Category: media

HBO takes a big lead in nominations for this year’s Emmy awards. “The pay cable channel, which has now led the list of nominations four consecutive times, totally dominated the competition this year, taking in 124 nominations, up from its previous high of 109 last year. That was almost double the number of the nearest competitor, NBC, which this year took in just 65 nominations, down from 77 last year.”

The FCC’s recent crackdown on “obscenity” isn’t likely to change much of what commercial broadcasters choose to put on the air. After all, with most TV networks and radio stations now owned by a few multi-billion dollar corporations, the potential $500,000 fines are a slap on the wrist. But for public broadcasting, where every dollar of programming money has to be begged and cajoled from either viewers or the government, the fines have the potential to be crippling. Accordingly, PBS, public radio, and some individual public stations are working overtime to get rid of anything that sounds even remotely controversial, even when it’s just a single word from an innocuous British sitcom or a sound byte embedded in an award-winning documentary series.

In a mildly surprising twist on the usual Hollywood bluster, today’s announcement of the nominations for the 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards did not include a nod to the just-concluded NBC blockbuster, “Friends.” The sitcom probably didn’t deserve to be nominated, but that rarely has anything to do with it when a hit show is leaving the air. Instead, the nominated comedies are “Sex & the City,” “Arrested Development,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Will & Grace.” On the drama side, HBO’s mob hit “The Sopranos” once again leads the pack after being ineligible last year.

Even as the music industry continues to kvetch over illegal file-trading, it seems that mere songs are no longer the only files on the block to be swapped. In fact, the popularity of online trading of complete films and “other files larger than 100MB” is close to overtaking that of music on peer-to-peer networks. It’s all illegal, of course, but while the music industry has been touting the success of its anti-piracy campaign, it seems that what has actually occurred has been a shift in focus, from music to film, and a shift in technique, from large well-known file-trading enablers like Kazaa to smaller, more surreptitious programs.

The BBC’s governors yesterday said that the corporation’s programmes were not good enough and launched a major inquiry into how to improve them.

It’s likely that when UK radio stations are all broadcasting in digital format, the analog signals will be switched off. “The government has set a target of 2010 to switch over to digital TV, and the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, recently hinted that a similar move for radio would be considered.”

“Canada’s broadcasting watchdog refused yesterday to renew the licence of a controversial Quebec city radio station, setting the stage for its closure next month. The CRTC said CHOI-FM repeatedly broadcast insulting and offensive comments in violation of the Broadcasting Act.”

“A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health has found that a decade of ‘ratings creep’ has allowed more violent and sexually explicit content into films, suggesting that movie raters have grown more lenient in their standards.”

“Twenty-five years after they colonized the arcades, the original video games have begun to invade a whole new area: pop culture and high art.” They’re showing up everywhere…

TV critic Tim Goodman calls PBS the “worst-run media company in the world” in print, then runs into PBS head honcho Pat Mitchell. And Goodman’s feeling a bit emotionally down. And…