AND THE WINNER IS … ABC

Thanks to its annual broadcast of the Oscars, ABC wound up in first place on the Nielsen ratings chart for last week, averaging 10.68 million viewers. That figure was skewed by the 39.34 million who tuned in to Sunday night’s Oscar telecast, the No. 1 program of the week. After the awards show and the […]

JAMES MURDOCH QUITS SCANDAL-PLAGUED NEWS INTERNATIONAL

Without explanation, James Murdoch resigned today (Wednesday) as head of News International, the umbrella group for News Corp’s British newspaper business. His resignation came just days after the successful launch of a new NI title, The Sun on Sunday, which was directly overseen by his father, News Corp Chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Tom Mockridge, News […]

WEINSTEIN TAKES THE BULLY PULPIT

Harvey Weinstein is ratcheting up his battle with the MPAA and theater owners over the R rating his soon-to-be-released documentary Bully has received because of language. On Tuesday Weinstein responded to a letter from John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, who wrote that if Weinstein refuses to submit future films to […]

TIME WARNER CHIEF URGES STUDIOS TO MODERNIZE HOME VIDEO

According to Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes the reason that consumers have flocked to kiosks like Redbox and online stores like Apple’s iTunes has little to do with price and everything to do with convenience and ease-of-use. Speaking to a media conference in Palm Beach, FL, Bewkes observed that a study of the behavior of […]

MARILYN MONROE COMING TO CANNES

The image of Marilyn Monroe will appear throughout Cannes in May during that city’s 65th annual film festival. “Fifty years after her death, Marilyn is still a major figure in world cinema, an eternal icon, whose grace, mystery and power of seduction remain resolutely contemporary,” the festival said in a statement as it unveiled a […]

CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATORS HAIL SUCCESS OF ACT OF VALOR

The success of Act of Valor has given conservative Hollywood haters some of the most potent ammunition for their arsenal since Mel Gibson struck it big with The Passion of the Christ. On Andrew Breitbart’s BigHollywood.com website, Kurt Schlichter, a California attorney who spent 24 years in the Army and is a frequent contributor to […]

OSCARS AND GRAMMYS WIND UP TIED

Final Nielsen figures for Sunday night’s Oscar telecast on ABC put the audience count at 39.34 million. That number is a tad below the 39.50 million that the Grammys wound up with two weeks earlier, but the difference is moot. Nielsen’s margin of error is plus or minus about 310,000; therefore the two awards telecasts […]

SEACREST DUSTS HIMSELF OFF FROM COHEN PRANK

Ryan Seacrest denied on Monday that he was in on the red-carpet incident at the Oscars involving Sacha Baron Cohen, who, dressed in the costume of his title character in his forthcoming The Dictator dumped the contents of an urn on him. The urn, Cohen had told Seacrest moments earlier, contained the ashes of his […]

EVIDENCE IN SUN PROBE REVEALS “NETWORK OF CORRUPTED OFFICIALS”

One day after Rupert Murdoch inaugurated a Sunday edition of his daily tabloid The Sun, with a reported circulation of 3 million, a Scotland Yard investigator has presented sensational evidence that the newspaper has routinely engaged in bribing police and public officials to obtain gossipy information about celebrities and other public officials. In testimony prepared […]

NETFLIX BECOMING A TV RERUN SERVICE

Given the wariness of the major Hollywood studios to support its streaming service, Netflix will become a mostly TV rerun operation when Starz yanks its content on Wednesday, the New York Times observed today (Tuesday). Commented the newspaper: “It’s a transition that Netflix has made rather successfully in the last six to 12 months, in […]

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