Is the growth of online video cannibalizing TV time? A TV viewing report from eMarketer last week reveals that 42 percent of U.S. adults believe they watch less TV now than they did two years ago, but it may not be attributable to online video because there hasn’t been a huge increase in video viewing. The latest statistics from Leichtman Research Group say four percent of U.S. adults viewed online video daily and 14 percent viewed it once a week in December 2006 compared with four percent and 11 percent in March 2006.
The report also found hesitation about watching long-form video programming on computers, with 68 percent of adults saying they would watch downloaded TV shows and movies on their TVs, but only 45 percent willing to watch them on their computers.
“TV will still likely be the dominant media device for the next several years,” eMarketer concluded, although it projects the number of online video viewers will grow from 107.7 million in 2006 to 157 million in 2010.
Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”
In accepting the award, Straughan said, “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a... Read More