Category: media

“Everyone remembers the two words that entered the cultural lexicon afterward: “vast wasteland.” But few remember why Newton N. Minow’s sermonette caused such a sensation at the time. Even fewer can recall the sweeping promises the FCC chairman made in that speech or that he failed to deliver on any of them.”

A record 47.3 million are tuning into at least one station each week.

“Pre-Twitter, our most extreme comments tended to stay inside a private space populated by, at most, a couple of dozen friends and colleagues. But Twitter has … [made] it easy for any jerkish utterance to spread … The thing that makes tweets most vulnerable is that the Twitter interface lends itself perfectly to expressing the anger of the busybodies who take umbrage at the simplest statement.”

Meredith Attwell Baker resigned her post Wednesday as a Federal Communications Commission commissioner to become the top lobbyist for the merged Comcast-NBC, just four months after she approved the deal.

“It’s hard not to view Bridesmaids … as his mea culpa to the women of America. Presumably, he’d like to put to rest charges that the women in his films are underdeveloped vehicles for male transformation. … [But] Apatow has no need to atone. While his film canon is undeniably dude-centric, the lady characters he’s brought to the screen are more complex and fully realized than his detractors claim.”

“The Indian film industry sees Toronto as a gateway into the North American market, on the strength of buzz generated by local Bollywood fans.”

“This pilot season, with heightened pressure on networks to make sure new shows break through the clutter and compete with hundreds of cable channels, Netflix and the DVR, the big-four networks have increasingly turned to feature-film directors. Adjusting to TV isn’t always easy. Unlike in film, where auteurs impart their vision, in TV the writers rule.”

“Television can no longer be called with any justification ‘the opiate of the masses,’ because the “mass” audience no longer exists. In fact, I put it to you that, thanks to the existence of a long list of sophisticated shows, television is now the number-one opiate for adults in search of compelling, grown-up storytelling.”

“In the last three years, Imax’s global theater network has expanded nearly 80% to 528 theaters, including 201 in foreign markets, where the per-screen revenue tends to be substantially higher than in North America, thanks to strong consumer demand and higher ticket prices. The international marketplace is becoming increasingly critical for Hollywood studios, which now amass more than 50% of their annual box-office revenue abroad.”

“They’ve just announced that a revision to their submissions categories that allows for video game content to apply for grant money, with what was once The Arts on Radio and Television category now becoming The Arts in Media.”