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MEDIA OF NEW YORK CITY
The media of New York City is internationally influential, with some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, most prolific television studios, and biggest record companies in the world. New York is the largest hub of media production in the United States and is also the nation's largest media market. It is a major global center for the television, music, newspaper and book publishing industries.
Three of the Big Four music recording companies have their headquarters in the city. One-third of all independent films in the United States are produced in New York and more than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city. The book publishing industry alone employs 13,000 people. With nearly seven percent of the nation's television-viewing households, it is the nation's single largest media market. For these reasons, New York is often called "the media capital of the world."[1]
Newspapers
The ongoing decline of newspaper reading in the United States has left even most big American cities with a single daily. New York City is an exception; it is home to four of the 10 largest papers in the United States. These include The New York Times (circulation 1.1 million), The New York Daily News (circulation 795,000), and The New York Post (circulation 650,000), founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.
The Wall Street Journal (circulation 2.1 million) is the city's (and arguably the nation's) business paper and the first or second most-read newspaper in the nation, depending on measurement method. El Diario La Prensa (circulation 265,000) is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[2] There are also several borough-specific newspapers, such as The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and The Staten Island Advance.
The city's ethnic press is large and diverse. Major ethnic publications include the Brooklyn-Queens Catholic paper The Tablet and Jewish-American newspaper The Forward (פֿאָרװערטס; Forverts), published in Yiddish, English and Russian, and the African-American newspaper Amsterdam News. There are seven dailies published in Chinese and four in Spanish. Multiple daily papers are published in Greek, Polish, and Korean, and weekly newspapers serve dozens of different ethnic communities, with ten separate newspapers focusing on the African-American community alone.[3] Many nationally-distributed ethnic newspapers are based out of offices in Astoria, Chinatown or Brooklyn. Over 60 ethnic groups, writing in 42 languages, publish some 300 non-English language magazines and newspapers in New York City.[4]
Ethnic variation is not the only measure of the diversity of New York City's newspapers, with editorial opinions running from left-leaning at alternative papers like the Village Voice and the New York Press to the conservative daily New York Sun. The New York Observer covers politics and the city's rich and powerful with unusual depth. The tradition of a free press owes much to John Peter Zenger, a New York publisher who was acquitted in his 1735 landmark court case, setting the precedent that truth was a legitimate defense against accusations of libel.
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Magazines
The New Yorker magazine publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction.
The city has a long history in American magazine publishing. The 19th Century was rife with popular titles: Harper's Weekly launched in 1857 claiming to be "A Journal of Civilization" to readers; St. Nicholas Magazine, a pioneering children's publication; and Collier's Weekly, which counted Upton Sinclair and Ernest Hemingway as contributors. New York Magazine, founded in 1968 by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker, was one of the first "lifestyle" magazines and aspires to compete with The New Yorker.
Today more than 350 magazines have their editorial offices based in the city. New York is home to the corporate headquarters of publishing giants:
Other national leaders are Rolling Stone published by Wenner Media and Newsweek, owned by the Washington Post Company but edited in Manhattan.
- See also: List of New York City newspapers and magazines
Literature and book publishing
The book publishing industry in the United States is based in New York. Publishing houses in the city range from industry giants such as HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster to small niche houses like Soft Skull Press. New York has also been the setting for countless works of literature, many of them produced by the city’s large population of writers (including Paul Auster, Don Delillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Lethem, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag, and many others). The New York City metro area, home to the largest number of Jews outside Israel, has also been a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.
New York is also home to PEN American Center, the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. PEN American Center plays an important role in New York's literary community and is active in defending free speech, the promotion of literature, and the fostering of international literary fellowship. Author Salman Rushdie is its current president.
Some of the most important literary journals in the United States are in New York. These include The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, n+1, and New York Quarterly. Other New York literary publications include Circumference, Open City, The Manhattan Review, Fence, and Telos. New York is also home to the US offices of Granta.
- See also: List of books set in New York City
Radio
New York City has a tradition as an important place in radio broadcasting. Edward R. Murrow defined American broadcast journalism with his World War II reporting from Europe relayed back to CBS in New York and onward to the rest of the nation.
Broadcast news, all news all the time
The all news format was the subject of Newsradio starring the late Phil Hartman and New York has two such AM stations: WCBS and WINS. WCBS was an all news station before acquiring the live broadcast rights to the New York Yankees baseball games while WINS still has a 24 hour news format.
Public radio, WFUV and WNYC
WNYC, New York's flagship public radio station, is the most listened to public radio station in the United States and produces several news and cultural programs for national syndication. WFMU, along with KCRW in Los Angeles, is considered by music industry insiders to be one of the most influential open-format indie radio stations in the country. WBAI in Manhattan, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States. Fordham University's WFUV and Columbia University's radio station, WKCR, are also important non-commercial stations in the city.
