Category: media

One of the strengths of Amazon.com has been its ability to track customer demand and preferences and meet them. Now Amazon hopes to use some of the information it generates from its site to help create new products. Like movies, perhaps? “Amazon hopes to not just sell movies but also help Hollywood make them by connecting agents, producers and talent using the same sort of data analysis that helps Amazon sell stuff.”

American television is notoriously devoid of racial diversity, and the small screen will reportedly be getting even whiter next season, as sitcoms, a recent haven for minority casts, continue to lose their place in prime time lineups to cheap-and-easy reality shows. The UPN network will continue to air multiple shows featuring all-minority casts, but among networks that viewers actually watch in anything approaching respectable numbers, blacks and Latinos might as well not exist.

The Writers’ Guild of America has publicly rejected a “final” contract offer from the major Hollywood movie studios following eight weeks of negotiations. Both sides are downplaying the possibility of a writers’ strike, but neither side has been willing to budge on issues like DVD revenue (the writers want a chunk of it; the studios want to keep it all). The WGA last struck for 22 days in 1988, delaying the fall TV schedule.

As it turns out, MTV is willing to air ads for Morgan Spurlock’s anti-McDonald’s documentary/diatribe after all. In fact, the whole dust-up appears to have been one of an increasing number of “the-world-is-against-me-whatever-happened-to-free-speech-for-the-little-guy” marketing blitzes, a technique used with great success by Michael Moore. “The episode offers a glimpse into the new world of documentary marketing, in which controversy and big-league publicity gambits are increasingly part of the strategy for box-office success.”

The recording industry is testing technology that would restrict backup copies made from CD’s. “Tools under review by the major labels would limit the number of backups that could be made from ordinary compact discs and prevent copied, or “burned,” versions from being used to create further copies, according to Macrovision and SunnComm International, rivals that are developing competing versions of the digital rights management (DRM) software.”

The UK TV regulator Ofcom is suggesting it may be time to implement a ratings system for TV. “People want to know what a programme contains, such as bad language, sex and violence, and that is something very much appreciated by parents.”

By early 2005, Canada’s largest province will end nearly a century of film censorship, thanks to recent court rulings and a decision by the provincial government of Ontario not to fight for the survival of such practices. Ontario has always required that films be presented to its Film Review Board for possible censorship before being released to the public. The government is considering implementing an American-style ratings system to replace the review board.

Mel Karmazin has resigned as chairman of Viacom, the media conglomerate that owns CBS and radio giant Infinity Broadcasting. The resignation is likely to have ripple effects throughout the media world, as several Disney board members are known to have been courting Karmazin as a replacement for embattled CEO Michael Eisner. Additionally, Karmazin’s departure could spell the end for controversial radio host Howard Stern, whom Karmazin allowed a very long creative leash which is unlikely to be matched by future execs running scared from a potential FCC crackdown on obscenity.

A major Indian film director has been arrested on several charges surrounding the death of an assistant on a film set last week. The assistant, Nadia Khan, was hit by a train during shooting in Bombay, and director Kaizad Gustad is charged with fabicating evidence and negligence. The judge in the case is asking that an additional charge of culpable homicide, which carries a prison term of ten years, be added to the list.

The University of Texas is attempting to take its film studies program where none has gone before, joining forces with investors to create an actual working, albeit tiny, movie studio. “No American film school has ever tried such an ambitious foray into commercial filmmaking, and the project is being watched with great interest, and great skepticism, in academia and Hollywood.”