Category: media

“The TV business these days is a vast swamp of fear and loathing, pity and terror, and sports. Folks – that’s you the viewer, also known as “the eyeballs” – like live sports events on TV. Recent changes to the mechanics of measuring how many people watch TV in Canada indicate that we adore sports.”

“Some media experts believe rapidly aging societies and rising retirement ages in the developed world may slowly start reshaping expectations about the kinds of faces people expect to see on the screen, opening the door to more roles for older people in visual media.”

“Porn production accounts for less than 5% of all film permits, but FilmL.A. does not track the industry’s overall activity. A decade ago, local economists estimated that the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley generated 10,000 to 20,000 jobs annually and had $4 billion in annual sales.”

“Canada’s internet regulator has launched a review of decisions that would have eliminated unlimited internet plans and drastically lowered downloading limits for customers of small internet service providers.”

“The BBC is to axe more than 1,000 hours of children’s radio programmes on digital station Radio 7 after it emerged that the average age of their listeners is 48. Programmes will be dropped from Radio 7, which is being rebranded as a BBC Radio 4 spin-off station, Radio 4 Extra.”

“BBC Radio 4 was today criticised for its love affair with all things American and warned that it was in danger of losing its appeal to younger listeners. Overall the [news and spoken word] station was given a largely glowing review by the BBC Trust… and received the highest approval rating of any of the corporation’s national services among listeners.”

“It’s a gig actors call ‘corpse duty,’ and in a shrinking market for jobs in scripted TV, dead-body roles are on the rise. In the past few years, TV dramas have responded to feature-film trends and HDTV, which shows everything in more realistic detail, by … delivering more shock value on the autopsy table.”

“The top-grossing documentary of all time took in more than $220 million worldwide. Moore’s company, Westside Productions, had a deal with the Fellowship Adventure Group, the Weinsteins’ company, to split the profits 50/50. Moore is seeking almost $3 million for ‘bogus accounting methods’.”

“Prosecutors have been complaining that shows like CSI are creating the expectation that every trial must feature high-tech forensic tests. They fear that when they don’t show off CSI-style technology, juries might let criminals get away with murder.” But is the effect real?

A Q&A with Hammad Khan, director of Slackistan, a cinematic portrait – complete with a Muslim punk soundtrack – of the young, rich and aimless in the Pakistani capital, which Khan describes as “the city that always sleeps.”