Published March 17, 2010

Type the word “student” into Google, and the first option that comes up in the 10-deep list of autocomplete suggestions is “student loans.” Third down is “student loan consolidation.” Keep going and you’ll pass “student loan forgiveness,” “student loan calculator,” “student loans without cosigner,” and something called “studentloan.com” before you hit bottom. For the Internet age’s first generation of college graduates, the words “student” and “loan” have become nearly inseparable. In 1996, according to a U.S. Department of Education study, 58 percent of U.S. students graduated with debt, and those debt holders owed an average of $13,200. By 2008, the percentage of grads in the red had climbed to 66 percent and their average debt to $23,200. But the cost, according to Edie Irons, spokeswoman for the Project on Student Debt, extends even beyond those numbers. (more…)

Published March 10, 2010

“Hollywood East” isn’t the most imaginative nickname that Massachusetts’ burgeoning film and television industry could have been tagged with, but the Bay State media have made it stick. And goofily optimistic though the title may be, Massachusetts has worked hard for it. In 2005, under Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, the commonwealth was part of the first wave of states to institute film and television production tax credits. Romney’s Democratic successor, Gov. Deval Patrick, expanded the credits two years later. The program now offers a 25 percent tax credit on all in-state spending—more generous than nearby New York, which offers a 30 percent credit only on below-the-line costs, but less generous than competing states such as Michigan, which offers a 40 percent credit. (more…)

Published Feb. 24, 2010

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will hold its monthly national board meeting Feb. 27. There, a subcommittee created last month is expected to recommend whether AFTRA should re-enter joint bargaining with the Screen Actors Guild on its prime-time television contract. AFTRA broke away from joint bargaining in 2008, when Alan Rosenberg, a vocal critic of AFTRA, was president of SAG. But since then, changes in SAG’s leadership have reopened the door to closer cooperation between the two unions. Ken Howard, who was elected SAG president last year on a platform that promoted the eventual merger of SAG and AFTRA, told Back Stage in January that a return to joint bargaining “will be a huge step toward mending a lot of fences.” (more…)

Published Feb. 17, 2010

The National Endowment for the Arts’ wealthiest days came courtesy of a Republican president and a Democratic Congress. For the 1992 fiscal year, Congress and President George H.W. Bush allotted $176 million to the agency—pocket change by federal budget standards, but still the largest haul the NEA has ever enjoyed. A few years later, Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich would declare war on the organization, succeeding in having its budget slashed from $162.3 million in 1995 to $99.5 million in 1996, and very nearly killing the agency altogether. (more…)

Published Jan. 28, 2010

Mark Zimmerman and John Connolly spent the last few years carrying on the work of their late friend Patrick Quinn. When Quinn stepped down as president of Actors’ Equity Association in 2006 to become executive director of the union, Zimmerman, then Equity’s 1st vice president, stepped into the vacated position. After Quinn died of a heart attack that year before he could assume his new role, Zimmerman helped recruit Connolly, a former president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, to take the directorship. Quinn, Zimmerman, and Connolly had been close, going back to their days as young actors on the Philadelphia stage. For a grieving organization, it felt appropriate to place Quinn’s legacy in the hands of his trusted friends. (more…)

Published Jan. 21, 2010

“I think viewers are going to be happy to see this lineup of great new shows that will truly fit the NBC legacy of quality, culturally defining shows.” (more…)

Published Dec. 16, 2009

When CBS announced Dec. 8 that it was canceling the 54-year-old soap opera “As the World Turns,” the news was less surprising than spotting Meryl Streep in a “For your consideration” ad. Eye Network president Nina Tassler had cast doubt on the show’s future at the August upfronts, when she told the New York Post that the program was “having ratings challenges” and that its health was being closely watched. A month later, the final episode of another CBS daytime stalwart, “Guiding Light,” then the longest-running scripted program on television, aired. (more…)

Published Dec. 2, 2009

Robert Iger has been busy. On the last day of August, the Walt Disney Co.’s president and CEO announced Disney’s intent to buy Marvel Entertainment—makers of comic books and Robert Downey Jr. films—for $4 billion. Just more than a month later, Iger replaced Walt Disney Studios chief Dick Cook with a TV executive, Disney Channels Worldwide president Rich Ross. But the most eyebrow-raising Disney news came Nov. 4, when the company announced that it had gained approval from the Chinese government in Beijing to build a new theme park in Shanghai. (more…)

Published Nov. 18, 2009

From 2006 to 2008, the Better Business Bureau received approximately 1,000 complaints and 143,000 inquiries related to acting and modeling scams in Southern California. And the frequency of such schemes—usually targeting child performers and their families, often costing the victims thousands of dollars—has been growing. From January to October of this year, the bureau fielded 78,055 inquiries and 544 complaints. Often the stories find their way to Mark Lambert’s desk. (more…)

Published Nov. 5, 2009

In September, the research firm Audit Integrity released a study identifying the 20 publicly traded U.S. companies valued at more than $1 billion that were at greatest risk to declare bankruptcy in the next 12 months. The list read like a hall-of-fame roster for American corporations, including Goodyear, Macy’s, Sprint Nextel, Hertz, and so on. But the most iconic name on the list may have been one of the least surprising: the CBS Corp. (more…)