Category: media

Friday, November 29, 2002

Where Are The Women? There seem to be more high-profile women in the movies these days. But that doesn’t mean there are more women in movies. In a recent study, women accounted for 25 percent of all characters in the top 250 films released in 2001. “That is about five percentage points higher than when researchers first tallied roles – in 1952. (On prime-time network television, women account for about 38 percent of the roles, a number rising more quickly than in film.)” It’s even worse for women over 40 – they get only 8 percent of female roles. “The percentage of working directors among the top films dropping from 11 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2001, and from 14 percent to 10 percent for female screenwriters.” San Francisco Chronicle 11/29/02

Where Are The Minorities? “There are substantially more African American, Latino and Asian American faces onscreen than just three years ago, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People denounced the industry for the lack of cultural diversity in prime time. Indeed, on the big four broadcast networks, as well as UPN and the WB, there are actors of color in 26 of the 33 shows premiering this season.” But the gains are almost all in supporting roles, with little progress in starring roles. San Francisco Chronicle 11/29/02

To Every Season Wonder why certain kinds of movies are released at certain times of the year? Big-deal movies in December, action/fluff in summer, art films in January… “Today, the majority of a film’s box-office receipts are reaped in the first fortnight of release, and a week’s delay can make or break a film, so movie schedules are more finely tuned and globally calculated than ever before.” The Guardian (UK) 11/29/02

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Cry For Independence As the British government opens up ownership of broacasters to foreign companies, a new report says independent producers need some protection. “Under quotas, terrestrial channels have to offer 25% of their programming to independent companies. But the actual average was only 15% because channels were unwilling to offer news or large outdoor events to independent production.” BBC 11/25/02

Conduct Unbecoming “The U.S. Naval Academy has confiscated the computers of about 100 midshipmen who allegedly have pirated music and movies on their hard drives. The Annapolis students could face punishment up to a court-martial if they are found to have the copyrighted material illegally.” Wired 11/25/02

Monday, November 25, 2002

Lockout Time was when aspiring movie biz hopefuls would hang out on the studio lots and watch. The storyu goes that “Steven Spielberg’s professional movie career began the day he decided to jump off a tour bus at Universal Studios Hollywood and wander around the back lots. While exploring the buildings, he found an abandoned janitors’ closet and turned it into his office. He would go to work there everyday, wearing a business suit and tie, walking past the security officers. After some time, the security guards had seen him so often they would wave him through the gates, no questions asked.” But now, studio security locks down the lots to outsiders. Backstage 11/24/02

Battle of the TV Music Networks Is MTV in trouble in the UK? “After enjoying 15 years as a near monopoly, the network is in the biggest competitive fight of its life. In less than 18 months Emap – the magazine and radio group formerly known as East Midland and Allied Press – has been able to launch and grow six rival channels which, together, are now watched by almost as many people as MTV’s.” And there are more competitors coming… The Guardian (UK) 11/25/02

Finally – Watch What You Want “After years of failed promises, unripe business plans and half-baked technology, the cable industry is finally beginning to deliver reliable and economical video-on-demand services. Despite the omnipotence that the label implies, video on demand does not allow users to watch any program or movie under the sun. No database is yet infinite. But in New York City, for instance, Time Warner Cable plans to have 1,300 hours of programming available at any one time — the equivalent of almost two months of TV watching.” The New York Times 11/25/02

Sunday, November 24, 2002

The Movies Made Us This Way? Why are Americans so cocky about going to war? Why are they so confident everything will turn out in their favor? “The source of our unworried attitude, our sureness that Iraq will be no more than a blip on our glorious march toward the future, is, I very much fear, that we have been brainwashed by history and, more to the point, by the movies into thinking we cannot lose.” Los Angeles Times 11/24/02

The Artless Censor If a film gets an “NC-17” rating in America, it will have difficulty being distributed. So filmmakers often censor themselves before the ratings board does, taming the content to fit an “R”. “Why do we accept similar censorious interruption when it’s sex rather than violence at issue? And why is the art-house audience, supposedly the one that takes film most seriously, so willing to look the other way?” Denver Post 11/24/02

High-Tech Teen Pact A dying teenager makes a pact with friend that when the first of them dies, the others will put a small digital camera attached to the internet inside the coffin. “When one of the teenagers dies, the survivors must decide whether to fulfill their high-tech pledge and if so, how. One stipulation moves the story into the gothic realm of Edgar Allan Poe. The coffin is to contain a heating element that will speed or reduce the body’s rate of decomposition. The temperature will then be controlled by online visitors, who can adjust an interactive thermostat on the tell-tale Web site.” The New York Times 11/25/02

Friday, November 22, 2002

Communications Bill Introduced The British government has revealed its communication bill, which will reform the way broadcast media do business in the UK. “The bill aims to promote universal access to media and communications services, and self-regulation for companies in the media industry.” BBC 11/22/02

Playing Games With Race Judging by a lot of today’s movies, “you’d think race was easy. No biggie whatsoever. Not only that, it’s fun and entertaining.” But Hollywood has a long history of distorting race relations. “If anything, Hollywood is — and nearly forever has been — in the problem-dodging business, and if these movies are only becoming more strident in their insistence that race on-screen isn’t an issue, it’s because off-screen it so clearly, obviously and unsettlingly is.” Toronto Star 11/22/02

Remaking Public TV Since taking over as CEO of PBS in 2000, Pat Mitchell “has been herding cats, struggling to bring unity and stability to the nation’s loose affiliation of 349 noncommercial television stations. With varying success, she has shifted some of the network’s ‘icon’ series from their hallowed time slots in an effort to bring a new thematic consistency to the weekly offerings. None of these changes, even ones that seem superficial, have been easy.” Washington Post 11/22/02

• Native Talent Native Americans have played virtually no role in Hollywood movies. “Today, say native American artists, that is slowly beginning to change.” Christian Science Monitor 11/22/02

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Acting Out (On The Outs) Radio dramas were once a staple of the dial. But TV changed all that, and though there are still die-hards plugging away producing shows, the outlets have shrunk. Fans hope new technologies like satellite radio or the internet might revive the genre. But will it? Baltimore Sun 11/21/02

Save the Canadian Drama! The head of Telefilm Canada is urging the government to spend more on Canadian drama for domestic consumption. Canada already spends $1.4 billion every year to produce original television programs and films, and yet studies have shown that not a single Canadian program ranks in the top ten list of most popular programs. Is it that the American production juggernaut is just too powerful, or are Canadian-made dramas just generally not up to snuff? The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/21/02

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Nazis Come To German TV For the first time in more than half a century, German television is showing a program about Nazis. And it’s a comedy. “Non-German directors in a long line that stretches from Charlie Chaplin to Roberto Benigni may have dug humour from beneath the horror-strewn surfaces of Nazism and fascism. But for Germans themselves, ‘the catastrophe’, as it is often called, has been too painful to be seen as anything but a tragedy.” The Guardian (UK) 11/19/02

Hurt Me Baby One More Time Forget sex and violence. What sells these days is humiliation. Some “reality,” eh? “Viewers have shown an insatiable appetite for the queasy thrill that comes from watching an ordinary person suffer searing public embarrassment in exchange for 15 minutes of fame.” The New York Times 11/20/02

• The Next Big Movie Rental Model “Consumers love the Netflix rental model, which lets subscribers order DVDs online, receive them by mail, and keep them for as long as they want without late fees. Walmart.com likes it so much that it’s launching a nearly identical service early next year. ‘They’re printing packaging that is essentially identical to ours. Blockbuster is close behind’.” Wired 11/19/02

In Praise of Jesse Helms What’s that, you ask? Praise the anti-arts, anti-NEA, anti-progressive, anti-anything-that-hints-of-compassion obstructionist US Senator? “While his actions may very well be motivated by the interests of small conservative Christian Internet broadcasters, his support for the Small Webcasters Settlement Act (SWSA) has compelled some noncommercial station backers to feel for him what they never imagined they could – gratitude.” Salon 11/19/02

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Has Radio Quality Been Hurt by Derugulation? “The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) charges in a new report that the 1996 Telecom Act, which allowed companies to own more stations, ‘has not benefited the public. It has led to less competition, fewer viewpoints and less diversity in programming.’ Nonsense, says the National Association of Broadcasters. “Studies repeatedly show 75% of Americans express high satisfaction with radio. This report has all the credibility of Miss Cleo.” New York Daily News 11/19/02

The Scholarly Buffy A Melbourne University professor puts out a call for scholarly papers on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is flooded with proposals. “Scholarly Buffyphiles prefer the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies (www.slayage.tv), a website governed by an editorial board with academic contributors examining notions such as Buffy as ‘transgressive woman warrior’, or Buffy ‘and the pedagogy of fear’. Intellectuals around the globe are deconstructing, dissecting and extrapolating from Buffy, across disciplines, in journals and at conferences too.” The Age (Melbourne) 11/19/02

The New Home Movies As prices for digital video cameras drop and computers with sophisticated editing capabilities are more and more available, “home movies” are looking more professional, and budding movie “auteurs” are born. Newsweek 11/25/02

Monday, November 18, 2002

Little Evidence Violent Games Harm Adults: Governments around the world have been considering legislation regulating sale of violent and pornographic computer games. Australia recently banned two controversial games. But social scientists say “more careful research before we can reach a definitive conclusion, (but) I know of no scientific evidence that the interactive nature of computer games makes them more harmful than other popular media.” The Age (Melbourne) 11/17/02

How Will Radio Evolve? Does webcasting help promote recordings in the expectation that listeners will go out and buy? Or is it just theft of free music? Should webcasters have to pay substantial royalties for the privilege of using recordings? Have big corporations consolidated the life out of traditional radio stations? These are questions confronting those trying to determine the future of music-casting. BBC 11/17/02

Sunday, November 17, 2002

How Canada is Stealing Hollywood: From 1999 to 2002, money spent on making films in Canada has doubled, as production crews look to save money by exploiting the weak Canadian dollar. By a remarkable coincidence, the number of U.S. cities that give a darn about the Northern migration of moviemaking has also recently doubled, from one (Los Angeles) to two (L.A. and New York.) What made the Big Apple sit up and notice? Well, you don’t really expect New Yorkers to sit still while a TV movie about the life of former mayor Rudy Giuliani is filmed in Toronto, do you? Boston Globe 11/16/02

Anti-Tobacco Forces Target Hollywood: Product placement has been a staple of big-budget Hollywood films ever since E.T. followed a trail of name-brand candy into Elliot’s bedroom. But a coalition of activist groups and health organizations is demanding that the film industry draw the line at in-film cigarette advertising. “The groups want the industry to encourage the Motion Picture Association of America to impose an R rating on films that include smoking, except those that ‘clearly and unambiguously’ reflect tobacco’s dangers.” Edmonton Journal (AP) 11/16/02

Egoyan’s New Role: Atom Egoyan knew his film Ararat, which tells some hard truths about the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians in Turkey, would be controversial. He wasn’t prepared for just how controversial. Since Ararat debuted several months ago, Egoyan has been called a liar, a propagandist, and had his life threatened via e-mail. It’s enough to make a director long for the days when he was only being called an anti-Semite by a Toronto critic… The New York Times 11/17/02

Friday, November 8, 2002

Australia Film Industry Booming: Australia’s film and TV production industry grew by 8 percent in the past year. “But while budgets boomed, there was also concern about the drop in locally made television drama, with not one adult television mini-series made here for the first time in more than 20 years.” The Age (Melbourne) 11/08/02

• Previously: THE DIGITAL TV MESS: Arizona Senator John McCain has quite a brouhaha to look forward to as he takes over the committee in charge of the transition to digital TV broadcasts. The government wants the transition to move fast, so it can sell the analog spectrum to wireless providers. The industry doesn’t want to commit to digital anything until a system is in place to prevent consumers from making personal copies of copyrighted material. And consumers want their old TVs to work with the new system, and the right to make personal copies of copyrighted material. Good luck, Senator! Wired 11/08/02

Wednesday, November 6, 2002

Sotheby’s Trust Problem How will the public regain trust in auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s? Fines are not enough. Confidence in the auction houses won’t come until everyone who had any hand in the price-fixing scandal has departed. One problem. Former Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman, currently serving a prison term in remote Minnesota, is still the company’s biggest shareholder. And he’s not likely to sell anytime soon. The Times (UK)

• Previously:
  • STONE BOX LINKED TO JESUS IS DAMAGED: A 2000-year-old stone box believed to be the oldest physical evidence of Jesus Christ, has been damaged in transit on its way to the Royal Ontario Museum. Existence of the box was revealed two weeks ago. Museum officials declined to reveal details of the damage. Discovery 11/04/02
  • CHANSONS – OF THEE I SING: “While French artists of today glory in the richest musical heritage in Europe, they are also frustrated by the insularity of their traditions. At a time when the music business is becoming increasingly globalised, it is hard for a Francophone artist to break out of the home market. Language is a huge barrier; there are very few French songs that become international hits.” The Guardian (UK) 11/04/02

National Gallery Makeover London’s National Gallery has unveiled a £21 million makeover project to improve access to the museum. “Gallery officials and architects believe the refurbishments will turn the area into the capital’s cultural focal point.” BBC

• Previously: An Expensive Door: “The east entrance to the National Gallery is about to become the most expensive front door in Britain: opening the towering glossy black door to the public, after 170 years, will cost £21 million.” The Guardian (UK) 11/06/02

Sunday, November 3, 2002

Spiderman Sets Record On its first day in stores, the movie Spiderman sells a record 7 million DVDs and videotapes. Last spring Spidey shattered box office records with a $114.8 million opening weekend in movie theatres. Houston Chronicle (AP) 11/03/02

• Previously: FIGHTING IN PUBLIC: A public and rancorous debate is being carried out in public among two of England’s better known public intellectuals. “The debate is particularly English because its protagonists — the novelist Martin Amis and the Washington-based writer Christopher Hitchens — are so rooted in late 20th-century London. Both graduated from Oxford University and have carried out their quarrel in learned texts freckled with Latin. Both won renown while working at the leftist New Statesman in the 1970’s. Each had no cross word — in public at least — for the other. Until last month.” The New York Times 10/14/02

Saturday, November 2, 2002

State of Shock: Shock jocks on American radio get away with the most outrageous stunts and foul language. But while pop culture that finds an audience on one side of the Atlantic usually finds success on the other, the shock jock phenomenon hasn’t. The Guardian (UK) 11/02/02

Friday, November 1, 2002

Wait – the gov’t is against monopolies now? The U.S. Justice Department has filed suit to block the merger of the two largest satellite television companies, saying that the merged company would eliminate competition in the industry, particularly in rural areas not served by cable television. The suit was not entirely unexpected, but it raises questions about what the government’s plans may be for the proposed merger of cable TV giants AT&T and Comcast. Wired 11/01/02

• Turf War? What Turf War? National Public Radio has opened a huge new West Coast operations base in Los Angeles despite facing a cash crunch so severe that the network has been laying off veteran correspondents, and the expansion has nothing whatsoever to do with rival Minnesota Public Radio’s incursion into the same territory last year. (MPR is closely allied with Minneapolis-based Public Radio International, NPR’s main competitor in the distribution of programs to public radio stations nationwide.) The ‘NPR West’ mission seems a bit vague, but the important thing, according to network execs, is that there is no turf war, there has never been a turf war, and they are shocked – shocked! – that anyone would assign them such scurrilous motives. Los Angeles Times 11/01/02

Thursday October 31

FRIDA – WHERE’S THE ART? There’s plenty to like about the new Frida Kahlo biopic. But also some serious wrongs. First, where’s her art? Then, “the film unintentionally demeans Kahlo by depicting her as a charming naif, rather than a savvy professional. OK, so she often wore folkloric Tehuana clothes and mimicked folk-art techniques, the better to express her solidarity with working-class Mexicans. But she herself was born bourgeois and was a creature of the international art world besides. Her paintings are far more sophisticated than they initially seem and, even though she downplayed her ambition, she obviously took her work extremely seriously.” Slate 10/30/02

NEWSFLASH – SEX STILL SELLS: The National Organization for Women has released its annual critique of American television, and the landscape has rarely looked bleaker for women who are unfortunate enough not to look like Jennifer Aniston. “The standard for beauty is ‘young, thin and white.’ Only four Asian-American actresses had substantial roles in regularly scheduled series, NOW notes. The networks employed 134 more men than women in recurring prime-time roles.” And the top TV role model for young women isn’t even a human being: she’s crusading cartoon character Lisa Simpson. Denver Post 10/31/02

Wednesday October 30

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ARTS COVERAGE ON THE RADIO: Why is radio afraid to discuss ideas on air? Instead we get artist interviews, process stories and fluff… everything except the ideas. “Free public education is not an elitist concept. And the CBC could be the best public educator in the world, by using experts to explain difficult concepts in everyday language. Most experts on art or ideas are already trained to do this, since they have had to spend some time teaching to make their living. Learning and teaching are inseparable to most thinkers and writers.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/30/02

JESSE HELMS TO THE RESCUE: The North Carolina senator (who’s just about to retire after a 30-years in the Senate) is blocking royalty legislation for webcasters. He says “he believes the discounted record label fees would still be too high for small companies.” Charlotte Observer 10/29/02

REALLY BIG SHOW: Imax theatres are beginning to show digitally remastered prints on their giant screens. The showings are popular, but some critics worry that “if an Imax film, especially the latest Hollywood releases, can be seen at your nearest commercial multiplex, what’s the point in making the trek to the science centre or museum?” Toronto Star 10/30/02

Tuesday October 29

IT’S ABOUT WHO GETS TO CENSOR: Hollywood directors are suing companies who sell software that edits out what they consider offensive scenes. “It’s hard to sympathize with the Directors Guild of America’s efforts to prevent parents from cleaning up movies when it allows studios to do it every day. As long as there’s a buck in it down the line, filmmakers allow studios to reedit their films for TV and airplane broadcast. If studio research numbers come in low, filmmakers willingly change endings, reshoot scenes, tone down sex and violence, cut out entire characters and subplots, and even change the whole tone of a film to make it more commercially salable.” Los Angeles Times 10/29/02

Monday October 28

THE MAN WHO MADE THE MODERN BBC: John Birt is an egoist of the first order. “By the time he retired, he left an organisation that was, if anything, too dominant. Birt had negotiated an above-inflation licence fee settlement for digital channels even before it was clear what they were to be. Extraordinarily, half the money spent on programmes for British television now comes from the BBC. Around two-fifths of all original programming is commissioned and paid for by the licence fee. BBC Worldwide is the country’s largest distributor and exploiter of media intellectual property.” In a new book, Birt tells his story… The Observer (UK) 10/27/02

HOLLYWOOD’S NEW LATIN BEAT: Hispanics are now the largest minority in the United States. “In Los Angeles alone, 47 per cent of the population is Hispanic; that includes five million Mexicans.” And Hollywood is paying attention. The movie industry is increasingly thinking about ways to appeal to Hispanics. “In the last few years, the main thing I’ve observed is a change in attitudes. The business community has realised how important the Latino population is, and movies and TV have started to as well.” The Observer (UK) 10/27/02

FINDING THE REAL FRIDA: How to bring artist Frida Kahlo’s art to the screen? Director Julie Taymor “wanted some way to convey the motivations behind Kahlo’s art, and the device she came up with is what she calls ‘live-action, three-dimensional paintings’ – sequences in which Kahlo’s famous paintings meld with the actors on screen. ‘That makes it a little different than a biopic, because you go in and out of linear storytelling,’ she says.” Washington Post 10/27/02

Sunday October 27

BAD NEWS FOR BRIT FILM: The British film industry is officially in a slump. In the last year, the UK’s Channel Four closed its film production business, and less US investment in British film has resulted in fewer movies being made overall – 40% less than last year, in fact. But the British Film Council is not ready to throw in the towel, and insists that the industry will rebound. BBC 10/25/02

Friday October 25

WHERE’D THE ART GO? Movies have always been entertainment. But also art. “Lately, though, the word ‘art’ is scarcely mentioned in discussions about films in this country, even where you might most expect it, namely independent cinema. The reasons are complex but include the decline of fine art in middle-class life and our love affair with the most trivial aspects of entertainment culture.” San Francisco Chronicle (LAT) 10/25/02

NEW RESPECT FOR BOLLYWOOD? “Although India has a film industry that goes back a century and produces more than 800 films a year, Bollywood filmmakers often complain their work is not taken seriously by either critics or the larger global audience. With their heavy reliance on musical numbers and formulaic plots about star-crossed lovers, popular Indian movies have rarely won critical applause.” But recently Bollywood seems to be winning more respect away from home. What people have become aware of recently is that the way Bollywood deals with similar plot lines is interesting. It has become far more acceptable to think that melodrama is a viable form of art, and not just a failure of art.” National Post 10/25/02

Wednesday October 23

LISTENING TO THE WEB: Most popular TV series are tracked by scores of websites – an official one run by the network; the others run by fans – that dissect the content of every episode. It would be simple to underestimate the intensity with which Web sites fetishize TV programs – and the impact they have on the show’s creators. It is now standard Hollywood practice for executive producers (known in trade argot as ‘show runners’) to scurry into Web groups moments after an episode is shown on the East Coast.” New York Times Magazine 10/20/02

Tuesday October 22

BOLLYWOOD DOWN: India’s Bollywood, home to the largest film industry in the world, has lost $30 million since the beginning of the year. “Both producers and distributors have been hit by the ongoing economic downturn, and that producers have faced falling profits from the sale of music, satellite and overseas rights.” BBC 10/22/02

Monday October 21

ROYALTY PAYMENT DELAY: Small webcasters got an extension on Sunday’s deadline for paying royalty fees for music they stream. “The extension, granted by the recording industry and performance artists Friday, came a day after the Senate recessed for the elections without approving copyright rate revisions negotiated between webcasters and the copyright holders.” The fees will put hundreds of webcasters out of business, the webcasters caim. Nando Times (AP) 10/20/02

INTERACTIVE TV ON YOUR PHONE: “Text messaging has recently overtaken Internet use in Europe. One of the fastest-growing uses of text messaging, moreover, is interacting with television. Figures show that 20% of teenagers in France, 11% in Britain and 9% in Germany have sent messages in response to TV shows.” The Economist 10/18/02

Sunday October 20

WHAT LISTENERS WANT? These days radio is programmed by focus groups and consultants. Radio execs say that what we hear is more in tune with what listeners want than ever before. On the other hand… “radio was once regional, as different as every town. More and more, the whole country is listening to one station … music is something that is magical, ultra-magical, and radio was an art form. Now it’s something cold and different.” Los Angeles Times 10/19/02

WHY TV DRAMAS DON’T AGE WELL: Why is it that “quality” TV dramas that look so real and up-to-date when they first run, look so dated and contrived just a few years later? Part of the answer is technical. ”When drama like this was new, it relied almost totally on words. With the limberness of camerawork and editing today, we rely on a lot of things, not the least of which are elaborate location, costumes, music, and sound effects, things you’re not even aware of and which allows for much more nuanced and subtle acting.” Boston Globe 10/20/02

FITS OF ANALYSIS: What is it about The Sopranos that critics can’t resist? “Never before has a programme been subject to such extensive interpretation. “North American academics have recently published no fewer than five books about The Sopranos. The authors include psychiatrists, sociologists, literary theorists, postmodernists, post-structuralists and the other usual suspects. It’s only fair to warn you that these are determined individuals who will not waste two words when a chapter will do.” The Observer (UK) 10/20/02

Friday October 18

IRANIAN DIRECTOR TURNS BACK AWARD: Iranian film director Bahman Qobadi has rejected an award he was to receive at the Chicago Film Festival after US immigration officials refused to grant him a visa to collect it. “In a letter to the festival organisers, Mr Qobadi said ‘a country which rejects the visa application of an artist, better keep the prize of its festival for its own authorities’.” BBC 10/18/02

VIDEO-ON-DEMAND GOES OFFLINE: Intertainer, the video-on-demand provider, is shutting down while it sues big entertainment companies. “The company said it cannot continue to provide movies and other programming online and on cable systems while entertainment companies raise prices and withhold programs.” Nando Times (AP) 10/17/02

DIGITAL RADIO BLOCKS OUT LITTLE GUYS? Last week the American FCC approved digital radio for US stations. But the way it’s set up is likely to squeeze out small low-wattage community radio stations. Wired 10/18/02

HOW ABOUT SOME UGLY PEOPLE? A researcher in Norway accuses journalists, photographers and TV producers there of “concentrating on beautiful faces and bodies and accuses the press of choosing attractive interviewees from schools or the workplace, and avoiding others. “Ugly people should be spotlighted in the media in the same way that the media wishes to emphasize persons from ethnic minorities.” Aftenposten (Norway) 10/18/02

Thursday October 17

A NOT-FOR-TV EVENT: As far as American TV news is concerned, upcoming elections might as well not be taking place. “Of 2,454 local news programs in the country’s 50 largest media markets, 1,311 contained nothing at all on campaigns between Sept. 18 and Oct. 4, according to the Lear Center Local News Archive.” Nando Times (AP) 10/16/02

