Category: media

The recording industry, pleased with the drop in file sharing activity since it began suing file-swappers this past summer, has announced that it will now begin warning offenders that they are about to be sued, and offering them an opportunity to settle out of court if they respond within ten days. The move is seen as an effort to quiet consumer advocates who decried the industry’s heavy-handed tactics after it was revealed that the targets of the lawsuit campaign included a 12-year-old girl and a 71-year-old grandfather.

“Rarely in recent Hollywood history has there been an uprising of this magnitude over such an apparently trivial matter. But ever since the Motion Picture Association of America announced two weeks ago that studios had to stop sending out free DVDs of their movies to voters during the coming awards season, the mob has been storming the castle gates. The ban on so-called ‘screeners’ was intended to stop unauthorized duplication of the films, a problem that concerns many in the industry. But to read the daily headlines in the industry trade papers, nothing less than the future of creativity in the movies is at stake.”

Racial diversity is slowly coming to American TV, according to a new report from a media watchdog group. Hispanics have made the greatest gains in recent years, with Hispanic characters being introduced in many mainstream shows, but Asian-Americans are still grossly underrepresented on U.S. screens. The coalition that issued the report singled out CBS’s new drama, Joan of Arcadia as being absurdly devoid of Asian-Americans, since it takes place in the heavily Asian town of Arcadia, California. Still, the coalition is no longer calling for the network boycotts it threatened a few years ago, and acknowledges that real progress is being made.

When Apple launched its music downloading service, iTunes, last spring, it marked a seismic shift in the computing and music industries towards an eventual embrace of the new technologies which have caused so many headaches for copyright holders. Now, Apple has (finally) launched a version of iTunes that runs on PCs, thereby greatly expanding the company’s reach and share of the legal downloading market. Cross-promotions with Pepsi and AOL will follow soon, and just like that, Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopes to do what the music industry has been insisting isn’t possible: convince consumers to pay for music they can still find for free on other services.

“If the unprecedented box office success of documentary films in 2003 were itself the subject of a documentary, critics would find the plot wildly implausible and the explanations maddeningly inconclusive. A nearly wordless cinematic love poem to the flapping of birds, Winged Migration, has earned nearly twice as much money this year as that teetering blockbuster with Ben and J.Lo… Why this is happening to the much-maligned documentary category is much harder to pinpoint than box-office numbers. The most obvious answer: Good movies sell tickets.”

“Universal Music, the world’s largest record company, is to slash 1,350 jobs – or 11% of its workforce – in order to cope with a protracted slump in sales. Global music sales have been in decline for more than three years, with the industry laying the blame on illegal song swapping over the internet and home CD burning. Universal says the cuts will save it $200 million a year and leave the firm in a good position to take advantage of any turnaround.”

Sony Pictures plans to lay off 300 workers in the next year and a half. “The layoffs will follow the elimination of 1,000 jobs in the entertainment and electronics giant’s struggling music group earlier this year. The new cuts are expected to hit across the board at Sony Pictures’ key business units, including its Culver City-based Columbia Pictures movie studio, domestic and international television operations and Sony Pictures Digital. Sources estimate that the cuts could save the company as much as $75 million a year.”

After failing to find sponsorships, this year’s New Zealand National Film Awards have been postponed. “New Zealand cinema has been receiving world acclaim, with Whale Rider producing its biggest box office hit since Once Were Warriors in 1994.”

Hollywood filmmakers protest the decision by the Academy of Motion Pictures not to send out DVD copies of movies to Oscar voters. “More than 130 filmmakers led by director Robert Altman signed an open letter, published as full-page ads in industry trade papers Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, calling the ban an “unwarranted obstacle” that will keep independent, cutting-edge films from gaining needed exposure.”

A magazine trade group gives away Tivos to consumers as a way of making a point about advterising. “The point was to underscore the magazine publishers’ argument that an ad’s appearing on television does not mean the consumer actually sees it. By contrast, according to an ad for the contest, ’90 percent of all consumers pay full and complete attention to magazines when reading’.”