Category: media

Why are critics going so ga-ga over 50-something women showing a little skin in recent movies? “Though the American film industry has pretty much had a 35-and-out attitude toward women as sexual beings, the trend, if indeed it is a trend and not merely a confluence of goose-bumped flesh, is more reflective of real life than the way things have been. Women’s bodies don’t become decrepit when the first grey hair appears, and sexual desire doesn’t dissipate when a woman blows out the 36th candle on a birthday cake.”

Do broadcast networks have any advantage over cable stations anymore? “Even if it doesn’t bite them today or tomorrow where it hurts (presumably the wallet), the broadcast titans seem to be ceding creative leadership in a way that ultimately dissolves any viewership advantage to which they continue to cling. How long can it be until viewers completely abandon the notion of the networks as the “default” choice to check what’s worth watching each night? What’s the difference when ABC looks like TLC looks like Fox looks like Spike?”

Advertisers are famously obsessed with young people, and so television, by necessity, is obsessed as well. In recent years, network brass have been at a loss to explain where all their young viewers have gone. Some say they went to cable, some say they went to the internet, and some say it shouldn’t matter, anyway. But what if the 18-to-34s haven’t deserted TV after all? What if they’ve just moved their “prime time” back a few hours? A close look at demographic ratings shows that young people are watching plenty of TV: they’re just turning on the set a lot later.

“Last week’s court decision preventing the recording industry from forcing Internet service providers to identify their subscribers on peer-to-peer networks offers new hope to file traders who have been sued. But fighting the RIAA may prove costly for anyone hoping to challenge the trade group, which spends an estimated $17 million annually in legal fees. In the wake of Friday’s ruling, which found that the RIAA can’t subpoena Internet providers for subscribers’ personal information without going through the court system, experts say lawyers could feasibly argue that their clients’ information was unjustly obtained from ISPs, and therefore should not be used. But such a strategy would be unorthodox and difficult to carry out.”

Promos, ads and other filler has proliferated on American TV. “According to a recent report in Media Life, an online magazine, the major networks now offer one minute of “clutter” for every two minutes of legitimate entertainment during prime time. Or put in another context, the Big Four (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) air about 52 minutes of commercials and promotional material during three hours of prime time. This is up 8 percent from 2000 and a whopping 36 percent since 1991.”

“A soaring Australian dollar, staunch competition from Canada, eastern Europe and New Zealand, the impending US-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California have cast a dark shadow over the Australian film industry.”

Voters for the French Cesar film awards will be getting DVD copies of the movies that self-destruct. “The DVD of Gus Van Sant’s film Elephant turns black and becomes unusable with two days of being played, reports industry website Screen Daily. The DVDs, which are designed to be disposable, will be sent to members of France’s Academie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema, said the report.”

In the UK, plans are for all TV broadcasts to be digital by 2010. But the only way to get some viewers to switch might be to pay them. “There were only two ways of making everyone switch to a digital source, such as a set-top digital box, cable or satellite. One is to pay people to switch, the other is to force them.”

“Increasingly Hollywood studios are aiming to open their potential blockbusters simultaneously, or nearly so, around the world. If the phenomenon is beginning to make seeing the Hollywood blockbuster a global experience for the most avid movie fans, the reasons for it have little to do with those fans. Instead the trend is being pushed by the threat of movie piracy and the harsh realities of marketing costs, combined with ever-briefer theater stays as highly promoted films quickly saturate their markets.”

In a surprise ruling, a U.S. federal appeals court has told the recording industry in no uncertain terms that it does not have the right to demand the names and addresses of subscribers from the nation’s internet service providers (ISPs). A lower court had previously upheld the industry’s demand that Verizon and other ISPs release the names of their subscribers, and paved the way for nearly 400 lawsuits against users suspected of illegal file-trading. The ruling doesn’t mean that the industry must cease suing online pirates, but it will make such actions much more complicated.