcasters.

Critics may have judged this year’s Academy Awards as a tiresome experience, but most of the Aademy itself was quite pleased with the revamped ceremony and its new host, comedian Chris Rock. Still, not everyone is happy: “The tweaks to the format–which involved bringing whole groups of nominees onto the stage and handing out some Oscars in the aisles of the cavernous Kodak Theater–have met with occasional disgruntlement. To some, it even seemed cruel to award Oscars in the aisles.” Rock also came in for some criticism from older members of the Academy, who felt that he didn’t show the proper reverence for the Oscar tradition.

Conservative Christians have fought Hollywood over the years. But now Hollywood is finding support from these critics, who are “stepping up to back the entertainment industry in its moment of need: a high-stakes battle against online file-sharing services that has reached the nation’s highest court. File-swapping services make pornography easily accessible to minors, the social conservatives submit. The entertainment companies, meanwhile, blame sharing for declining sales and lost revenue. An unlikely alliance thus formed.”

Podcasting is the hot new medium. But whre is it going? ”As is the case with advertising on blogs, there seems to be some potential. However, it is too early to tell if there is a serious market opportunity there.”

In a sign that satellite radio is gaining a foothold, XM says it will raise its monthly subscription fee. “XM said it would raise the price of its basic service to $12.95 per month from $9.99 beginning April 2, matching Sirius’ monthly fee.” The company is trying to recoup some of the massive investments in programming it has made.

The numbers are in, and this year’s Academy Awards broadcast scored lower with viewers than last year. “Like the Golden Globes and Grammys before it, this year’s Academy Awards broadcast, on ABC, was down in total viewers from a year ago. The program drew an average audience of 41.5 million viewers, versus the 43.5 million who watched last year. That was better than in 2003, when the start of the Iraq war a few days before the ceremony helped push Oscar ratings to their lowest in nearly 30 years. This year’s show drew almost 8.5 million more viewers than that broadcast.”

Wondering why you can’t buy DVDs of your favorite TV series? “For many TV shows, costs to license the original music for DVD are prohibitively high, so rights owners replace the music with cheaper tunes, much to the irritation of avid fans. And some shows, like WKRP, which is full of music, will probably never make it to DVD because of high licensing costs.”

Pressure groups are protesting over the content of TV shows. But should they be allowed to influence what gets shown? “It is now relatively easy for small numbers of protesters to organise what may appear to be mass protests. It is not clear how many emails originated from Britain and how many from America. But more important, we are not running some kind of Pop Idol competition in which the greatest number of votes gets a programme pulled from the schedule.”