VIDEOAGE"PAPER CLIPS": A WEEKLY PRESS REVIEW

PROGRAMMING
Actor Bob Hoskins has joined the cast of CBC-TV's adaptation of The Englishman's Boy based on Guy Vanderhaeghe's award-winning novel of the same name. The two-part, four-hour miniseries, is being shot in Saskatchewan until mid-October. Hoskins will play a Hollywood mogul who hires a Canadian writer.
The Globe & Mail

In her first interview since her husband's untimely death, Terri Irwin, wife of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, told the ABC network's 20/20 that video footage that captured her husband's death won't ever air on broadcast television. The segment featuring the interview will air Wednesday night, September 27. Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray on September 4 while filming a documentary near Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
E! Online

ABC's Desperate Housewives, a critical darling in its premiere year, and critically lambasted in its second season, seems to be coming back strong with its revamped third season. The series' Sunday airing -- which faced off against NBC's Sunday Night Football and lived to tell the tale -- was watched by an estimated 23.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Only 15.6 million tuned in to watch the football match, so maybe the women can finally afford to be a little less desperate.
E! Online

CONTROVERSY
Joe Francis, creator of the boob-tastic Girls Gone Wild series pled guilty to two felony charges of failing to document and maintain records of the ages and identities of the young women featured in his videos. Several of the ladies baring their assets turned out to be minors. Francis will personally pay $500,000 in fines, and his Santa Monica-based Mantra Films, and a related company, MRA Holdings, must shell out an additional $1.6 million in penalties. Francis won't have to serve any time in the big house -- a place where he too might have had to show some skin.
E! Online

Fresh out of rehab, hate-spewing Mel Gibson was spotted in Oklahoma and Texas fielding questions about his new movie, the all-Mayan all the time Apocalypto. Speaking before members of the Comanche Nation at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, Gibson donned a wig and sunglasses allegedly to keep from drawing a crowd... or to try and hide from his own shame.
E! Online

BUSINESS
Poland-based Capital Partners will soon take over 30 percent of Superstacja, a company preparing to launch a TV channel in the next few months. Superstacja, which will be a specialized channel similar to TVN 24, will be free of charge to consumers, and is expected to show a profit by 2008. Once this occurs, Capital Partners will sell off the company's shares on the stock exchange in order to raise money for further development.
Warsaw Business Journal

The newly announced terrestrial digital TV standard will help make digital TV a 500 billion yuan ($62.5 billion U.S. dollars) business in China in 2015. According to the China digital TV industry association, in five years there will be 230 million digital TV users in China, with a yearly increase of 70 percent. TV set manufacturers believe that the 2008 Beijing Olympics will whet viewers' appetites for digital TV and be a boon to the industry.
Xinhua

PIRACY
With the Motion Picture Association of America estimating that piracy of newly released films involves in-theater camcorders 90 percent of the time, a counteroffensive is finally being launched. In a few years, experts hope to create a gadget that will seek out the optical signatures of bootleggers' cameras, then fire narrow beams of light into the lenses, blinding the cameras and saving Hollywood millions.
Technology Review

FILM FESTIVALS
The powers that be at Edmonton's Global Visions Film Festival, Canada's oldest documentary festival, are scrambling to find money for the event after city councilors refused their request for emergency funding. They had asked for C$25,000 from the city to make up for the loss they experienced in July when the Canada Council denied their proposal for a C$20,000 project grant. They also received C$10,000 less than they had hoped for from the Edmonton Arts Council. The festival, scheduled for November 2-6, attracted 4,000 viewers in 2005.
Edmonton Journal News

For the Asia TV Forum, VideoAge is preparing an essential editorial vehicle for all companies participating in this important market in Singapore.
Some of VideoAge's focuses will be:

· The challenges in Asia for Latin companies
· Company profile of the Singapore-based 6-6-8

In addition, the issue will:
-Preview the upcoming NATPE trade show and
-Explore the opportunities that Digital Multimedia Broadcasting will be offering to broadcasters the world over.

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