Category: media

“In summers past, [studios have] used Comic-Con International, the premiere convention for comic book, science fiction and fantasy fans, as a marketing platform.” This year, not so much. “Comic-Con, as a growing number of movie marketers are realizing, has turned into a treacherous place.”

Judy Bachrach: “Their kind of death is not death. Or to put it another way: The death you see on the screen will not be the death you have.”

“The new chairman of the BBC” – Lord Patten of Barnes, formerly Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong – “has signalled he is prepared to axe sports events and a digital television channel – but vowed to fight to save the World Service from spending cuts.”

“The debate over whether BBC3 should be axed to save money as part of the corporation’s austerity measures is already over, according to the digital channel’s new controller, Zai Bennett, … [who] added that the BBC has ruled out abolishing the service.”

The multiply honored novelist is writing “a sci-fi television series in the belief that quality TV drama has taken over from film and the novel as the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories. ‘It’s like the best of both worlds,’ [he said,] ‘You can work in movie style productions, but have proper control’.”

“[In] a world where we can log on and find any song we want, it turns out that many people enjoy letting someone else curate a set list. College radio, free of the demands of profit and playability [made by corporate owners], is a particularly great source for such serendipity.”

“Statistics Canada says the industry’s operating revenues reached $1.6 billion in 2010, up 3.2 per cent from 2009. Profit margins in private radio rose to 19.1 per cent before interest and taxes, up from 17.9 in 2009. The agency says the industry’s profit margins have consistently exceeded 15 per cent since the late 1990s.”

“Any attempt by the board within the Attorney-General’s Department to classify public web content, let alone social media, would also appear to be impossible. Yet some submissions to the inquiry, instigated by conservative Tasmanian Liberal senator Guy Barnett, call for tighter classification and control.”

“3-D sports on TV is young and immature, but rife with potential to permanently alter how we view (literally and figuratively) sports on television. What they’re still trying to figure out, one year into their grand experiment, is how to bring all the pieces together so that 3-D sports is just another accepted offering for sports fans’ TV spread.”

“Studio and network executives say that this year they heard more pitches than ever before for shows about the changing dynamics of men. ‘Manliness is under assault. That’s the premise’.”