There’s nothing better than being able to do the right thing and the politically savvy thing while simultaneously paying back a long-time abuser in spades.

And that’s just what the Republicans in Congress did to Hollywood when it abandoned the rush to pass SOPA and regulate the Internet for the benefit of Tinseltown. Astonishingly, considering its usual inability to perform competently at even the most basic level, the GOP not only managed to embrace good policy but drove a wedge into the Democratic coalition that may well have dramatic consequences down the road. And, best of all, it provided a bit of long overdue payback to the smug oligarchs of LA’s West Side who have spent the last couple decades treating Republicans like something you’d hasten to flush.

Hey, suckers, how do ya like us now?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is only the latest attempt by Hollywood to breathe some life back into its dying business model. Enraged that online “pirates” are passing around bootleg copies of movies, shows, books, music, and all other manner of intellectual property, the industry did what it has done for years: ran to Congress for ever more burdensome and onerous laws designed to hold back the inevitable consequences of progress. 

But this time, it went too far. Perhaps it was Hollywood’s arrogance. Perhaps it was the provisions allowing Hollywood to use the United States government to shut down any website it pleased on the mere accusation of “piracy” without any due process, a power lefty–fascist bureaucrats would be only too eager to accept.

Not surprisingly, the people who make their living on the web were less than thrilled about giving Uncle Sam and the media conglomerates an off-switch.

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Good article from the “L.A. Times,” touching on how the Internet has forever altered television viewing habits and what this means for the business end of it:

Television production studio executives long have been wary of Hulu and other forms of Internet distribution, fearing they would lead to increased piracy and destroy lucrative secondary markets, including syndication and DVD sales. But video streaming services offered by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.com are becoming an unexpected boon to the TV syndication market. By writing checks to license library content from networks, the Internet services are injecting new revenue into the TV business and breathing new life into middling shows.

“The introduction of the subscription video-on-demand platform has broadened the opportunities for exploitation of product in a very positive way for consumers and studios,” said Ken Werner, president of Warner Bros. domestic television distribution. “You do not need to accumulate 100 episodes of a series because 40 hours of programming is a lot, so many of these shows work perfectly well on these new services.”

Something the article does miss, though, is how television marathons and DVD have also altered our viewing habits. We like to gorge now, watch more than just a single episode at a time and lose ourselves in that world for hours. This is one reason serialized dramas such as “Mad Men,” “24,” “Breaking Bad,” and the like are such favorites. These shows are addictive — in the best way.

Yesterday, the wife and I watched 5 episodes in a row of “Sons of Anarchy,” and when a new DVD arrives via Blockbuster of “The Closer,” we usually knock out all four episodes in just a sitting or two.

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There’s a reason Prince made it onto Time’s 100 Most Influential Celebrities list.  His musical legacy is easily apparent, and his opinions are still making headlines.  Recently, the purple-clad eccentric has endured great scorn for his statement, “The Internet’s completely over.”  Just so you know he’s serious, Prince has banned his music from YouTube and iTunes, shut down his own website, and announced his newest album 20TEN will only be distributed as a free CD inside the British paper the Daily Mirror (much to the chagrin of my wife and sis-in-law, huge fans).

After blasting online music distributors, Prince calls the technology itself a fad that’s on the way out:  “The Internet’s like MTV.  At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.”  Obviously, he’s out of touch; MTV was a diversion, not a tool that expanded the potential accomplishments of virtually every business and individual in the world.   Nor were millions of people physically addicted to MTV and its content.

 Though his statement is demonstrably false, there’s something to the sentiment behind it.  I’ve rarely bought mp3s online that I could buy on a physical format for two reasons:  first, lower sound quality (to bring the file sizes down, they remove frequencies and decrease the audio’s resolution), and I prefer the limitation of having to choose and listen to one CD at a time.  Just browsing through a collection of mp3s ripped from the same CDs, I appall myself, getting so easily bored and skipping through music that I find exhilarating when I commit to it.  Despite an age difference of three decades, Prince and I find solidarity in this anachronism. (more…)

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and articulated his position that the media is the primary adversary to those fighting for traditional American values.

