Category: media

The choice of dialect turns out to be crucial to a particular property’s success. “Should it be Egyptian dialect, the lingua franca of Arabic comedy? Light and airy Lebanese, a proven winner for sitcoms? Syrian Arabic, edgy, serious, well suited to drama? Khaleeji, the dialect of Arabs in the Persian Gulf, the region’s most lucrative television demographic? … Or the old standby, classical Arabic?”

For all the innovation that Hulu represents, the site also lays bare the gulf between what online viewers want and what TV companies are willing to give them.

“Already Netflix has as many subscribers as the country’s largest cable company, and consumers and the business world alike have watched as it thrived while putting video-store chains out of business. Along the way, its influence has grown: Television programmers are now making decisions based on potential Netflix popularity.”

“YouTube users from more than 192 countries uploaded more than 4,500 hours of video to his channel, all of it shot on a single day: July 24, 2010. Kevin Macdonald and his team, which included directors Ridley and Tony Scott, took that footage and made it into a 90-minute documentary called, aptly, Life in A Day.”

“If audiences can’t wait for a film’s trailer to end, they won’t show up when it opens. In contrast, a great trailer makes you feel excited about a film’s imminent arrival.”

“In the early days of cable, basic channels wouldn’t dream of producing original scripted fare, now they’re chockablock with them. How can they afford them? The better question may be, how can they afford not to make scripted shows.”

“The saga of Bret Saxon and the question of whether he is simply an unlucky producer or, as alleged in the lawsuits, a fraud provides a window into film financing in modern Hollywood and the risks of such investments.”

“Decades of rainy-Sunday screenings have blinded us to the true nature of postwar British cinema – freedom, naughtiness and a very black humour indeed.”

“Black and Asian representation in major UK drama stands at only 8.3%, according to the most up to date research into ethnic minority representation on television.”

Javier Bardem “called for actors to get the same protection as musicians and writers, including the right to earn money from the use of their performance beyond a film’s original release. He also said he wants movie tickets to be cheaper–that way even would-be pirates go to see a film at the theater once in a while.”