Category: media

“Texting at movies could work as a draw to some moviegoers. Maybe if theaters pitched it as a different kind of “interactive” experience – ITXT, if you will – so that everyone in the theater gets what they paid for. Maybe it could be one showing a day across theater chains with a special hashtag to link everyone at the showing. They could react and interact – and fill each other in on what they’re missing in the movie.”

Sheila Nevins, head of HBO’s documentary programming: “We’re not the main reason people subscribe to HBO. In the documentary department, I like to think of us as off-off Broadway in way. In order to get on Broadway, you have to be really careful with your steps — you have to make sure they want to transfer you from Bleecker Street to 42nd Street. You just feel your own ground and get your footing more carefully.”

“Right now, with such online services as YouTube and Hulu holding “upfront” presentations to advertisers in New York, the chatter about the end of TV rises noisily again. Much of the chatter is absurdly out of touch with the realities of human nature, technology and consumerism. TV isn’t dead or dying, and here’s why.”

“As the recording industry has seen its sales tumble by more than half since 2000, labels are intent on squeezing every bit of profit out of songs in their catalogs. Licensing that music to films — whether big Hollywood productions or modestly budgeted documentaries — is an attractive source of revenue.”

“Since he moved to Jakarta four years ago, [Gareth] Evans, a softly-spoken scion of the Brecon Beacons, has resurrected the Indo martial-arts film. His latest, a careening piece of John Woo-esque ultraviolence called The Raid, is winning the country some overdue global exposure.”

“With regular weekly shows and viewer-friendly playlists, they are indeed slightly more televisionlike than the millions of mostly homemade videos that surround them. But the harder they try to resemble television, the less interesting they are.”

“Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt defended his conduct during News Corporation’s takeover bid for BSkyB today as he battled for his political life amid demands for his resignation over claims that he was a “cheerleader” for Rupert Murdoch’s company.”

“The research group estimated that 1.9-million people in Los Angeles listened to Pandora between September and October of 2011. The No. 2 station, KIIS-FM, garnered 1.4-million listeners in the same time frame, according to the survey.”

Viewers increasingly are using online services, such as Netflix Inc., to get caught up on past seasons of award-winning shows, such as the PBS series “Downton Abbey” or AMC’s “Mad Men,” and watch current episodes through digital on-demand offerings.

52 percent of those surveyed saw at least one 3D pic in the last three years. Of those, 71 percent said the experience surpassed that of watching 2D films, while 31 percent found the experience “incredible.”