Entertainment radio
Music
WQHT, also known as "Hot 97", is an influential high-profile commercial radio station that is arguably the nation's premier hip-hop station. Doctor Dre and Ed Lover were morning hosts at the station in the 1990s. Radio in New York City is diverse and varied; the highest-rated Spanish language radio show in the United States is the morning radio program El Vacilón de la Mañana, broadcast on WSKQ and hosted by Luis Jimenez.
Talk radio
The first New York City radio station to feature a phone-in talk format was WNBC in the late 1960s, (with Long John Nebel in the early morning hours) but the format began in earnest in New York in 1970, when WMCA radio dropped its "Good Guys" top-40 radio format in favor of the "Dial-Log Radio" slate of call-in shows. In addition to mainstay Barry Gray, the format featured such prominent talkers as Alex Bennett, Long John Nebel and Bob Grant.
Talk was also a heavy component of general-interest station WOR, home to the long-running "Rambling With Gambling" morning show hosted across three generations by John B., John A., and John R. Gambling. Both Grey and Grant ended their careers at WOR. Eventually, both WMCA and WOR were been surpassed by 50,000-watt powerhouse WABC when it changed from all music on May 10, 1982, to talk. Though it began with a moribund "Talkradio" format delivered via satellite from KABC Los Angeles, the station came into its own after it lured Grant away from WABC and hired such humorous talent as Alan Colmes and Lynn Samuels. The station also became the flagship station for nationally syndicated conservative powerhouse Rush Limbaugh, who in the Reagan years produced highly funny pieces which satirized liberal holy cows like civil-rights advocate Jesse Jackson and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
In the past 2 years liberals have begun to shift the balance of political talk with the liberal network Air America Network with stars Al Franken a comedian, Jeanane Garofalo an actress, and Randi Rhodes a true radio professional, to do political talk. Al's success is not surprising because Rush showed humor is popular, not deep political discourse with thorough the political depth. Air America's other shows are less popoular because they fail to take advantage of the shallowness of popular taste and can only hope for a small number of deeply believing converts. The exception is Rany Rhodes whose show also has highly produced humor bits just like Limbaugh used to do.
Now the talk spectrum runs from liberals like the Air America station WLIB and WBAI Pacifica to conservative WABC with the aforementioned king of conservatives Limbaugh to lesser WABS talent like Laura Ingrahman, Monica Novotny, and Sean Hannity.
Beyond political and sports talk lies the "shock jock" morning drive shows. Opie and Anthony are at the forefront of this, having returned to terrestrial radio on WNYW-FM's FreeFM format, after being on XM Satellite Radio exclusively for two years. The city is also home to popular talk shows such as Don Imus, famous for his controversial statements and morning satire, Elivs Duran and the Z Morning Zoo on Z-100, the "morning zoo" crew of NYC, and was the home for Howard Stern until his move off terrestrial radio and onto Sirius Satellite Radio.
Television
- See also: List of television shows set in New York City
Roughly 100,000 New Yorkers are employed in the film and television industry, which contributes about $5 billion to the city's economy annually. New York City is the home of the three traditional major American television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. It is also the headquarters of several large cable television channels, including MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. Silvercup Studios was the production facility for the popular television shows Sex and the City and The Sopranos. MTV broadcasts programming from its sound stage overlooking Times Square, several blocks away from the theater housing The Late Show with David Letterman. Saturday Night Live is broadcast from NBC's studios at Rockefeller Center, where The Today Show is also taped. BET is headquartered on 57th Street. The Daily Show is produced by Comedy Central on 54th Street. Over a thousand people are involved with producing the various Law & Order television series. In 2005 there were more than 100 new and returning television shows taped in New York City, according to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting.
Normal broadcast
The traditional bif three network affiliates are channel 2 for CBS, 4 for NBC and 7 for ABC. In the past there was the Dumont network. But now the WB network has channel 11 and UPN has channel 9. UPN and WB have announced a merger. Channel 5 is the Fox network affiliate.
PBS
The City of New York also has an official television station, run by the NYC Media Group. WNET, New York's largest public television station, is a primary national provider of PBS programming. The oldest public access channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, well known for its eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming. There are eight other public access channels in New York, including Brooklyn Cable Access Television.
Local cable news
Another notable channel in the city is NY1, Time Warner Cable's first local news channel, known for its beat coverage of outerborough neighborhoods. Its coverage of City Hall and state politics is closely watched by political insiders.
