The Sundance Film Festival is the great American big-screen experience. Yet it is also evolving into an important showcase for the small screen.Television has become a major player at Sundance-and indeed, in the independent film world. For reasons that go…
Sinclair Broadcast Group’s big, bold entry into centralcasting will likely be a litmus test for local television. Sinclair, which operates 61 stations in 39 markets, introduced its News Central project last fall. The multimillion dollar effort to centralize news, weather…
U.K.-based production company Shine has completed a hat trick in the U.S. market, closing deals with a broadcast network, a syndicator and a cable network. The 18-month-old company founded by Elisabeth Murdoch will develop a dating game show for Fox…
TV syndication is one business that isn’t a head case this year. Though King World Productions therapist “Dr. Phil” McGraw reigns as a new hit for the industry, the business is clear-headed for program distributors.Syndication rode the good fortunes of…
“Our blood drive days are over,” said Sheldon Davis, general manager of both the Sage Broadcasting-owned Fox affiliate KIDZ-TV and UPN station KXVA-TV in the Abilene-Sweetwater, Texas, area. “We are a promotionally dependent company,” he said. “We are doing so…
Annie Morita, the dynamic Sony Pictures Television senior VP who oversees international TV program sales, says Sony kept a catered buffet available all day in the spacious Penthouse of the tony Windsor Court Hotel during this year’s National Association of…
Who was the biggest winner in Sunday’s Super Bowl?The consumer electronics industry.Several newspapers reported last week that consumers were sprinting into stores like Jerry Rice to buy high-definition televisions and other big-screen TVs. The Oakland Tribune reported that two Raiders…
A plan to seek funding from the consumer electronics industry for a new digital broadcasting laboratory has seriously undermined the integrity of the effort.That was the assessment last week from Nat Ostroff, VP of new technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group.“Basically,…
Americans are using “reality” to escape from reality.There’ve no doubt been ironies more profound, but this one will do for now. What reality are we trying to escape? The reality of who’s president, for one, and what he is likely…
A chill wind may have been blowing through the streets of New Orleans for most of the National Association of Television Program Executives convention, but the action on the convention center floor and in hotel suites around town was hotter…