Category: media

“Thailand says it expects a record windfall this year from foreign film-makers lured there by its exotic locations and liberal industry regulations. Officials announced on Tuesday that they expected to rake in 1.5bn baht ($35m) during 2003. They have credited the government’s moves to cut red tape governing film shoots and to lower income tax for foreign actors.”

Adult Contemporary radio – those endless loops of Elton and Phil Collins and Micahel Bolton and… a 2001 survey of Canadian radio revealed that 23 percent of all listening time on the radio was devoted to this format. But those familiar songs that have been played over and over again for the past decade – “just when it seemed these radio-friendly legacies would never go away – all right, 16 or 17 years after it seemed they wouldn’t go away – it seems like now they just might…”

The movie industry is close to telling cable TV operators to block recording of movies. The technology is aleady in place. “Hollywood’s new strategy is likely to affect everyone from computer-adept users of online music services to the average couch potato. The digital future, hailed as more convenient and of higher quality than the scratchy, fuzzy analog past, is coming with multiple strings attached.”

The dominance of American TV is waning, though still a major force in countries like Australia. “In the US, television executives have attributed the worldwide decline of US programs to several factors, not least their cost. Industry executives say the American studios priced themselves out of the market just as competition began to heat up abroad from newly privatised commercial broadcasters and cable and satellite networks.”

In an industry where ratings are everything, websites that hash over the latest series offerings have found big influence in Hollywood. One – a site called Television Without Pity – has attracted a regular following of people who run the shows – all who want to know what the fans on the site think of their work. TWoP tends to be merciless…

Talent? Hard work? Not necessarily. “It’s just a personality thing that has nothing to do with acting that most people who are successful have. It’s a certain charisma, an energy you’re attracted to. Established actors usually have it. Some people have it only under certain circumstances. But either you have it or you don’t.

The BBC has been under attack for some time for shorting the arts in its schedule. Now BBC chairman Gavyn Davies says the critics are right: “We have accepted that the critics have a point and that we should do something to bring the arts back into the centre of the schedule.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 279 movies are eligible for this year’s Academy Award nominations. “We will next week mail a complete list of those films along with nominations ballots to academy voters, allowing them to nominate these movies or their actors, actresses and directors for awards this year.”

“Movie tourism is perhaps as old as the movies themselves, but with the recent phenomenon of individual films bestriding the globe, it has intensified.” All over the globe tourists are flocking to the “actual places” where this or that scene from their favorite movies were filmed. Some places are rushing to take advantage as a “rebranding” opportunity.