Category: media

I-CRAVE-LAWSUIT GETS ITS WISH

Canadian internet startup iCraveTV.com has been rebroadcasting American network channels available in Toronto over the internet. Though the picture is jerky, the site has attracted millions of visitors in a few short months. Now an indignant Hollywood has served up a big fat lawsuit. – CBC 01/21/00  

  • Previously: I-CRAVE-LAWSUIT.COM: Toronto man rebroadcasts every TV station available in Toronto over the internet on Icravetv.com, and networks have a fit. “It’s all perfectly legal,” he claims. – Wired 12/17/99

SUNDANCING

This year’s Sundance Film Festival gets underway. Nearly 1,700 films were submitted for consideration this year. “Clearly a growing number of people out there want to be filmmakers. And many of them will be found this coming week, wearing parkas and frazzled looks, on the icy, traffic-choked streets of Park City.” – New York Times 01/20/00 

  • Taking stock of the independent film world – and what happened to last year’s crop of ’99 Sundance films (end of story). – Chicago Tribune 01/20/00

  • Handicapping this year’s field. – San Francisco Chronicle 01/20/00

  • Star for a week: Getting your film into Sundance is swell, but for most the after is… – National Post 01/20/00

    • “Be careful what you wish for” – a cautionary tale from one of last year’s chosen. – Indiewire.com 01/18/00

CYBERGRASS VS. GENDER BIAS

The Vienna Philharmonic is one of the world’s great orchestras. Also one of the few to retain a distinctive sound that is theirs alone. Trouble is, they don’t believe in women musicians in their midst. The international campaign taking on the VPO’s sexist discrimination has been fertilized on the internet in a real cyber-grass roots effort that has exerted considerable pressure on the orchestra to change its ways. (be sure to take the musical gender test part way through the story). – MSNBC 01/20/00

DRUG OFFICE NEWSPAPER CONNECTION

Last week Salon Magazine reported that television networks had taken money from the White House drug office in return for inserting anti-drug messages into their programming. The Washington Post now reports that “the drug office says it is spending $11.3 million in the current 12-month period to advertise in 250 newspapers, and that $893,000 of that money is being spent on the New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post. And White House officials say that in three cases–two of them involving the Times and The Post–newspapers were granted $200,000 in financial credits that reduced the amount of public service advertising they are required to provide under the program.” – Washington Post 01/20/00

LOCO-LOGO

  • CBS used digital editing technology during its New Year’s Eve broadcast to slice out NBC’s Times Square billboard and replace it with an image of the CBS logo. Ever since, “NBC has become increasingly shrill in its protests, going so far last week as to say that it was “shocked and outraged that CBS News used digital imagery to alter and block out images in public places.” Whenever a for-profit company becomes ‘shocked and outraged,’ it’s a sure sign that we have crossed into the realm of propaganda.” – Feed 01/20/00

“BIZARRE LITTLE FILMS”

Mental hygiene films were a staple in American schools over the 25 years following World War II. “Students of all ages were forced to watch these earnest but bizarre short films, which apprised them of such things as the folly of playing on steep precipices overlooking the ocean, the need to minimize one’s square-dancing during the early days of the menstrual cycle, the inadvisability of shooting heroin before an important track meet and the necessity of placing the fork to the left of the plate.” New York’s American Museum of the Moving Image resurrects some of the classics. – New York Times 01/20/00