Showbiz Sandbox 477: The Recording Academy Upstages Itself During Grammy Week
January 21, 2020
Even before this year’s Grammys are handed out next Sunday the Recording Academy is making headlines, not necessarily in a good way. In a controversial move, the organization put its CEO Deborah Dugan on administrative leave after less than six months on the job, citing reports of alleged misconduct. However, this came after Dugan sent a memo to the academy’s board highlighting voting irregularities, financial mismanagement, exorbitant legal bills as well as conflicts of interest with the organization’s board members, executive committee and outside lawyers.
It will take some time to sort out what is actually going on within the Recording Academy’s executive ranks, though we should know who takes home the Album of the Year Grammy by next week. If the academy plays it safe, it just might be Vampire Weekend, but we think Lizzo should be a frontrunner.
Meanwhile, Chinese New Year is upon us, the biggest movie-going week in the Middle Kingdom. As usual the country has blacked out Hollywood film releases to help bolster attendance of homegrown movies. Yet this may not even be necessary since lately domestic titles are doing better than imported content.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Netflix plans to spend billions on content and why we might be headed for another writers strike.
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Showbiz Sandbox 189: Contentious CinemaCon; Corporate Coachella
April 29, 2013
At this year’s CinemaCon movie studios showed up in full force to pitch the world’s largest gathering of cinema operators on a bounty of upcoming blockbusters. Behind the scenes however, some of the larger theater chains were haggling with studios over how to divide ticket sales for tentpole releases such as “Iron Man 3”.
Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, the promoters of the Coachella Music Festival tried to replicate the event over two weekends. They held the same festival, with the same musical acts, on back-to-back weekends. While at times it couldn’t help but seem like a greedy attempt to extract more money from attendees, there were moments of sheer magic that only happen at Coachella.
Then there is Netflix, which after being ridiculed publicly for a series of ill-advised strategic moves in 2011, has managed to turn its ship around. After successfully producing its own hit-content with “House of Cards”, subscribers have returned, profits are increasing and the stock price is on the rise. Netflix CEO is feeling so good he wrote a manifesto on the future of televsion.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including Zach Braff’s successful Kickstarter campaign, how Bittorent is helping market a movie and whether “Django Unchained” will ever be released in China.
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