Category: media

“American Splendor” wins the grand prize at the Sundance Film Festival. “The movie tells the story of a Cleveland file clerk named Harvey Pekar, who wrote a famous series of comic books documenting his boring life and discontented psyche.”

“The recent flood of reality programs such as ‘American Idol,’ `Joe Millionaire’ and `The Bachelorette’ and the number of viewers they are drawing is unprecedented. They are pulling in young people who had drifted to cable or their home computers, revitalizing the ratings fortunes of both ABC and Fox and – in some cases – putting a serious dent in the viewership for well-established comedies and dramas. The shows have become such a cultural phenomenon in this country.”

“Are movie critics out of touch with the public? Is that necessarily bad? And if so, should average moviegoers or Oscar voters pay any attention to this deluge of critical voting, rehashing and listmaking? Looking over the lists of movies anointed by the critics so far, compared with 2002’s top grossing box-office hits, you can understand why some observers – especially movie studio and marketing executives and their cronies – become exasperated.”

Los Angeles’ KCET, the West Coast PBS flagship station, has laid off 14 people. “A spokeswoman for the station said that the cuts were due to lower-than-expected revenue from subscribers and corporate sponsorships. The projected station budget at the beginning of the fiscal year was $48 million, a figure that is now being reformulated.”

“The success of shows like ‘American Idol,’ ‘The Bachelorette’ on ABC and ‘Joe Millionaire’ on Fox was so impressive that numerous executives said they were now ready to embrace plans for a radical restructuring of the network business, which previously had been talked about only as dimly possible, long-term adjustments. Not only will reality shows continue to flood network’s schedules next fall, but television executives are also predicting such developments as an end to the traditional television season.”

“Broadcast television, under intensifying attack by saltier cable competitors, is pushing the limits of decorum further by the year, and hardly anyone is pushing back. Though the changing standards of prime time have evolved gradually, the pace has accelerated in recent years. But the falloff in protests over those changes has been sudden.” Seems the groups that used to protest racy language have gone away…

Should media companies be allowed to own newspapers, radio and TV stations? The Federal Communication Commission is “studying whether decades-old media ownership restrictions are appropriate in a market altered by the growth of the Internet, satellite broadcasts and cable television. Media companies say outdated regulations restrict their ability to grow and stay competitive. Critics warn that mergers resulting from looser rules could leave a few huge companies in control of what people watch, hear and read.”

A judge has dismissed class-action lawsuits brought by Hollywood writers who claim that entertainment studios have refused to hire them because they are older. “The writers, all of them over 40, claimed they were ‘gray-listed’ by networks, producers and agents who systematically refused to hire or represent them because of their age.

“Once a festival where unknowns came to be discovered and hungry agents scoured the field for the next big thing, Sundance has gradually become as much of a launching festival as a film market, the sort of event at which a distributor might unveil a film coming out in the next few months in hopes of attracting attention and publicity.”

Sundance long ago came of age, and now, some critics think it may be experiencing a bit of a midlife crisis. How else to explain the sudden influx of films that make a point of displaying their youth bent? This year, it seems that nearly every film is either another “generic teenage wasteland” or a “Sundance afterschool special.” This is not to say that any of these films are bad, you understand, just that for Sundance to feature quite so many of them at once seems not unlike the 40-year-old account executive who fights off ennui by buying a Ferrari.