OSCAR IS MIGHTY GOLDEN FOR ABC

With each 30-second ad selling for an average of $1.8 million, ABC’s telecast of the Oscars ceremony on Sunday is expected to generate around $95 million for the network, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Friday), citing ad tracking firm Kantar Media. The figure represents a 9 percent increase from last year. “It has been […]

DVR VIEWING BOOSTING RATINGS FOR FALLON’S TONIGHT

For years, the DVR has plagued late-night TV shows. If two strong competing primetime shows aired earlier in the evening, many viewers would simply watch one of them live and record the other to watch during the late-night hours. But with the arrival of Jimmy Fallon’s new Tonight show, the reverse seems to have occurred. […]

SONY CONTINUES TO PARE DOWN

On the heels of a report that Sony is shutting down most of its retail stores in the U.S., the Japanese business daily The Nikkei reported today (Friday) that the company has decided to sell its former headquarters in central Tokyo. The building is close to its current headquarters. According to the newspaper, the sale […]

HULU SELLS ITS JAPANESE SERVICE

Although Netflix and Amazon are rapidly expanding their video streaming services internationally, rival Hulu on Thursday pulled back, announcing that it has sold Hulu Japan to the Nippon TV television network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Hulu, which is owned by the corporate parents of ABC, NBC and Fox, has provided mostly content […]

HOW BIG WILL GOD BE AT THE BOX OFFICE?

No one is taking any bets about how Son of God will do against the new Liam Neeson action flick Non-Stop. The current consensus is that each will open with around $20 million this weekend but that each could do far better than that. Particularly Son of God — which reportedly has received some massive […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: NON-STOP

Non-Stop has just about everything critics look for in movies — an intelligent (if far-fetched) script, fast-paced direction, and most of all an indelible performance by its star, Liam Neeson. “The actor’s face is capable of convincing anguish and despair as well as naked fury, and when he invests himself in a scenario, his authority […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: SON OF GOD

It’s a good thing that Son of God is critic-proof. Some reviews of the movie verge on sacrilege, all of them agreeing that it’s far from the greatest story ever told. The New York Times devotes just 298 words to its review by Nicolas Rapold, the briefest movie review in the Times in memory. Rapold […]

12 YEARS A SLAVE GOES TO SCHOOL

The National School Boards Association has recommended that the Oscar-nominated 12 Years a Slave be made part of the national high-school curricula beginning this September. In an alliance with New Regency, the film’s distributor, Penguin Books, which published the original 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup on which the movie is based, and talk-show host Montel […]

PARAMOUNT TAGS “EXPLANATORY MESSAGE” TO NOAH

In an apparent effort to avoid a full-blown religious controversy over its forthcoming biblical epoch Noah, Paramount has agreed to add an “explanatory message” to the film and related marketing material, including the trailers. The action came after Dr. Jerry A. Johnson, head of the National Religious Broadcasters, called for such language at the NRB […]

FALLON A HIT ONLINE AS WELL AS ON TV

While Jimmy Fallon’s new Tonight show has generated huge ratings since its debut, it has produced even bigger numbers online via YouTube, NBC.com and Hulu. Today’s (Thursday) New York Times reported that during the show’s first week, clips from the late-night show amassed more than 37 million views on YouTube alone. The Times observed, however, […]

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