WEBCASTER DEAL FALLS APART: Small webcasters thought they had made a deal that would have exempted them from royalty requirements that they say would have forced many of them out of business. But with an October 20th deadline fast coming up, the agreement has fallen apart, and many of the webcasting operations will go silent. “With a new field like Webcasting, it’s hard to tell where the serious concerns end and the panicked hyperbole starts. However, there is evidence that the fear of the July agreement has already dampened what had been a blossoming field.” Boston Globe 10/17/02

AUSSIE FILM EXPERIMENT: Eight films are being shot – all with the same script. “Despite different directors, casts and crews, they are all using the same 10-minute script about two former lovers meeting. One version features deaf actors, another is “a David Lynch nightmare-scape” set in the 1940s, a third was shot in Japanese using train carriages and a fourth has become a tale about schizophrenia. Another, being shot in Bourke next week, has two Aboriginal leads.” Sydney Morning Herald 10/17/02

Wednesday October 16

ON THE FRONT LINES OF PROPAGANDA: These days, Americans tend to view the U.S. propaganda films which aired in movie theatres during World War II as quaint relics of the past. But as the Bush administration cranks up the PR campaign for war against Iraq, the military is once again producing propaganda shorts to air along with previews and pre-screening ads in theatres around the country. The first such film short began airing in select cities this month, with the largest U.S. theatre chain insisting that it is only trying to”‘inform and educate the public.” Los Angeles Times 10/16/02

THE MOVIES YOU’LL NEVER SEE: “Every year, Hollywood studios quietly dump movies — even ones with top stars — that aren’t worth the money to distribute in theaters. Call it Hollywood’s dirty little secret. With marketing costs spiraling higher every year, studios increasingly have both economic and psychological incentives to cut their losses by keeping their stinkers in the closet.” Los Angeles Times 10/16/02

Tuesday October 15

END OF THE VCR: DVD players are the quickest growing consumer device in Australian history. “VCR sales dropped 14 per cent last year but 850,000 units are still expected to sell this year. About 800,000 DVD players are expected to be sold this year. Within four years, VCR sales are expected to dry up.” The Age (Melbourne) 10/15/02

Monday October 14

SANCTIMONY VS. SACRILEGE: The debate between Hollywood directors and the Utah company that is releasing ‘edited’ versions of their films with all the sex, violence, and foul language removed is fast becoming one of those hot-button issues where both sides become so absorbed in their own righteous point of view as to make compromise impossible. To the directors, the old-fashioned folks who just want to enjoy a good flick with their children are ‘fascists’; and to the old-fashioned folks, those Hollywood people are one good full frontal scene from being hard-core pornographers. So where is all this headed? Federal court, of course. Los Angeles Times 10/14/02

PLAYING ALONG: When talking movies first hit theatre screens, 55,000 musicians in the US who had accompanied the silents were thrown out of work within six months. “But some musicians still make a healthy living playing along to old movies at festivals around the world.” BBC 10/14/02

SAG TRIES AGAIN: “The newly elected board of the Screen Actors Guild, seeking to open lines of communication after a three-year battle that ended in defeat for the nation’s talent agencies, on Sunday said it would try to reopen its dialogue with agents over whether to ease restrictions governing their business practices. But there’s a catch. SAG, which represents 98,000 actors, will try to jump-start the talks even though its membership already has said no to the agent’s make-or-break issue: giving agents more leeway to receive investments from and invest in companies that also produce.” Los Angeles Times 10/14/02

Sunday October 13

WHAT WILL DIGITAL SOUND LIKE? This month, the FCC approved the introduction of digital radio signals into the American broadcast landscape, setting off a flurry of predictions, speculations, and warnings over what form the new technology might take. The truth is that digital radio will likely be many things to many people, but anyone looking for it to provide an end to the corporate domination of the airwaves will likely be disappointed. Chicago Tribune 10/13/02

Friday October 11

THE FCC DID WHAT? The two satellite radio companies which have been inundating us with advertising for the last year or two haven’t turned a profit yet, but execs at both Sirius and XM have repeatedly expressed confidence that mass popularity for the medium is only a matter of time. But this week, the FCC has approved plans for existing radio stations to broadcast digital signals (much as TV stations will soon be required to) and the fallout may include the death of satellite radio. Wired 10/11/02

HOLLYWOOD’S OWN MELTING POT: “Many of the great movies that seem to define ‘American’ values have been directed by foreigners, from Yankee Doodle Dandy to Jim Thorpe: All-American. And that isn’t even counting the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock… The flood of talent to Hollywood today hasn’t stopped, it’s just flowing from new directions. In Hollywood’s early years, the directors were Europeans, some of whom were fleeing the Nazis. Today, filmmakers come from Asia and Latin America, too, not to mention English-speaking countries like Australia.” The Christian Science Monitor 10/11/02

Thursday October 10

FILM INSTITUTE MAY CLOSE: The Australian Film Institute is close to closing, after failing to raise enough money to support its operations. “In its 25 years of existence, the Australian Film Institute’s library has played a key role in countless local and international screen projects.” The Age (Melbourne) 10/10/02

SCOTTISH STUDIO IN DOUBT: A study commissioned by the Scottish government concludes there isn’t enough fim work in Scotland to justify building a big new film studio. “Hopes had been raised for a studio after one of the busiest years in the industry – with about 14 productions currently shooting in Scotland.” BBC 10/09/02

Wednesday October 9

GOING DIGITAL? Digital radio could be the biggest update to the medium since the debut of FM in the 1940s. The Federal Communications Commission is to decide Thursday whether to allow radio stations to broadcast digital signals and how they should do it. Digital radio’s rollout could begin in a few months in some major cities, and consumers would start seeing digital receivers in car stereos and high-end audio systems next year.” Wired (AP) 10/08/02

FINAL CUT: Video editing software is sophisticated enough that anyone can now edit TV shows or movies. Legal challenges confront Cleanflicks, a company that edits out scenes it feels are objectionable. But “legal or not, this kind of manipulation is here to stay. It’s not just conservatives in Utah who are taking the knife to films: Enterprising fans are using their computers to alter films, too.” Village Voice 10/08/02

Tuesday October 8

WEBCASTERS MAKE ROYALTY DEAL: Small webcasters may have a deal to lower proposed royalties for songs they stream on the net. Many webcasters had gone silent, complaining that onerous royalty fees would put them out of business. “Sources on both sides of Sunday’s deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was a two-year agreement that calls for Webcasters to pay back and future royalties equal to 8% to 12% of their revenue or 5% to 7% of their expenses, whichever was higher.” Los Angeles Times 10/07/02

OFFSHORE TRADING: The KaZaA file trading network has something going for it that Napster didn’t – its operator is located outside the United States. “What KaZaA has in the United States are users — millions of them — downloading copyrighted music, television shows and movies 24 hours a day. How effective are United States laws against a company that enters the country only virtually? The answer is about to unfold in a Los Angeles courtroom.” The New York Times 10/07/02

MY BIG FAT RECORD: My Big Fat Greek Wedding has sold $148 million worth of tickets, making it the top-grossing independent film of all time, ahead of The Blair Witch Project. “The film has already outgrossed such mega-budget films as Tom Cruise’s Minority Report, Vin Diesel’s XXX and Hank’s Road to Perdition. Some box-office pundits bet that it will surpass the $200-million mark. And that’s not counting video/DVD sales or the international box-office take.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/08/02

Monday October 7

A HOLLYWOOD DIVIDED: “There’s hardly a cause in the world that isn’t attempting to harness Hollywood’s star power to raise awareness and cash. Yet the question of Israel and whether to wholeheartedly embrace its cause is posing a surprisingly provocative and uncomfortable dilemma for many in the industry, all the more notable because the movie business was founded by and is still well-populated by Jews.” Chicago Tribune (LAT) 10/07/02

HAVE IT YOUR WAY: We’re maybe three years away from having video-on-demand – any movie, anytime, anywhere. “The implications of such a trend: declining influence of the movie-distribution chains that hold sway over when and where new films are released; few video stores outside large urban areas; and dwindling attendances at cinemas everywhere. Cable providers will get their cut in the form of payment for opening their networks to third-party content. Meanwhile, the set-top box will replace the VCR—the greatest single product the consumer-electronics industry ever produced, and one which, at its peak, generated half the industry’s sales and three-quarters of its profits.” Think the cable/movie/TV business is worried? The Economist 10/04/02

FILM’S DEBT TO POLLOCK: The best, most counter-cultural strain of American film-making owes a great deal, perhaps everything, to Jackson Pollock. It is impossible to overstate his importance in American culture. He was the first purely American artist. It took the strange, inarticulate Pollock to break through to something unprecedented. The way he painted – dancing, letting paint fall – was not European. It asserted a freedom, a daring that marks a break in the cultural history of the US.” The Age (Melbourne) 10/07/02

ANTE-DILUVIAN: American syndicated radio host Don Imus daily spews his “anti–gay, anti–black, anti–Asian, anti–Semitic, and sometimes anti–handicapped ridicule” over the airwaves, writes Philip Nobile. So why do prominent members of the American intelligentsia – like New Yorker editor David Remnick – regularly appear as guests on his show? MobyLives 10/07/02

Sunday October 6

FILM MUSEUM WON’T REOPEN: When it opened in 1988, London’s Museum of the Moving Image was “one of the most popular tourist attractions in London, particularly with young visitors.” But it closed down in 1999 for “redevelopment” and now the British Film Institute says it won’t reopen at all. “The future of the museum became bogged down in the redevelopment of the South Bank arts complex, where yet another masterplan has bitten the dust.” The Guardian (UK) 10/05/02

MUSICAL MAKEOVER: There was a time that movie musicals were very popular. Those days are long gone now. So some reinvention is in order. “In the last three years, the salvage operation has become an international project, with directors as dissimilar as Lars von Trier (Danish), Baz Luhrmann (Australian) and most recently François Ozon (French) trotting out ambitious idiosyncratic test models of a new and improved 21st-century movie musical.” The New York Times 10/06/02

Friday October 4

PROTECTING COPYING: Two US Congressmen introduced legislation Thursday that “would legalize the manufacture and use of technology for copying of copy-protected CDs and DVDs for personal use. ‘The anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act unfairly tilts the balance in favor of content owners and away from the consumer, slowly but surely siphoning away the availability of information to which we all have a right’.” Nando Times (Scripps) 10/03/02

EXTRA CREDIT: “The Writers Guild of America has released a set of proposed changes for determining television and screenwriter credits, some of which have already raised the ire of rank and file union members. The four proposed changes, which must be voted on by the Writers Guild’s 12,000 members, were sent out Thursday. Critics say the two most controversial proposals would erode the importance traditionally placed on the first writer of a script.” Los Angeles Times 10/04/02

SCREENWRITER EXTRAORDINAIRE: Harold Pinter is so famous as a playwright that his work for the movies is often overlooked. But Michael Billington is a big fan: “The fact is that he has written 24 screenplays of which, unusually, 17 have been filmed as written. And I would argue that the screenplays not only constitute a significant second canon to the plays, but reveal an even more consistent preoccupation with politics.” The Guardian (UK) 10/04/02

CAN WE KILL OFF PEOPLE’S CHOICE NEXT? The eternal Hollywood question: How many awards shows will the world accept before someone takes Joan Rivers hostage and sets fire to the red carpet? The apparent answer: One fewer than there are now. CBS has announced that the low-rated American Film Institute Awards will not return for a second year. “If there is a lesson from AFI’s experience, it is that… if you plan to broadcast an awards show, you better hope the winners show up.” Los Angeles Times 10/04/02

WATCHING YOU: TV ratings methods are notoriously unreliable. Viewers forget to fill in diaries, and box meters don’t measure who’s there watching. So now there’s the Portable People Meter (PPM), a device about the size of a pager that clips on a belt or can be worn around a person’s neck. Because it is portable, the PPM will capture viewing data that set-top boxes don’t, such as when the person watches the Super Bowl at a sports bar or gets together with friends for a Survivor party.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/03/02

Thursday October 3

TAKING THE CONSUMER’S SIDE: While Microsoft and big chip-makers Intel and AMD are embedding copy protection measures in new products meant to thwart consumer copying, Apple is taking a pro-consumer stand. “The Mac is becoming the hub of a digital lifestyle, in which you move data between a Mac and various devices around the home, such as digital cameras, MP3 players and the like.” San Jose Mercury News 10/02/02

TRYING NOT TO FORGET: Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet presided over one of the most horrific police states of the 20th century, and these days, many Chileans would prefer to forget about those days. But for filmmaker Patricio Guzman, the Pinochet era has become a personal crusade which began when he fled the country following the dictator’s ascension to power. “What shocks me is the lack of space for memory in Latin America. There is no great literature on repression. In Chile great writers have not spoken out… Movie directors turn away from the topic. Most artists feel it is a tired theme. They want to move on, to write about or cover other things. I think we’ll have to wait for those who are 15 now to address this past.” The New York Times 10/03/02

Wednesday October 2

FUN AND GAMES: One of the big promises of digital television was that it would make TV interactive; viewers would be able to tailor their viewing experiences in the ways they wanted. But it hasn’t turned out that way. No surprise – TV is a passive experience, and people seem to like it that way. Instead, the new digital medium is being used for gaming. “Gaming channels have grown wildly popular in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia; South Korea has three, and in the United States, the 24-hour G4 channel was launched in April. What is striking about G4’s offerings is that, belying the cutting-edge nature of the technology it presents, many of its programming formats are utterly traditional.” International Herald Tribune 10/01/02

Tuesday October 1

THE DECLINE OF RADIO? “The consolidation of the radio business in the hands of a very few, powerful corporate owners has devastated the quality of commercial radio. Every year, radio programming is produced with smaller and smaller budgets by fewer and fewer people with more and more smoke and mirrors: cookie-cutter music formats, overuse of syndication, tighter, more repetitive playlists filled with inferior songs, one programming staff operating a cluster of stations and commercial breaks that never seem to end.” Salon 10/01/02

MORE FAKE MOVIE FANS? Are Hollywood movie studios planting e-mail postings to various moviewebsites touting movies they want to promote? The e-mails purport to be from movie fans and talk up upcoming movies in web postings – but in fact they might be planted by the studios. “This is dirty tricks, not legitimate marketing. It’s also a slap in the face because the studios are using our site to hype movies without paying for advertising. After all, what’s the difference between paying people to pretend to be film fans Web sites across the country and paying them to pretend to be happy customers in a testimonial TV commercial?” Los Angeles Times 10/01/02

TV’S NEW AGE OF THE ARTS? “For critics who love the arts, something has gone terribly wrong with arts on television. But in the past year, two remarkable things have happened to shake up this purported decline. The first was the establishment of BBC4, billed as ‘a place to think’ and expressly designed as a haven for intellectual, cultured programming. The second thing was even more radical. In the past year, Channel 5 has unexpectedly moved upmarket, making arts programmes designed to draw in a more upmarket audience.” And audiences are watching. The Guardian (UK) 09/30/02

UNDUE INFLUENCE: Hollywood seems to have an almost supernatural influence over lawmakers in Washington, who have been obediently drafting all manner of legislation that is clearly not in the best interests of consumers. From proposals to allow companies to invade home PCs in search of copyrighted music and movies, to a plan to outlaw analog video equipment (thereby rendering today’s generation of VCR’s unusable), big business is winning. Wired 09/30/02

Monday September 30

SIN-TILLATING: New-style censorship companies edit out what they consider to be objectionable parts of movies and make them available to clients. One company – CleanFlicks – says “we love movies, but prefer to watch them without the sex, nudity, profanity or extreme violence.” Now Hollywood is suing, saying no one has the right to edit creative property owned by those who make it. These Internet Age puritans have the “misguided notion that there are spiritually correct ways to wallow in sinfulness. It’s a bit like telling us what kind of life preserver is the best one to wear for a joyride down the river Styx.” Toronto Star 09/29/02

THE POWER OF LITERALSPEAK: The need to get foreign audiences to buy cinema tickets, videos or DVDs to see obscure-sounding movies has created a specialised genre that marketing departments have christened ‘literalspeak’. Although not always crystal-clear when translated back into English, the system replaces the title of Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall, which could mean anything, with the foreign distribution rebranded The Urban Neurotic. Boogie Nights, a title that conceals the central theme of an unusually well-endowed hero, is spelt out in China as His Powerful Device Makes Him Famous.” The Guardian (UK) 09/17/02

Sunday September 29

CHURCH CONDEMNS FILM – IT JUMPS TO NO. 1: Not long after condemning the movie that won this year’s Venice Film Festival top prize, the Catholic Church is attacking another movie – the surprise Mexican blockbuster, The Sin of Father Amaro, “a tale of a young, idealistic and heterosexual priest who lets himself sink into the institutional corruption of the church after getting his young lover pregnant. If the condemnation was meant to keep the faithful away, it backfired spectacularly. In the last week, driven on by lurid rumours of the film’s contents – particularly a scene in which an alley cat eats a host wafer spat out by a communicant – The Sin of Father Amaro has become the most successful Mexican film ever.” The Guardian (UK) 09/28/02

PLAY IT AGAIN: Are there really no new ideas in Hollywood? Sometimes it seems that way, given how many remakes there are. But no – there are planty of ideas. The reason movies are made and remade over and over is – here’s a shocker – money. “When you’ve got the equity already built up in a brand name, it’s already been promoted, it’s already been sold once. It’s almost like going into the movie already having had one advertising budget spent on you.” Chicago Sun-Times 09/29/02

Thursday September 26

SPACE INVADERS: The US Congressman who is proposing legislation that would allow copyright holders to invade and disable the computers of those they suspect of copying copyrighted works, defends his proposal: “While these P2P networks have some usefulness, there really can’t be any doubt that their primary use is sharing millions, perhaps billions, of copyrighted works. This bill fundamentally affects their whole business method.” Wired 09/25/02

Wednesday September 25

MAJOR MOVIE COMPANIES SUED: A movies-on-demand company is suing major media companies, charging they have set up a cartel to shut out independents. “In a lawsuit announced Tuesday, Intertainer leveled 14 counts of antitrust violations at AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony, claiming they have withheld movies from being licensed by unaffiliated companies while they developed their own on-demand streaming service called Movielink.” Wired 09/24/02

FILM OFFICE CLOSING: The Dallas/Fort Worth Film Commission is being closed after the city of Dallas withdrew its funding. “In folding, the local office follows other film commission casualties in Massachusetts, Ohio, Orlando, Fla., and St. Louis. Arizona got a last-minute reprieve but had a 50 percent cut to $500,000. Illinois had a 35 percent budget cut, Iowa and Michigan are down to one person, and Wisconsin currently has no film office.” Dallas Morning-News 09/24/02

RUNNING COMMENTARY: “The concept is relatively simple, though somewhat clunky in execution: Hook up a microphone to your computer, fire up a DVD, record your insights as you watch, convert your words to either one long, low-bit-rate MP3 or several smaller ones (perhaps divided by chapter), and, finally, post them on the Web. Interested parties can download your file, then play it through their computer speakers in sync with the corresponding disc.” But is anyone interested in what you might have to say? Salon 09/24/02

Tuesday September 24

SO MUCH FOR THE OBSESSION WITH YOUTH: Movie audiences are getting older. “According to a survey by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, between 1990 and 2000, moviegoers in the obsessively sought-after 16-20 age group had dropped from 20% to 17% of total viewers. Moviegoers in the 25-29 category dropped from 14% to 12%. Even 12- to 15-year-olds, who are supposed to be part of the biggest demographic bulge since baby boomers, dipped from 11% to 10%. Meanwhile, moviegoers ages 50-59 didn’t just stay steady, they shot up from 5% to 10% of total audience.” Los Angeles Times 09/24/02

PROTECTING THEIR OWN: The movie industry has been making menacing noises about going after consumers who copy movies. But Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti says: “All we’re trying to do is to be able to protect movies in a sturdy fashion, so that we can deliver them on the Internet to give consumers another choice as to how they want to watch movies. The industry wants to do this at a fair and reasonable price.” San Jose Mercury News 09/23/02

PROTESTING TOO MUCH? New satellite radio services are selling themselves as an alternative for listeners who want more diversity in programming. It’s a pitch that must be working – the National Association of Broadcasters is putting money into a PR campaign to dispell this “myth.” “The NAB has said all along that traditional radio provides almost everything the vast majority of listeners need, and that if satellite radio finds a market at all, it will be a small niche on the fringe.” New York Daily News 09/24/02

Monday September 23

NBC’S BIG NIGHT: Conan O’Brien hosted, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer worked the red carpet, and Friends and The West Wing took home the gold at the 54th Annual Emmy Awards, while cable network HBO walked off with 24 awards but few of the big ones. Nearly shut out was HBO’s Six Feet Under, which many had picked for a sweep, and Michael Chiklis took home the Best Actor award for his work on a show most Americans had never heard of. Los Angeles Times 09/23/02

• THIS SHOW SUCKS! “The trend in televised award shows isn’t going the way of either the Oscars or Emmys. You want to see the future of TV awards? Find someone with a tape of the last MTV Music Awards. Pagan exhibitionism, baby. That’s what the world of show-biz award shtick is coming to. Or, put another way, we’re talking the difference between formal proms and a rave.” St. Paul Pioneer Press 09/23/02

Sunday September 22

FORCED TO CHOOSE: For years, African-Americans have assailed the major broadcast networks over a lack of non-white faces on the small screen. In recent years, diversity has increased a bit, with a handful of shows scoring points both for their originality and for their willingness to showcase minorities in non-stereotypical situations. But two networks have once again enraged activists and TV critics alike with their inexplicable decision to put America’s two most successful shows featuring black families (The Bernie Mac Show on FOX and My Wife and Kids on ABC) opposite each other in the new fall lineup. Chicago Tribune 09/22/02

Friday September 20

RADIO CONSOLIDATION – GOOD? BAD? Has massive consolidation of the radio industry in recent years led to “more opportunity for radio industry employees, more diversity of programming and better radio for smaller markets? Or has it meant a “loss of jobs, the elimination of local content, less access by the public to the airwaves and a narrowing of the music and opinion heard on radio?” Both views are being heard as the radio business is transformed. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 09/19/02

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Are there really no original ideas left in Hollywood, or is everyone out there just exceedingly lazy? In either case, the film industry is once again obsessed with remaking movies that someone else has already made. In one particularly ridiculous example, Paramount is preparing to release the fifth version of “The Four Feathers.” Some say it’s homage, but most agree that it’s just yet another sign that Hollywood is making movies the way McDonald’s makes burgers – fast, cheap, and every one like every other. The Christian Science Monitor 09/20/02

COVERING THE DEAD: A TV host in the U.K. is attacking the BBC for what he sees as arts coverage mired hopelessly in a previous century. Melvyn Bragg, who hosts an arts program for BBC rival ITV, pointed to a recent BBC documentary on the Mona Lisa as an example of arts programming which ignores contemporary work and living artists. The BBC says Bragg is full of it, and insists that Britain’s original broadcaster is firmly committed to showcasing contemporary British art. BBC 09/20/02

Thursday September 19

NO SANITIZERS: Hollywood says it will crack down on those who re-edit films to filter out content for “sensitive or politically conservative consumers. “This is not about an artist getting upset because someone dares to tamper with their masterpiece. This is fundamentally about artistic and creative rights and whether someone has the right to take an artist’s work, change it and then sell it.” The New York Times 09/19/02

ENHANCED ENTERTAINMENT: Who wants to have to watch ads when you’ve shelled out $8-10 for a movie at the local megaplex? Yet mosty theatres now bombard their patrons with a succession of advertising before the feature begins. Or did we misunderstand? Theatre owners have a different perspective on what they show. They’re actually provided an enhanced service: “During a time when they would otherwise be sitting watching a blank screen, we’re providing entertainment for them.” Denver Post 09/19/02

Wednesday September 18

HOLLYWOOD DOWN UNDER: The Victorian government has signed off on constructing a new $110 million film/TV studio complex. The plan would be the “last piece of the jigsaw to establish Victoria as a pre-eminent film and TV location in Australia”. The project is expected to generate “an extra $100 million of film and television production a year, 500 jobs during construction, and 1000 in the film industry.” The Age (Melbourne) 09/18/02

HOLLYWOOD IN CHINA: “Nothing stirs Hollywood’s covetous soul these days quite so much as the mention of China. With 1.3 billion people and only 5,000 movie screens — North America, with one-fourth the population, has more than six times as many screens — China looks to Hollywood much like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must look to the oil industry: vast, untapped and potentially fat. But the potential for profit is undercut by the flood of illegal DVD’s into Chinese homes.” The New York Times 09/18/02

SOPRANOS SINGS: The Sopranos season debut on HBO last week beat everything the broadcast networks served up in the timeslot, as 13 million viewers tuned in. That’s a record for the cable network. “That audience would have placed “Sopranos” sixth among all prime-time programs last week–a stunning figure given that HBO is received by roughly a third of the 106.7 million homes with television in the U.S.” Los Angeles Times 09/18/02

Tuesday September 17

TV – MORE LIKE AMERICA NOW? Three years ago American minority groups accused television networks of excluding minorities from the screen. But “it’s been awhile since we’ve heard the NAACP mention the possibility of anything as dramatic as a boycott. Does that mean change has come? How have the networks progressed over the past few years? Are African-American performers finding more roles in network television?” Backstage 09/16/02

