Category: media

The proximity of the Writers’ Guild of America Awards to the Oscars always leads to speculation that the latter could follow the lead of the former, and this year is no exception, as Sideways and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind took home the Guild’s top honors this weekend. Other major awards, all for scriptwriting, included HBO’s miniseries adaption of Angels in America, NBC’s The West Wing, and the critically adored Fox sitcom, Arrested Development.

“In Hollywood, movie projects are assembled – and unraveled – every day. But the sudden collapse of a high-profile film only days before shooting is set to begin still gets the town talking. Fox Searchlight, News Corporation’s art film unit, was topic A for many in the film business this week, as the thriving ministudio – on its way to the Oscars with a best-picture nomination for its film Sideways – watched a big-star vehicle aimed at next year’s awards season suddenly collapse in Australia.”

“PBS has warned its member stations that it cannot protect them against federal indecency sanctions if they broadcast an unedited, profanity-laced version of a documentary about a United States Army regiment in Baghdad as it faced insurgent attacks leading up to the Iraqi elections, producers of the documentary said yesterday.”

A CBC executive has predicted that “by 2008, CBC-TV’s prime-time schedule will have doubled the amount of prime-time Canadian dramatic series, 10-per-cent more hours of Canadian comedy, and 50-per-cent more hours of indigenous miniseries.”

Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper than the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the beleaguered network’s president.

“The radio business may be undergoing its biggest shakeup ever. So many new digital technologies are beckoning to its traditional listeners that it’s hard to know what radio is anymore. It’s no longer limited to the airwaves, thanks to cable TV’s music offerings, the Internet, and one day, perhaps, cellphones. It’s not strictly live because online “podcasters” and others let you download music to play at your convenience. About the only thing that really separates radio listening from, say, uploading music to an iPod is that on radio, someone else plays deejay.”

It’s accepted as gospel these days that Clear Channel Communications is the 800-lb. gorilla of the media world, controlling blocks of radio stations, billboards, and concert venues in nearly every large metro area in the country. But it wasn’t too long ago that Clear Channel was nothing more than a struggling radio group, competing with countless other station owners in a relatively competitive marketplace. Then, back in 1996, Congress passed a Telecommunications Act which legislators swore would increase competition and serve consumers better. As everyone now knows, the opposite happened, and Clear Channel became the face of America’s new corporate media.

Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema is in danger of folding in the wake of the resignations of its president and executive director. Montreal has three major film festivals, and city officials have been working with the film industry to try to cut that number by two. The result has been open warfare between festival organizers, which culminated last week when the newest entry, the Montreal International Film Festival, was seen as encroaching on the Nouveau’s territory with its decision to schedule its inaugural season directly opposite Nouveau’s.

Documentarians can be scrappy and persistent, but Canadian filmmaker Eva Ziemsen might take the prize for most innovative baiting of her subject. Desperate to conduct a face-to-face interview with iconoclastic filmmaker Lars von Trier, Ziemsen, traveled across Europe with nothing more than the vaguest hope of success, barged into von Trier’s studio with the camera rolling, and then, with the ultimate rejection at hand, offered to conduct the interview naked. Two hours later, von Trier was sitting across from her (and no, she didn’t have to remove any clothing).

PBS is asking the U.S. Congress to create a dedicated endowment which would fund the public broadcaster in perpetuity, protecting it from the political whims of politicians who object to one program or another. PBS has frequently been accused by conservatives of tilting to the left (as has nearly every broadcast network in the U.S.), and a recent flap over an episode of a children’s program which featured a family with two mothers has renewed the right’s vitriol, even though PBS has recently launched several high-profile shows featuring conservative commentators. The idea of funding PBS through a permanent trust comes as the network prepares to begin a search for a new president.