Category: media

“Pledging a ‘calm and straightforward’ process by a company with a reputation for transparency and Western standards of corporate governance, [a Russian World Studios official] said that up to eight projects [suspended due to the recession] would be chosen for support in the next 18 months, with finance averaging $2.5 million per project.”

“Major U.S. television stations complete their switch to digital transmissions tomorrow, a move that may cut off signals for almost 3 million unprepared homes. Beginning early in the morning and ending by midnight, 974 TV stations, including those in the largest cities, will stop sending the analog signals used since the birth of TV, according to the Federal Communications Commission.”

“Sweden is putting a blue line through film censorship. The government has decided to close the board of film censors, Statens Biografbyra, in 2011, 100 years after it was founded. From then on, any film will be able to be released in Sweden, as long as it does not break laws governing such things as child pornography.”

“Reality television shows are depending more than ever on viewer participation to guide the outcome of their competitions, asking audience members to vote on who stays in the jungle on ‘I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!,’ who should stick to a diet on ‘The Biggest Loser’ and who keeps waltzing on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Those votes sometimes have more in common with Politburo polling, however, than with democratic elections.”

“Maybe some TV writers don’t care about winning an Emmy, but it’s hard to ignore the attraction: the intrinsic pride and glory, plus an express train to better pay, visibility, hireability or all of the above. Still, there’s an unspoken glitch in the Emmy writing categories for scripted series. Each year, awards go to individual writers or writing teams from a given episode. But many episodes aren’t written by individuals or duos — they’re written by entire staffs.”

“It was going to be glorious, positively Jetsonian. With digital broadcasting, the television industry once promised, the TV set would be transformed into a miraculous info-appliance, the modern household’s electronic brain.” Remember? “Well, the future officially arrives this week, and it’s . . . not exactly as advertised.”

On June 10, California playwright Jeremy Gable begins 140: A Twitter Performance (http://twitter.com/twit_play), which will unfold in the form of tweets from each of four characters over the course of 60 days.

“Has pop culture been lying to us about time travel? When did it get so convoluted? We would avoid it [if] we could, but this summer, time travel is everywhere, and it’s more complicated than ever. So The Talk sought answers from Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at California Institute of Technology, who lectures on time and relativity.”

“There was a time when nonfiction programming meant slow camera movement, a droll narrator and maybe even the occasional nap — or, on the other extreme, the crass sideshow appeal of specials like ‘When Animals Attack.'” Back then, the object was either ratings or awards. “But today, the lines have been blurred, with networks … recognizing that education and entertainment needn’t be mutually exclusive.”

“While this summer boasts a raft of de rigueur studio blockbusters, the “Angels & Demonses” and “Star Treks” of the world, it also features a crew of A-list directors pointedly departing from the kinds of films that made their reputations, often chucking the trappings of big-budget filmmaking in search of the high of flying by the seats of their pants.”