THE CASE FOR/AGAINST TIVO: Tivo allows TV viewers the ability to watch whatever programs they want when they want it. Also to get rid of commercials, and that worries TV execs. “According to its last customer survey, 74 percent say TiVo has made their life better, 89 percent say it’s frustrating to watch TV without TiVo and 96 percent say it would be difficult to adjust to life without TiVo. More than 40 percent said they’d toss their cellphone before giving up TiVo.” Hartford Courant 09/17/02

PROGRAM CHOICES: The real battle for the eyes and minds of American TV viewers is being played out over onscreen programming guides. With so many channels available on digital cable and satellite, the guides are essential. But who gets to control what kind of program information you get? Wired 09/17/02

Monday September 16

MAGDALENE GETS ANOTHER WIN: After winning top prize at the Venice Film Festival, The Magdalene Sisters, scores another top win at the Toronto Film Festival. The film, “a drama about women condemned to an asylum by their families and the Catholic Church in Ireland,” won the critics prize Sunday. New York Post 09/16/02

• NZ FILM WINS TORONTO HONOR: The New Zealand film Whale Rider has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film, only the second from director Niki Caro, beat 344 films from 50 countries.” New Zealand Herald 09/16/02

WE ARE THE WORLD: It’s increasingly difficult to identify movies as having come from a particular place or culture. “Independent filmmakers, seeking to maintain their distance from studio filmmaking, more frequently must go around the world to seek financial arrangements that make their independence possible — in the process engaging in a variation of the same kind of international moviemaking practice that now defines the very studios these filmmakers seek to work independently of.” Toronto Star 09/16/02

HOLLYWOOD’S WAR COLLEGE: Since the attack on the World Trade Center, a group of Hollywood screen writers, directors and producers has been meeting to “devise plausible ways in which terrorists might launch new attacks against the US. Unusually for Hollywood, where everyone wants a credit, the participants chose to remain anonymous. Equally odd, they didn’t want to be paid. Indeed, many of the group were thrilled because this was the first time they had been able to collaborate with their industry competitors. They continue to meet occasionally. They also agreed that their ideas would remain secret.” The Age (Melbourne) 09/16/02

WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE: “Back in the days of The Golden Girls, it was almost a novelty to find active, vibrant older actresses in leading roles on television. During the past several seasons, however, that has begun to change. With an onslaught of ensemble dramas, women over 40 are continually being pushed into the forefront and defying stereotypes of mature women devoid of personality, sexuality and corporate savvy.” Los Angeles Times 09/15/02

ARTISTIC CODE: An exhibition at the Whitney aims to make connections between finished digital art and the underlying code that makes it work. Even at its basic code level, artistic choices distinguish code as art. “This is a very unusual artistic practice in that the artist completely writes the project in verbal terms and that determines the visual outcome.” The New York Times 09/16/02

Sunday September 15

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT TORONTO: Sure, there’s been some kvetching from a few critics (notably Roger Ebert) who couldn’t manage to gain access to a couple of screenings, and no one would envy this particular festival its placement so close to the 9/11 anniversary, but the Toronto Film Festival may well be the closest thing we have to what a celebration of the cinema ought to be. Where Sundance and Cannes are little more than platforms for the stars, Toronto is a festival of, by, and for the people, with the general public not only invited but encouraged to mix in with the glitterati. The result is that the city spends a couple of weeks talking seriously about film, and that can’t be a bad thing for the industry as a whole, no matter how many puffed-up semi-celebs get their panties in a wad. Oh, and the movies are pretty good, too. Dallas Morning News 09/15/02

TROUBLE IN BOLLYWOOD: An Indian film actress is facing contempt of court charges after she apparently enlisted the support of a right-wing political leader in her efforts to stop a film in which her character appears naked from being screened. Manisha Koirala had sued the film’s distributors after discovering that nude scenes featuring her body double had been added in post-production without her permission. The court ruled partially in her favor, but judges are now furious that Koirala solicited the heavy hand of the Shiv Sena party to forcibly stop theaters from showing the film. BBC 09/13/02

HOW TO SAVE THE NETWORKS: Any way you slice it, the traditional American broadcast TV networks are in trouble. With cable slicing away at an increasing share of the audience, and a shockingly large percentage of network fare looking stale and boring before it even hits the air, something clearly needs to change in the network culture. Neal Justin has some thoughts, and they begin with the hardest advice of all for TV executives: Butt out, and let your creative people do their jobs. The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 09/15/02

Friday September 13

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? A new study of 120 American broadcast television and cable networks or channels shows that “only 16% of the presidents and chief executive officers are women.” At the 10 biggest entertainment conglomerates, “women comprise only 13% of directors on corporate boards and only 14% of the firms’ executives.” Fox Entertainment and USA Networks “don’t have a single woman among their top executives in their 2001 annual reports, while Clear Channel and AMC Entertainment included no women on their boards.” Backstage 09/12/02

• ALL ABOUT THE GUYS: Ninety percent of Hollywood movies are directed by men. Does the gender imbalance dictate what movies are made? Or do the movies Hollywood dictate the gender of its directors? “I think that because most of the movies the studios want to make at the moment are aimed at a young male audience guys are having an easier time finding work and receiving the green light. They are more tapped into making pictures for that particular audience.” The Scotsman 09/12/02

BROADCAST VS CABLE: Much of the buzz about new shows in recent seasons has been about cable series like The Sopranos and Sex and the City. But is cable programming really getting that much better, or is broadcast getting worse? “Pay cable’s hype is totally out of proportion compared with publicity for the 180-plus shows on the seven broadcast networks. But more than half the lead-out sitcoms on the networks are failing to retain a decent portion of their lead-in audience. Yet the broadcasters continue to spend billions on what they know is a broken system.” LA Weekly 09/12/02

OVERSTATING THE YOUTH MARKET? Advertisers care so much what males 18-34 watch that they focus most of their advertising on them. But is this traditional wisdom wise strategy? “A growing number of experts are suggesting that the “get ’em while they’re young” premise is an outdated assumption about both the young and the old. First, women, not men, control 85 percent of all personal and household spending, according to recent research. And the over-49 crowd in general has more disposable income than younger people.” Christian Science Monitor 09/13/02

• BECAUSE NUMBERS AREN’T JUST NUMBERS: Why do shows with decent ratings get dumped, while others that seem to struggle with viewers get to live? It’s not just about numbers. Some viewers are worth more than others, and it isn’t always fair. Christian Science Monitor 09/13/02

FONE TRADERS: A French company has developed technology that will allow users to trade digital music, pictures, and data via their phone, in a similar way to today’s computer-based file-trading programs. “The technology gives users a digital store cupboard for their own media files and lets them pass them on to anyone who wants to use, listen or look at them on their own handset.” BBC 09/12/02

Thursday September 12

MY STORYBOOK GREEK WEDDING: Nia Vardalos was a struggling actor in Hollywood, getting no parts and not likely to. Then she organized her own script of a story about a Greek family and a daughter’s wedding and staged it at a small LA theatre. But it wasn’t until Tom Hanks and his production company got involved that the play got made into a movie starring Vardalos. And in real storybook fashion, the movie has become one of the biggest hits of the year. The Telegraph (UK) 09/12/02

WANTED – DOWNLOADING DECISION:The recording and movie industries have asked for a quick ruling in US courts in their case against file-trading software providers. But file traders defend themselves: “There can be no liability for two reasons. The first reason is that we have no ability to control how people use our software. Secondly, the software is capable of substantial non-infringing uses which was the basis for the Sony Betamax case.” BBC 09/11/02

Wednesday September 11

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM… Fans will soon be able to download Harry Potter and other hit films over the internet. Mindful that the music industry failed to give consumers an easy way to legally pay for music, the film industry is experimenting with movie downloading. “Hit films will be able to be downloaded for $3.99 per view, with other movies costing $2.99 in the three-month experimental deal.” BBC 09/10/02

DEATH BY PATENT LAW? As video-on-demand gets ready to take off, a company that filed a patent back in 1992 angles to get a piece of all the action. Will its claim kill a new industry? “When you have a patent that purports to cover a huge industry, the stakes are too high and the companies often have to fight it to the death. They do a risk analysis, and decide the patent has to be crushed.” Wired 09/11/02

WILL THE VCR SAVE FILE-TRADING? As Hollywood’s Old Guard movie and music production companies try to sue file-traders out of business, the traders have settled on a 1984 ruling in the Betamax case. The US Supreme Court ruled that Sony “wasn’t liable for copyright infringement because its videocassette recorders had ‘substantial’ legitimate uses as well as illegal ones. If the file-sharing companies win, the music and movie companies would be forced to turn their legal guns directly onto consumers who make pirate copies. That’s a step the entertainment industry has been loath to take because it’s expensive and might alienate customers. But if the file-sharing companies lose, some advocates say, the shrinking scope of the Betamax ruling could put a damper on new technology.” Los Angeles Times 09/11/02

Tuesday September 10

A SCOTTISH HOLLYWOOD? Many cities and countries around the world would like to grab a piece of the global movie-making business. Accordingly, a group of Scots has ambitious plans to build a movie studio near Inverness. But a leading Scottish film producer has pronounced the project unworkable: “There are too many reasons for people to work elsewhere – the technology investment is so enormous and changes so rapidly that London production houses are having a tremendous problem keeping up with the huge technological spend that they are required to make just to stay in [the industry].” The Scotsman 09/10/02

Monday September 9

VENICE PICKS MAGDALENE: The Venice Film Festival closed Sunday by naming “director Peter Mullan’s scathing depiction of an abusive Catholic convent, The Magdalene Sisters” as Best Picture. The film had been criticized by the Vatican” as an “angry and rancorous provocation.” Toronto Star (AP) 09/09/02

• MULLAN DEFENDS: Mullan defends his film against criticism by the Catholic church. “The Magdalene Sisters follows four promiscuous girls who were used as labourers by the Catholic church in Ireland in the 1960s and shows them being abused by nuns in the notorious asylums.” The church has denied the abuse happened. But Mullan says: ‘I’m not a good enough dramatist to make this stuff up’. “The film got a rapturous reception from one audience in Venice, who cheered every time one of the girls tried to escape or rebelled against the nuns.” BBC 09/09/02

CORPORATE GRAB: Copyright wars are heating up as computers begin to act more like home entertainment devices. But while the multimedia capability is welcome, consumers are finding new built-in restrictions on how they can use their machines. “These machines have copy-protection embedded in the hardware, much like home recorders that keep people from making copies of videos they have purchased. The threat of lawsuits has motivated companies to develop locked-down, closed computers. And those restrictions no longer mean a product won’t sell.” Wired 09/09/02

THE 9/11 EFFECT: The way movies and TV are being made has changed since last September. “Overall, in the film industry, the changes are largely in what kinds of stories aren’t being told, while in TV, with its hundreds of channels, the networks have served up sometimes contradictory fare. At the other end of the prime-time spectrum are nostalgic series that previously might have seemed overly sentimental but now are accepted and, more important, bankable.” Los Angeles Times 09/09/02

Sunday September 8

DESOLATION AND RENEWAL IN VENICE: In an age when film festivals increasingly reflect nothing more than the desire of filmmakers to become famous and make money, the Venice Film Festival is a refreshing slice of reality, says one critic. Well, maybe refreshing isn’t the word – after all, reality is not terribly upbeat these days, and much of this year’s festival is reflective of an uncertain and sometimes frightening world outlook. But the art is genuine, and the entries as eclectic as any film fan could wish for. And you know the festival can’t be taking itself too seriously, since the president of the judging panel speaks only Mandarin, a language in which not one of the entered films is subtitled. Chicago Tribune 09/07/02

• EH, IT’S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE: If Venice really wants to be taken seriously as a premiere film festival, it needs to stick to what it does best, and quit trying to be Cannes or Berlin, says Frank Bruni. This year’s red-carpet fixation reflects “the overarching, unofficial themes of the festival’s 59th incarnation: relentless self-examination, aggressive overhaul and an emphatic quest for renewed glory at a time when competitors have stolen much of its luster. Over the last few decades, Venice has gone from the grande dame of film festivals to the somewhat neglected spinster, and the first person to say so is…its new director.” The New York Times 09/07/02
• NEWS FLASH – NOT EVERYONE LOVES THE U.S.: The idea was simple – get filmmakers with different global perspectives to create separate short films about the September 11 attacks, and screen them together at the Venice Film Festival. But some Americans in attendance were infuriated by some of the entries (in particular, an Egyptian film blaming U.S. foreign policy for the turmoil in the Mideast,) claiming a lack of “balance.” Critics, for the most part, have applauded the series. BBC 09/06/02

THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN IN HOLLYWOOD: “The screening of the Hindi film Ek Chhoti Si Love Story (A Small Love Story) has gone ahead, despite a court order to postpone its release. The [Indian] high court… ruled the film could not be shown after its star, actress Manisha Koirala, alleged that her reputation would be damaged if people saw it. The actress claimed the film’s director, Shashilal Nair, had used a body-double in allegedly obscene shots – thereby portraying her in an indecent manner.” The director claims that Ms. Koirala gave her permission for the body double, and movie houses are showing the film anyway.” BBC 09/06/02

Friday September 6

FEST EXPERIENCE: There are now more than 1000 film festivals a year – every day of every week somewhere a festival is playing. And they have changed how movies are marketed and what we see. “Different constituencies like film festivals for different reasons. Cities like them because they are useful for tourism and promotion. Audiences like them because they are exposed to films they might not otherwise see. Filmmakers like them because they can debut their films before enthusiastic audiences and at the bigger festivals they can get a lot of publicity at one event, getting the most bang for their promotional buck.” National Post (Canada) 09/06/02

• TOPS IN TORONTO: “North America’s biggest film showcase, the Toronto festival has become a key launching spot for studios’ major fall releases, including Academy Awards hopefuls. The 27th annual festival began Thursday and runs through Sept. 14. It will feature 265 feature-length movies and 80 short films from 50 countries.” Canada.com (AP) 09/06/02

Thursday September 5

BLOCKBUST AT YOUR PERIL: This was a blockbuster summer for Hollywood, with numerous films making hundreds of millions of dollars each. But the costs of making these blockbusters has soared too, with big-name stars making tens of millions for their parts. And then there are those costly flops…Little wonder studio execs are looking hard at surprise boutique hits like My Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million to make, but has brought in $100 million so far. The New York Times 09/01/02

VENICE ON THE WANE: “This has been a disappointing year at the Venice Film Festival, and even its director Moritz de Hadeln has observed that it is in danger of losing the pre-eminence in Europe it has shared with Cannes and Berlin. The problem is simple to pinpoint, if difficult to solve: too many film festivals, and nowhere near enough first-rate or interesting films to go around.” The Telegraph (UK) 09/05/02

ARARAT IN TORONTO: “When Atom Egoyan’s Ararat opens the Toronto International Film Festival tonight, it will do so under the same cloud of controversy that has trailed the much-anticipated film since its production… According to the communications officer for the [Armenian National Committee] of Toronto, the Turkish government has threatened the film’s producers, threatened Egoyan and attempted to discredit the director and attack his personal life. An official at the Turkish embassy in Ottawa says the country’s government is concerned by the film’s content, but is not participating in a campaign against the film and will not be mounting any form of protest when the film debuts in Toronto tonight.” National Post (Canada) 09/05/02

ANCIENT ATTRACTION: After a long period out of favor, the ancient world is hot in Hollywood again. “The most popular man in Tinseltown at present is Alexander the Great. Four projects about his life are competing to make it first on to the screen. Baz Luhrmann and his leading man Leonardo DiCaprio are favourites to win the race, but they are competing with two other big-screen versions of the Alexander story – one directed by Oliver Stone, another by Martin Scorsese – and a mini-series starring Mel Gibson.” The Guardian (UK) 09/05/02

Wednesday September 4

TECH COMPANIES RACE FOR PROTECTION: “Studios and record labels want their products protected from the widespread thievery popularized by services such as Napster. Spurred by the threat of federal legislation, technology companies such as Microsoft Corp. and RealNetworks Inc. are scrambling to prove that their systems do more than the other fellow’s to keep content under lock and key. Microsoft has been particularly aggressive, launching a number of efforts to satisfy entertainment moguls’ hunger for security in a digital age when content can be perfectly reproduced millions of times.” Los Angeles Times 09/03/02

BUZZ SAW: Film festivals exist for the purpose of finding undiscovered gems, which can be “catapulted onto a higher plane of existence by a combination of word-of-mouth, lavish press and the embossed chequebooks of major-league film distributors. That’s what makes buzz. But here’s a word of advice that may not be appreciated by some of the more excitable elements of the entertainment press: Don’t believe the hype. As a breed, film festivals don’t have a great track record of predicting movies that will catch on with the public.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/03/02

Tuesday September 3

IRRATIONAL RATINGS: The rating of films in America is a murky business. There’s no absolute standard, and independent filmmakers complain that the ratings board deals with their films more restrictively – especially movies with sex in them. “The rating system was started to fend off church-related organizations from rating films themselves, which often led to community bans. But the ratings board has become the worst kind of censor itself, exercising its own subjective, often maddeningly capricious opinions. This is especially true of the board’s decisions involving sexual content.” Los Angeles Times 09/03/02

HOLLYWOOD’S RECORD SUMMER: The numbers are in for the summer movie season. “By Labor Day, domestic ticket sales will have totaled about $3.15 billion since Memorial Day weekend, surpassing the record of $3.06 billion set last summer. Factoring in higher ticket prices, movie admissions this summer likely will come in slightly lower than last year’s 542 million and well below the modern record of 589 million set in 1999.” Hartford Courant (AP) 09/02/02

IMPERFECT MEASURE: Traditional survey measurements of what people listen to on the radio are generally inaccurate. But with so much money riding on the ratings, several companies are developing better ways of recording what we’re listening to. Sydney Morning Herald 09/03/02

Sunday September 1

KEEP THE STARS OUT OF IT: Hollywood has once again become enamored of Shakespeare, and in recent year, you can’t swing a screenplay without hitting a big-money production of the Bard’s work, usually starring one or more of the biggest names in the biz. Great, right? No way, says Clive Barnes. “Once in a while this approach works out marvelously – when you get the sheer magnetism of a Christopher Walken or a Liev Schreiber, for example. But more often it turns out like this, where no one – from the cast to the production team – seems to know where they were going.” New York Post 09/01/02

Friday August 30

RIGHT TO EDIT: A video store chain that edits profanity, violence and sex from films asked a judge Thursday to rule the practice is legal, despite protests by such directors as Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg. Nando Times (AP) 08/30/02

• Previously: WE WANT OUR SEX AND VIOLENCE! Hollywood directors are looking into the possibility of legal action against a handful of Utah companies which specialize in distributing video tapes and DVDs of popular movies with all the bad language, sex, and graphic violence stripped out for family consumption. The directors say that such edits amount to censorship and leave the films devoid of meaning. Wired 08/28/02

NOT ABOUT QUALITY: Once upon a time (so legend has it), it was thought that if you made good movies – no, really great movies – more people would buy tickets and you’d make money. But “apparently, that highly desirable and once elusive quality – the `must-see’ status that guarantees a film a huge opening weekend – can now be synthesized using a carefully researched combination of ultra-aggressive TV, print and partnership promotion, merchandising, `brand naming’ and super-saturation release patterns. But the result is a host of movies that exist for no other reason than to make money and are often free of content and conviction.” Boston Herald 08/30/02

WORLD PERSPECTIVE: The Montreal Film Festival is so international it’s not even called the Montreal Film Festival – it’s the Festival des Films du Monde – World Film Festival. “The program is the size of a Manhattan phone book, and the ‘grille horaire’ – Montreal’s combined schedule, map, and prayer guide – is as densely figured as the Rosetta stone and nearly as multilingual. There are films in and out of competition, of course, but also filmmaker tributes, an international selection, and Latin American, Japanese, Canadian, and African groupings. Throw in more than a hundred experimental, television, and student works, and you have one long suicide-by-pleasure for aficionados of world cinema.” Boston Globe 08/30/02

STAR TURNS: Accountants and financiers have such a strong grip on the British film industry that they dictate how movies get made. And how they want them made is with recognizable big stars. “If you’re making your film for less than £2m, then you’ve bought yourself a degree of freedom in casting. Much over that, and the pressure from investors to use recognisable names becomes intense.” The Guardian (UK) 08/30/02

Thursday August 29

THREAT TO WEB RADIO: So the US government has decided that webcasters will have to monitor and report any music they play over the internet, and pay a small fee. But if the ruling goes into effect, it will effectively push many small stations off the air. “While it sounds simple enough, the ruling would force low-budget operations to add expensive hardware and software to comply with the order. The stations that can afford the upgrades face the task of training their unpaid volunteers to monitor and run the systems.” Wired 08/29/02

HOLLYWOOD’S WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD: Hollywood makes movies to appeal to demographic groups. Which groups? Simple. “The movie audience has been reduced, for marketing purposes, to four identifiable groups. They are: males under 25, males over 25, females under 25 and females over 25. That’s it. You are a member of one of these groups, whether you like it or not. No one can escape the inevitability of being in one of these groups. Only death excludes you from being in one of four quadrants, but give the marketing geniuses in Hollywood a little time. They’ll figure a way to make movies for dead people.” Hartford Courant (OCR) 08/29/02

CBC KEY FOR NATIONAL IDENTITY: For years the Canadian government has been cutting the budget of the CBC, the country’s public broadcaster. Now a new poll indicates that 81 percent of Canadians consider the CBC “important in maintaining and building Canadian identity and culture. A strong majority (88 per cent) said they would like to see the CBC strengthened in their part of Canada.” Toronto Star 08/29/02

MONTREAL TO BUILD WORLD’S LARGEST MOVIE STUDIO: Montreal investors are set to announce they will build the “largest film studio in the world” in Quebec. The project “will create 300 direct and indirect jobs in the short term and 1,200 in the long term.” Toronto Star 08/29/02

Wednesday August 28

NICE TIMING: PBS is forever being exhorted by critics to take more chances with its programming. Well, here’s some risky behavior for you: the public broadcaster will air a new documentary whih portrays Taliban fighters in Afghanistan as sympathetic figures and the U.S. as an international bully only two days before the one-year anniversary of 9/11. The film may make some good points, but is unlikely to score many points with viewers as the nation gears up for what will certainly be an ultra-patriotic anniversary. New York Post 08/28/02

BYE BYE BETA: Who knows how these things happen? When VCRs first became all the rage in the ’80s, the format fight began between Betamax, which offered high-quality pictures and superior sound, and VHS, which had, well lower-quality pictures and inferior sound. Naturally, VHS won the battle, and this week, it was announced that Betamax machines, which have remained popular in Japan and with a small worldwide cult following, will finally be phased out entirely. BBC 08/28/02

PLEASE DON’T TELL JESSE VENTURA: “Lawyer-turned-actor-turned-United States senator Fred Thompson is becoming an actor again before his term officially expires, with NBC confirming that the Tennessee Republican will join the cast of “Law & Order” this fall, playing the role of the New York district attorney. In a surprise, Thompson–who had previously announced that he would not seek reelection in November–is beginning production on the show this week, meaning he will be featured when the series opens its 13th season in October, while he’s still in the Senate.” Los Angeles Times 08/28/02

WE WANT OUR SEX AND VIOLENCE! Hollywood directors are looking into the possibility of legal action against a handful of Utah companies which specialize in distributing video tapes and DVDs of popular movies with all the bad language, sex, and graphic violence stripped out for family consumption. The directors say that such edits amount to censorship and leave the films devoid of meaning. Wired 08/28/02

Tuesday August 27

MOVIES – A MAN THING: Why is Hollywood so closed to women directors – 96 percent of commercial movies are directed by men. “At a time when film schools are graduating almost equal numbers of men and women, why is the movie business still such a closed shop? Many women from every stratum of the directing world – established Hollywood types and shoestring independents, celebrated art-house stars and creators of light teen comedies, film school deans and movie historians – tell remarkably similar stories of deep-rooted prejudices, baseless myths and sexual power struggles that litter the path to the director’s chair with soul-wearing obstacles.” Salon 08/27/02

TAKING ON HOLLYWOOD: Is a grassroots movement beginning to organize over the internet to fight old-line media’s grab to control creative works? “The entertainment industry and its supporters are threatening free speech and innovation in their zeal to protect an outdated business model. A movement is beginning to stir in America, an overdue reaction to the predations of a cartel that is bidding to control how digital information may be created and used.” San Jose Mercury-News 08/26/02

Monday August 26

OSCAR – PLEASE DON’T GO: New York officials asked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider holding part of next year’s Oscars in New York – splitting the telecast between LA and New York for one year only. But California State legislators are considering a resolution asking Oscar to stay put. “California, like New York and many other states, is suffering an economic downturn and cannot afford the loss of the Academy Awards to another location.” Nando Times (AP) 08/23/02

