Category: media

PBS is in a world of denial. “For the most part, it creates fine programming, the kind that TV critics would love to champion. But PBS hasn’t learned that it’s in a competitive environment. No longer is the business so starkly simple that one can say, ‘We make quality programming, and everyone else airs garbage.’ The fact is, cable channels do much of what PBS does, equally well, and market it better. The disadvantage for PBS is that the system it operates under is a gigantic mess – the local stations wag the dog and always have.”

ABC says it will wean itself off reality TV (the genre was described by one ABCer as “crack cocaine” for its seductiveness to programmers). “They all just look the same. They’re all focused on interpersonal, petty relationships. They generally have some kind of vote-out mechanism. Many of them seem to get progressively more salacious.” Or could it be that ratings for “reality” TV are just way down this summer?

PBS’ Materpiece Theatre is looking for funding (and it’s not proving easy). “ExxonMobil Corp. had provided sole funding for the program since its 1971 debut until deciding to drop its support. The series is funded by ExxonMobil through 2004.”

Whjy does TV pay black performers less than white ones, even when ratings for the former are higher? “Advertisers pay lower rates for programs that attract black audiences because they reason that blacks are among TV’s more loyal customers, and it’s easy to reach them across the TV dial.”

Why does TV always feel its got to sex up serious subjects in order to get attention. A new BBC show on Shakespeare tries to make the Bard’s life exciting. Gary Taylor begs to disagree with how this story line has been hyped. “There’s something obscene about using the political assassination of Christopher Marlowe, or the legal torture and public execution of martyrs like Edmund Campion, Edward Arden, and Robert Southwell, to spice up someone else’s dull biography. Shakespeare never sacrificed anything for anybody.”

A generation ago, going to film school meant picking up a camera and making movies. Now it’s learning words such as “diegetic,” “heterogeneity,” “narratology,” “narrativity,” “symptomology,” “scopophilia,” “signifier,” “syntagmatic,” “synecdoche,” “temporality.” “Is there a hidden method to these film theorists’ apparent madness? Or is film theory, as movie critic Roger Ebert said as I interviewed him weeks later, ‘a cruel hoax for students, essentially the academic equivalent of a New Age cult, in which a new language has been invented that only the adept can communicate in’?”

Don’t look for an end anytime soon to the interminable pledge drives on PBS. PBS president Pat Mitchell says it’s reality: “We know we are creating issues with pledge in terms of interrupting the schedule, and that some of our most loyal viewers don’t appreciate the programming that is often seen during pledge periods,” she said. But honestly – put yourself in the shoes of the station manager who is looking at a budget that has only 17 to 19 percent of guaranteed income each year. Period. That’s all that comes in from the government. The rest of it, you have to raise somehow.”

“PBS is the Ralph Nader of U.S. television. It is honest and unbridled by commercial interests. It knows the difference between right and wrong; its news and documentary programs are agenda- and convergence-free. Like Nader, PBS has the unavoidable stigma of dreary smugness. Americans know Nader is a smart fellow, but they sure won’t vote for him. They know PBS is good for them, but they rarely watch. Everyone should watch PBS, really, but its audience remains a fraction of other networks’.”

Are audiences growing tired of blockbuster sequels? “Nearly 30 of this year’s big Hollywood films are sequels, but in the US ticket sales are down and there is a feeling that what seemed like a magic marketing notion no longer works. The big three screen offerings last weekend were sequels: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blue, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. According to the box office monitor, Nielsen EDI, sales were down 15 per cent on last year’s July 4 holiday weekend.”

A new DVD – one that will destroy itself in 48 hours, is being tested. This DVD, known as EZ-D to its makers, can be “played for 48 hours after being removed from its cover. It will then self-destruct—not in flames, its inventors hasten to add, but because contact with the air eventually renders its surface opaque, making it impossible for the laser in a disc player to read the data beneath. The idea is to revamp the video-rental market. At the moment, if you want to hire a movie for a couple of days you have to pay $5 or so for a videotape or DVD that may well be a bit scratched by previous use, and then go to all the hassle of returning it to the shop when you have finished with it. And you have to watch it soon after you have hired it, or risk paying a fine. None of this, except the 48-hour viewing period, applies to an EZ-D. It will stay in pristine condition in its case for a year, and once it has been watched—as many times as you like within the two-day window—it can be thrown away.”