Search Results for: void of vision

New York – Dreams of world domination must be hard for MTV executives to avoid when they host a party at the Kremlin, with a Russian diva and Queen dueting on “We Will Rock You” and Russian soldiers performing a hip-hop dance routine. MTV Networks will reach a milestone in February when the turn of a switch starts an MTV outlet in Africa, the company’s 100th channel worldwide and first based on that continent. Most of its American audience is probably unaware of the extent to which MTV and its sister networks have blanketed the world in an aggressive expansion… Read more »

New York – The year began with the Super Bowl halftime show fiasco and ended with aftershocks from Howard Stern flipping his detractors the bird and taunting the Federal Communications Commission with a just-try-and-get-me-now move to satellite radio. Between those two seismic events, the FCC levied a record number of indecency fines, responding to an avalanche of complaints carefully orchestrated by conservative zealots and election year political pressure. The results from the government crackdown were widespread. Top-rated personalities were fired. Zero-tolerance edicts were issued. On-air delays and indecency tutorials became commonplace. Warhorses like Pink Floyd’s “Money,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”… Read more »

Rome – Goth rockers The Cure are enjoying an unexpected revival, but frontman Robert Smith isn’t letting it go to his head. “It’s very flattering,” Smith told Reuters Television late on Thursday after performing at the MTV Europe Music Awards, his first MTV event in 15 years. “But I’m not stupid enough to think it’s an Indian summer. “We realize that this upsurge in media attention is almost entirely due to very good young bands picking up on The Cure,” added Smith, who wore his trademark red lipstick and heavy eyeliner under an unruly mop of hair. When asked whether… Read more »

Federal regulators opened a new front in their crackdown on offensive broadcasts Thursday, saying that almost any use of the F-word on over-the-air radio and television would be considered indecent. The Federal Communications Commission overruled its staff and said an expletive uttered by rock singer Bono on NBC was both indecent and profane. It marked the first time that the FCC cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God’s divinity. The FCC on Thursday also proposed maximum fines for the broadcast of the Howard Stern radio show and for a program on two… Read more »

Beyonce Knowles may be “Crazy in Love,” but she kept her cool Sunday at one of the more sober Grammy Awards shows in memory. She was the night’s big winner, taking home a record-tying five trophies to join recent Grammy queens Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones with the most wins in a single year by a female performer. OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year, giving the eccentric Atlanta funk/rap group three wins, including Best Urban Alternative Performance and Best Rap Album. British band Coldplay took home the prize for Record of the Year for “Clocks,”… Read more »

A dispute over royalty rights on copy-protected CDs and other types of music discs is helping to stall the release of some new music technology, and could result in record labels owing tens of millions of dollars in back payments to music publishers. At issue are “double session” CDs that include two versions of each song on a disc, formatted for playback on different kinds of devices. The most widely distributed type are copy-protected discs that prevent CD tracks from being copied to a hard drive, but that also include a digital version of the songs, often in Microsoft’s Windows… Read more »

Police armed with a search warrant are remaining at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in central California, and a broadcast report has said officers are also carrying an arrest warrant for the pop superstar. “The Jackson’s family attorney has confirmed that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff has issued an arrest warrant for Michael Jackson,” NBC Television reported on Wednesday. Police said without elaboration that they served “a search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.” Cable channel Court TV, which broke the story, quoted sources saying there had been a new allegation of sexual abuse brought by a 12-year-old boy… Read more »

The week the music industry brought suit against 261 users of Internet file-sharing services, Donald L. McCabe was in St. Louis to talk about a different form of digital copying. Mr. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, has made a career of studying the cheating of American high school and college students. His most recent study found that cheating was spreading almost like file-sharing. Of more than 18,000 students surveyed, 38 percent said they had lifted material from the Internet for use in papers in the last year. More striking to Mr. McCabe, 44 percent said they considered this sampling no… Read more »

Smaller Internet music broadcasters are getting an extension on copyright royalty payments that would have been due Sunday, which means they can avoid shutting down. The webcasters will still have to pay up to $2,500 each in fees by Monday. But that is far less than the tens of thousands of dollars that many of them would have owed. The extension, granted by the recording industry and performance artists Friday, came a day after the Senate recessed for the elections without approving copyright rate revisions negotiated between webcasters and the copyright holders. The changes, unanimously approved by the House earlier… Read more »

The world’s five largest music companies and the three largest music retailers will pay $143.1 million to settle a CD price-fixing case launched by New York and Florida two years ago, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Monday. In August 2000, most U.S. states joined in a lawsuit alleging that an industry practice called “minimum advertised pricing” (MAP) artificially inflated the price of CDs between 1995 and 2000, violating federal and state antitrust laws. Under MAP, the labels subsidized advertising for retailers that agreed not to sell CDs below a certain price. The five record labels –… Read more »