Two Cents
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/1/2004
"It was one in a long list of people who thought I had no talent. They're not unique in that observation."
Today host Katie Couric, recalling how a news director in Chicago in the 1980s rejected her job application, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.
"It's completely inappropriate and unprecedented for a broadcast company to shift the burden of complying with FCC regulations onto the backs of its employees. … What's truly indecent about this situation is how big media is trying to absolve itself of complying with FCC regulations by making its employees pay fines that are only levied because of management's programming decisions."
Statement from the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists opposing proposals by some broadcasters to make radio disc jockeys pay for indecency fines.
"The insects we eat are tested by an entomologist who tells us about different toxin levels that might be in the bugs. Two months of research goes into putting one of these stunts together. … We have a couple of brave souls in the office who will test them for us. We pay them $100 to do the things that our contestants will be doing for $50,000."
Fear Factor associate producer Jason Henry explaining the gross feature of the series, as quoted in the Los Angeles Daily News.
"It's an exodus without precedent—three programs with high ratings and widespread critical acclaim, disappearing not because their networks canceled them but because their producers and casts simply decided it was time to move on."
Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin, on the finales of Sex and the City, Frasier, and Friends.