MAKING THE CUT: Movie fans no longer have to sit through movies the way directors shot them. Fans are taking digital copies of movies they like and re-editing them to remove parts they didn’t like or to change the story line. Fan edits of movies like AI have downloaded hundreds of thousands of time over the internet. And about the copyright… Toronto Star 08/25/02

LIKE, UPDATE THIS: “Why is there such a dearth of Britons adapting their own literary classics in anything other than period dress? Because if nobody gets to grips sharpish with our literary classics and adapts them for new times, the Americans, in a nice piece of reverse cultural colonialism, will cherry-pick the whole canon. It’s not just Shakespeare who has been plundered by Hollywood…” The Guardian (UK) 08/26/02

Sunday August 25

FREE RADIO THAT MAKES MONEY: What if your radio spewed out all the music you wanted, there was no talking and no commercials? And it was free? A service now delivered to satellite TV subscribers does this. And it even makes money. Do traditional radio station employees need to fear for their jobs? The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/24/02

KPIG BACK ONLINE – FOR A PRICE: After webcasting radio stations were told they would have to start paying royalties for the music they play, many went off-stream this summe, including KPIG, one of the first and most popular webstreamers. Now the Northern California station is back online, after making a deal with RealNetworks to be part of a pay-to-listen service. But will anyone be willing to pay a subscription to listen in? Los Angeles Times 08/24/02

Friday August 23

NO SEX PLEASE – WE’RE THE SEATTLE TIMES: When Spanish director Julio Medem’s art film Sex and Lucia played at the Seattle International Film Festival last spring it packed houses, “audiences voted Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes for the film, and judges bestowed ‘Emerging Master’ and a Golden Space Needle Award on Medem.” But when it came time for a regular theatre run in Seattle last week, the prudish Seattle Times refused to carry an ad for the film. “A Times spokeswoman says simply that the movie ‘did not fit [the Times’] guidelines for adult entertainment,’ pointing to the fact that it is un-rated.” The Stranger 08/22/02

WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE? The digital revolution has created a demand for content. And Hollywood would love to cash in. But finding and clearing rights to many shows is a mind-numbingly difficult and mundane chore. “The hodgepodge of record-keeping systems makes it difficult to track even pedestrian deals with video chains and broadcast and cable networks. Newfangled electronic distribution deals with Internet outfits and cell phone makers will add another layer of complexity.” Forbes 08/21/02

RENT FOR DISPLACING THE HOMELESS? Activists in Vancouver, Canada have sent film production companies a letter demanding that the companies compensate street people who the companies chase out while filming on location. “Sex trade workers must be compensated for displacement they experience at your hands in the same manner you would compensate a business if you were to use their locale during operating hours. The same must hold true for homeless people you push from beneath a bridge or doorway and drug users you move from a park.” Nando Times (AP) 08/22/02

Thursday August 22

HOLLYWOOD GOES TO CHINA: Forget Canada, “foreign film-makers are discovering that China is a good place to make movies. And just as makers of everything from washing machines to wigs learned before them, lower costs are a big draw. Shooting a movie here can cost half, even a third, of what it might back home, industry executives say, with savings on everything from crew salaries and construction of sets to catering fees. Far Eastern Economic Review 08/29/02

MEXICAN MOVIE RECORD: The Catholic Church has strongly condemned the Mexican movie El Crimen del padre Amaro. But in its opening weekend, director Carlos Carrera’s film broke Mexican box office records and “earned 31 million pesos ($5-million) and reached an audience of 863,000 people in 365 movie theatres throughout Mexico.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/22/02

SMOKIN’ JOE (NOT ANYMORE): Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas’s “latest work – published by the New York Times – is a savage polemic against tobacco, which has caused more sharp intakes of breath than anything he has done since Basic Instinct. Writing as a reformed smoker who is ‘alive but maimed’ after losing much of his larynx to throat cancer, he declares that tobacco ‘should be as illegal as heroin’. With God at his side, he vows, he will end nicotine’s long relationship with cinema.” The Telegraph (UK) 08/22/02

Wednesday August 21

IS CITIZEN KANE BEST? A recent poll of film critics and directors named Citizen Kane as the top movie of all time. No movies of the past 20 years made the top ten. “Does this gap indicate a widespread belief that the cinema is in decline? To an extent. Certainly, the rapid ascent of films to the canon in the ’50s and ’60s reflects the feeling of many cinema lovers of the day that they were living through exciting times. A more convincing explanation for the aging of the canon is simply that film criticism has become institutionalized over the course of the last three decades.” Slate 08/20/02

EUROPE’S MOVIE BOOM: Movie box office is up in Europe, just as it is in the US. “European film fans spent 5.6bn euros (£3.6bn) on more than one billion cinema tickets in 2001, according to a report. More than three-quarters of European cinema admissions were in just five countries – the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. But smaller countries saw the biggest growth.” BBC 08/20/02

AFTER A BROADER NICHE: There’s not as much news on the news channels anymore. Not as much history on the History Channel or trials on Court TV. As these niche cable channels mature, they’re going after broader audiences, often by diluting their content. “It’s really a debate over some hypothetical mass market versus a quality market.” Los Angeles Times 08/21/02

Tuesday August 20

LEADING THE FOLLOWER: The BBC might be riding an updraft of popular success, but the director of the Broadcasting Standards Commission has lashed out at the public broadcaster for the quality of its programs. He charges that “the corporation lacked originality and was delivering a schedule filled with bland dramas in its drive to attract bigger audiences. ‘One begins to wonder what really is the point of the BBC bringing this to us. Let’s have something a bit different. They have tended too much to try to find out what it is people want … what it is people have enjoyed in the past, and give it to them’.” The Scotsman 08/20/02

PUBLIC TV ICON STEPS ASIDE: Public television is changing quickly in the US. So maybe it’s appropriate that Peter McGhee, one of public TV’s icons, has decided to step aside. “McGhee has shaped the course of the medium over his 32-year tenure at WGBH, where he has risen from lowly producer to his current title, vice president of national programming. One by one, he has initiated or championed such nationally acclaimed series as Frontline, American Experience, and Antiques Roadshow, the most popular program on PBS.” Boston Globe 08/18/02

THE DYING SOAPS: Soap operas have long been a staple of daytime TV. But the form is ailing. Ratings are falling away quickly. “The whole soap genre looks like a dinosaur, and it’s dying like one. It keeps lumbering forward in a space- age, In ternet- savvy world, looking like an art form frozen in time, so stuffy in content, so staid in appearance, so establishment in form. There is a contingent of young people who get hooked on soaps in college, so there always is a chance for a new audience. But each year, the audience gets older and smaller. I have no doubt that soaps are an endangered species.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/20/02

Monday August 19

THE ART OF DIGITAL: “Without most moviegoers’ noticing, digital technologies have been slowly supplanting film-based processes that have been used since the 1920s.” But most movies still use film, and superimposing heady new digital effects is a delicate balancing of color and tone. Technology Review 08/16/02

Friday August 16

AD-FREE 9/11? Many radio advertisers aren’t running ads on September 11. “I think a lot of advertisers realize they have to be very careful that day. They want to do something patriotic, but they don’t want to do something that comes across as crass.” Boston Herald 08/16/02

ALIEN NATION: Some of Hollywood’s best new films are being made by non-Americans. “The multinational nature of the industry’s present talent pool might be a wonder to US critics; but that’s just amnesia talking. Hollywood, after all, owes its very existence to the mass immigration of the early 20th century. It was only natural that this budding nation should seize on the infant medium of cinema, a potent lingua franca based around the great equalisers of melodrama and adventure, with a frequent bias toward heroic but misunderstood outsiders.” The Guardian (UK) 08/15/02

WHY I DOWNLOAD: The film industry estimates that in May, 400,000-600,000 films were being downloaded by Internet users per day. Is it just rampant theft? “People who go through the trouble of downloading these movies are die-hard fans who would buy it on DVD anyway. . . . It’s a way to sort through what I want to buy.” San Francisco Chronicle 08/16/02

Thursday August 15

MOVIE STUDIO INVENTS FAKE FANS? First movie studios got caught inventing critics to promote their movies. Now the editor of a popular internet site devoted to movie reviews says a movie publicist has been inventing fake fans to post positive comments to a fan forum. He also claims that “whoever is behind the bogus postings collected the e-mail addresses of all the users of the message boards and sent ads for the film to them.” Hartford Courant 08/15/02

FIGHTING THE FILE-TRADERS: Movie and music companies are stepping up plans to combat file-swapping. “The new plan appears to extend the target beyond companies with an apparent declaration of legal warfare against individuals who the industry believes are swapping illicit songs or movies through peer-to-peer networks. The outcome could include jail time for those convicted of wrongful file swapping. This move comes as copyright holders are striving to combat the continued popularity of peer-to-peer networks, which permit millions of people to link their PCs to a massive collection of files, some legal to distribute and some not.” CNet 08/14/02

Wednesday August 14

HOME CENSORS: New software allows viewers the ability to “delete offensive language, violence, or adult situations from movies that are played back on home digital equipment.” But the software goes beyond simple censorship. It can also change the look of a movie. “A consumer can actually choose to tone down the violence in a movie but leave the language intact or vice versa. In other words, parents can become movie directors.” ABCNews.com 08/14/02

WHITE BOYS AND MORE WHITE BOYS: “The American summer of 2002 will be known as the ‘season of the white boy’ at the nation’s cineplexes. It opened with Spider-Man and The Sum of All Fears and has subsequently serviced every beloved boy genre save perhaps the Stand by Me coming-of-ager. Summer 2002 was for bigger boys, men who grew up playing cops and robbers and G.I. Joe in the backyard, men who had difficult fathers, men who went to sleep reading The Lone Ranger and action comics. Yes, folks, the Hollywood dream factory continues to produce more stories about white guys than anything else.” Sydney Morning Herald 08/14/02

INFLATED FEELINGS OF INFLUENCE? Does Hollywood’s glamorization of smoking on the big screen capture young minds and turn fans into smokers, as screenwriter Joe Eszterhas claimed last week? “Despite the claims of its creators and its detractors, Hollywood hardly wields such omnipotent powers to shape human behavior, whether for good or ill. People actively process what they consume and make decisions for themselves. Indeed, if people actually aped what they read, viewed, and listened to, then violent crime rates by kids, ostensibly the most impressionable audience segment, would have soared over the past 30 years – a period in which popular culture inarguably became more violent and graphic. But the rates are in fact lower than they were in 1973, when the federal government first started collecting such data.” Reason 08/09/02

Tuesday August 13

TV GUIDE LOSES ITS WAY: For much of its career, TV Guide was a publishing powerhouse. In the 1970s, 40 million people read it every week. These days “circulation has plummeted to 9 million, the magazine is increasingly reporting on gossipy non-TV stories like Winona Ryder’s legal troubles, and – in a clear sign of the changing zeitgeist – it’s taken a backseat to new TV Guide properties that are online or delivered by cable and digital systems.” San Francisco Chronicle 08/12/02

LAPD BECOMES BRAND-SENSITIVE: “The Los Angeles Police Department is seeking to censor films and television shows by threatening to sue any company that uses its name, badges or logos without getting approval for the script first. Behind the move is a desire to force the entertainment industry to abandon one of its favourite stock characters: the bad cop who either beats up suspects, takes money on the side or drinks too much.” The Telegraph (UK) 08/12/02

CUT-RATES = MORE WORK: Hollywood musicians were losing more and more movie-score recording to musicians in other cities who would record it cheaper. So last year the musicians cut their rates by 50 percent. They got more work. “In theory, we could have lost money. What we really did was behave in a way that made us good stakeholders in the industry. There are now many more albums out there, so we have 25% of something instead of 50% of nothing.” Andante (Variety) 08/12/02

Monday August 12

THE GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL: What does the recent British Film Institute list of all-time great movies say? “It has surprised, even shocked, some people that there are no recent pictures on the 2002 lists but even more striking is the absence of certain big names – Lang, Buñuel, Ford, Ophüls, Powell, Reed. But the lists aren’t terrible, especially considering that in the critics’ section 631 films were nominated (408 receiving one vote each), while the directors named 490 films (312 receiving one vote apiece). This is an encouraging tribute to the attractive diversity of world cinema.” The Observer(UK) 08/11/02

• Previously: TOP FILMS OF ALL TIME: Every ten years the British Film Institute asks leading international critics and directors to rank the best movies ever. Citizen Kane tops this year’s list. “The most recently made film to reach the directors’ top 10 was Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, released in 1980.” Nando Times (AP) 08/10/02

WHAT, ME WORRY? Traditionally American broadcast networks have ignored cable television. But then HBO won all those awards. And the ratings were up. And… now there’s some anxiety as “HBO and Tony Soprano are in their face, launching the new season of the hit cable series on the eve of the network fall schedule.” Denver Post 08/11/02

Sunday August 11

OSCAR IN NEW YORK? “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a group of New York leaders have been talking about moving part of next year’s Academy Awards show to New York City to help the city recover from the Sept. 11 terror attacks.” Nando Times (AP) 08/10/02

TOP FILMS OF ALL TIME: Every ten years the British Film Institute asks leading international critics and directors to rank the best movies ever. Citizen Kane tops this year’s list. “The most recently made film to reach the directors’ top 10 was Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, released in 1980.” Nando Times (AP) 08/10/02

• MOVIES – NO LONGER THE COMMON LANGUAGE: For much of the last half-century one common cultural reference point has been the movies. As much as “we loved the films, we treasured the thought that ‘everyone’ knew them. More or less in those decades, everyone did go to the movies. In America, in the 20s and 30s, say, 60-70% of the people went to the movies once a week. Today, it’s no more than 15%.” Movies aren’t the cultural binder they once were. The Guardian (UK) 08/10/02

CENSOR FOR YESTERDAY: Britain’s new chief fim censor is a solid upstanding civil servant. But he’s hardly kept up with the movies he’ll soon be judging. “His favourites are the films you’d expect a busy civil servant to remember from his student days at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, rather than a film buff who keeps up with the trends at Odeon and Empire, Leicester Square.” How will he know what should play in today’s movie houses? London Evening Standard 08/09/02

Friday August 9

FIGHTING THE CANADIANS: Runaway productions are killing Hollywood film production. “While film box-office receipts hit an all-time high of $14 billion last year, industry employment in Southern California was at a four-year low. Some 30,000 jobs evaporated just between 1999 and 2000. Add to that the impact on local businesses that serve the industry and its workers, and the U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that the domestic economy is taking a $10 billion annual hit from runaway production.” A group of technicians is trying to fight movie flight, but they’re pissing off much of official Hollywood. LAWeekly 08/08/02

DIALING UP DIGITAL: The FCC decrees that within five years all televisions sold in the US must be equipped with digital tuners. “The tuners are necessary, the commission said, to ensure that all TVs can receive broadcast programming over the airwaves after the switch from analog to digital signals, expected within a few years.” TV makers are protesting. Wired 08/09/02

WGBH BREAKS A BOYCOTT: Since April, Boston-area TV stations have been boycotting Nielsen’s rating service. Nielsen had introduced its “people meter” system, which the stations say seriously undercounts broadcast station audiences. It has made life for the stations tougher, since they use the ratings to set advertising rates. So it’s something of a surpirse that this week WGBH, Boston’s public television station (which doesn’t sell adds) has become the first station to break the boycott and resubscribe to Nielsen. The station says it was getting pressure from underwriters. Boston Globe 08/09/02

BAD YEAR FOR NEW YORK MOVIES: It’s been a bad year for film and TV production in New York City. “Numbers released by the New York Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting (MOFTB) show an understandably dismal 2001: Film and TV expenditures declined by $149 million; the number of feature films in the city dropped from 201 to 174, and the number of shooting days shrunk more than 15 percent, falling to levels not seen since 1994.” Village Voice 08/07/02

Thursday August 8

AT LEAST GIVE THEM A CHANCE NOT TO SUCK: America’s television critics have been unusually merciless this season, seizing every opportunity to kick the big three networks (particularly the hapless ABC) while they’re down. The most frequent complaint has been network execs’ unwillingness to take risks with their programming. But last week, when CBS announced plans to air a miniseries on the rise of Adolf Hitler, the critics did a complete about-face, insisting that the show was too risky, and that CBS had crossed some invisible line of taste. Scott Feschuk wonders at the hypocrisy. National Post (Canada) 08/08/02

REALLY BIG HITS? Imax shows movies on giant screens 10 stories high. Now Imax is hoping to convince film companies to let it show up to six Hollywood films a year. “Imax has previously persuaded Walt Disney to convert two of its films, Fantasia 2000 and Beauty And The Beast, to its format. Both were successful when released on Imax screens across the world.” BBC 08/07/02 

KILLER-B’s: What’s with all the B-movie plots for this summer’s biggest blockbuster movies? Crop Circles? Radioactive spiders? Aliens? “The concept of B-movies was a product of cinema’s boom time in the 1950s. Smaller non-studio producers wanted to make a fast buck by tapping into the audience’s primal fears with sensationalist (but cheap) film-making.” Now they’ve moved into the mainstream. The Times (UK) 08/08/02 

GIANT KILLER? Clear Channel might be America’s biggest radio company, but there are signs the company might be in trouble. Its stock price has dived. Congress is making noises about reining in radio ownership. “Meanwhile, plaintiffs are filing lawsuits while critics raise questions about company finances and alleged payola schemes.” Wired 08/07/02

BOW TO THE MACHINE: Machinima – a contraction of machine and cinema – is the newest and cheapest thing in film-making. “The new form was made possible by computer game manufacturers, which began releasing some of their codes to enable players to customise characters and backgrounds.” Sydney Morning Herald 08/08/02

Wednesday August 7

STUMBLING GIANT? Clear Channel owns some 1200 radio stations in the US in 300 markets. It controls a good chunk of the country’s concert business too. But lately the company has been doing so well. “Clear Channel – well known for its hardball tactics – has been hit with numerous antitrust lawsuits, petitions to the Federal Communications Commission and pending legislation on Capitol Hill.” Salon 08/07/02

• THE CORPORATE LOCAL: With giant corporations owning hundreds of radio stations across America, the voice on the radio who wakes you up every morning isn’t exactly local. “The chances are pretty good that the man behind the voice lives in another time zone, appears on stations in four states, and picks up local color by reading newspapers online. He may even have taped his show last month then gone on vacation to some exotic locale he’s never visited. Like, say, your town.” Wired 08/07/02
• IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, BUY ‘EM: Clear Channel radio has had many critics among radio insiders, but few as vitriolic as Inside Radio, a trade publication which in 2000 found itself on the business end of a defamation lawsuit from the corporate radio giant. Two years later, the publisher is out to pasture, the suit has been settled, and Inside Radio is published by (who else?) Clear Channel. New York Daily News [first item] 08/06/02
• Previously: CLEAR (AND ONLY?) CHANNEL: “After a blizzard of purchases, sales and mergers, Clear Channel owns or operates 1,165 radio stations in the United States. It controls about 80 more through other means that occasionally raise eyebrows.” Critics contend that Clear Channel is sucking the creativity out of American radio with standardized formats and market-driven programming. Wired 08/05/02

MIGHT WANT TO HOLD OFF ON BUYING THAT TiVo: With U.S. broadcasters on the verge of upgrading to fully digital signals, and cable companies already delivering video on demand and digital-quality pictures, the companies who manufacture video recording devices like TiVo and ReplayTV will soon see their machines become obsolete. The devices cannot handle digital signals, and while the next generation of product certainly will, Hollywood is threatening to withhold movies from broadcasters unless measures are put in place which would disallow such personal recording, making TiVos all but useless. Wired 08/07/02

Tuesday August 6

CLEAR (AND ONLY?) CHANNEL: “After a blizzard of purchases, sales and mergers, Clear Channel owns or operates 1,165 radio stations in the United States. It controls about 80 more through other means that occasionally raise eyebrows.” Critics contend that Clear Channel is sucking the creativity out of American radio with standardized formats and market-driven programming. Wired 08/05/02

OUR DIGITAL MOVIE FUTURE: “Digital video is one of the most controversial issues in Hollywood. Film purists like critic Roger Ebert decry the muddy and streaky images that often afflict lower-end video features – while proponents like George Lucas hail high-end digital video (DV) as the wave of the future that will democratize filmmaking, allowing artistic freedom and permit even established directors to make risky films.” New York Post 08/05/02

Monday August 5

DIGITAL DEBATE: “The F.C.C. is set to decide on Thursday on a regulation proposed in January 2001 that would require consumer electronics makers to include digital tuners in all new TV sets by 2006. The idea is that if enough sets are sold with the proper receivers, broadcasters will have more incentive to provide programs to watch on them — giving people more reason to buy the televisions. But the measure is opposed by the Consumer Electronics Association, which argues that the rule would add as much as $250 to the average price of a TV set.” The New York Times 08/05/02

SLAVE TO STEREOTYPE? Here’s the charge – Hollywood supports only “three types of black films: the slapstick comedy, the romantic comedy and the gangsta/’hood thriller. If a filmmaker attempts anything different, says Eriq La Salle, potential backers argue that they don’t know how to market nontraditional black movies.” New York Daily News 08/04/02

NARROW DEFINITION OF WOMEN: “We all know that women fall madly in love even when they’re not raving beauties — or sweet young things. And that these days many are staying vigorously active, leading fulfilling professional lives, and having physical adventures and sexual escapades well into their senior years. Yet head to the mall to take in the latest Hollywood studio films, and you get a much narrower vision of womanhood.” Seattle Times 08/04/02

LATE’S NOT GREAT: The Directors Guild of America is complaining that almost half of all scripts for prime-time series have been arriving late. This is “a level of tardiness, they say, that means inadequate time to prepare and thus undermines program quality.” Los Angeles Times 08/05/02

RIDING THE RED CARPET: The red carpet walk – it’s where the stars come out, the cameras go off, and people most feel the glamor of Hollywood. “Studios can spend millions of dollars for this one- night-only fanfare, an event that some consider an expensive exercise in celebrity worship that ultimately does little to boost box-office revenues. But others in the industry say the red carpet is as vital as the movie itself. It’s Hollywood’s security blanket, they say, a reassuring tradition for an industry consumed by anxiety.” San Francisco Chronicle 08/02/02

GETTING THE MESSAGE UP FRONT: Few advertisers just want to buy 30-second spots on TV shows anymore. Product placement is big business, and some of America’s most successful TV shows and movies have worked products into their storylines. “If someone’s drinking a can of soda, it can be Coca-Cola. But downstream in syndication, if Pepsi wants to sponsor the show, it can (digitally) become a can of Pepsi.” Dallas Morning News 08/05/02

Sunday August 4

KID-PROOFING THE BIG SCREEN: It may be hard to believe in this era of family-friendly blockbusters, but there was a time only a few years ago when a PG rating was considered box office death, and directors intentionally inserted words and scenes designed to garner the adults-only R rating into their movies. So what’s changed? According to one industry analyst, “”If you’ve got excessive violence or nudity, you’re taking out a huge portion of America, conservative moviegoers included, not to mention the most lucrative audience of all, and that’s the under-16 crowd.” Denver Post 08/04/02

Friday August 2

RIGHT TO OWN IS UNDER ATTACK: “The simple transfer of music, from home to car to portable device, could soon be ending. Content companies and consumer advocates are waging a vicious battle in Washington, with the future of consumer rights – and what you can do with products you have purchased – at stake. At the center of the fight: government regulations being written with the support of movie studios and record companies.” Wired 08/02/02

PUTTING RARE CULTURE ONLINE: A project in Britain will digitize important artistic, historic, scientific and cultural records to make them available to all. The project includes, rare books, scientific records, old newsreels, photographs – many of the documents or records are currently inaccessible because of fear of damage, and it is hoped that digital records of them will help research. Wired 08/02/02

WRITING SMALL: Where’s the real creative juice for a screenwriter these days? TV. Movie writing is too deeply compromised by the big money and power of the studios and stars. “The writer is the power in TV; in features, a star can say they don’t like it and you’re stuck.” The Economist 08/02/02

NOW FOR A SOMETHING THAT REALLY MATTERS… What are the greatest cartoon characters of all time? TV Guide has made a list. And no one’s bound to be entirely satisfied. No. 1’s bad enough, but “the most serious scandals are near the end of the list: Yogi Bear and Boo Boo (36) beating the more ingenious Wile E.Coyote and the Road Runner (38); the charming stammerer Porky Pig (47) out-talked by the incomprehensible Donald Duck (43); two ingratiating magpies, Heckle and Jeckle (25), flying higher than the definitive bird/cat combo Tweety and Sylvester (33).” Sydney Morning Herald 08/02/02

Thursday August 1

PBS AT THE GATE: PBS seems determined to make itself unloved and unwanted. “Like an underperforming child, you get angry at its failures because you so badly want it to succeed. But lately PBS hasn’t even been responding to tough love. It does what it wants, for whom it wants, never takes criticism well and then can’t understand why it gets hassled all the time.” San Francisco Chronicle 07/31/02

• PILING ON PBS: “This is all very nice and earnest, but PBS isn’t getting sympathy and support from critics any more.” So says a Canadian writer after observing PBS’s various stumblings in recent months, and its sad, pathetic attempt to make generic, boring programs look exciting and new. With the Louis Rukeyser flap and the HIV-positive Muppet flap both thoroughly botched by network management, reruns of The Civil War simply aren’t enough to cover up public broadcasting’s glaring inadequacies anymore. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 08/01/02

