Category: media

A new study suggests that American TV and movie producers have exagerated the impact of American productions that film in Canada. “A Canadian consulting firm last week released a hard-nosed 45-page report accusing the U.S. industry of employing inflated statistics and scare tactics in blaming its northern neighbor for wooing productions away from the United States.”

The TV in your local bar bugging you? Well, now you don’t have to suffer the blare. A new device called TV-B-Gone shuts off any television set in the vicinity. “The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.”

In an unprecedented move, Britain’s film censors have approved for public viewing a movie “which features real sex scenes including fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus, some in close-up.” The film, 9 Songs, premiered at Cannes this year to much controversy, but the film board ruled that “the sex occurred in the context of the development of a relationship between two people and did not raise issues of harm or sexual violence.” The approval is the latest sign that the UK is moving away from hard and fast rules regarding what its citizenry can expose itself to.

“Just when it appeared that Michael D. Eisner, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, could begin enjoying the company’s turnaround and his final years in charge, a shareholder lawsuit threatens to dredge up some of the most embarrassing details of his two-decade reign and complicate his planned exit. On Wednesday, the Court of Chancery in Delaware will begin hearing a lawsuit filed by Disney shareholders contending that the board breached its fiduciary responsibility when Mr. Eisner hired his friend, Michael S. Ovitz, as president in 1995 and then signed off on Mr. Ovitz’s $140 million severance package 14 months later.”

A price war is developing in the DVD rental market, as relative newcomer NetFlix and traditional chain Blockbuster square off in the battle for online customers. The price cuts on both sides are delighting consumers, but investors in both companies are not happy.

“Few technological changes have been so contentious as the colourizing of movies originally released in black-and-white. Moviegoers are willing to tolerate all sorts of things, including Hilary Duff movies and orange goo on nachos, but many of them are ready to man the barricades against any meddling to monochrome.” But new digital technology has raised the quality of colorization to such an extent that some in the film industry believe it can truly enhance old pictures. The key is in choosing films which would actually benefit from a splash of color.

“In a first of its kind move, independent movie distributor Lions Gate Films, based in Vancouver, will make its first release of a movie… on new digital systems in AMC theatres that offer a low-cost way to reach mass audiences. The move tests a nascent process for distributing films via digital systems linking theatres on high-speed networks, and it could offer low-budget films a more effective way to compete with Hollywood.”

Comedy is a dirty business, and for comedy writers working on a sitcom, ordinary workplace rules simply don’t apply. Or do they? A lawsuit filed by a former assistant on the TV show Friends “contends that while doing her job, which was to record anything any of the writers said, [the assistant] was subjected to her bosses’ dirty, personal and just plain weird banter, so much so that it constituted sexual harassment.” The defense being mounted is a novel one, and it could have far-reaching ramifications for the joke-writing business: the studio insists that comedy writers can’t possibly do their jobs without such inappropriate chatter.

Hollywood studios desperate to protect their copyrights from unscrupulous critics had been planning to send out this year’s Oscar “screeners” on encrypted DVDs that can only be viewed on specially equipped players which would be distributed to Oscar voters across North America. But with awards season fast approaching, the technology is reportedly nowhere near ready, and the studios are in danger of a similar PR debacle to the one it faced last year, when the industry tried to do away with screeners altogether.

Public radio’s ratings have a disturbing habit of plunging over the weekend, mainly because commuters make up a large chunk of the daily listenership. And in fact, most weekend shows on public stations fit into a distinctive mold: one-hour blocks focused on specific niche audiences, with an eye towards cultivating a narrow but loyal listenership. Minnesota Public Radio is trying to change the model with a heavily researched new program designed around short, “bite-sized” news items and features, the better to fit into the average listener’s hectic weekend schedule. But an angry backlash against the show is building among industry insiders who are decrying the “Wal-Marting” of public radio.