Showbiz Sandbox 599: The Grammy Awards Have A Timing Problem

November 18, 2022

The nominees for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards were announced this week and as expected Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles will all be competing for top awards. Yet some of the year’s biggest albums weren’t even eligible to be nominated because they were released after September. This is a continuous problem for the Grammys, since their deadline is always before the busy holiday season when many artists release albums.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including why how Netflix is eyeing live sporting events, workers are headed for a strike at publisher Harper Collins and the “Black Panther” sequel opens to big box office.

 

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Showbiz Sandbox 463: Why the Emmy Awards Make For Such Bad Television

September 23, 2019

How is it that an awards show honoring the best and brightest talent and content on television always winds up being such a poor representation of the medium? We’re talking about the Emmy Awards, which were handed out this past weekend in a ceremony without a host. While it was nice to see a few new honorees take home trophies, the proceedings themselves were rather dull. We try and figure out why.

Meanwhile, in the music business Live Nation and Ticketmaster are once again being scrutinized by the Department of Justice for antitrust. It doesn’t help that the company’s latest attempt to thwart scalpers left some fans of the Black Keys holding worthless canceled tickets.

Speaking of music, Amazon is raising the bar for streaming services by offering a Hi-Def streaming tier with lossless audio. Even the notoriously fussy rocker Neil Young is hailing the move.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how “Downton Abbey” spurred adults into cinemas, French courts claim you have the right to resell your legally purchased digital content and screenwriters take a big stand in their dispute with talent agencies.

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Showbiz Sandbox 237: Cannes Lives Up To All The Hype

May 27, 2014

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan took home the Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his movie, “Winter Sleep”. The slow-paced character drama set in a picturesque corner of Apollonia faced stiff competition from Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy”, Andrey Zvyaginstev’s “Leviathan” and even Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film. Overall, this year’s festival managed to surpass everyone’s already high expectations.

As May draws to a close, so too does this past year’s television season. Scripted series continue to gain significant viewership when accounting for delayed viewing, but what’s most noticeable about this year’s top 20 ratings winners is how long-in-the-tooth some of the shows are.

Meanwhile, the final cost of finishing “Fast & Furious 7” after the death of actor Paul Walker last November has yet to be tallied, however it’s shaping up to be one of the most expensive insurance claims in motion picture history.

Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment news stories including some creative differences at Marvel, Amazon’s silent war with publishers and the Supreme Court’s decision in an important copyright infringement case.

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Showbiz Sandbox 173: Spoiler Alert! Your Movie Has A Kicker

December 10, 2012

Frustrated at not knowing if the movie he was watching would have any special scenes during or after the credits Chris Ramey did something about it. Ramey is the founder of What’s After The Credits? a website that details kickers, as they are often called, to popular movies, television shows and video games. He tells how what inspired him to create the site and how its grown in popularity.

Speaking of popular, “Skyfall” is not only the most successful James Bond film of all time, it has also become the highest grossing movie of all time for Sony Pictures and the United Kingdom. Yet despite positive reviews, the film hasn’t been appearing in any of the recent year end critic polls.

Grammy nominations were announced last week and with acts like the Black Keys racking up five nominations, including Album of the Year, they had a rock and roll vibe. It is nice to see the Grammys include a lot of fresh faces in some of their top categories and refrain from knee-jerk nominations for veteran performers. We’ll provide a rundown of the nominations.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the expansion of iTunes to 56 new countries, Netflix signs an exclusive content deal with Disney and how much Psy is making off of his hit song “Gangnam Style”.

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Showbiz Sandbox 145: Rise of Playlisters Marks The Death of Music Blogs

April 16, 2012

Last week Doug Freeman, a music critic for the Austin Chronicle, wrote an opinion piece in response to a Hypebot interview in which Sean Adams, the founder of Drowned In Sound, suggested music blogs are no longer influential. Freeman joins us to explain that if blogs were simply gateways to new music discovery, then the streaming playlister is the new music blogger. New influencers and kingmakers will emerge in a shifting editorial landscape.

We also take you to the first weekend of this year’s Coachella Music Festival where more than 150 acts strutted their stuff to an more than 100,000 attendees. Headliners such as Radiohead and The Black Keys proved to be big hits, but Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg stole the show by performing with a picture perfect hologram of the late Tupac Shakur.

“The Hunger Games” continues to feast on the North American box office, but the number one movie in the world this past weekend was “Titanic 3D” thanks to a record breaking opening in China.

We also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including Mel Gibson’s public fight with a screenwriter, an extended run for “Game of Thrones” and an anti-trust lawsuit against major publishing houses.

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Showbiz Sandbox 129: Ticket Masters – The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped

December 12, 2011

Anyone who has ever tried to get good tickets to see their favorite band in concert knows how frustrating it can be. Josh Baron and Dean Budnick, two editors of Relix magazine, spent three years speaking to hundreds of industry veterans to research the history of modern ticketing. Their book, “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped“, is being hailed as the most comprehensive work on the subject. In this interview they explain the real culprit behind today’s high ticket prices and provide a few ways to get the best seats in the house.

The end of the year usually marks a busy and highly profitable time in the movie industry, however box office receipts have been declining over the past two weekends to three year lows. It certainly doesn’t help that as film critics from around the nation bestow their annual awards, there doesn’t seem to be a clear frontrunner for the upcoming Oscar season.

In the music world, despite the glut of music subscription services such as Spotify, Rdio and Mog, some musicians are pulling their latest releases from the platforms. Most recently, The Black Keys have joined the likes of Coldplay in not allowing their new album to be streamed on any of the top services. Rather than help increase sales, the feeling is that these services may actually be preventing them.

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