Category: media

“Capping an extraordinary furor over a movie virtually no one has seen, CBS scrapped plans Tuesday to televise “The Reagans” and decided to shunt it off to the Showtime cable network instead. Based on snippets of the script that had leaked out in recent weeks, conservatives accused CBS of distorting the legacy of the former president.”

The Federal Communications Commission has approved a controversial plan to allow broadcasters to insert a digital “flag” into their television programs which would prevent consumers from distributing digital copies of the program over peer-to-peer file trading services. Privacy advocates had argued that the plan infringed on the “fair use” rights of the public, but the FCC determined that U.S. copyright law made it legal for restrictions to be placed on just what consumers can do with the pictures that come across their TV screens.

“Film-makers who abuse the system of tax breaks for British films are facing a crackdown by the UK Government. Films that are British or co-produced by Britain get tax relief in the UK. But the government suspects some co-productions of falsely claiming to spend more in the UK to qualify, while others do not give value for money.”

Is MTV threatened by music download sites like iTunes? The music channel plans to launch a service of downloadable MTV. “There’s no doubt it’s a strong brand, with a strong profile of viewers. But they can’t rely solely on their brand come next year … After iTunes launched in April, MTV should have been like a hawk on a field mouse.”

The Federal Communications Commission isn’t used to being a magnet for controversy. Although the FCC and its 5-member board has near-complete control over the nation’s broadcast spectrum, its rulings have frequently gone unnoticed by the vast majority of the American public. But this year, “the FCC broke its traditional lockstep and experienced a very public 3-to-2 split in June votes that narrowly endorsed six media-ownership rule changes, including one that would allow a single network to control television stations reaching 45 percent of all American households.” The reaction from the public was dramatic and negative, and the resulting fallout has put FCC chairman Michael Powell on the defensive.

BBS is apparently considering dropping the airing of a mini-series on Ronald Reagan, after conservative groups protested that they believe the program to be biased against the former US president. “The possible cancellation of the mini-series was first reported on Monday in Daily Variety. A CBS spokesman declined to comment, and it was unclear why the network would consider bowing to pressure.”

South Florida public radio station WLRN recently replaced some music programming with news from the BBC, prompting charges of racism from some listeners. “It has also raised questions about whether the publicly licensed station’s programming should be aimed at drawing in the largest number of listeners, the goal of commercial stations, or serving smaller fragments of South Florida’s ethnic and cultural mosaic.”

“The world is the way it is because of MTV. The world is pop. It all happened at some point in the 1960s, or the 1970s, or the 1980s. Plenty of magazines argue about when exactly this point was (these magazines are published because of MTV). But it was not until the revolution began to be televised in the early 1980s, as something called MTV, that everyone began to appreciate how much the world had gone pop.”

“In its third annual report on minority hiring, “Out of Focus, Out of Sync,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People found that gains made in entertainment-industry practices in front of the camera were counteracted by the dearth of minority employees in other jobs.”

Are children spending too much time in front of their TVs? A new study says: “Children from 6 months to 6 years old spend, on average, two hours a day with TV, video games and computers – about the same as they spend playing outdoors and three times what they spend reading or being read to, according to the survey of 1,065 parents released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The phenomenon, said the Kaiser researchers, can be linked to the relatively recent avalanche of videos and TV shows aimed at viewers too young to know the difference between Einstein and Elmo.”