Category: media

In the US, “the season’s nearly 40 new shows have again failed to yield a consensus “hit,” and according to the Nielsen Media Research firm that measures TV viewing, young men in particular seem to be abandoning the tube in stunning proportions. In the gloomiest interpretations of these omens, they signal the beginning of the end of free, over-the-air television, because shrinking audiences at some point will have to mean declining revenue from the ads that have given viewers a free or relatively cheap ride. Put more simply, that would be: Goodbye broadcasting, hello pay-per-view!”

Employees of National Public Radio were stunned by the $200 million gift left by Joan Kroc. “NPR employees celebrated the news by eating takeout McDonald’s for lunch yesterday. ‘When I heard about the scope of it, I was almost speechless – a dangerous state in my line of work,’ said longtime NPR host Susan Stamberg. ‘This was totally unexpected.’ She joked that she was changing her name to ‘McStamberg’. Before her death last month at 75, Kroc, widow of McDonald’s mastermind Ray Kroc, had committed her attention and some of her $1.7 billion fortune to charity.”

What will National Public Radio do with the $200 million gift it got from the estate of the late Joan Kroc? “Kevin Klose, the president and chief executive of NPR, said that the broadcasting company had yet to decide how the money would be spent. For now, he said, ‘most of it will not be spent; it is to be saved.’ He added that the NPR board would discuss how to spend the interest earned by the money. At an annual rate of 5 percent, it would generate about $10 million a year.”

“This week, CBS decided that the camp, unsubtle mini-series The Reagans was too hot to handle. Dissent is out of the question, then. A fanatically conservative cabal of Republican politicians, officials and shrill, finger-wagging conservative commentators, has imposed an orthodoxy. There are ludicrous accusations of ‘bias’ in everything from news stories to opinion columns and now a TV miniseries, for heaven’s sake. The mere accusation of bias is enough to shut up some of the accused.”

Finding Nemo has become the fastest-selling DVD and tape of all time. “The film sold more than eight million copies in the first day of US release, beating the record held by Spider-Man. Nemo is the most profitable cartoon in US cinema history and the biggest hit of the year at US box offices.”

Viewers are deserting broadcast TV in large numbers, particularly in the most desirable demographic. “Overall viewership is down nearly 10 percent from a year ago – a record low. (The decline is limited primarily to the six broadcast networks: basic and pay cable appear to be holding steady.) The new fall shows are being felled left and right.” What’s the big turnoff?

National Public Radio has received an enormous gift from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc, amounting to more than twice the network’s annual operating budget. The gift of $200 million came as a total shock to NPR staffers, who are speculating that the money could be used to rescue several music and culture programs which fell to the budget axe this year. Alternatively, the network could decide to use the gift, which seems to have no strings attached, to expand its focus on news and information programming. NPR’s board will meet in the next several weeks to decide how the bequest will be spent.

How did the CBS Reagan mini-series get to be so controversial? “The producers of ‘The Reagans’ were so intent on re-examining their subject’s legacy that they missed the missile-defense shield surrounding Mr. Reagan, now incapacitated by Alzheimer’s disease. He is not just a beloved former president; he is the Moses of the conservative movement. Rather than treading lightly, the stars gloated about how controversial their film would be.”

“Special screenings are hardly a new idea. Publicist Peggy Siegal, considered by some to be the mother of this invention, has been doing them for more than 20 years. But their importance to film marketers—especially those with smaller budget art-house movies—has supersized in the last 30 days. Film marketing was already a difficult gambit in a 24/7 world of celebrity stimuli and instant, online gratification, but last month the Motion Picture Association of America made it even more difficult when it decided to severely limit how film distributors could raise the awareness of their films and still be considered for the one of the best marketing tools out there, an Oscar nomination.”

The movie Titanic, released in 1997 starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has raked in the biggest box office in history – $1.8bn (£1.1bn) at global box offices – almost twice as much as its nearest rival. But that didn’t stop BBC1 viewers from voting it the worst movie in history.