Category: media

In the past year Hollywood has been accused of being closed to minorities. The number of minorities working on TV projects doesn’t come close to representing their numbers in the general population. But this summer “African-American filmmakers are now making their presence known in Hollywood in the only way Hollywood has ever truly recognized and respected: by making huge amounts of money for the industry.” – Boston Herald 07/14/00

Over the next two years, Broadway Theatre Archive plans to release a total of 300 digitally restored adaptations of plays from PBS’ ‘Great Performances,’ ‘Theatre in America’ and ‘Hollywood Television Theatre,’ and such commercial network series as ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’ and ‘Du Pont Show of the Month.’ “I have always been surprised that Broadway, in particular, has never successfully made the leap to television. The only way it did was through staging original productions for television. I was curious what that body of work was.” – Chicago Sun-Times 07/14/00

The British are protesting the gratuitous rewrite of history in “The Patriot,” but there are other reasons to worry about this movie. “Thanks to the sheer raving outrageousness of ‘The Patriot’ – which climaxes with the use of an American flag as a bayonet; which evokes Waco in a scene in which a church-full of militia sympathizers are burned alive by the British; and which peddles a right-wing agenda so outlandish it would make Rambo blush – you’d have to be a flaming, wood-paneled idiot to miss the movie’s politics.” – Toronto Star 07/14/00

Canada has elaborate tax-credit laws used to encourage use of Canadian content in the movie and TV industries. But a new audit reveals that up to a third of the companies that took advantage of the tax breaks in the province of Quebec deliberately or accidentally misrepresented their labor and production costs. – National Post (Canada) 07/13/00

Broadcast companies are beginning to invest in internet radio in a big way. “Traditional radio has been limited in the number of commercials that can be sold, since there is only 24 hours of broadcasting time in a day. Not so with the web, where niche and specialty channels can be created almost without limit, raising the advertising time available for sale.” – The Independent (UK) 07/13/00

Companies buying the right to plaster their names atop modern sports palaces has become routine. Now Kodak will pay $70 million over 20 years to affix its name on a new Hollywood theatre that will permanently house the Academy Awards starting in 2002. – Los Angeles Times 07/12/00

In January it was revealed that TV networks have received millions in exchange for working anti-drug messages into their programming. Now federal drug policy-makers are taking their campaign to Hollywood, urging studios, writers, and directors to promote (and profit from) films with similar messages. – CNN (AP) 07/11/00

The movie “Patriot” hasn’t even opened in Britain yet but the English are boiling about the revisionist way the movie interprets them historically. “Hollywood has a habit of taking away the character of notable English people and demonizing them. With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt onto someone else.” – Dallas Morning News (AP) 07/10/00 

The BBC will ax 900 jobs over the next three years. The corporation says the move will result in “a flatter, more coherent and more co-operative BBC. Overall we are now confident that these new changes…will give us a great deal more money to spend on our programmes and services over the next five or six years, something like £750 million over the period.” – BBC 07/10/00