LIMP OPINION: A new book condemns Australian film reviewers for being superficial and soft on homegrown movies. “Most mainstream reviews are shallow exercises in opinionated writing with little critical depth or knowledge of cinema history: We have a fetish for superficial dabbling, commodified thumbnail reviews or banal ratings games, as writers bask in the glamour of the entertainment industries rather than attempting to dissect them.” Sydney Morning Herald 08/01/02

UK GETS A NEW CENSOR: “Senior civil servant Sir Quentin Thomas – who played a key part in securing peace in Northern Ireland – has been named as the new president of the British Board of Film Classification… Sir Quentin, 58, was one of the first UK officials to make contact with the Sinn Fein in the search for a peace deal [in Ireland] in the early 1990s, and was instrumental in securing the 1998 Good Friday agreement. A film fan, he will take charge of vetting all cinema and video releases in the UK.” BBC 08/01/02

Wednesday July 31

YOUR RIGHTS THREATENED: US lawmakers are seriously considering legislation that would allow movie and music companies to hack into personal computers to check for content. “Maybe this grotesque legislation will die the death it deserves, once sensible people understand the consequences. But if it or something similar goes through, its passage will be only one more in a series of laws and wish lists that have a single purpose. The goal is to give copyright owners profound control over music, movies and other forms of information. The fact that this control would do enormous damage to your rights, and to the future of innovation in a nation that desperately needs more innovation, is apparently beside the point.” San Jose Mercury News 07/30/02

BRITISH MOVIE BOX OFFICE SURGE: British movie theatres had their busiest June in 30 years. “Spider-Man Peter Parker and the latest intergalactic offering from the George Lucas stable guaranteed booming box office figures throughout last month, which totalled 12.2m – an increase of 30% on the same period last year, making it the highest June on record since 1972.” The Guardian (UK) 07/30/02

SEEING IS NOT BELIEVING: We see much on TV that seems unexplainable, unbelievable. Yet it keeps passing by, an endless stream of unexplainable, unbeliveable things. “Who do you trust? These days, you could lose big playing this game. That’s the message of TV: Stay on highest alert or risk losing your retirement, your child, your country, your life.” Los Angeles Times (AP) 07/30/02

EVEN ON SESAME STEET… Four years ago Sesame Street began broadcasting an Israeli-Palestinian co-production, conceived in the afterglow of the 1993 Oslo accords. The collaboration produced 70 half-hour shows, each one containing Hebrew and Arabic segments that were broadcast to receptive audiences. But under a new co-production agreement, which now includes Jordanians, the project has run into difficulty. The name “Sesame Street” has been changed to “Sesame Stories” because the concept of a place where people and puppets from those three groups can mingle freely has become untenable.” The New York Times 07/30/02

Tuesday July 30

PROTECTING NET RADIO: Concerned that new royalty fees might put fledgling internet radio stations out of business, there’s a proposal in the US Congress to exempt small radio stations. “The Internet Radio Fairness Act would exempt webcasters with less than $6 million in annual revenues from the additional RIAA royalty and from future royalty requirements.” The Register 07/29/02

Monday July 29

TAKIN’ IT EASY: Together with nostalgia, fantasy and slam-bang movie-style action, they portend a new season of escapism. Some of it is designed as bait for the fickle youth market; some as post­9-11 comfort food. ‘For the vast majority of the television audience, TV is what they do after they get home from a long day at work or after being with their kids all day. We will leave groundbreaking to somebody else’.” Dallas Morning News 07/28/02

Sunday July 28

BIG OR ELSE: In the new world of globalized culture and giant movie conglomerates, movies that don’t have the potential for worldwide branding and orifits will see little in the way of promotion from studios. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/27/02

A SHIFTING UP AND DOWN: “No matter how you measure upscale and downscale — by viewers’ income and education, as the number crunchers do, or by common-sense standards of good taste — the networks are mixing ever-more-sophisticated comedies and dramas with the increasingly crude game and reality shows they call ‘alternative’ programs, a buzzword meaning nonscripted and cheap to produce. The top network executives agree that this high-low split now represents a permanent change in the television landscape.” The New York Times 07/28/02

Friday July 26

EH, WHO NEEDS THE 4TH AMENDMENT? Hollywood is pushing a new piece of legislation which the industry hopes will allow it to take an active role in stopping the video piracy it claims is epidemic. If passed, the law would allow studios to seek out and disable pirated copies of movies and music. Seek out? Why, yes, that does mean what you think it does: the law would allow the movie industry to hack into your computer more or less at will, and cripple your system if pirated material is found. BBC 07/26/02

Thursday July 25

SONY’S FOUND NEW RELIGION – MOVIES: Since it got into the movie business in 1989, “Sony has been the butt of jokes, known as much for churning out over-the-top flops as for profligate spending that forced it to take a $3.2-billion write-off in 1994, one of the largest losses in Japanese corporate history.” But that has all changed this summer. “Sony’s movie lineup broke all summer records and helped rack up $1 billion in U.S. ticket sales, more than most studios make in a year. First-quarter earnings are due today, and movie profits this year are expected to make the studio second only to Sony’s successful PlayStation in importance to the bottom line.” Los Angeles Times 07/25/02

THE GREAT STIMULATOR? A new Australian study of children’s TV viewing says that rather than turning kids into zombies, imaginative shows stimulate brain activity. The study reported that “shows that stimulated the imagination led to pretend play, which was ‘critical for development’ in fostering social skills and building confidence and self-esteem.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/25/02

TOO WHITE: American TV networks get low grades from a coalition of minority groups for the nets’ lack of diversity on screen. “Of the four largest networks, Fox did best, receiving a C grade. ABC got a C-minus. NBC scored a D-plus, and CBS got the worst grade, with an overall D-minus, including an F from the American Indians in Film and Television group. The grades are embarrassing to the networks, especially because they were already taking heat for fall schedules.” Hartford Courant 07/24/02

SEX SELLS? NOT TO US…UH, UH… A new poll says that “most television viewers believe that broadcasters use sex to boost their ratings, but that it had little effect. Of those questioned, 85 per cent said programme-makers include nudity and erotic content in an attempt to persuade them to tune in.The poll, which was conducted for the Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival, which runs from August 23 to 25, also found that 83 per cent of viewers said they were not tempted to watch programmes with sex in the title.” The Scotsman 07/25/02

PHONING IT IN: A Minneapolis web designer has produced mini movies that can be seen on cell phones. Careful though, the plots seem to involve stick figures getting decapitated… Wired 07/24/02

Wednesday July 24

COMMIT TO THE MACHINE? The tech industry is making overtures to the entertainment industry. Should we be worried? The industry “may well want to do the right thing by its customers – something you should not take for granted – but it’s also enthusiastically building the tools that will help the entertainment cartel grab absolute control over customers’ reading, viewing and listening.” San Jose Mercury-News 07/22/02

BACK TO THE 80’S: Surveying the fall offerings for American TV could give viewers a serious case of deja vu. Not only are a number of 80s stars popping up again, but the shows have a distinctly 80s sensibility. “Like ordinary investors, television executives seem to be feeling bruised and less bold. They may envy HBO its 93 Emmy nominations this year for more avant-garde shows like Six Feet Under, but these days they are as risk averse as portfolio managers.” The New York Times 07/24/02

WHO WANTS TO BE A BOOK CLUB? With typical television industry timing, the demise of Oprah Winfrey’s on-air book club has been met with a lemming-like stampede of programming executives determined to take advantage of the popularity of book clubs in general, and the void left by Oprah’s in particular. From a Canadian comedian determined to go highbrow to the decidedly lightweight contributions of Live with Regis & Kelly, the broadcast book club may just be the next cheap ‘n easy TV fad. And that wouldn’t be all bad, would it? The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/24/02

Tuesday July 23

THE COST OF ROYALTY: The internet’s first commercial radio station has closed down, citing the cost of recently imposed music royalties. ”The bill comes out to around $3,000 a month for KPIG, which isn’t a whole lot, but KPIG is basically a small-market radio station. And right now, it’s not making any money from that stream.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AP) 07/23/02

TV FOR THE DUMB: A new report in the UK concludes that new-style TV is breeding ignorance. It says that “the international documentary is dead, with TV preferring to show programmes involving clubbing, surfing, popular music and the sex industry. ‘There is a real danger that we are becoming a fragmented society where some people will have all the international knowledge while the rest will just be consumers of advertisers’.” The Scotsman 07/23/02

NOT SO SMART: “Traditional quiz shows, from Mastermind to Who Wants to be a Millionaire have served to confuse memory with intelligence. If not obvious enough, a mastermind is not someone who can reel off the US presidents in order of height. Some of the world’s most stupid people have excellent memories or mathematical abilities. Scoring highly in an IQ test won’t make you a mastermind either. One person can score a low IQ but be happy, well balanced, creative and successful. Another can score in the genius class and be the Unabomber.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/23/02

DIGITAL PRESERVATIVES: Digital art is in danger of disappearing as technical formats change, so steps have to be taken to preserve it. “With digital art, there’s no room for things to fall between the cracks. If you don’t do something to preserve it within a span of five years, it’s not going to survive. Some works of digital art are already gone. Our time frame is not decades, it’s years, at most.” Wired 07/23/02

THIS JUST IN… A Melbourne man has confounded medical experts and film critics by declaring he has completely understood David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. The movie had previously been though to be impenetrable.”What makes the Melbourne man’s claim so extraordinary is that he performed this unprecedented feat of comprehension while drinking an entire bottle of spirits.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/23/02

Monday July 22

DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ ACTORS: The latest thing in movies? A technology coming out of computer games. “Machinima (ma-SHIN-i-ma), a form of digital filmmaking that piggybacks on the slick graphics that are easily available from computer games and uses them to produce animated movies quickly and cheaply. Machinima movies, which range from short comedies to science-fiction epics, are produced entirely on computers, eliminating the need to buy costly equipment, rent spectacular locations or hire glamorous actors. The films are then distributed free over the Internet.” The New York Times 07/22/02

CENSOR THIS: Some 1200 people recently applied to fill a vacancy on the Australian censor’s board. “The office’s 12-member classification board looks at virtually every new film, video, computer game, DVD and adult magazine proposed for screening, sale or hire in Australia. More than half the material classified by the board is what’s known as ‘adult’ product.” Last year “the board considered more than 5700 products. Only 382, or about 7 percent, were general-release movies; 588 were computer games; and 1832 were publications. Almost half the board’s decisions related to videos for sale or hire. Of the 2912 videos, 933 were classified X18+.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/22/02

• CHIEF CENSOR RESIGNS: The head of India’s censor board has been forced to resign after proposing that X-rated movies be permitted in some theatres across the country. “Although it is illegal to show pornographic films in India, almost every city has cinemas which do so. Many screen films in the morning, re-inserting deleted scenes and bribing local police to turn a blind eye.” BBC 07/22/02

Sunday July 21

LOOSENING THE CENSOR’S GRIP? In Great Britain, film ratings are not just advisory, as they are in the U.S., and children under certain designated ages are not allowed in to films with varying levels of sex and violence. But the outgoing director of the British Board of Film Classification is predicting that the U.K. will scrap the mandatory ratings within a decade, and that the country will move to a U.S.-style system as public tolerance for movie action continues to evolve. BBC 07/21/02

Friday July 19

ROLL OVER, HOLLYWOOD: So you think the American movie juggernaut is rolling over all other types of film? There are signs that Hollywood is losing its grip on the world market. “The thirst for film has never been greater, but a new reality shapes the tastes of the young people watching the screen’s best and worst. In Europe alone, the market share for American movies fell from 73 per cent to 65 per cent. European film is about to enjoy a renaissance of hope among a generation now wearying of the formulaic American ‘product’.” London Evening Standard 07/18/02

THE “GOOD WAVE”: Latin-American eceonomies might be on the ropes, but a vibrant new wave of films has emerged. The new cinema is called “la buena onda” (the good wave), and it’s finding international audiences. But just as success comes, some wonder whether la buena onda is selling out to a globalized American vision of culture. The Guardian (UK) 07/19/02

LITTLE PROGRESS IN DIVERSITY: It’s become an annual ritual. Each year minority groups issue a report critiquing the representation of minorities on American television networks. And eash year the story bis more or less the same. Minorities are underrepresented in TV. This year “the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s third annual diversity ‘report card’ showed ABC and Fox upped their grades slightly from last year while NBC and CBS slid backward.” Nando Times (AP) 07/19/02

Thursday July 18

EMMY NOMINATIONS: Emmy nominations were announced this morning in LA, with “a first-year program, HBO’s Six Feet Under, emerging to lead the field with 23 nominations. The series about a family of undertakers will literally provide some stiff competition to two-time best drama winner The West Wing.” Los Angeles Times 07/18/02

TECHIES TO HOLLYWOOD – NOT OUR TABLE: “On Monday, technology executives, including Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Dell Computer’s Michael Dell and Intel’s Craig Barrett, said in an open letter to entertainment industry executives that they were not about to create technology that limits computer users ability to copy and play digital media.” Entertainment producers had asked the tech industry to develop protocols that would limit the technical ability of devices to copy digital content. Nando Times (APF) 07/17/02

SO THE KEY IS EVEN MORE REGULATION? Why does it matter that Canadian TV networks aren’t producing more dramas? “A country without a healthy diet of continuing, homegrown drama is lacking in the fibre of contemporary storytelling. In every country that has even the vaguest notion of a culture and identity, there is a distinct link between the idea of itself and the fictive imagination. A country is simply inauthentic if its stories are not reflected back to itself. That’s why Canadian publishing is subsidized and Canadian television is regulated.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/18/02

OVERWHELMED BY SUCCESS? So many Hollywood film productions are shooting Down Under that the Australian Film Commission is “seeking to address concerns about the impact on local employment, Hollywood’s slow cultural takeover, and the effect of foreign production on domestic film culture.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/18/02

HOME OF THE BRAVE: Some US Republican lawmakers, concerned that a Sesame Street Muppet portrayed as being HIV-infected for the South Africa version of the show might be incorporated into the American version, wrote to PBS president Pat Mitchell to express their concern. They wrote that they “didn’t think it would be appropriate to bring the Muppet to the United States.” Mitchell assured them the Muppet wouldn’t be introduced in the US. Washington Post 07/18/02

“RECKLESS” BREACH: In October 2000, the Australian TV show 60 Minutes aired an interview with actor Russell Crowe. During the interview Crowe pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. Now the Australian Broadcasting Authority has ruled that the segment and subsequent re-airings of it constituted promotion of smoking, violating Australian law. “Although there is no evidence that the interview was intended to promote smoking … the footage in fact promoted those things, in that it encouraged smoking. In the ABA’s view it is not unreasonable to expect that viewers may be influenced by Mr Crowe’s behaviour and may believe that it is desirable to adopt Mr Crowe’s behaviour, including smoking Marlboro cigarettes.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/18/02

Wednesday July 17

IS THE BBC TOO BIG? The BBC has surging ratings and dominates the broadcast life of the UK. “The corporation is a many-tentacled monster that would be unrecognisable to wireless entrepreneurs of the early 1920s. It has staff numbers that would dwarf many a small city and an annual income of £3.16 billion that, if it was a country, would make it a rival of the GDP of Iceland or Mongolia. Plainly the BBC has more global clout than either country.” But does it have too much power? The Guardian (UK) 07/17/02

Tuesday July 16

NO LONGER A LICENSE TO PRINT MONEY? American TV network execs are gloomy. “Only two broadcast networks – NBC and CBS – are expected to turn a profit this year. General Electric’s NBC, which finished the season in first place in the ratings, expects more than $500 million in profit from the network; CBS, owned by Viacom Inc., expects network profit this year to top $150 million.” Fox and ABC both expect to post big losses. Los Angeles Times 07/16/02

WOULD WE PAY? New technology allows TV viewers to zap commercials. If this catches on, the TV industry will have to find new ways to make money. “Let’s all look into the future, let’s decide whether we want to pay for our television or pay for it by watching the commercials.” If we all were to pay for watching TV, it would cost about $250 a year. Denver Post 07/16/02

Monday July 15

AT THE MOVIES: While many things in the pop culture universe seem to be riding a downward spiral (broadcast TV, cd sales, concert attendance) the movies are in the passing lane. “So far this year, box-office revenues stand at $4.71 billion, up an eye-popping 19 percent over last year’s record pace. It seems nearly every weekend sets a new milestone.” So why are people taking to the movies theatres? Dallas Morning News 07/14/02

• QUALITY WILL OUT? There are many theories, but “everyone seems afraid to admit the obvious: There are some fine movies out there, folks. In fact, in all my years of movie reviewing, I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more satisfying summer indoors.” Detroit Free Press 07/14/02
  

THE NEXT GREAT MOVIE-MAKER? National Geographic is getting involved with major Hollywood studios in producing big-budget movies. The latest Harrison Ford adventure is one example. “This is one of the major things that we bring to the table: the extensive resources of National Geographic’s research departments, which can provide a much deeper and more detailed exploration of the story behind the movie. National Geographic is sitting on what is, potentially, an almost bottomless fund of adventure stories. It’s a specific area. It’s finite. But it’s definitely a significant part of the tradition of filmmaking.” The New York Times 07/15/02

WHY CANADIAN HOMEGROWN TV IS SO BAD: Three years ago the agency that regulates Canadian TV allowed loopholes that let broadcasters stop investing in homegrown series. The results are predictable: “In the past three years the number of truly homegrown, one-hour prime-time series has dropped from 12 to five. ‘It’s not like we had a golden age of television and lost it. But we had an aluminum age in the eighties and nineties, and we have lost that’.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/13/02

• ACTING DOWN: Why is Canadian TV drama ailing? “What makes a production Canadian is that it’s usually cheaper, chintzier and more stupidly-scheduled than its U.S. competition. There’s too little creative vision, not enough money, too much network interference/neglect plus an indecent dependence on the public teat which often results in hastily-written scripts, slapped-together shooting schedules and other problems brought about by waiting around to get the go-ahead from the funding agencies.” Toronto Star 07/14/02

Friday July 12

ARTS CHANNEL TO FOLD: Artsworld, the UK premium TV channel featuring live performances of opera, jazz and ballet launched with great fanfare 18 months ago, is about to close. The channel needed about 140,000 subscribers to make it viable; it has only 100,000, and investors are reluctant to put up any more cash. The Guardian (UK) 07/11/02

• A SORRY PREDICATBLE TALE: Oh, it’s all so predictable. Artsworld disappears and other broadcasters say we’re about to witness a renaissance of new arts programming. “Oh really? Pardon me for not exuding more joy, but haven’t we been here before? I must point out that the Philistines/morons/etc running BBC One and BBC Two have now cut arts programmes to such a dribble that the Culture Department’s demand for the BBC to broadcast 230 hours of arts next year (out of 17,000 hours of airtime) is seen as a huge challenge.” The Times (UK) 07/12/02

NO BUSINESS IN SHOW BUSINESS: The shutdown of FilmFour, one of the UK’s most interesting movie producers, rips a hole through the British film industry. Why did it fail? “There was no satisfactory route to profitability. FilmFour returned operating losses of £3m in 2000 and £5.4m in 2001, and the underlying business model was not a basis for building a commercial entity.” The Guardian (UK) 07/12/02

• GOOD – OR SUCCESSFUL? Was FilmFour a victim of its success? The company made some brilliant films, but as success grew there was more pressure to produce more hits. That changed the climate in which the company decided on projects – instead of making movies because they were interesting, producers looked more to making successes. The Guardian (UK) 07/12/02

AIDS AWARENESS COMES TO SESAME STREET: The producers of the most successful children’s television program in history have announced that the South African edition of Sesame Street will debut an HIV-positive Muppet character this fall, and a similar character is being considered for the U.S. version. AIDS is, of course, rampant on the African continent, and the producers of the show say that “the goal is to help ‘de-stigmatize’ the disease, promote discussion about it and ‘model positive behavior’ toward an afflicted person among viewers of the program, who typically are age 3 to 7.” Washington Post 07/12/02

JUST SOME FRIENDLY ASSISTANCE: The Drug Enforcement Administration is getting into the movie business, whether anyone wants them there or not. The DEA met with Hollywood bigwigs this week, with agency head Asa Hutchinson saying he “wanted to help make plots more realistic.” Cheech and Chong were not immediately available for comment. BBC 07/12/02

FAMILY-FRIENDLY FARE FLATTENS FAMOUS FLICKS: “Last weekend, four of the 10 top-grossing movies in North America carried either G or PG ratings from the Motion Picture Association of America.” In fact, kids’ movies are cleaning up all across the map these days, and the trend has led to an explosion in the number of new releases you can take your five-year-old to. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 07/12/02

Thursday July 11

DIE WEB, DIE: Web radio has been flourishing. But come October 20, many of the stations will go out of business because of royalty fees owed to music producers. The retroactive “bill due for all Webcasters represents several times the total revenue of the entire industry. The folks at the Recording Industry Association of America defend this on the ground that without music, you have no Internet radio.” But shouldn’t the producers be the very ones encouraging this dissemination of their products? Newsweek 07/15/02

WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO BE A SPANNER TOO: C-Span founder and host Brian Lamb has a cult following among viewers known as “Spanners” for their devotion to the cable network. “Lamb is open to interpretations of himself – the solemn ones, mocking ones, camp ones. He’ll play along. He is resigned to his celebrity niche. He has been called the most boring and the most trusted man in America, both of which he would take as a source of pride, or, at least, humor.” Washington Post 07/12/02

RERUN REVOLT: TV viewers are abandoning reruns of dramas. The dropoff in audience is so severe that networks are abandoning reruns of some shows. “This summer, the average rating for a network drama repeat is 54 percent lower than a first-run original, which is in line with previous years. (Comedies fare much better with only a 45 percent decline.) But the drop-off is more precipitous — about 70 percent — for such shows as ER, Boston Public, Alias and The Practice, all of which depend on continuing stories.” Seattle Times (NYDN) 07/11/02

Wednesday July 10

RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME: Filming of productions in California was down 19 percent last month compared to a year ago. “More than a dozen big-budget movies from major studios are filming this month in Canada, Australia and other foreign countries as Hollywood’s troubles with runaway production worsen.” Los Angeles Daily News 09/10/02

KOREA’S BANNER YEAR: Just as in the US, Korea’s film industry is having a great year. Box office is way up, and Korean-made movies are having their best year since 1984, when the government made it easier to import foreign movies. Korean movies accounted for almost 50 percent of movie tickets sold in the first half of this year. Korea Herald 07/10/02

PRODUCT PLACEMENT/PROGRAM DEFACEMENT: Increasingly, as traditional ads become less effective on TV advertisers are looking for new ways to gey their products in front of viewers. “Networks say they are open to sponsor-supplied programs and elaborate product-placement schemes as long as the buyers don’t dictate content, but who are they kidding? Why would companies pony up cash without expecting some input over how it’s spent?” Los Angeles Times 09/10/02

IT’LL TAKE MORE THAN AN AGENT: America’s health maintenance organizations are tired of being portrayed as the bad guys on TV and in the movies. So they’ve hired an agent to try to get a more positive image portrayed. “What we’re trying to do is get a level playing field. We’re not saying it’s verboten to attack some part of the health care system. We’re saying there is another side to what we do.” Nando Times (AP) 07/09/02

END OF VHS? As more stores sell DVDs and cut back on videocassettes, it seems inevitable that VHS will disappear. In their time, though, VHS was considered a threat. “At the time there was some debate about whether this would hurt Hollywood, but over time it’s only enhanced people’s interest in movies. It opened movies up to a broader audience instead of discouraging it.” Hartford Courant 07/10/02

Tuesday July 9

STUDIO DOWNFALL: For 20 years FilmFour was the closest thing Britain has had to a film studio. No more. The studio has gone bust. “The fortunes of all studios fluctuate, but FilmFour’s fall from grace was alarming and sudden. It seemed to implode in the last 10 months, thanks to flawed creative decisions, an ill-fated lurch towards the mainstream, and a run of sub-standard films.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/09/02

Monday July 8

THE NEW FILMMAKERS: The falling costs of making movies has attracted an army of new filmmakers. “Rather than using the pen to tell their stories, creative wannabees in Sydney are embracing film-making. The number of film industry hopefuls at short film festivals has tripled. There are now about 300 film festivals in Australia, compared with 100 three years ago.” Sydney Morning Herald 07/08/02

REPRESENTING HOLLYWOOD: With one-time super-agent Mike Ovitz bowing out of the movie business, there’s a power shift to a new, largely unheard of management company. “With all the focus on the short term, on making immediate profits, people sacrifice building brand credibility. I have a different approach. I want to build credibility behind entertainers. Credibility is another word for brand equity.” Washington Post 07/08/02

Sunday July 7

RETHINKING SYNERGY: When AOL merged with Time Warner to create the world’s largest entertainment conglomerate, the tech boom was still on, synergy was the watchword of the financial community, and the new behemoth was assumed to be an unstoppable juggernaut. As it turns out, synergy in the world of mass entertainment may not be all it’s cracked up to be: “People relate much more to the individual brands. They care about HBO, AOL, Time magazine. They care about ‘Harry Potter’… But it just doesn’t matter to them that all those things are tied together.” Chicago Tribune 07/07/02

