Janet Stilson

Making Sense Amidst Senseless Violence

Almost exactly one week ago, one of my favorite people in the media business was murdered. He was shot repeatedly in front of his three-year-old child.

His name is Steven McIntosh, and I posted a blog about him on Jan. 28th. If you scroll down, you'll find his photo and why I find the work that he was doing on behalf of the whole television industry so important.

The account of Steve's death is disturbing even if you never met him. But part of the shock for me has to do with how deeply his death hit me, because I'd grown so fond of him in such a short span of time. How many phone conversations did we have? Maybe five. How many e-mails did we exchange? Around 20. How many times did I meet him face to face? Zero. 

So how did he do it? Why is it that my heart is so shattered when I never even spoke with the bloke until late last year -- less than six months ago?

The Child That's Got Her Own

She was a loner and buried away in such an angry universe that when she was standing right in front of me, I couldn't feel her behind those huge rabbit-brown eyes. 

I couldn't climb over her walls to tell her that it didn't matter that she was so tall, struggled with weight issues, got terrible grades, was shunned and teased, suffered from depression and an inability to focus, was kicked out of school, flew off into tirades that terrified her family.

If she'd just stop cutting herself, trying to die. Scaring her family into acts of desperation that involved countless dollars to send her clear across the country to a God-forsaken landscape and people who look up kids' butts for drugs, and shock-treat them into another way of thinking.

Ted, Rene, Stephen and Bill

Last week I had the opportunity to ask Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, about Stephen Colbert. His show, The Colbert Report, is one of the funniest programs on TV, if you ask me. She said that nothing motivated Stephen more than if you told him that something was really hard or impossible to do. That's Stephen, pictured here. (Photo credit: Scott Gries, PictureGroup)

Michele's remarks reminded me of some of the most intelligent, successful people I've ever known. They share the same traits: They're incredibly determined despite all the odds against them, and they can be really, really funny.

The Lost Advertising Windfall

What if there was $45,000 out there in the universe with your name on it, but you just weren't aware that it was there -- or figured it was too much trouble to get? What if there was $45 million just waiting for you, or some of your rivals? How about $45 billion -- during a really, really tough economic period?

That last figure is an estimate concerning the amount of revenue that advertisers leave on the table every year, either out of ignorance or because they can't be bothered, according to Steve McIntosh (pictured here), who is vice president and general manager of the Belo Advertising Customer Service. That's a unit within Belo Corp., which owns 20 TV stations in the U.S.

The estimate relates to something known as coop advertising, and it encompasses advertising on all forms of media, not just TV.

Steve is on a mission to make the process of getting at those dollars a whole lot easier for advertisers as well as the TV stations where they run commercials.

Defying Journalism's Realities

It's enough to give give a journalist whiplash -- finding out that there's actually a news organization that's hiring reporters in droves, rather than laying them off en masse. It runs counter to the general trend that most news services have faced over the last several years.

So it was a particular pleasure for me to write an article about Allbritton Communications' raging success, Politico, which is both a newspaper and an online news source dedicated to providing Washington, DC insiders with the very latest news about their various interests. That's Politico's bustling newsroom in the image above.

The Fly -- Or How Benevolent Brainwashing Backfired on Me

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the power of repetition and what an important part it plays in the human experience. The old adage "practice makes perfect" certainly has enormous relevance for me (even though I never get to the "perfect" aspect).

But recently, something happened to me that made me realize the unfortunate consequences of repetition. It's taken me round a personal "wheel of fortune" that started out in a mindset of love and well being to one of mass murder and fright before I managed to swing round to a more peaceful existence again.

The Alchemy of Adaptations

Adapting content for the screen has been a topic that has intrigued me for years -- most especially because I adapted a short story into a film a few years ago and found it a very rich experience. But lately, it's risen to the surface because this last week I moderated a panel session on the topic organized by New York Women in Film & Television. And I also saw the Coen Brothers' rendering of True Grit, which is a very entertaining and artful road movie.

It's very common, when I speak with film producers, to learn that they're most interested in working on adaptations. And in fact, one of the panelists at the session this last week, Marsha Norman, said that she owes much of her career's success to work involving adaptations.

Marsha may be best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning play 'night Mother, but her adaptations include a movie version of that play, the book for the musical The Color Purple, the HBO series In Treatment (reformulated from an Israeli series), the musical adaptation of The Secret Garden (which won her a Tony) and the upcoming theater rendering of The Bridges of Madison County.

Advertising's Growing 'Community' Agenda

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Maria Luisa Francoli, CEO of the media-buying ad agency Havas Media North America, and CEO of Havas' MPG Global buying unit. That's her, pictured at left.

I heard Francoli speak at a recent MPG Collaborative Alliance session during Advertising Week, hosted as always by the witty Mitch Oscar. And that prompted me to pitch a Q&A story featuring her thoughts to TVNewsCheck. They snapped it up.

Like Francoli herself, Havas and MPG have roots in Spain, but they are giant multinational ventures. Havas Media North America spent $2.7 billion on ad placements in 2009 alone,

Musings on Muses

In the last two days, I've had some separate experiences that are remarkably connected. They all relate to what it's like to be a woman in the film and television industries.

Among them, I've been most deeply affected by New York Women in Film & Television's annual Muse Awards gala, which took place yesterday at the Hilton Hotel in New York. I headed the committee that produced the event, and all our many hours of work over the last five months ended with such a bonfire of inspiring words and stories. It was worth every second of my time.

The day before, Helen Mirren gave a very witty speech at The Hollywood Reporter's annual Women in Entertainment breakfast, in which she derided filmmakers who "worship at the altar of the 18 to 25 year old male and his penis."

And today, I found time to read a blog posting by MediaPost's David Goetzl, in which he suggested that it might be time to do away with entertainment industry power rankings of women.

The Art of Romance

I've been thinking a lot about love lately. Specifically, what you find up on screen in a dark movie house filled with a lot of popcorn munching.

Love is so primal. And yet many movies released in recent years don't seem to make the romance between characters completely believable. For me, it's like being cheated out of an emotional high. And as someone who's written romantic films, it's something I take very seriously.

So when I went to a screening recently of Love & Other Drugs, featuring Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, I was surprised by the credibility of the romance at the heart of the story.

It didn't hurt that this is a very sexy film, and the chemistry between the co-stars was remarkable. (No wonder that the director and co-writer, Edward Zwick, told The New York Times that he had his co-stars watch Last Tango in Paris as part of their preparation.)