English Entertainment
Fox under pressure to drop adoption show
MUMBAI: The Rupert Murdoch owned US broadcaster Fox is under pressure to abandon a scheduled adoption game showWho’s Your Daddy?
Thousands of people have protested at the programme in which children try to identify their father for a £50,000 prize.
A report in The Guardian states that the mother of a five-year-old adopted daughter has led the grassroots campaign that prompted 5,000 people to complain to the network that the programme is insensitive and offensive.
As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com the show will air on 3 January 2005 on Fox.
Deborah Capone, who led the campaign, has asked for a meeting with Fox and for the show to be axed. She is urging Fox affiliate networks not to take the programme.
Before the controversy erupted Fox’s head of reality, Mike Darnell had praised the programme in the publication Variety. “It’s the most emotional show we’ve ever put on the air. I guarantee you, if you have any heart, you’ll be bawling at the end of the show, When a contestant ends up eliminating her real father she feels terrible”.
In a strongly worded letter to Fox president Peter Chernin, Families With Children From China president David Youtz said, “This is a new low for the Fox network. It is hard to imagine a more callous kind of exploitation than the treatment of this most private moment as a crude entertainment. The circuslike atmosphere of televised reunions can only be painful for the many adopted persons searching or considering searching for birth parents.”
Fox executives in Los Angeles this week issued a statement saying, “It is not the producers’ or network’s intention to offend anyone, but clearly the title of this special is attention-grabbing — possibly contributing to controversy. It is not indicative, however, of the special’s actual content. The willing and informed participants are some of the tens of millions of adopted Americans unable to reunite with their biological parent. They seized the opportunity to participate, and the result is compelling.
“It is also important to note that this special, in no way, detracts from the relationship between adoptive parents and their children. In fact, most participants clearly state that they consider their adoptive parents to be their ‘real parents,’ but they are curious about their family of origin.”
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
