Category: media

“The corporation is the biggest, oldest and most revered public broadcasting company in the world, a centerpiece of the British brand, as essential to Britains view of itself as the National Health Service or the royal family. … But despite all that, or perhaps because of it, the BBC seems at times to be an all-purpose whipping boy, an easy target for casual joking and at times naked derision from the country’s political establishment.”

“A film about a couple trying to escape the repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak may be screened in Egypt following the former president’s ousting from power. Authorities had banned Cairo Exit, by US-based Egyptian film-maker Hesham Issawi, due to a plot line that features a relationship between a Muslim man and a Coptic Christian woman.”

“YouTube has reached agreement to offer movies from Sony Pictures Entertainment and Universal Pictures on the same day the movies are available on other on-demand services.”

“Currently, networks are paid by advertisers only for how many viewers watch the commercials in their shows over the first three days after a show is broadcast — a model known as “commercial plus three” (C3) ratings. But networks are monitoring how shows do over a full week after they are broadcast to gauge the depth of audience interest and loyalty.”

“The online streaming and DVD rental company added 3.59 million subscribers in the three-month period ended March 31, bringing its worldwide total to 23.6 million. Netflix now has as many subscribers in the U.S. as Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, as of Dec. 31, 2010.”

A Hong Kong movie billed as the world’s first 3D porn film has broken the city’s first-day box office record previously set by director David Cameron’s Hollywood blockbuster “Avatar.”

“Many of the newer films are global by design. Most are co-productions, jointly financed by studios in Asia, Latin America and Europe; and they’re premiered at festivals in Venice, Berlin and Toronto.”

“American Idol” the entertainment equivalent of the “tea party” movement… People resent the entertainment industry not because they hate the movies, records, and TV shows it produces, which are, in fact, popular; they hate the industry because, in its arrogance, it seems as if it is superior to the public it serves. We have been its passive receptors, not the initiators. “American Idol” briefly changes that balance of power.

“The BBC seems at times to be an all-purpose whipping boy, an easy target for casual joking and at times naked derision from the country’s political establishment.”

“Those movies were obviously dumb, so no more of them. That’s kind of a cool idea. Imagine having the power to stop the entertainment crap that surrounds, by government decree, just as easy as that, just stop it: No more girl-fight romantic-competition shows, no more celebrity gossip “news” items….”