Category: media

“Channel 4 is to spend a record £455 million on UK commissions in 2012, with the broadcaster promising more one-off singles and serials in its drama output.”

Andrei Zvyagintsev “is being described as a seer of the social and spiritual divides in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. … And the sense that he views life – and the Russian condition – as a series of moral challenges is apparent in his films and in conversation.”

“Fans have become more creative (or maybe desperate) over time, sending symbols as well as letters to networks.”

“When it comes to the traditional screen that families gather around, live television is competing against a growing array of self-selected content. Given the amount of high-quality shows idling in my DVR and on-demand queue, channel surfing for live television seems very last century.”

“Movie sets are drug-free environments, at least in theory. Even if an actor is playing a tie-dye-wearing burnout whose best friend is a honey-bear bong, puffing the real thing is strictly verboten.”

“Despite what anyone claims about the modern acceptance of and appetite for language of the roughest, rawest, most graphic sort, the truth is that a huge contingent of the paying crowd objects to it still.”

“It makes more sense to try and figure out how to take advantage of the Web in order to provide something that the current market is likely to value, instead of focusing on how to squeeze as much as possible out of a declining market. What is The Huffington Post doing right, or Buzzfeed, or Politico, or The Atlantic? Why don’t they need paywalls? Coming up with creative answers to those questions is likely to play a much larger role in the survival of traditional media entities than a paywall.”

“Box offices have started off strong this year, but the number of tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada slumped 19% to 1.3 billion last year from 2002, Motion Picture Association of America data show. This has left cinema operators open to experimenting with new technologies that might lure back more cash-conscious viewers–especially younger ones–from their home plasma-TV screens, DVD and videogame players and, increasingly, Internet streaming services.”

“Ah yes, CBC-TV, shaken by budget cuts, wobbles forward. And, one suspects, clueless about its direction and meaning. Is it after audience share with humdrum programming or excellence and audience share with distinctive programming? Is it competing with Global, CTV and Rogers for eyeballs and advertising dollars or is it simply offering Kevin O’Leary four shows and hoping for the best?”

“Roman Polanski, a director who has had extensive personal experience with a justice system he and supporters believe wronged him, will make a movie about another exceptionally high-profile trial: the Dreyfus affair” – a story he has reportedly wanted to film for many years. (Please tell us Polanski doesn’t identify.)