Watch the whole thing: you’re sure to enjoy when Andrew discusses that while the New Media may well save the Republic (and perhaps the world), it has already saved him personally.

The Brody File show airs tonight on the CBN Newschannel.

A full profile of Andrew Breitbart will air on The 700 Club show May 13th.

Some highlights/discussion points below:

“By aiming everything at the media, I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do: ‘please accept the premise that we’re fair and let’s move on.’ No, I’m not going to accept that premise.” (more…)

Last week, in  Parts 1 – 3 of this series, I examined some of the inherent flaws in the Hollywood manufacturing system. This article will suggest how those flaws permeate the system so completely, that innovation is stifled, leading the repetitive creation of homogenized product.

Considering the extent to which fear controls decision-making in Hollywood, it isn’t much of a stretch to assume it also controls how content, particularly film, is marketed. Television isn’t the issue here, quite as much as feature films. If there is any doubt that marketing capital is being flushed down the toilet by the major studios, one need only look in the entertainment section of any major newspaper. Gigantic ads for movies still fill most of the pages. Hollywood doesn’t seem to notice that newspapers are dying a quick death, that their primary demographic doesn’t read newspapers, and that anyone who wants to know the location and time of a movie has a portable communication device with them at all times.

Meanwhile, the percentage of total media spending that the studios allocate to the Internet will be about 7.7% this year.  This is all they allocate — while the Internet has essentially consumed eyeballs across the entire globe. (more…)

[Ed. Note: This is the first part of an 8 part series that will run each weekday morning through next Friday.]

In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber last November, legendary media titan John Malone said this of the network television model: “It don’t work.”  Now, perhaps Dr. Malone was just getting in his digs on traditional media, which he does from time to time.  But in this case, he’s right. The network television model has been failing for some time, and so has the feature film financial model.

This naturally leads us to ask the question “If it is broken, can it be fixed?”  As the Internet continues to flummox media companies, forcing management to confront increasingly fragmented audience pools, we must further ask, “if it can be fixed, what exact form does this fix take?”

The ultimate goal of this series of articles is to proffer different financial models for media companies of all kinds to consider – and find one that will ideally offer a higher degree of financial stability and therefore deliver value to shareholders. This model should permit media companies to achieve maximum ROI in a world where alternative financing, production, and distribution will become increasingly important.   Readers will discover that the cure, such that it is, is at least as dependent on a set of objective criteria that constitutes good storytelling as it does on a re-jiggering of the financial models. (more…)

Internet hoaxes that look too good to be true usually are. Over the weekend, a leaked resignation letter written by director Paul Haggis spilling all kinds of dirt about the Church of Scientology hit the web and looked way too good to be true. But now that New York Magazine and the Hollywood Reporter have picked it up….

After 35 years as a member of the Church of Scientology, Paul Haggis is calling it quits. In a badass letter to Scientology’s national spokesman Tommy Davis (who hates Martin Bashir), the filmmaker lays out the reasons why.

It all started when a San Diego church publicly supported Prop 8. Haggis asked Davis to denounce its actions but Davis never went through with it. Then the already-pissed Haggis read an interview in which Davis denied Scientology’s practice of “disconnection” (forcing members to cut off communication with loved ones who oppose Scientology). But Haggis knew disconnection first-hand. His wife was forced to cut ties with her parents.

Choice snips from the Haggis letter: (more…)

The Hollywood star system: Rest in Peace.

Nowadays, when I trawl through Blockbuster aisles, I find films with major stars that never saw the dark light of a theater. I’ve never even heard of some films. And I wonder about the parallel between society and film. History may be defined as the intersection of amazing events with amazing people. Will Mallory make the climb up the cliffs of Navarone? People created history by their choices, hesitations, fears, desires, whimsy, obsessions and visions.  Will the Colonel give in to Saito’s brutality? Great films, anchored by magnetic personalities, cast wide nets across our consciousness. Will Lawrence survive the Devil’s Anvil?