JOHN FRANKENHEIMER, 72: Hollywood director John Frankenheimer, famous for his tales of political intrigue and dark conspiracies, has died. His films included Seven Days In May and The Manchurian Candidate. The New York Times 07/07/02

Friday July 5

THE “PROFIT” MOTIVE: “I used to think people made films for profit. I know better now. Films are made to generate income. If profit follows, well and good. But income can be diverted – not to use a blunter word – whereas profit has to be declared, shared, and have tax paid on it. Which is one reason why many movies, earning box-office millions, do their best not to come into profit too soon, if ever, by loading themselves with distribution costs. But there is a class of film that can create a profit even before it’s made – and needn’t ever be shown.” London Evening Standard 07/05/02

AMERICA’S FASTEST GROWING ARTS SHOW: Studio 360 is the fastest growing show on American public radio. A show about arts and culture, it tries to look at creativity as part of everyday life. “The goal for the show is to demonstrate that culture is a kind of continuous panorama. We think of culture as being balkanized niches. It’s a disparate fabric, but it’s all one fabric.” Los Angeles Times 07/05/02

THE SOUND OF SATELLITE: Satellite radio offers better sound and many more programming choices than traditional radio. But are people ready to spend hundreds of dollars on new equipment and pay a monthly fee for the privilege? “Just like FM took advantage of all of AM’s vulnerabilities, [satellite radio] is taking advantage of all of FM’s vulnerabilities.” Christian Science Monitor 07/05/02

THE BOLLYWOOD METHOD: Bollywood is finding fans worldwide. Its methods of making movies are unique. “It’s the most organised chaos in the world; nothing should work yet everything does. There are no shooting scripts, no shooting schedules, no call sheets. The crew may be phoned in the morning to shoot that day. Actors work on several movies at a time and are often handed their scripts five minutes before filming. This is to avoid someone outside pinching the idea and making the same movie.” The Age (Melbourne) 07/05/02

THE ENEMY R US: Do TV viewers have a “contract” with TV producers wherein they agree to watch commercials in return for programming? “Napster may—and I stress, may—have been legitimately labeled piracy, but now all forms of consumerism are being criminalized with ever-decreasing degrees of credibility.” Big media is losing control and as it does, is treating its customers as crimminals. “Name-calling is the last resort of once powerful institutions that are finding themselves losing control in the face of rapid media change.” MIT Technology Review 07/04/02

Thursday July 4

THE TV FACTOR: The nature and tone of television has changed over the years. Maybe not for the better? “TV, once expected to be a polite guest in our living rooms, has turned into more of drunken party-crasher. Sex, violence and language that in earlier days would have triggered FCC threats and congressional investigations is now routine.” Chicago Tribune 07/04/02

Wednesday July 3

EGOYAN BY A NOSE: The great competition is over. Atom Egoyan’s Ararat will play in the high-profile opening night slot at the Toronto International Film Festival, beating out David Cronenberg’s Spider. Except that it wasn’t a competition. Really. They swear it wasn’t. But whatever it was, all of Toronto has been talking about it for quite some time, and the debate over which film truly represents the best of Canadian cinema will likely continue. Toronto Star 07/03/02

• WHAT THE CRITICS THINK: So is Atom Egoyan “poncy and pretentious” or “accessible… with a streak of black humour”? Is David Cronenberg “provocative and bankable” or just a high-minded horror purveyor with a fixation on “fleshy joysticks and umbilical sockets”? Three critics square off on the high-profile debate surrounding TIFF’s two stars of the moment. National Post (Canada) 07/03/02

BYE-BYE INDEPENDENTS(CE): TV’s independents – from stand-alone producers to local stations – continue to disappear, swallowed up by the entertainment industry’s appetite for consolidation. Several producers spent the early 1990s vainly sounding alarms about this scenario, but the government has nevertheless spent the past decade stripping away rules that prevented the big from getting bigger, turning the producer-network game – never an entirely fair fight to begin with – into the equivalent of Florida State versus Sister Cecilia’s School for Wayward Girls. As a result, truly entrepreneurial program suppliers have mostly been transformed into employees.” Los Angeles Times 07/03/02

FALLEN FROM GRACE, AND BITTER AS HELL: Time was in Hollywood when you couldn’t make a move (or a movie) without Michael Ovitz’s say-so. But today, Ovitz is a bitter and broken man, a few years removed from his embarrassing ouster at Disney, and smarting from the collapse of his once-dominant talent agency. Ovitz is lashing out in a soon-to-be-published interview in Vanity Fair, claiming, among other things, that a Hollywood “gay mafia” is responsible for his downfall. The New York Times 07/03/02

Tuesday July 2

A FIRST – CABLE BEATS BROADCAST: For the first time, all the US cable channels combined have more viewers than all the combined broadcast channels. Cable’s trend of producing more original series has helped boost the cable nets’ numbers. Orange County Register (NYDN) 07/02/02

OSCAR LOOKS FOR SWEEP: The Oscars are being moved back from March to February. Why? Well, the Academy has been worried about slipping ratings. And the TV networks figure to get a ratings boost during February sweeps. Washington Post 07/02/02

DVD’s RULE: CD sales might be in a slump, but DVD’s are hot. “Consumers are on pace to spend $11 billion on DVD sales and rentals this year, making it the fastest-growing home-electronic product ever. DVDs routinely make more money in their opening weekend than comparable theatrical releases. Video games aren’t far behind, with sales reaching $6.3 billion last year, nearly double what they were five years ago.” Why? They’ve gotten cheaper, and they’re stuffed with cool features – unlike stodgy CD’s which are overpriced and the same-old same-old. Los Angeles Times 07/02/02

THE NEW LATIN FILMS: After decades “in the doldrums” Latin American films are winning new international audiences. “We are still finding and fighting for our identities – it’s the opposite from Europe, in which everything already has its place. We are societies in movement, and chaos and collision are always part of everyday life. There’s an extraordinary sense of urgency, energy and pertinence, which translates into these films in a very muscular and organic manner. Obviously it’s not something which will please the ministries of tourism. But it is what it is.” The Telegraph (UK) 07/02/02

Monday July 1

THE MOVIE SUMMER: The summer movie season is beating all box office records. So far, from May 2 to June 23 box office is up 27.5% over last year. “A key factor this summer is that the hit films are generally playing stronger and longer, unlike last year, when spectacular first weekend grosses were followed by drops of 50% or more in the second weekend.” Los Angeles Times 07/01/02

HURRAY FOR BOLLYWOOD: “Bollywood has never been hotter. Glossy magazines are dedicating pages to Indian-style fashion (henna tattoo, anyone?) and Western directors are scrambling to make movies inspired by these epic tales of love, lust and heartbreak. The Indian film industry produces 1,000 movies a year watched by audiences across the East from Africa to China and by expat Indians around the world. Every day 23 million people pile into cinemas across India (population 1 billion), to watch movies. Even the West is finally catching on. What’s the attraction? Sydney Morning Herald 07/01/02

Friday June 28

ALL IS SWEETNESS AND LIGHT: Whatever happened to the grand old tradition of dark acting? These days it seems that all Hollywood antagonists must be so evil as to be caricatures, and the days of quietly menacing characters, the type who don’t frighten you so much as make you wildly uneasy, have faded away into the ether left from an era when subtlety still had a place in Tinseltown. Toronto Star 06/28/02

BACKING AWAY SLOWLY: National Public Radio has reconsidered its much-criticized policy of requiring webmasters to go through a lengthy ‘permission’ process before posting a link to any part of the public broadcaster’s site. In a statement, NPR acknowledged that vociferous objection from the online world had played a role in the change, but claimed that it had been looking at changing the policy for some time. Wired 06/28/02

CURE FOR THE COMMON MULTIPLEX: “Snacks and soda are banned from the theatre. Most of the movies have subtitles; many are in black-and-white. The actors and directors deal in highbrow concepts like neo-realism and surrealism. More to the point, there’s nary a web-slinger nor a lightsabre in sight. Welcome to Summer At The Cinematheque, the most popular program of Cinematheque Ontario, the film lover’s paradise far from the maddening multiplex.” Toronto Star 06/28/02

Thursday June 27

SUPPORTING ROLES: Why is it that every Hollywood film purporting to be about racial minorities, civil rights, or non-white cultures always seems to end up focusing on a white protagonist? While the film industry revels in its liberal image and loves to pay lip service to minority causes, the movies it churns out consistently relegate black, Hispanic, and Native American characters to supporting status, while the “white-man-on-a-white-horse” protagonist rides in to embrace their cause and save them all. It couldn’t be much more insulting. Chicago Tribune 06/27/02

WHITHER PACIFICA? After the better part of a decade spent in epic battles between network execs and volunteer programmers, the Pacifica network is now squarely in the hands of the dissident broadcasters who appear on its air. The question is, can the inmates really run the asylum, and does Pacifica’s grass-roots, left-wing, and (let’s be honest) brutally unpolished style still have a place in today’s radio landscape? Salon 06/20/02

Wednesday June 26

BBC EXPANDS ARTS PROGRAMMING: In response to charges it has been dumbing down its arts programming, the BBC is expanding its arts coverage. “Perhaps stung by the criticism, BBC1 plans to spend more than £3.3m on arts programmes in the autumn schedules, which will be announced in the next few weeks. This is £1.5m more than last year. The number of hours dedicated to the arts will rise by 40 per cent.” The Independent (UK) 06/24/02

HAVE MONEY WILL PLAY: Is Clear Channel Communications – with 1200 radio stations across America, the country’s largest broadcaster – giving airtime to record labels in return for money? Well, maybe not directly, but some of the company’s new services sure look suspicious. Salon 06/25/02

• PAY-TO-PLAY: Music payola is becoming a hot topic, with the US Congress threatening to hold hearings and make new laws. Payola is the deal where recording labels pay radio station to play their music. For some large radio conglomerates, it’s become a big income producer. But the system essentially shuts out artists and labels that don’t have the money to get their music played. Salon 06/25/02

Tuesday June 25

PBS CHIEF HOPEFUL ABOUT NETWORK: With PBS ratings falling to historic lows, PBS chief Pat Mitchell rallied the troops at the network’s annual meeting. “That one small part of my musings about ratings has become the message: that I am measuring PBS’ relevance by ratings. Not true, of course. I was actually arguing against ratings as the only measurement of relevance or success.” Yahoo! (Hollywood Reporter) 06/25/02

EXOTIC MAKEOVER: Foreign directors have a long, rich history in Hollywood, from Josef von Sternberg and Billy Wilder to Fritz Lang and Fred Zinnemann, and more recently directors like Czech-born Milos Forman have flourished in America. But many have suffered. Hollywood hires foreign filmmakers for their artistic cachet, then often wastes their gifts on hackneyed material. It’s that classic combination of the American thirst for the exotic and insistence on the familiar.” Los Angeles Times 06/25/02

MASSACHUSETTS CLOSING FILM OFFICE: In the 1990s many US cities and states tried to lure Hollywood movies to shoot on location, trying to harvest some of the millions spent on location shoots. Most states set up film offices to facilitate permits and try to convince filmmakers to come. Now, with states like Massachusetts facing budget deficits, legislators are considering closing their film offices. ”We’re talking conservatively of $30 to $40 million coming into the state for late summer or fall. ‘If there’s no film officer, then it’s unlikely that the studios will come here to shoot on top of the other problems we’re facing.” Boston Globe 06/25/02

Monday June 24

YOUR AD HERE: Product placement is an old story in Hollywood movies. But the new Tom Cruise/Stephen Spielberg movie Minority Report is breaking records. “Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks, which co-produced and are distributing the picture, peg its final budget at $102 million U.S. According to product placement reps, the brands could have contributed $25 million to the final shooting budget, offsetting costs handsomely — and guaranteeing a healthy future for the marriage of Hollywood and Madison Avenue.” Toronto Star (Variety) 06/24/02

Sunday June 23

THE FOLLY OF BIG RADIO: Clear Channel Communications is, for all intents and purposes, the face of American radio in the era that has succeeded the notorious Telecommunications Act of 1996. The company has a near-monopoly in many markets, and nationwide, radio has never sounded so bland, so demographically targeted, and so predictable. Clear Channel claims that such tactics are what the public wants, but overall listenership is down 10% since 1996. Furthermore, some reports have Clear Channel bleeding at the wallet at a time when it should be raking in the dough. Is this the death of radio as we know it? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Washington Post) 06/23/02

• TAKING ON TELECOM ’96: So, most observers agree, radio has more or less sucked ever since Congress fiddled with it back in 1996. “Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) aims to do something about it. Feingold plans by month’s end to introduce legislation aimed at plugging what he sees as holes in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which opened the floodgate of corporate consolidation.” Washington Post 06/23/02

GOLDEN AGE OF THE DOCUMENTARY? To TV execs, they’re a cheap, easy, low-stress way to fill blocks of time on the schedule. To their creators, however, documentaries are an art, walking a fine line between filmmaking and journalism. And never have documentarians had so many outlets clamoring for their work: from PBS’s endlessly provocative P.O.V. to HBO’s sometimes-seedy America Undercover, the original “reality programming” is becoming the hottest thing in television. Boston Globe 06/23/02

NO BOYS ALLOWED: Quick, name a female filmmaker other than Penny Marshall. Stopped you cold, right? The fact is that, while female actors have made great strides in securing plum roles and top salaries, the world of those behind the camera remains overwhelmingly male. A new summer workshop in New Mexico aims to change that, if only by giving young women access to the knowledge and materials necessary to pursuing a career making films. Nando Times (AP) 06/21/02

THE SUM OF ALL NUCLEAR HOLOCAUSTS: Nuclear war has always been a subject of fascination in Hollywood. From Dr. Strangelove to On the Beach to The Day After, the spectre of nuclear annihilation has traditionally been a surefire way to wind up an audience while making what passes in the industry for a political statement. But the new summer thriller The Sum of All Fears marks a departure from the nuclear norm, and the message is clear: post-9/11, movies like Sum play less like futuristic fantasies than as prophetic predictions of the horrors to come. Los Angeles Times 06/23/02

Friday June 21

WEBCASTING FEES SET: The US Librarian of Congress has cut royalty fees internet webcasters will have to pay to play music. The copyright office had proposed a fee of .14 cents per song. The new rates “require webcasters to pay record labels .07 cents each time a song is streamed live and .02 cents for archived or simulcasted streams. Temporary copies, such as ripped copies of CDs that are used to create the digital streams, will cost companies 8.8 percent of their entire royalty fee.” Webcasters say that the fees will put them out of business. Wired 06/20/02

A US-PROGRAM DUMPING GROUND? The UK is considering allowing American companies to own British commercial broadcasters. But BBC head Greg Dyke warns a parliamentary committee that if it happens, “US media giants would simply ‘dump’ their own shows on the UK rather than invest in British programming.” BBC 06/21/02

NPR’S “CLUELESS” LINK POLICY: National Public Radio has become the object of ridicule on the web for its policy of requiring webmasters to apply for permission to link to stories on NPR’s site. “By Wednesday afternoon, the NPR link form was the No. 1 item on Daypop, which ranks the popularity of items in weblogs. ‘If you take this to its logical end, if you did this to everyone at every site, the Internet would break down. So the policy is borne of either cluelessness or evil – and I’d like to think that the Car Talk and tote bag people aren’t evil.” Wired 06/20/02

Thursday June 20

RECORD HOLLYWOOD: Major Hollywood movie studios took in a record $31 billion last year, up by $1.3 billion from the previous year. “Home video, spurred by the continued rise of DVD sales, was again the biggest contributor to the overall growth, accounting for 40% of all-media revenue, according to a summary of annual global results. Backstage 06/19/02

SEX WIPES AWAY MEMORY: A study reports that a little sex in a TV show wipes away viewers’ ability to remember commercials. “Researchers found that people watching shows packed with sexual innuendo, performers with revealing clothes or sexual scenes were much less likely to remember the ads both immediately after the show and a day later.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/20/02

RADIO FOR THE WORLD: Australia’s SBS Radio is the most multicultural radio operation in the world, broadcasting in 68 languages. “SBS Radio broadcasts 15,000 hours of programs each year to Australia’s major cities. Different languages are allocated varying amounts of time on air depending on the percentage of speakers in Australia, but population numbers are not the only element taken into consideration.” Sydney Morning News 06/20/02

Wednesday June 19

WAR GAMES: Hollywood war movies are everywhere this summer. “Not since the flurry of Vietnam movies in the late 1980s has the combat film been so viable or so visible. And not since the gung ho Reagan-era warnography of Rambo and Top Gun has the brass been as pleased.” Village Voice 06/18/02

Tuesday June 18

THE END OF PBS? With PBS’ ratings falling to historic lows, critics are wondering whether the network will survive. PBS president Pat Mitchell: “We are dangerously close in our overall primetime number to falling below the relevance quotient. And if that happens, we will surely fall below any arguable need for government support, not to mention corporate or individual support.” FoxNews 06/18/02

Monday June 17

STREAK OF INDEPENDENCE: While the big movies rely more and more on boffo opening weekend at the box office, the marketing and distribution of smaller independent films is being rethought. “The challenge is finding the right small movie to schedule opposite a behemoth. It’s an evolutionary process. The increase in independent films jockeying for art-house space has changed the equation, as has alternative programming on cable that’s really satisfying.” San Francisco Chronicle 06/17/02

MISSING WOMEN: “According to an annual study that counts the number of women working on the 250 top domestic grossing films of the year, the number of women directors declined from 11 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2001. Women accounted for 14 percent of writers in 2000. In 2001, the percentage dropped to 10.” Wired 06/17/02

Sunday June 16

FEST ME: There are now 1,600 film festivals around the world and 650 in the United States. And oddly, Los Angeles, the home of movies, doesn’t have a top-tier film fest. Why? Shouldn’t it? Los Angeles Times 06/16/02

THE NEW OLD FANTASY: “Perhaps more than ever before, Hollywood is an empire of fantasy. But despite the popularity of these movies — and despite the unmatched power of the studios to blanket the real world with publicity, advertising and media hype — Hollywood is not the center of this empire. It is, rather, a colonial outpost whose conquest has been recent and remains incomplete. Fantasy literature, which in the broadest sense includes modes of storytelling from novels to movies to video games, depends on patterns, motifs and archetypes.” The New York Times 06/16/02

Friday June 14

A CONSPIRACY AGAINST CHICK FLICKS? There seems to be some sort of cosmic film critic law that prevents reviewers from ever reviewing a movie which features strong female characters expressing their emotions without the use of the words ‘chick flick’ or ‘weepie,’ says Deborah Hornblow. But “the predominantly male critical establishment legitimizes and sanctifies the life experiences of men as they are represented in film, never pausing to consider special–or marginal–classification status.” Hartford Courant 06/07/02

PUBLIC BROADCASTER MAKES MASSIVE CUTS: “Dallas public broadcaster KERA cut nearly a quarter of its staff Thursday, citing lower-than-expected corporate and individual donations since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks… Public TV stations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Oregon also laid off workers in the last month.” Dallas Morning News 06/14/02

Thursday June 13

PBS’ RECORD LOW RATINGS: America’s PBS racked up record low ratings this past season. The network is trying to reinvent itself, working to attract viewers who aren’t kids and old people. But can PBS reinvent before its audience completely goes away? “The PBS audience has wandered off to niche cable channels that have cherry-picked one coverage area after another that PBS once had exclusively: The Food Network and Animal Planet in specific areas, for instance, and even Discovery and A&E more directly competing with PBS’ broader vision.” Chicago Tribune 06/13/02

BRIT TV GOES TO THE US: Sales of British TV shows to the US increased 20 percent last year, helped by the success of a couple of hit exports, including The Weakest Link. “Sales to the US account for nearly a third of all exports from the UK and the market is worth £136 million, according to the British Television Distributors Association (BTDA).” BBC 06/13/02

• Previously: DOES UK HAVE WORLD’S BEST TV? Britain has won the most awards at the Banff International Television Festival, winning nine awards. The US came second with 7 awards. “The U.K. has traditionally dominated the awards, held for the past 23 years in this Rocky Mountain resort town.” National Post (Canada) 06/11/02

Wednesday June 12

BEST ROMANTIC FILMS: The American Film Institute releases a list of Hollywood’s all-time best romantic movies. The oldest film was Way Down East (No. 71) from 1920. The newest was 1998’s Shakespeare in Love (No. 50). The Star-Tribune (AP)(Minneapolis) 06/12/02

Tuesday June 11

DOES UK HAVE WORLD’S BEST TV? Britain has won the most awards at the Banff International Television Festival, winning nine awards. The US came second with 7 awards. “The U.K. has traditionally dominated the awards, held for the past 23 years in this Rocky Mountain resort town.” National Post (Canada) 06/11/02

PROTESTING CONSOLIDATION: A TV group representing creative workers in the industry are warning that consolidation of American media is dangerous for the country. They’re asking the FCC to investigate. “The harm comes about as a direct result of the growing concentration of ownership. The consequences of this new factor in our industry are – and this is no exaggeration – potentially catastrophic.” Nando Times (AP) 06/11/02

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GREAT CARTOONS? “The era of the great cartoons is dead. There’s no great mystery about it. They used to be made for adults, with children only partly in mind, and they were destined for cinema release. They were created by people of great wit and craft who were as comfortable composing symphonic music as cartoon underscore. Cartoons are sold by volume nowadays like the bookseller who sells literature by weight – $10 a kilo.” The Age (Melbourne) 06/11/02

Monday June 10

THINK OLDER: Australia’s Victoria government is urging TV execs to get over their preoccupation with youth and program more to older Australians. A new government report shows that “those older than 55 were the most avid television viewers in Australia, watching an average of four hours and 18 minutes each day. Teenagers watched two hours and 39 minutes, while those 40 to 54 spent three hours and 18 minutes in front of the box.” The Age (Melbourne) 06/10/02

Sunday June 9

TV FOR THE VERY YOUNG – A CHANGE: For years some TV producers of kids shows for the very young believed that attention spans were so short that shows should be cut up into small segments. The approach won Sesame Street 79 Emmys over 33 years. But it turns out video viewing habits for the very young are changing along with the rest of the population, so the show has gone to longer stories. The change seems to be working – Sesame Street’s ratings are up 31 percent in the 2-5 age group. The New York Times 06/09/02

Friday June 7

MOVIES FROM THE ‘AXIS OF EVIL’: An internet site based in Iran has set up a nice little business streaming American movies over the internet. The site has all the latest movies, and charges less than $1.50 per view. Yes it’s illegal, but “legal and technology experts said Hollywood will be hard-pressed to reel in a Web site based in a country that is not a party to international copyright treaties and that has not had diplomatic ties to the United States since 1979. In fact, tensions surged again early this year when President Bush lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea as part of an ‘axis of evil’.” SFGate 06/06/02

A TOOL TO CHANGE ART: Digital filmmaking is sweeping the industry. But it is “a cause for misgivings as well as wonderment. It will kill art before it enhances it. It will aggrandise businessmen before it enriches audiences. It had to happen, just as the talkies had to, because technology dictated it, but not because any creative artist craved it.” One thing is certain – it will change the art of making movies – in good ways and in bad. London Evening Standard 06/07/02

WHY AMERICAN TV BEATS BRITISH: “Although there is still an unbudgeable assumption that British television is ‘the best in the world’, and the BBC the guardian of that excellence, a mental roll call of the most innovative and impressive shows on our screens suggests that that confidence is quite misplaced.” The best TV in recent years have been made by the Americans. The Times 06/07/02

HOW LEW WASSERMAN RUINED THE MOVIES: He was mourned as a legend this week. But “missing from all the gushy epitaphs is an example of a single great picture that got made because of Wasserman’s vision. “If the only movies playing at your local cineplex are Spider-Man and the new Star Wars epic, Wasserman deserves much of the blame. Even during the drug-induced brilliance of 1970s Hollywood, Wasserman’s taste at Universal was always conservative, middle-aged, and middlebrow: no Coppolas, no Altmans, no Scorseses.” Slate 06/06/02

• OKAY, SO THE MOVIES WEREN’T ANY GOOD: “Wasserman, who died Monday from the effects of a stroke, was a major figure in the history of Los Angeles, a key figure in the history of American Jews, a critical figure in the history of American politics, even an important transitional figure in the history of capitalism itself. And, yeah – he changed movies too, not entirely for the better.” LAWeekly 06/06/02

Thursday June 6

AUSSIE E-MAIL MIGRATION: Australian actors and directors have been working in Hollywood for years. Now so are Aussie writers. “Once considered the weakest part of the film industry, writers are jumping from local successes into studio films. And rather than basing themselves in Los Angeles, they are often staying in Australia. So it’s a quiet export of screenwriting talent – an exodus by email.” Sydney Morning Herald 06/06/02

