“For all its gravitas and importance to an aware, thoughtful audience, though, PBS is an obscurity in the U.S. TV racket. Each day during its presentations here, the evidence of its negligible status is stark – the room has a few dozen TV critics and reporters, instead of the usual two or three hundred.”
Category: media
Why Does TV Seem Like An Assault On The Senses?
“Television was once such a comfort. Now it’s wants to make me nervous. From its rude jokes to unpleasant subject matter, it aims to repulse. At the very least, the upcoming season’s shows seem calculated to make politeness seem out of date.”
Netflix – Success In The Seeds Of Creative Destruction
“Creative destruction has such a cataclysmic sound. But the term, coined by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter to show how capitalism destroys companies as more innovative ones succeed, describes a process that is more like a slow-motion train wreck.”
LA’s KCET Gets An Earful From Viewers When It Proposes Cutting PBS Ties
“Recognizing the danger of asking people for more money at the same time you are telling them their favorite programs may be pulled off the air, KCET canceled its on-air solicitations on Wednesday and Thursday nights.”
Reality TV Is Bonanza For Featured Businesses
“Owners of local businesses that have been showcased on TV reality shows say the exposure is priceless. The smallest plug can boost business, they said, and an appearance on a show is generally free, or at least cheaper than traditional advertising.”
Do New HD TVs Change Us As A Society?
“For all the attention paid to the new televisions by both technology’s cheerleaders and skeptics, almost no one has asked the most important question: What psychological, emotional, social, and even neurological effects will these big-screen high-definition televisions have — especially on the development of children and adolescents?”
Ad-Zappers – How DVRs Are Hurting TV Networks
“We’re now losing upwards of 25 percent of the salable audience from our shows. In other words, if you take a show on FX, we get paid, from an advertiser standpoint, typically now for about 75 percent of the people actually watching the show. The other 25 percent are, in fact, measurably watching the show, but not watching the commercials.”
TV Recycles
“It’s recycling time in television. At a time when new shows are desperate to stand out from the crowd, the allure of built-in marketing cachet and an audience (albeit an aging one) that remembers the original is a big plus, network executives say.”
Latest Holocaust Documentary Stuck With ‘R’ Rating
A Film Unfinished, “directed by Yael Hersonski, dissects a Nazi propaganda film that purported to depict life among Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II but actually manipulated its portrayal to reinforce anti-Jewish policies.” The appeals board kept the rating because of the film’s “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.”
Jerry Garcia Biopic Forbidden to Use His Songs
“Grateful Dead Prods. and the Jerry Garcia estate issued a statement Wednesday asserting that they are not involved in the film and won’t license songs for it.”