Media future - more control ?

The corporate drones have successfully taken over the Sundance festival, that attempt at a showcase for alternatives to Hollywood junk:




'At one point, ‘back in the day,” Sundance was an alternative to Hollywood and these values. But those days are long gone. Today, the pass to have is marked Industry, as buyers get the red carpet far more than actors.

While there are some strong documentaries, their prospects for distribution are not given much hope. Sundance director Geoffrey Gilmore is ready to blame the audience for that, not the risk-adverse media companies and theater owners who would rather promote avaricious Hollywood fare, “people might be suffering fatigue with films that are serious.”

While there still are serious films on important topics at Sundance on subjects like Abu Ghraib and Darfur, it seems like Gilmore and his team of programmers now believe in a new kind of activist filmmaking—less political, less ideological about what he calls “social evolution—a set of issues related to individual lifestyle. “ This is exactly the attitude of many in the movie biz who only want character driven storytelling, not contextualized long form dissenting argument or analysis . This logic and prejudice leads to suppressing more outspoken fare and softer movie-making driven by commercial values and appeal.'

http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2007/01/22/reporting-from-the-sundance-festival

Now they aim to take over the new media too:


"... decisions are being made today about our country’s digital future by the biggest media companies, advertisers, technology manufacturers, lobbyists, and politicians. The U.S. public, sadly, has not been invited to participate, even though these decisions will affect everyone here and – since the United States is so dominant – around the rest of the world.

The corporate media know where they wish to take us. If they are successful, we are likely to live with a communications system that offers us dazzling entertainment and seeks to fulfill our every consumer desire. Yet it will not meaningfully contribute to improving our lives or our democracy. We run the risk of merely serving as observers while special interests determine America’s “digital destiny.”
...
Now they have their sights on the foremost digital prize: the Internet. A few wish to be lords of the digital domain, able to control – and greatly profit from – what should be our public communications highway. They hope to hijack what should be a public resource and treasure. They want to transform the Internet into a digital tollbooth that will send us gaming, gambling, more movies on demand, and interactive advertising. If they succeed, we will travel over a corporate-run piece of electronic real estate where we are numbered, digitally shadowed,and evaluated based on income, race, and class. All so we can be better around-the-clock consumers in virtual spaces and off-line (the real world). Media and telecommunications industry lobbyists are now using their practically unlimited power and checkbooks to have Congress, the White House, the courts, and the FCC help them transform the Internet from what a federal court termed in a landmark decision “the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed” into a system of corporate-controlled private 'pipes.' "

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/01/22/communications-at-the-crossroads