Pandora's box

Internet Radio Fairness Act fight pits Pandora & friends against traditionalbroadcasters

Traditional over-the-air broadcasters and Internet radio companies are duking itover the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
Pandora is urging its listeners to lobby Congress in support of the InternetRadio Fairness Act.

The battle for your ears has taken an interesting twist. Traditional over-the-air broadcasters and Internet radio companies are duking it out over something called the “Internet Radio Fairness Act.”

This bill, introduced in both the House and the Senate, tries to level the playing field and put the fees Internet radio pays for music at the same rate as other digital music providers. Last year, according to Pandora, it paid roughly 50 percent of its total revenue in royalties, more than six times the percentage paid by satellite radio provider Sirius-XM.

A recent radio study by Alan Burns and Associates and Triton Digital showed that radio is less strongly bonded to listeners under 35 because younger listeners want music control and fewer commercials.

"On the surface, the rates paid by Pandora and other online radio services appear onerous and in need of congressional relief,” wrote Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for BTIG. “However, the reason why companies such as Pandora pay such high royalty rates as a percentage of revenues is because they severely limit audio advertising to protect the user experience and keep people on the platform.”

So their answer is to have Pandora run more advertisements to make up for the revenue (God forbid anyone should “protect the user experience”).

Radio will point to studies showing how many people listen to them during the week, and that number is very impressive, but Internet radio also has a compelling story to tell. Pandora reported that, in September of 2012, it showed an increase of 67 percent from 687 million to 1.15 billion of listening hours during the same period last year.

Another point Greenfield raised in his report was “Why should the U.S. government allow musicians to be harmed simply to help Pandora and its investors generate enhanced returns?" It’s an interesting argument because it is the same one used by the radio industry. Many radio executives feel they should pay smaller royalties to musicians because they help promote artists and sell records. Both points of view have merit, but you can’t play both sides.

If radio were smart (and there are many smart people working in radio), they would develop new ways to advertise that continue to produce a healthy profit while enhancing, not hurting, its user experience instead of trying to thwart companies like Pandora. Product placement type ads, shorter commercial breaks and smoother insertion of advertisements could all lead to increased listening among younger demos which would result in higher revenues.

The questions is: Will anyone in radio be willing to take the chance, or will radio end up listening to Wall Street instead of Main Street?

Bill Van Rysdam is a former longtime broadcast executive in the Houston radio market.

unspecified

Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

---

Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

movies film