Film
New York's film industry is much smaller than that of Hollywood, but its billions of dollars in revenue makes it an important part of the city's economy and places it as the second largest center for the film industry in the United States.[5] It is also a growth sector; according to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting New York City attracted over 250 independent and studio films in 2005, an increase from 202 in 2004 and 180 in 2003. More than a third of the actors in the United States are based in New York.[6]
In the earliest days of the American film industry, New York was the epicenter of filmmaking. However, the better year-round weather of Hollywood made it a better choice for shooting. The Kaufman-Astoria film studio in Queens, built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields. It has also been the set for The Cosby Show and Sesame Street. The recently constructed Steiner Studios is a 15 acre (61,000 m²) modern movie studio complex in a former shipyard where The Producers and The Inside Man, a Spike Lee movie, were filmed.
Silvercup Studios revealed plans in February 2006 for a new $1 billion complex with eight soundstages, production and studio support space, offices for media and entertainment companies, stores, 1,000 apartments in high-rise towers, a catering hall and a cultural institution. The project is invisioned as a "veritical Hollywood" designed by Lord Richard Rogers, the architect of the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Millennium Dome in London. It is to be built at the edge of the East River in Queens and will be the largest production house on the East Coast. Steiner Studios in Brooklyn would still have the largest single soundstage, however. Kaufman Studios plans its own expansion in 2007.
Miramax Films, a Big Ten film studio, is the largest motion picture distribution and production company headquartered in the city. Many smaller independent producers and distributors are also in New York.
See also
Music
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In the 1930's New York-based RCA was the nation's largest manufacturer of phonographs. In the late 19th and early 20th century, most sheet music in the United States — especially the popular songs of the day, many now standards — was printed at Tin Pan Alley, so called because the constant sound of new songs being tried out on pianos in the publishing houses was said to sound like a tin pan. By the early 1960's the radio and musical stars of the Golden Age of Broadway gave way to the Brill Building's "Brill Sound."
In the 1980's, hip hop labels including Def Jam, Roc-A-Fella, and Bad Boy Records were founded in New York, creating what is known as East Coast hip hop. These labels continue to be among the largest hip-hop labels in the world. Two of the "Big Four" music labels, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, also have their world headquarters in New York.
Many major music magazines are headquartered in the city as well, including Blender Magazine, Punk Magazine, Spin and Rolling Stone .[7]
Portrayals of New York in the media
Taxi Driver used the disorder of the city as a backdrop to the turbulence of the 1960s.
Because of its sheer size and cultural influence, New York has been the subject of many different, and often contradictory, portrayals in mass media. From the sophisticated and worldly metropolis seen in many Woody Allen films, to the hellish and chaotic urban jungle depicted in such movies as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, New York has served as the unwitting backdrop for virtually every conceivable viewpoint on big city life.
In the early years of film New York City was characterized as urbane and sophisticated. By the city's crisis period in the 1970s, however, films like Midnight Cowboy, The French Connection, and Death Wish showed New York as full of chaos and violence. With the city's renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s came new portrayals on television; Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City showed life in the city to be glamorous and interesting. Nonetheless a disproportionate number of crime dramas, such as Law & Order, continue to use the city as their setting despite New York's status as the safest large city in the United States after plummeting crime rates over many years.
An essay appearing in the Arts section of the New York Times in April 2006 quoted several filmmakers, including Sidney Lumet and Paul Mazursky, describing how modern cinema shows the city as far more "teeming, terrifying, exhilarating, unforgiving" than contemporary New York actually is, and the consequential challenge this poses for filmmakers.[8] The article quotes Robert Greenhut, Woody Allen's producer, as saying that despite the increased sanitization of modern New York, "New Yorkers' personalities are different to Chicago. There's a certain kind of vibrancy and tone that you can't get elsewhere. The labor pool is more interesting than elsewhere — the salesgirl with one line, or the cop. That's who directors are looking for."
James Sanders, editor of Scenes From the City: Filmmaking in New York, 1966-2006, is quoted in the article as predicting that future films in New York City will move away from the well-worn setting of upper-middle class Manhattan neighborhoods to the outer boroughs, where they will begin examining the crosscurrents emanating from ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
See also
References
- ^ The State of New York. See The Governors Island Preservation & Education Corporation Request for Expressions of Interest 2005.[1]
- ^ "Editor & Publisher International Year Book 2004." Found at infoplease.com.[2]
- ^ "New York City's Ethnic Press." Gotham Gazette.[3]
- ^ Independent Press Association of New York.[4]
- ^ Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting.[5]
- ^ "Creative New York." Center for an Urban Future Dec. 2005.[6]
- ^ Has the Music Scene Died in New York?. Gotham Gazette. Retrieved on September 7, 2005.
- ^ "New York City as Film Set: From Mean Streets to Clean Streets." The New York Times 30 Apr 2006.[7]
External links
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