Category: media

As previously threatened, Italian government officials in the small northeastern town of Udine have told organizers of the Far East Film Festival that they must withdraw their invitations to all guests from the Far East, due to concerns about the SARS outbreak. “Although there are no travel restrictions on people from the Far East, the World Health Organisation has warned about large gatherings of people from Eastern Asian areas.”

“Britain has been Europe’s most movie-intensive television market for more than 40 years. Until relatively recently, this has made perfect sense. Before it was possible for viewers to compile their own private film library, the belated television screening of a successful theatrical release was a genuine broadcasting event.” But with so much non-TV access to movies, it’s time for programming to move on.

The 18-to-49 American TV demographic is “the single most important factor in determining what we see, hear and read. Appealing to young adults and trend-setting teenagers in an effort to sate ad buyers has promoted numerous media trends, among them the proliferation of so-called reality television, since the genre disproportionately attracts them; the 1990s surplus of yuppie-something sitcoms; news channels streaming text up, down and sideways; and even shorter newspaper articles, usually accompanied by pictures the size of a cantaloupe. Now, beyond tailoring sitcoms and dramas to a younger crowd, news coverage increasingly reflects this infatuation, from model-like anchors to gee-whiz graphics that translate the war into video-game language for those conversant in Nintendo and PlayStation.”

Clear Channel Communications, the biggest radio company in the US, “said it would cut ties with music promoters who are paid by record labels to trumpet songs to radio stations, saying the long-standing practice gives the appearance of ‘pay for play’.” The company has been widely criticized for the practice. “We have zero tolerance for “pay for play,’ but want to avoid even the suggestion that such a practice takes place within our company.”

How long will it take television to start churning out military-inspired fiction based on the current American actions in the Persian Gulf? Actually, such shows could be hitting your screen any day now. HBO has already ordered one such show into production, and NBC is known to be retooling an existing show to tie into the Iraq war, and is considering starting a new one as well.

In Canada, the government subsidizes the production of many of the nation’s most popular television programs. Producers must apply to the government for the funding, and any program which is not granted funding is much less likely ever to make it to the small screen. Now, a new round of budget cuts may mean that several popular existing TV shows may wind up unfunded in the next year, seriously jeopardizing future production. Thought to be on the hypothetical chopping block are such programs as the biting satire This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and rural send-up The Red Green Show, which has also found a large audience in the U.S.

“In a major disappointment to management at [Boston public broadcasting powerhouse] WGBH-TV, John Willis – the station’s vice president of national programming – announced yesterday that he is stepping down in June for a senior position at the BBC. Willis, a celebrated British filmmaker and former television executive in Britain, is leaving WGBH after just a year on the job.” WGBH produces many of the programs which air nationally on the PBS network, including This Old House and Evening at Pops, but the station has struggled in recent years to compete with a growing universe of specialty cable channels.

Top figures at the Federal Communications Commission are sparring over the right way to approach further deregulation of the American media industry. Both sides agree that further loosening of the rules regarding media ownership is desirable, but there is disagreement over the extent of the deregulation, and the formulas which would be used to calculate ownership limits in a given market. Still, the debate is largely over small sub-issues, and nowhere in the upper echelons of the FCC is anyone giving any credence to the notion (generally accepted by press and public) that media deregulation has been disastrous from the point of view of the consumer.

“While it has been much publicized that the loss of the commercial film business to Canada and other countries, known as ‘runaway production,’ has hurt movie production in Los Angeles and New York, a recent study by the United States Commerce Department found that it had been devastating to the much-smaller film markets in Chicago and other cities between the coasts. Since 1985, 57 feature films with Chicago backdrops have been shot in Canada. The director of the Chicago film office estimates his city has lost $1.9 billion and 17,000 jobs from the local economy.

The US Federal Communications Commission is considering further deregulating ownership of media. Will companies be able to own radio and TV and print media in the same market? Perhaps. What about diversity? Well…maybe a formula for each market that would determine the maximum oncentration of ownership…but maybe that’s too complicated and there shouldn’t be limits?