“Epic,”film producer Frank McCarthy (“Patton”) once told me, “is defined as a man who changes himself, his community and his world.”  In short, all the great character arcs in a movie script have driven the creation of events and epics which, in turn, are pushpins in World History. A noted script consultant, Chris Vogler,  distilled and explained the work of Joseph Campbell, an expert on tribal storytelling and myth. Vogler explains the hero’s journey through the Ordinary World, the Call to Adventure, the Refusal of the Call, Mentor, Threshold, Tests by Allies and Enemies, Approach, Ordeal, Reward and The Road Back. (more…)

Because televised news has been rendered obsolete by technology (who needs Christine Amanpour when every citizen has an HD camera, YouTube, and Twitter?), I turned to the Internet to keep up with the events transpiring in Iran.  I logged into Twitter and found this massive “Twitter-grid” of people in Iran and people around the world communicating.  It went something like this….

#iranstudent:please help.they are attacking the dorms.

#crzygrl:EVERYONE WEAR GREEN TOMORROW TO WORK AND SCHOOL

#iranstudent:my god.  where is help?  they will kill us.

#Evlhaliburton:this is just like US in 2000.

#iranstudent: please send troops.  they shot my friend. (more…)

It is unnecessary for me to tell any of you reading this that the left has a stranglehold over both Hollywood and the mainstream media.  It is axiomatic in today’s news world dominated by the likes of Keith Olbermann and The New York Times that the “news” is delivered to your doorstep with a leftward slant.  

What are less well understood, however, are the lengths to which the government has gone to protect the left’s monopoly during the last decade and the complicity of the news media in that endeavor.  The recent confrontation between General Electric CEO Jeffery Immelt and an O’Reilly Factor producer at GE’s shareholder meeting highlighted the nexus between government and the left-leaning media for all to see. 

For decades, the major broadcasting corporations and newspapers were the gatekeepers of the national political discourse in this country because the enormous infrastructure costs associated with setting up a news organization and a distribution network were prohibitive.  If you were a candidate, incumbent, or someone with a cause, you had to go hat-in-hand to the editors of these organizations asking them to take an interest in you or your cause.  If they accepted you, national attention followed, but if you were rejected by the media elites, you languished in anonymity.  In the last five or ten years, however, the cost of entry declined precipitously due to the proliferation of the internet, and the old guard found its cherished position atop the hierarchy being threatened by smaller upstart organizations.  (more…)

It wasn’t much of a surprise when the New York Times reported that one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year-X-Men Origins: Wolverine-had been leaked a month before the film’s release date and was available for download on illegal file-sharing sites.  Stories like that are all too common, unfortunately, with the ease of illegal file trafficking over P2P sites like Pirate Bay.  The Wolverine leak is particularly troubling because the leaked version was unfinished, missing several key scenes, music, and special effects. As the film’s star Hugh Jackman said, “It’s a serious crime and there’s no doubt it’s very disappointing. I was heartbroken by it. It’s like a Ferrari without a paint job.”

What was surprising however, is that this time, the leak was universally condemned by Wolverine’s online fan community, bloggers, movie buffs and comic book fans.  Several movie blogs are refusing to run reviews of the raw footage (FoxNews.com’s Roger Friedman was fired for writing a review of the pirated copy), while others such as Dark Horizon have condemned the uploading of the pirated copy as an “act that cruelly robs thousands of people of not just months of hard effort, but their livelihood as well.”  The New York Times was even spurred to ask whether Internet access is a fundamental human right, or a privilege, carrying with it a responsibility for good behavior. (more…)

Last week’s episode of the Fox Network medical-mystery series House included a Big Event meant to shock the show’s viewers and send the story line in an interesting new direction, as one of the main characters of the series was killed. As it happens, the show’s fans figured out exactly who it would be, several days in advance of the program’s airing, as the kind of public conversation the Internet makes so easy enabled a mass pooling of information and instant critiquing of same. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

After the 2004 election, much was made of Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s campaign manager and Internet guru. Mr. Trippi is credited with using social networking tools to hook up supporters and to drum up excitement and campaign cash for Vermont’s then-little-known former governor.

His book “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything” capitalized on Mr. Dean’s meteoric yet short-term rise at the hands of a previously competent yet little-known Democrat apparatchik who became an Internet legend for almost getting the dark horse over the primary finish line.

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