Wednesday June 5

CANADA’S TV ACTORS WANT BETTER DEAL: “Marginalized for decades, largely impotent in negotiations, and too fearful of personal backlash to fight back, some of Canada’s most distinguished thespians have recently begun to find their voice.” For what? “The Canadian film-service industry has grown into a $3.5-billion annual business. But of every dollar spent, technical crews make between 18 and 22 cents, while actors under the jurisdiction of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) earn just two cents – about $600 a month on average for each working actor. Most of the rest goes to producers.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/05/02

FRANCE’S LATEST CULTURAL EXPORT: Many recent French films are violent. “The proliferation of such graphic depictions of sex and violence hints at a hidden France, one very different from the confident, civilised face it turns to the world. It is as if the French tradition of philosophical existentialism has curdled into a kind of nihilism where the individual is not only adrift in a meaningless universe but also personally reluctant to make any moral decisions.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/05/02

TV MAKES OVERWEIGHT KIDS: A new study says that having a television in a pre-schooler’s room increases the risk of obesity. “The relationship between television viewing and obesity among school-aged children, teens and adults is well-established. These new results, published in this month’s edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academic of Pediatrics, extend the association to preschoolers.” National Post (Canada) 06/05/02

Tuesday June 4

MOVING TO CANADA: A new study “shows that the amount of money spent to produce films in the United States dropped 17% from 1998 to 2001, while the amount spent on production in Canada grew by 144%.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (AP) 06/04/02

CAUGHT IN A WEB: Radio stations are evolving their websites into listener loyalty centers. “For everything from rating snippets of songs to answering trivia questions, from knowing secret codes that are given over the air to viewing ads for sponsors,” listeners can “win points from the country station that she can use to enter in sweepstakes or to bid in auctions on such items as DVDs, gift cards and small appliances. Add these reward programs and e-mail blasts to dating hotlines and other gimmicks, and it becomes clear that music stations aren’t just about the music nowadays (if they ever were) and that many stations are becoming comfortable with the Web. ” Chicago Tribune 06/04/02

Monday June 3

MOVIES ARE NEXT: “Movie downloading isn’t a widespread practice, partly because only about 10 percent of Americans have high-speed Internet access at home. But as that figure inevitably rises, the Internet could see an influx of movie-hungry file swappers itching to use their high-speed connections. This could ignite a downloading frenzy, emulating the fast and furious movie swapping already occurring in college dormitories with the fastest Internet links on the planet.” Orange County Register (KR) 06/02/02

• COLLEGE PIRATES: No surprise here, but college campuses, with their super broadband connections are where most movie downloading is taking place. “Colleges often don’t catch on because they’re too busy trying to balance security and the openness that students, faculty and staff require for their work.” Orange County Register (KR) 06/02/02

IN PRAISE OF THE BLOCKBUSTER: There are only two seasons in Hollywood – summer and Oscar. “A fresh batch of blockbusters now looms before us and, as usual, it’s being met with some ambivalence by fans. On the one hand, summer is showtime for Hollywood, a bombastic season when the runways are cleared and the year’s most anticipated event films are lined up for takeoff. On the other hand, summer usually signals an annual vacation from intelligence, as we’re bombarded with such movies as Godzilla or Pearl Harbor or Gone in 60 Seconds – films that spend six months convincing us they’re the thrill ride of the year, and then two hours making us wish we had an Aspirin and our 12 bucks back.” National Post 06/01/02

THE HOLLYWOOD FORMULA: The road to success in Hollywood goes wherever it takes to be “successful.” “The latest formula for success – the ‘brand movie’ – is working. This summer, Hollywood will release 16 big-star, big-budget films described as brands: films that are sequels, prequels, spin-offs, franchises or based on universally recognised characters from comic books, children’s books or video games.” The Telegraph (UK) 06/03/02

Sunday June 2

FILM-LOVER FEST: “At Cannes this year, the big winners – and most of the 22 competition films – tended to deal with big issues, significant topics. Cannes is, after all, a cinephile’s festival, a gathering for people who make movies or write about them (and, in the market section, those who buy and sell them). But most of all, Cannes is for people who love film — and who still manage to see movies the way most of us did when we were kids ourselves: as an occasion for surprise, pleasure and magic.” Chicago Tribune 06/02/02

FROM WILL AND GRACE TO GERMAN TV: Where do old LA sitcom writers go when they can’t get work in Hollywood anymore? To Germany. “This is, evidently, one of the unexpected byproducts of a global electronic village: You can be 53-year-old Lenny Ripps or 58-year-old Ed Scharlach or 58-year-old Paula Roth, and still matter, creatively, by entertaining German television viewers.” Los Angeles Times 06/02/02

Friday May 31

THE DEATH OF INDEPENDENT FILM? “Making movies is not the same as it used to be. The golden era of ’80s and early-’90s American independents, in which directors like Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, and Good Machine-nurtured auteurs such as Hartley, Lee, and Todd Haynes flourished, is no longer possible. Where there once was funding for innovative newcomers through foreign financing and the burgeoning video market, overseas funders are now scarce, video sales are down, and there is an increased reliance on foolproof bets. And like the burst of the dotcom bubble, the very success of the independent film has led to its gradual decline, with studio systems co-opting some of the brightest new talents (David O. Russell, Christopher Nolan) and the challenging economics of the film business excluding so many others.” Village Voice 05/28/02

THE ACTION COMIC BOOK MOVIE: Why are they so popular with movie studios? “Above all, these movies are bankable. The audiences are pre-booked. Whatever the critics say, brand loyalty will assure the all-important first weekend take. They’ll go to ACBM2 because they went to ACBM1. And if the critics say ‘don’t go’, they’ll walk right over the critics on the way to the best seats.” The Guardian (UK) 05/31/02

Thursday May 30

WORST CANNES EVER? This year’s Cannes Festival was as overhyped as a filmfest can get, and the howling of the critics could be heard worldwide as a result. But was this year’s installment of the world’s most prestigious film festival really its worst effort, as some have charged? Not likely. “Though the hype continued unabated, the naysaying of the first week proved to be an overreaction. While lacking in masterpieces of the epic variety, the second half of Cannes showed what film is all about–devious experimentation, political films of the moment, and severe art films with little commercial viability in sight.” City Pages (Minneapolis/Saint Paul) 05/29/02

Wednesday May 29

THERE’S ALWAYS ONE OR TWO WHO SPOIL IT FOR THE REST: How did the French movie Baise-Moi get banned in Australia? An Australian parliamentary committee wants to know. “The director of the Office of Film and Literature Classification, Des Clark, said that of about 50,000 Australians who saw the film in the three weeks before it was banned, ‘one or two’ had lodged a complaint with the office.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/29/02

• AND SPEAKING OF DIRTY MOVIES THAT AREN’T… The British Film Classification Board, the duties of which fall somewhere in between a ratings board and a national censor, seems to be relaxing somewhat its standards for what is allowable in English cinema. More films are being allowed to screen, and there is a movement afoot to make national age standards for attending certain films advisory rather than mandatory. BBC 05/29/02

CLEAR CHANNEL’S BLURRY FUTURE: No company is more powerful in the world of American radio than Clear Channel Communications. The company owns more radio stations in more markets than any other company, and is more or less responsible for the generic, predictable, nationally repetitive formats that consultants say are guaranteed to pull in listeners. So why is Clear Channel losing money hand over fist? Washington Post 05/29/02

IMAGE MAKEOVER: Britain’s Channel 5 is something of a national joke, known mainly for showing soccer matches, bad movies, and soft-core pornography. But the channel is attempting to broaden its appeal, and programmers see the arts as the way to better demographics. “There will be 28 new half-hour arts shows after successful prime-time trials.” BBC 05/28/02

Tuesday May 28

THE END OF FILM? There are many practical reasons to like digital filmmaking. And many are predicting the end of film, as more theatres begin projecting digital movies. But not so fast – “it appears that we’re in for a long coexistence, since most cinematographers are not about to abandon shooting on film and digital projection is still in its infancy.” Los Angeles Times 05/27/02

“REALITY” IS RELATIVE: The problem with the spectacular digital effects in movies? The real people in the scenes look fake. So they’re taken out and replaced with computer graphics. “Interaction is much more believable when digital characters are interacting with digital effects. In the future, to get work actors will need to be trained how to act and interact when no-one is there.” Sydney Morning Herald 05/28/02

MINORITY REPORT: After being criticized for their record on including minorities in their programming, American TV network executives say they’re doing better. “Executives at ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox last week pointed out how most of the new dramas and comedies coming this fall feature at least one minority character, and several new ensemble dramas feature minorities – primarily African Americans – in key roles. Minority groups disagree. “We were looking for growth, and there isn’t any. We have concerns to the extent that there are no central or lead minority characters on the new shows. Yes, there are blacks and Latinos on some of the shows, but the numbers on Asians and Native Americans are dismal.” Los Angeles Times 05/27/02

Monday May 27

A RECORD MOVIE YEAR? It’s been a great winter and spring for the movie box office, with revenues way ahead of last year. And “with Spider-Man and the new Star Wars as lead-ins to a huge summer film lineup, the season is shaping up to break last year’s domestic revenue record of $3.06 billion from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.” Nando Times (AP) 05/26/02

MAYBE IT RUNS ITSELF? The Australian Broadcasting Company has had a rocky year as it’s struggled to find a new managing director, after former top boss Jonathan Shier left. But it turns out the TV network has had one of its most successful periods ever in the ratings, with a substantial boost in viewership recorded in the latest ratings period. The Age (Melbourne) 05/27/02

OUR VIDEO FUTURE: “Despite the recession, a prolonged technology slump and Sept. 11, sales of video game hardware, software and accessories increased 43 percent last year, to a record $9.4 billion. A number of industry executives and analysts say that the current economic wave is rooted in both the cycle for new generations of video game players and the demographic shifts that have taken game playing out of the realm of cult status and into the mainstream.” The New York Times 05/23/02

WHAT WOMEN WANT? “By and large, designing video games for guys does not require an enormous amount of imagination. Girls are a bit more complicated. Despite countless research projects into women’s needs, video game makers still aren’t sure what female gamers want. They all know it’s a market with enormous potential: ‘female’ software currently makes up less than one per cent of the total video game industry, which last year made close to $20 billion, more than Hollywood takes at the box office.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/27/02

FAILURE TO POP: High-art practitioners have long complained that TV pays little attention to them. But the same can certainly be said for pop culture. British “television’s culture tsars either do not understand pop culture, or simply do not like it. There is little other reason for television’s tokenistic treatment of both popular music and film, the two most defining cultural mediums of our time. While broadsheet newspapers in this country belatedly cottoned on to the importance of both forms and began expanding their coverage accordingly, television has lagged behind to an embarrassing degree.” The Observer (UK) 05/26/02

Sunday May 26

POLANSKI’S PIANIST WINS CANNES: Roman Polanski’s film about the Holocaust wins the Palme d’or at the 55th Cannes Festival. “The film stars Adrien Brody as a brilliant Polish pianist who manages to escape the Warsaw ghetto. As boy in Poland, Polanski himself survived the Krakow ghetto but lost his mother at a Nazi camp.” Nando Times (AP) 05/26/02

BUYING WHAT CANADA WATCHES: Canadian TV gets most of its programming from the US. “This week, Canada’s programming executives flew down to L.A. to hole up in the city’s most expensive hotels. From there, they spend several days kicking the tires, by watching pilot episodes for the forthcoming series – often at hype-filled gala screenings. Other countries also participate in the Screenings, but it is really all about Canada: No other country buys so much fresh U.S. programming, or pays as much for it.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/25/02

PIRACY FRUSTRATES PRODUCERS: With their recent thwarting of anti-piracy measures, digital pirates are in control. Film and music producers are at a loss to figure out how to stop digital copying, but security may mean a change in the way they’ve traditionally done business. But how? Philadelphia Inquirer (Reuters) 05/26/02

Friday May 24

NETWORK AUDIENCE DOWN AGAIN: US TV networks had an average prime time audience of about 45 million in the just-completed season. That’s down 3 percent over the previous season, and continues a move of viewers to cable channels. Los Angeles Times 05/24/02

RADIO RALLY: Radio is undergoing a resurgence in the English countryside. “The almost biblical plagues that have afflicted the countryside in the past two years — the floods of 2000 and foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 — have given local radio a new passion and sense of purpose. Radio, after all, is the perfect crisis medium. It’s democratic: you can phone in and air your views. More important still, it’s low-tech. Newspapers stop coming when transport is blocked. Television and the Internet are no good without power or phone lines. But almost nothing can stop you listening to your old battery-powered trannie.” The Times 05/24/02

Thursday May 23

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: For the first time in recent memory, no American TV shows are being filmed in New York next season. Why? “Maybe there’s a perception on the part of writer/producers, who are almost all in Los Angeles, that New York is a place that you don’t want to be working in right now.” New York Post 05/22/02

CBC LOCKOUT ENDS: Workers at the French-language Radio-Canada and CBC networks in Quebec will return to their jobs tomorrow after a bitter, 64-day lockout over wages and job security. Workers staged a one-day walkout in late March, and the network responded with the lockout, which appears to have successfully worn down the union members. The contract approved yesterday is said to be “only marginally better than the one they rejected last week by three votes.” Montreal Gazette 05/23/02

Wednesday May 22

LATIN BAN AT CANNES? “The Cannes film festival is ignoring an important revival in Latin American cinema, according to Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles… Two Mexican films, the critically-acclaimed Y Tu Mama Tambien and Amores Perros, have helped boost the international profile of Latin American film after a long period of perceived stagnation. But no Latin American films have been selected to compete for the coveted Palme d’Or award.” BBC 05/22/02

VIDEO GAMES AS ART (REALLY, IT’S CLASSIC): Video games already outsell movies. Pretty soon they’ll outsell music as well. But do they mean anything as art? “In many ways computer games offer something that works of art have been attempting since the Renaissance. Art historians have commented that the German Romantic painter, Casper David Friedrich painted from what would appear to be an impossible perspective – as if he were floating high above the ground. And think of Picasso, wrestling with the possibilities of cubism, trying to see from all angles simultaneously. The artist wants to be all-seeing, everywhere at once. The new games let us see the world from wherever we wish. Indeed, they let us construct that world completely.” London Evening Standard 05/21/02

Tuesday May 21

FAILURE TO MIX: Another report blasts the lack of diversity on American prime time television. “Only 7 percent of TV situation comedies featured racially mixed casts, down more than 50 percent from the 2000-01 season. All of the series with all-black casts were comedies. The only programming genre considered ‘100 percent mixed’ was wrestling.” Boston Globe 05/21/02

CANNES EXPLORES VIOLENCE: “At this festival, the 55th, the violence and confusion that afflicts societies from Asia to the Americas have also found their way onto the screens of the Palais des Festivals. Filmmakers from different backgrounds, working in wildly eclectic styles, use the medium to explore, with varying degrees of success, histories of poverty, war, communal hatred and the way these histories continue to shadow contemporary daily life.” The New York Times 05/21/02

TRAILING EDGE: Movie trailers are a big business in themselves, and studios are spending ever more time and money on creating new ways to hook an audience. “A recent survey by Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, and Moviefone found that ticket buyers cited in-theater trailers as the biggest influence on their movie choices, followed by television, newspapers and the Internet.” Chicago Tribune 05/21/02

Friday May 17

MOVIE AS COMMUNITY: Why are so many people lining up overnight to get into openings of big movies? “Whether motivated by the dark side of the force (competition, pride) or the light (punctuality, promptness) – or just suckered by advertising hype – the movie-going norm is shifting as Americans clamor to share in the collective experience of a movie event. ‘It’s a huge shared ritual. It means on Monday morning, around the watercooler, there’s a notion of a shared experience’.” Christian Science Monitor 05/17/02

DIGITAL TRACTION: Digital movies are getting attention in this year’s Cannes Festival. Getting the most publicity is George Lucas, who’s on a digital crusade. But four of the movies in the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition were shot digitally. From China, Russia, Britain and Iran, they all went digital for different creative or practical reasons. Toronto Star (AP) 05/17/02

Thursday May 16

TAXING PROPOSAL: Canada proposes to levy a tax on the sale of digital storage devices. “The fee, based on storage capacity, would add $132 (210 Canadian dollars) to the $500 price of a 10-gigabyte Apple iPod, for example. The collective is also asking the board to introduce a $1.43 copying fee on recordable DVD’s and to triple, to 39 cents, a fee imposed two years ago on recordable CD’s. The fees are intended to compensate members of the music industry for the use of recordings.” The New York Times 05/16/02

I WANT MY DAB: “Digital radio has been available free of charge in most British homes for seven years. So why can’t you hear it? It’s a sad old story. Not for the first time, Britain has invented an idea and lost the race to exploit it. In radio we were first to Marconi’s wire, first to a public broadcasting network and now first to DAB.” London Evening Standard 05/15/02

Wednesday May 15

WHY CANNES? Given the proliferation of international film festivals, “why is Cannes still considered the most important film festival in the world? It has something to do with the distinction of its past, built upon with an iron determination to let glamour support art, and vice versa, but as much with the fact that almost every film-maker in the world still wants his or her latest offering in competition.” The Guardian (UK) 05/15/02

Tuesday May 14

CENSORSHIP STANDS: The Australian state of Victoria wanted to overturn a national censor board ruling that banned the French film Baise-Moi. But after looking into it, the state’s attorney general says there’s nothing the state can do. “We don’t have any power (to overturn the ban). We don’t have any power to review the review. We will adhere to the ultimate decision of the umpire, but the process has been appalling.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/14/02

• Previously: BANNED FILM SHUT DOWN: “New South Wales police last night closed down screenings of Baise-Moi at the Valhalla and Chauvel cinemas in Sydney. Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia had dropped the film from their schedules last week. Melbourne cinema-goers were undeterred by the controversy, many queuing in the rain in Lonsdale Street last night, saying the widely reported ban had encouraged them to see the film.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/13/02 

THUMB-SUCKING: What’s happened to Canadian movie critics? “While most Canadian critics are giving decent performances, true criticism is taking a supporting role to quick-hit reviews and simple ‘I liked it’ plot summaries. And it’s not necessarily the critics’ fault. The thinking at dailies seems to be that readers are looking for advice only on whether or not to spend their $12.” Ryerson Journalism Review Summer 02

Monday May 13

BANNED FILM SHUT DOWN: “New South Wales police last night closed down screenings of Baise-Moi at the Valhalla and Chauvel cinemas in Sydney. Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia had dropped the film from their schedules last week. Melbourne cinema-goers were undeterred by the controversy, many queuing in the rain in Lonsdale Street last night, saying the widely reported ban had encouraged them to see the film.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/13/02 

• Previously: DEFYING THE CENSORS: The Australian Classification Review Board banned the graphically explicit French film Baise-moi last week, even though the movie has been showing in Australian cinemas for over a month. The decision has prompted an outcry, and several cinemas are continuing to screen the film in defiance of the order. The Age (Melbourne) 05/12/02

TRIBECA FEST A SUCCESS: The TriBeCa Film Festival wasn’t designed to be the most innovative or unusual film festival in America – it was created to revive business in a section of Manhattan which was devastated by the 9/11 attacks. As it happens, it accomplished that goal, and also turned out to be a darned fine film festival, pulled off in record time. New York Post 05/13/02

PIRATE CLONES: The new Star Wars installment is out – on computer. Bootleg copies are out and being traded on the internet even before the movie has made it to movie theaters. “The copy was made at an early screening of the movie, using a tripod-mounted digital camcorder pointed at the screen. Another apparently employed a more sophisticated version of the same technique.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/13/02

ART TAKEN OFFLINE: An internet art project that scans the net probing for ways into other computers has been taken offline by the museum that is hosting it. The New Museum of Contemporary Art took the work offline on Friday “because the work was conducting surveillance of outside computers. It is not clear yet who is responsible for the blacking out — the artists, the museum or its Internet service provider — but the action illuminates the work’s central theme: the tension between public and private control of the Internet.” The New York Times 05/13/02

FILMS OF SUMMER: Summer is important not just for escapist studio blockbusters, but for smaller independent films too. “In the past five years, non-studio movies have regularly chalked up between 7% and 10% of overall ticket sales. Because they are not competing with the studios’ meatier Oscar-caliber films, which are primarily crammed into the last six weeks of every calendar year, summer independent releases have consistently been able to stand out with reviewers and linger in the memory long enough to garner mention on 10-best lists at the end of the year. Los Angeles Times 05/12/02

Sunday May 12

AUSSIE FILM INSTITUTE MAKING CUTS: “A financial crisis within Australia’s premier film culture body, the Australian Film Institute, has prompted the resignations of three board members and forced the organisation to severely cut back its operations. The AFI is to axe its sales and distribution department, cut its events program and is negotiating to halve the rental bill on its South Melbourne office by sharing with another film organisation.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/12/02

MISSING THE POINT OF MATRIMONY: Why does every movie about marriage seem, ultimately, to be about adultery? Surely real life doesn’t unfold this way for every married couple. “Part of the problem is that American movies act as if marriage is only about the two people who promise to spend their lives together and not about all the other people who share in that shared life.” Boston Globe 05/12/02

DEFYING THE CENSORS: The Australian Classification Review Board banned the graphically explicit French film Baise-moi last week, even though the movie has been showing in Australian cinemas for over a month. The decision has prompted an outcry, and several cinemas are continuing to screen the film in defiance of the order. The Age (Melbourne) 05/12/02

Friday May 10

NO HARM, NO FOUL? Should the Australian ratings board ban the French film Baise-moi? There is pressure for it to do so from morality watchdogs, who say that  “no harm will come from banning the film while a great deal of harm will come if it is released”. But “in attempting to assert the narrowest version of public morality the guardians not only seek to make children of us all, they threaten the concept of an open society and its citizens’ freedom of choice.” The Age (Melbourne) 05/10/02

WHY CANNES MATTERS: Cannes “has become the world’s largest yearly media event, a round-the-clock cinematic billboard that in 1999 attracted 3,893 journalists, 221 TV crews, and 118 radio stations representing 81 countries. And then there are the films. For many film people, a first trip to Cannes is kind of a grail, a culmination that tells you, whether you’re a journalist with a computer or a film-maker walking up the celebrated red carpet to the Palais du Festival for an evening dress-only screening, that you’ve arrived.” The Guardian (UK) 05/10/02

• KICK THE CANNES: “A leading Jewish organization is urging Hollywood figures to reconsider their plans to attend the Cannes Film Festival this month, citing a recent series of anti-Semitic attacks in France. In full-page ads in trade newspapers this week, the West Coast chapter of the American Jewish Congress compared the situation in contemporary France to the climate 60 years ago, when the anti-Semitic Vichy government was in power. ” New York Post 05/10/02
• CRONENBERG’S CANNES: No one could ever accuse David Cronenberg of lacking Hollywood’s taste for excess. But aside from one or two brief flirtations, his career as a filmmaker has mostly taken place outside of Tinseltown, and his best films have achieved only “cult classic” status. His latest work is called Spider (no “man,” thank you,) and it is Canada’s only entry in the judging at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a fact of national pride which is not lost on Cronenberg. Toronto Star 05/10/02

THE MOST HATED MAN IN HOLLYWOOD? When Michael Ovitz, once the most powerful man in the movie industry, crashed and burned a couple years back, the glee emanating from the rest of Hollywood was palpable. Even for L.A., the schadenfreude seemed a bit much – how could Ovitz have turned off so may people so fast? An anonymous article purports to provide some answers. Chicago Tribune 05/10/02

Wednesday May 8

ARTHOUSE BLUES: Movie attendance goes up in Britain, but audiences for arthouse films are shrinking. One solution? The government will spend £17 million on the arthouse circuit. Some complain it’s too little too late. Good movies are pricey, the prime demographic of yesteryear has abandoned art films, and advertising is expensive. Maybe independent film is dying? The Guardian (UK) 05/08/02

MORE THAN JUST GAMES: Video games are quickly becoming the entertainment of choice for much of the electronic world. They make “more money than the movie business (£10.3 billion last year to the film industry’s £8.2 billion). In the UK we spend more on games than we do on videos or cinema tickets and it is expected that sales of games will soon surpass sales of music too. Despite this success, video games have spent much of the last 40 years being maligned as a low-brow form of entertainment. But now, it seems, video games may at last be about to gain at least a degree of acceptance from the art world.” The Scotsman 05/08/02

Tuesday May 7

NEW UK MEDIA RULES: Proposed new laws to regulate media companies are being introduced in Britain today. “As well as regulating commercial broadcasters, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell says she wants to see a ‘level playing field’ between those companies and the BBC.” BBC 05/07/02

WHAT’S REAL? “The quest for cinema truth has existed since the early days of Russian Kino-Pravda; but the idea flourished in the Sixties, mainly because of the advent of light- weight cameras and sound recorders, and fast film requiring minimal lighting. Modern digital cameras mean that cinema truth and its offshoot, reality television, are, in practical terms at least, more tenable than ever. And yet, paradoxically, there is nothing real about what passes for reality television today.” New Statesman 05/06/02

Monday May 6

A FILM FOR ALL SEASONS: As the “summer movie season” pushes earlier and earlier into May, many movie studios are abandoning the idea of seasons for movies. “Opening movies in what used to be regarded as the off-season is an inevitable result of the studios placing more of their bets on ‘franchise’ pictures – that is, pictures with sequels – and other so-called event movies that typically benefit from heavy buzz and marketing.” Orange County Register (WSJ) 05/05/02

