Audio Video News

Movie tickets worth approximately $3.89 <I>billion</I> were sold in the United States during the first six months of 2001. That number is a 10% increase over the same period in the previous year, according to a report from Exhibitor Relations Company, which tracks business trends for the theater industry.

"In George Orwell's novel <I>1984</I>, everyone had a television in their home that monitored their every move," reads a June 26 report from the <A HREF="http://www.cme.org/access/index_acc.html">Center for Digital Democracy</A>, a Washington-based advocacy group. Orwell's good citizens dutifully watch, and are watched in turn, their every move tracked and recorded.

A threatened strike against the entertainment industry by actors will probably be avoided. Negotiators for film studios and television networks, and for two actors' unions, worked late Saturday, June 30 and resumed work Sunday morning in an effort to avoid a strike. The situation is a replay of one enacted two months ago by writers and producers, who arrived at an agreement May 4.

Remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz when our heroes are making their way through the forest chanting "lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! . . . lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!" Well, the movie business is apparently chanting "hackers, pirates, and peers" as they work their way through the digital media jungle. A new report released online last week details just how scary the future may or may not be for the Hollywood suits.

The cable industry continues to be the major obstacle to expanding the market for digital television (DTV). That's the view of the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org/">Consumer Electronics Association</A>, which in June asked the <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov">Federal Communications Commission</A> to consider instituting what it termed "a capacity-based dual or multicast cable carriage rule" to encourage the growth of the format.