Category: media

“Left unanswered is the question of whether Hollywood’s studios and big production companies are willing to open their pocketbooks to support the film program, whatever form it takes. Even in flush times, when profits were soaring, their reputation as donors was that they were far less generous than corporations on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.”

“Channel 4 is to boost its drama budget by £20 million a year as part of a renewed commitment to the genre, following its decision to axe Big Brother from its schedules.”

The country’s last TV manufacturing plant is closing. It marks the end of mass TV manufacturing in the UK, a technology the country invented.

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which organizes the annual Golden Globe Awards, and Time Warner Cable, in association with Ovation TV, have each agreed to put up $75,000 toward the LACMA film program, which had been scheduled to close in October. In addition, Time Warner Cable and Ovation said that they will spend more than $1.5 million to market the film program across their multiple media platforms, both locally and nationally.”

Tatort, which has run for 40 years and is now a national institution, is produced in 15 different regional versions (a Bavarian Tatort, a Saxon Tatort, and so on), all taking turns in the show’s time slot. “Each Tatort makes something of its regional roots, with actors speaking in local accents, solving crimes based on local imbroglios; and Germans talk about their favorite Tatort roughly the way they do about their local soccer teams.”

“While the Performance Rights Act, now in a congressional committee, would affect all artists as well as large radio companies, the legislation has caused hostilities within the African-American community, pitting black-oriented radio stations and their popular DJs against black politicians and artists who support the bill.”

The Motion Picture and Television Fund has told the 78 remaining residents of its long-term care facility that, due to financial troubles, the Fund must close the building and move the residents by the end of this year. Many of Hollywood’s big names are howling in protest, and the families of the residents plan to sue; meanwhile, some evidence appears to suggest that the Fund’s alleged fiscal crisis may not actually exist.

Dan Neil: “[A new spot for the Palm Pre] is the latest ad to deliberately evoke the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, which used thousands of people as pointillist elements to create dreamy, large-scale pictographs. … This is the ultimate feel-good advertising. The very texture of the frame is made of shiny, happy people.”

“This summer, some Boston University students thought they were attending a morning lecture by a renowned cultural anthropologist in an advertising class.” It was actually a shoot for a McDonald’s ad, in which “the students appear tired, dazed, and yawning until a crush of chipper uniformed McDonald’s workers, some actors and some real employees, swarmed into the lecture hall. They served everyone cups of iced and hot coffees. On camera, the students perked up and sipped their drinks.”

“The top two U.S. chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun in recent months to reduce or eliminate the small-type listings showing the start times for movies at individual theaters. Theaters typically must pay newspapers to print that information. … [T]he theater chains are instead directing consumers to their Internet sites or third-party sites, like Fandango, Moviefone or Flixster….”