Friday May 3

CANADIANS STILL VALUE CBC: CBC competitor Global TV wants the Canadian government to do away with the public broadcaster’s subsidy. As part of its campaign, CanWest, Global’s parent (and owner of most of Canada’s newspapers) commissioned a poll to ask Canadians if funding should disappear. The poll came back with a strong no, and to CanWest’s credit, its newspapers reported the results. Toronto Star 05/03/02

Thursday May 2

LONDON’S NEW ARTS RADIO: A new all-arts radio station hits the London airwaves. Its founders promise “no play lists, no smarmy DJs or pompous pundits, but a wide range of programmes made by artists representing the diversity of London’s arts scene.” The Guardian (UK) 05/01/02

NO SCIENCE ABOUT IT: This is the time of year American TV network execs determine what gets on the fall schedule. “Once a boisterous affair, with producers and studio executives passionately lobbying networks on behalf of programs, entertainment industry mergers have made those studios and networks siblings within the same corporate families. And while these step-kids might wrestle a bit with each other, ultimately a very few media barons serve as the arbiters of what gets on and stays on. So instead of a robust debate, the main gatekeepers engage in what has become little more than a high-stakes internal monologue.” Los Angeles Times 05/01/02

• Previously: TV PROGRAMMING – JUST PICK ONE: Four out of five TV series fail. And fail fast – sometimes in just a few episodes. Yet shows are the result of research, focus groups, testing, formulas and lots and lots of money. But for all the planning “TV programming is just another lottery. Pick one, and say your prayers. The networks call this ‘churn,’ probably because it describes the queasy feeling they get when specialty cable shows draw three times their numbers.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/30/02

Wednesday May 1

THE BATTLE FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE: Some content producers are trying to require copy protection technology on computers and entertainment devices. “At some date in the near future, perhaps as early as 2010, people may no longer be able to do the kinds of things they routinely do with their digital tools today. They may no longer be able, for example, to move music or video files easily from one of their computers to another, even if the other is a few feet away in the same house. Their music collections, reduced to MP3s, may be movable to a limited extent, unless their hardware doesn’t allow it. The digital videos they shot in 1999 may be unplayable on their desktop and laptop computers.” Reason 05/02

NEW AMERICAN FILM UNION RULES ANGER AUSSIE PRODUCERS: In the American film industry’s latest attempt to stem the flow of productions leaving the US to film in other countries America’s actors union, the Screen Actors Guild, has “ordered its 98,000 members not to work on films, TV shows or theatrical productions in Australia, Canada or any other country unless they are offered an SAG contract.” This has outraged Australian and Canadian producers who say “they will not be able to meet the rates and conditions set by SAG” and that their local film industries will suffer. The Age (Melbourne) 05/01/02

Tuesday April 30

ANIMATED ENTHUSIASMS: Last year’s biggest-grossing movie was an animated feature. More recent top ten movie grosses show three animated films on the list. Animation is hot. Sydney Morning Herald 04/30/02

TV PROGRAMMING – JUST PICK ONE: Four out of five TV series fail. And fail fast – sometimes in just a few episodes. Yet shows are the result of research, focus groups, testing, formulas and lots and lots of money. But for all the planning “TV programming is just another lottery. Pick one, and say your prayers. The networks call this ‘churn,’ probably because it describes the queasy feeling they get when specialty cable shows draw three times their numbers.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/30/02

RADIO TO GO SILENT: Hundreds of internet radio stations intend to shut off the music Wednesday to protest new royalty fees thbey will soon have to pay for playing music. “The fee sounds tiny – 14/100ths of a cent – but it’s per song and per listener, and Net radio operators, most of whom serve niche audiences, say the fees quickly multiply.” USAToday 04/29/02

Monday April 29

REINVENTING CBC (BUT NO ONE’S READY): Managers of Canada’s CBC Radio are attempting to reinvent the network’s schedule. “Network management figures the makeover is necessary if the CBC is to better reflect Canada, attract younger listeners and widen its appeal among minority groups.” But sources inside the corporation say the network is totally unprepared to make the kinds of changes that are being proposed. “They have nobody in place to produce the entire morning show. No execs and no production team. No one will touch it. It’s very difficult to have somebody in place for radio programs when no one knows what they are.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/29/02

CLEAN SWEEP: A new US video store chain is proving successful by offering “sanitized” versions of movies. “The parent company’s in-house editors remove much of the sex, violence, and nudity from films, which is proving popular with a lot of families disenchanted with Hollywood. Some 65 ‘Cleanflicks’ stores have opened across the country in just the past 18 months.” Nando Times (AP) 04/28/02

Sunday April 28

CANAL PLUS CHILL: France is mourning the sudden sacking of the head of TV channel Canal Plus. The channel, “which has been broadcasting since 1984, was a generous gift of the late President Mitterrand to his supporters in the cultural world. While exploiting a monopoly of the burgeoning market of pay television, the new channel was also given the role of subsidising French cinema. By last year it was spending $140 million, around 12 per cent of its revenues, on French film projects, and it had become the most important patron of the French film industry.” The Telegraph (UK) 04/27/02

WHAT’S A DEFINITION OF CANADIAN? The Canadian government tries to encourage Canadian TV and movie projects with tax breaks and exposure in Canada. But trying to determine what is Canadian and why is a much stickier process than mere labeling. Toronto Star 04/27/02

Friday April 26

MEMORABLE TV: Almost half of all British television viewers cannot remember anything interesting from the previous night’s programmes, a survey suggests. “But 59% single out TV as their best source in the media for trustworthy information and ‘curiosity satisfaction’.” BBC 04/26/02

AUSSIE SHUTOUT: Australia has been producing well-regarded movies in the past few years. So why do no Aussie feature films show up on this year’s Cannes lineup? “Cannes favours either big-budget American films, ‘cinematically challenging work from the Third World’ or auteur directors. That has left Australian film-makers, who are generally making more accessible films that succeed at home, out in the cold.” Sydney Morning Herald 04/26/02

MOVIES GO BIG: Superscreen IMAX movies aren’t just for the local science center anymore. “Mainstream Hollywood films meant to entertain, not educate, are being altered to fit the IMAX format. And super-sized screens – some as much as eight stories high – are popping up in some unlikely places. New venues such as theme parks, malls, and even a Natick, Mass., furniture store are changing the image of big- screen viewing.” Christian Science Monitor 04/26/02

Thursday April 25

CANNES LINEUP: Twenty-two movies have been chosen for this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “Organisers of 2002’s event on Wednesday revealed that they had chosen three US films, three UK movies and one from Canada to vie for the coveted top prize of the Palme d’Or.” BBC 04/24/02

• ATOM HAS HIS REASONS: When Atom Egoyan announced that he would not allow his new film, Ararat, to be submitted for judging at Cannes, it only added fuel to the controversy surrounding the film, which concerns the slaughter of as many as 1.3 million Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915. Says Egoyan, “Given the fact that it is dealing with history that hasn’t really been presented on film before and there are so many judgments that have already been imposed on it, the idea of subjecting it to an actual jury didn’t sit well.” Toronto Star 04/25/02

Wednesday April 24

SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR DISNEY? An ex-reporter for the New York Post sues the Post and Disney for $10 million after the Post fired her after stories critical of Disney. The case gives an inside look at  how big-time entertainment coverage is conducted. Village Voice 04/23/02  

EGOYAN DOESN’T WANT A SCORE: “Toronto director Atom Egoyan has refused to enter his contentious new film, Ararat,in competition at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. His highly anticipated movie about the Armenian genocide will be screened at the celebrity-studded fête on May 20. But people close to the 41-year-old filmmaker said he would not allow it to be judged for one of the festival’s prestigious prizes because of the deeply personal subject matter.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 04/24/02

Tuesday April 23

NPR CHANGES EXPLAINED: National Public Radio programmer Jay Kernis has been taking a beating in the media for his plans to restructure cultural programming at NPR. Why is he making changes to NPR’s successful formula? “The public radio listener – yeah! – likes foreign films, a lot. Likes independent films. But the public radio listener goes to big blockbuster movies and rents big blockbuster DVDs. And all I’ve ever said is that when we cover popular culture, we should cover it with the same journalism filters that we use when we cover a news event, which is to say do the reporting – ask tough questions – tell a real story. I have never said more popular culture, more popular culture. But I have said: Don’t be afraid to cover popular culture.” On the Media (NPR) 04/21/02

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: Italian film was hot in the 1950s, before going into a long period of decline. Now “anew generation of Italian directors is emerging that recalls the golden age of neo-realism 50 years ago, and some film makers who came to the fore then or soon after have staged remarkable comebacks.” The Economist 04/18/02

Monday April 22

FOOD FIGHT: “Now get ready for a gunfight between the Blame Canada crowd in L.A. and the producers happily taking advantage of lower costs and friendlier working conditions on this side of the longest undefended. It’s shaping up as the most bizarre scuffle you’ve ever heard of between people who make movies and the unions representing the actors who appear in them.” Toronto Star 04/21/02

DIVERSITY – NOT JUST ABOUT NUMBERS: “It seems like you can’t pick up a newspaper these days without reading about how TV, and Hollywood in general, needs to become more ‘diverse.’ As an African American actor, I suppose I should applaud these efforts to increase the presence of minorities on TV. But I’ve been in this business long enough to know that an issue like TV diversity is far more complex than it is often portrayed.” Los Angeles Times 04/22/02

IS PUBLIC BROADCASTING GOING COMMERCIAL? Why are public radio and TV stations moving out of their traditional program areas lately and being more numbers-driven? “The problem is that consultants whose experience was in commercial radio pretty much set the agenda for public radio in the mid-1990s.” OpinionJournal 04/19/02

WE WANT CREDIT: Studies show that TV viewers switch channels when credits roll at the end of a program. So some Disney owned channels are dropping the credits. But the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences objects. “People want to stand up for the right to be credited for the work that they do. That’s been a historic right in Hollywood and the entertainment industry.” Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 04/22/02

Friday April 19

CANCON TAKEN TO EXTREMES? “The most praised Canadian play in the Stratford Festival’s 50-year history has been refused a Canadian TV production investment because its central character is Queen Elizabeth I, a non-Canadian, and the events do not take place in Canada. Hamstrung by a stringent rule affecting completely Canadian-content productions, the Canadian Television Fund… has refused an application from Toronto’s Rhombus Media for a crucial 20 per cent investment to film Elizabeth Rex for CBC and Bravo. Toronto Star 04/19/02

Thursday April 18

BECAUSE PROPPING UP THEIR DOLLAR WOULD BE TOO COSTLY: The Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) has announced a new plan to enforce union contracts outside the boundaries of the U.S. The move is aimed squarely at curbing the tendency of Hollywood studios to trim costs by making movies in Canada, and SAG’s Canadian counterpart is not thrilled. Nando Times (AP) 04/18/02

RATINGS PRESSURES KNOCKS ARTS PROGRAMMING: A study of TV programming in Britain shows that arts, current affairs and children’s programming are falling off the program schedule because of ratings pressures. “An analysis  showed that arts and current affairs programmes have been the main casualties of the peak time battle, falling by 40% and 50% respectively.” The Guardian (UK) 04/17/02

CANNES JURY ANNOUNCED: The Cannes Film Festival has announced the jury for this year’s festival – five directors and three actresses, including American actress Sharon Stone. The Age (Melbourne) 04/18/02

• ATOM-IC EXPLOSION AWAITED AT CANNES: “The possible premiere of Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s new film Ararat at Cannes next month is hotly awaited by cinephiles around the world — plus one very angry government. Since last December, the Turkish government has been threatening legal action against the film’s producers if the film asserts that Turkey was guilty of genocide against the Armenian community in 1915.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 04/18/02

Wednesday April 17

WHAT, ME WORRY? Michael Powell (yes, Colin’s kid) is chairman of America’s Federal Communications Commission. He sees no problems with the rapid consolidation of media in the hands of a few mega-corporations. ”I mean, I can watch everything from a thoughtful piece on history on the History Channel to Fear Factor. I think we’re in a period right now where we’re seeing the very best that television has produced, and the very worst.” Boston Globe 04/17/02

BREAKING DOWN THE RACE BARRIERS: “Three decades after Melvin Van Peebles made his groundbreaking Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and three decades after Shaft brought blaxploitation to the American movie scene, there is no question that African-American filmmakers have entered the Hollywood mainstream. Because of this, some members of the African-American community argue that the real issue facing their colleagues today is not so much one of race as one of economics – the battle almost any filmmaker faces in getting a quality film off the ground. ‘It’s less about black and white than green’.” Backstage 04/17/02

FAMILY VALUES: G-rated family films are suddenly hot in Hollywood. “Studios have already decided that they’re going to make more G, PG and PG-13 films, said a market researcher for the major studios who didn’t want to be named. Often criticized in conservative political and cultural quarters for ignoring family values, studios are now vying for hard-to-find quality material with gentle themes and universal appeal.” Toronto Star 04/16/02

Tuesday April 16

ALL ABOUT OZZY: Rocker Ozzy Osbourne has found a second career as a sitcom star. “The aging, addled satanic rocker is the perpetually mumbling centerpiece of The Osbournes, which has turned into the most popular series in MTV history.” Weird as it sounds, though, the show is part of a long comfortable tradition of family sitcoms.” Washington Post 04/16/02

NPR PROGRAM CHANGES EXPLAINED: National Public Radio’s major reorganization of its programming has many worried about how NPR will cover culture. “People say NPR is going into pop culture. But we should cover popular culture in the same smart way as when we cover news events.” San Francisco Chronicle 04/16/02

POOH RIGHT BACK AT YOU: A New York Post reporter says she was fired by the newspaper “at the behest of Disney, after writing stories about the Mouse House’s long-running Winnie the Pooh litigation.” Now she’s filed a $10 million suit against the newspaper and Disney. Yahoo! (Variety) 04/15/02

Monday April 15

HOGGING CREDIT: It seems everyone in Hollywood is unhappy about the way credits for movies are allocated. “All you have to do is go to the movies and look at the proliferation of producer credits, and you can recognize that there’s a problem. (There is) a trend, which I think we are in the process of reversing, toward the devaluing or undervaluing of the producer and his role, because if you can give that credit to anyone, the implication is that it doesn’t mean anything.” Backstage 04/14/02 

DIGITAL SCRAMBLE: The demand for digital projection in movie theatres is growing. And fast. Trouble is, the companies that make the $130,000 projectors can keep up with the orders. And with the next installment of the digitally produced Star Wars coming out soon, there’s a scramble to get the best equipment. Wired 04/15/02

CRAPPY BUSINESS: The lords of TV and movies can rarely be called artists. Instead of art, business rules decisions about what gets produced and what doesn’t. So how do the moguls do at business? Tod Gitlin’s new book concludes that “generally, they don’t have very good reasons for doing what they do. And then, of course, if something succeeds, there’s a retroactive, backpatting and genius-anointing operation. But that’s the culture of the television-entertainment industry. Sometimes they’ll get lucky and strike Survivor for a while.” Salon 04/14/02  

WE’RE SHOCKED – HOLLYWOOD EXAGERATES? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has protested to a leading talent agency for exagerating its clients’ successes at the recent Academy Awards. “The Creative Artists Agency took out congratulatory trade paper ads March 22 – two days before the Academy Awards – saying 32 of its clients had received Oscar nominations. But half of the listed clients weren’t nominated.” Sydney Morning Herald (AP) 04/15/02

Friday April 12

NPR REORGANIZES ITS CULTURAL COVERAGE: National Public Radio restructures, cuts 47 jobs and refocuses its cultural programming and arts coverage. Officials said the new approach would “break down barriers between arts staffers and the news division – a barrier that cultural staffers acknowledge existed within the NPR offices on Massachusetts Avenue. The new approach will also be more eclectic.” Washington Post 04/12/02

• UNION MEMO ON THE CUTS: AFTRA, the broadcast union, details some of the cuts in a memo to NPR employees: “NPR informed affected employees of their status this morning in two separate meetings. The Cultural Programming Division has effectively been eliminated, and the Cultural Desk of the News Division has been drastically altered. NPR is also severing its relationship with American RadioWorks, resulting in the elimination of one unit position.” MediaNews@Poynter 04/11/02

DOWNLOADING HOLLYWOOD: Movie piracy is becoming a very big deal in the digital age. “According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the industry already loses more than $3 billion annually to the sale of illegally copied videotapes. Now, with an estimated 350,000 digital movie files being downloaded daily for free, and with that number expected to climb to a million by year’s end, digital film piracy is Hollywood’s next nightmare.” Christian Science Monitor 04/12/02

MOVIES PREFER PRAGUE: Prague is becomming the city of choice for shooting movies. “It is Prague’s potent mix of unspoilt locations, highly skilled (often non-union) technicians and, above all, low prices that have lured more than 60 international productions here since 1989, earning the Czech capital the moniker Hollywood on the Vltava, after the river that runs through it. International film-makers spend $200m (£143m) a year in the city, and there are even hints that – with ever-improving facilities and the fact that costs of production are up to 50% lower than in London – Prague may be about to oust the UK capital from the number one slot.” The Guardian (UK) 04/12/02

Thursday April 11

THOSE DAMN CRITICS… No, no no, Mike Figgis isn’t bitter about critics. So they don’t give his movies the respect they deserve. So others get lauded in print for accomplishments that were really his. “One of the rules of film conduct is not really negotiable: never whinge about a bad review or a particular critic.” Still… The Guardian (UK) 04/10/02

THE MEANING OF DIGITAL: The digital movie revolution is racing along, with some predicting film will be obsolete by 2005. “The new technology will change the way movies are made and the way they look. The digital revolution will also alter programming at cinema complexes. As well as movies, complexes will be able to screen any event taking place around the world simultaneously – concerts in New York, the Olympic Games in Beijing or Oscar presentations.” The Age (Melbourne) 04/11/02

BOND AND AUSTIN MAKE UP: Earlier this year the Motion Picture Association told producers of the new Austin Powers movie they couldn’t call it Goldmember because it infringed on James Bond’s Goldfinger (so much for parody). Now Bond and Austin have made up and Goldmember will be allowed. In return, ads for this summer’s new Bond film will run with every showing of the latest Powers sequel. Sydney Morning Herald 04/11/02

Tuesday April 9

MIKE AND MEL’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE: The premier of Ontario and the mayor of Toronto take a field trip to Hollywood with pocketsful of goodies to lure film productions to Canada. The pair offered tax credits and breaks on locations. Did it work? The pair claim that one “major feature film and six other movies discussed on the pair’s trip will now be shot in Ontario. But while Canadians were boasting about putting down roots for a film industry that caters to Americans in Canada, protesters were outside the consulate vowing to rip out those roots and nullify Canadian film subsidies with countervailing tariffs to keep film jobs in the United States.” National Post (CP) (Canada) 04/09/02

Monday April 8

IN GOVERNMENT WE TRUST? Judging by the TV schedule full of shows about government, American bureaucracy is popular again. “Cynics might note that these are basically the same dramas that used to happen in hospitals, or law firms, simply transferred to government settings. Throw up some columns, roll out some marble, drape a few flags, and “The West Wing” is basically L.A. Law in D.C. But that underestimates the power of setting. The government is not incidental to these programs, it is essential.” Washington Post 04/07/02

ET GO HOME: The movie ET was the biggest hit of its day, breaking all box office records. But the rerelease of the movie, with new and reworked scenes has been a disappointment at the gate. “One possibility is that re-releases need to be cult films. You need an in-built fan base. Just being a massive hit is not enough.” BBC 04/05/02

HEARING ALONG WITH THE ACTION: America’s TV networks introduce new technology that allows blind people to follow along with action on the screen. “The technology allows the user to turn on a secondary audio channel, on which a narrator describes the action during pauses in the dialogue. (All televisions made in the United States since the early 1990’s have such a channel.)” The New York Times 04/08/02 

RIO STRIKES BACK: Tourism officials of Rio de Janeiro plan to sue producers of The Simpsons for portraying their city in a bad way. “In the episode the Simpson father, Homer, is kidnapped by a taxi driver, the family is assaulted by begging Brazilian children on a beach, and the family visits Rio slums infested by violent monkeys.” Houston Chronicle (Knight Ridder) 04/07/02

Sunday April 7

MYTHOLOGY OF THE YOUTH DEMOGRAPHIC: The advertising gospel has long held that: “people age 18-34 watch less television than older adults but are the most desirable to reach because their brand loyalties have yet to be established. So networks with programs that successfully appeal to this audience will be able to charge higher rates for advertising, and advertisers will be able to establish brand loyalties that will continue for a lifetime.” But is this conventional wisdom true anymore? Some are beginning to question it. Chicago Tribune 04/07/02

THE NEW MOVIE EXPERIENCE: The success of the DVD format “has far outstripped expectations, and as a result of the DVD’s booming popularity since its introduction in 1997, the audience’s relationship to movies has changed. The home video was merely a small-screen version of a movie. The DVD is interactive – so much so that to the studios’ alarm, technically sophisticated film buffs with a little determination and access to the Internet can relate to a movie in ways that were impossible only a few years ago, including moving and removing scenes and characters from a movie. The implications are profound.” Los Angeles Times 04/07/02

Friday April 5

GOT $5,000? “Thanks to inexpensive digital-video technology and Internet access, more would-be Spike Lees are writing scripts, then shooting and promoting their films directly to the public online or through networking.” Christian Science Monitor 04//05/02

Thursday April 4

NO HOFFA JOKES, PLEASE: “The powerful Teamsters Union is attempting to take over the representation of 500 transportation workers on film and TV sets in Toronto, setting the stage for a potentially heated showdown and sparking industry fears of labour unrest in the city’s $1 billion, U.S. dominated movie and TV industry.” Toronto Star 04/04/02

MONEY-GRAB: Web radio-casters say that new royalty fees they will have to pay for music they play will put many of them out of business. And who will get the royalty money? The artists will, say recording industry spokespeople. But first there are all those fees and expenses and charges to be deducted. Who will really benefit from the new fees? Salon 04/03/02

ALL ABOUT THE DEMOGRAPHICS: Boston public television station WGBH produces fully 30% of the national programming aired on the PBS network. So a report this week that PBS is planning to ‘reexamine’ much of its programming with an eye towards attracting a younger audience is making waves in Beantown. “The research is part of a larger push by Pat Mitchell, who took over as PBS president and chief executive in 2000 with a plan to make programming more relevant to audiences in general and more appealing to younger viewers. Her mandate comes at a time of intense change in the television landscape, as more and more channels are emerging and many of them are broadcasting work similar to that of PBS.” Boston Globe 04/04/02

Wednesday April 3

RETHINKING CANCON: Three decades ago, Canada created a set of rules requiring all radio and television broadcasters to air a certain amount of Canadian content, in an effort to stem the rising tide of American influence. The regulations, known as CanCon, have always been controversial, but the government has stuck by them consistently, until now. The Canadian heritage minister has announced that the federal government will “take a look” at the restrictions, and while such a declaration is a long way from a promise to loosen the rules, it is the first chink in CanCon’s considerable armor. Toronto Star 04/03/02

PROGRESSIVE FIGHTING: America’s Pacifica radio network is the country’s largest alternative progressive politics network. But “since 1999 there has been a vitriolic battle over programming and personnel between the Pacifica Board and two of the network’s stations in particular, first KPFA in Berkeley and then WBAI in New York.” Is this a battle to professionalize and become more relevant or a sell-out to corporate interests? The Nation 04/15/02

Tuesday April 2

BUY AUSSIE: Many American movies are produced in Australia. But does that mean Australia has a film industry? “In order to say you have a film industry you must have an infrastructure which supports a home-grown industry, and I just don’t think that’s possible with the way American films have a stranglehold on the distribution systems,” Sydney Morning Herald 04/02/02

AFGHANISTAN GOES BACK TO THE MOVIES: The Taliban banned movies in Afghanistan. Now the first Afghan-made films are being shown at home again. “The showing of these two films was quite an event. A make-shift screen was set up in a spartan auditorium at the university. There were cheers for the director and clapping to the music. Reactions at the end were mixed, but what everyone enjoyed was that the films reflected Afghan life.” BBC 04/02/02 

MUST-SEE TV? With TV networks declaring a sitcom a hit and critics writing it off, where’s the truth? “The difficulty of launching new hit comedies is an old story getting older. Still, there also appears to be a disconnect between what audiences are actually embracing and more daring or critically lauded programs networks are eager to brand as hits.” Los Angeles Times 04/01/02

Monday April 1

THE END OF WEB RADIO? “The proposed royalties, which the copyright office has until May 21 to revise or approve, have radically dimmed the prospects for the legions of entrepreneurs and hobbyists whose radio stations — from MinistryofSound.com to Radio Margaritaville — have for the last two years provided free access to a startlingly wide range of music. Last week, lawyers for the Webcasters and the recording industry submitted their final comments to the copyright office, with the record labels urging the agency to increase the rate and the Webcasters pleading for a lower alternative.” The New York Times 04/01/02