Nikki Finke

The Congress, the FCC, the courts should all take note: Right now, Big Media’s 24/7 propagandist radio broadcasters are perverting the natural course of a California election. The result is, with a month to go, they’ve already called the recall. Disney’s Los Angeles and San Francisco Web sites have a......

Illustration by Robbie Conal Once upon a time, Hollywood was the most influential force in shaping people’s attitudes about hot-button issues. Think Gentleman’s Agreement (religion), The Man With the Golden Arm (drugs), The Defiant Ones (race), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (sex). Politics came a distant second. Now,......

Gloria Allred, California’s most high-profile defender of women’s rights, is demanding that Arnold Schwarzenegger answer the “very serious questions” raised by his lurid 1977 boasting that he participated in a gang bang at Gold’s Gym in Venice. In an interview with the L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles lawyer and feminist......

Mike Farrell was first approached seriously about running for high political office in California nearly two decades ago. But the actor who played Captain B.J. Hunnicut on M*A*S*H and who now promotes public-policy causes turned down the consortium eager to back his candidacy for governor or U.S. senator because it......

ICM’s Wednesday motion-picture meeting was convulsed with laughter. It was the mid-1970s, and agent Lou Pitt had just proudly announced to colleagues his signing of “Hercules.” Yes, that near-naked weirdo from Pumping Iron. The bit player in The Long Goodbye. The actor who had caught the eye of young CAA......

We are reporting from the front. The signs of war are everywhere. Standard-issue Hummers, especially the new H2 model in Sunset Orange Metallic, hurtle down Wilshire. Valentino-designed army fatigues, including khaki and camouflage tracksuits with elastic cuffs, are all the rage on Rodeo. Communications are erratic: That Motorola T722i cell......

Comcast Corp., the country’s No. 1 cable operator, has officially expressed interest in acquiring Vivendi Universal, the L.A. Weekly learned today. So add the name of Comcast’s Brian Roberts to the shortlist of media moguls — MGM’s Kirk Kirkorian, Liberty Media’s John Malone, NBC’s Bob Wright, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, former......

“Hello, Bill Keller here. My cell phone is acting up. Hello?” Okay, so it’s rather curious that the just-named executive editor of The New York Times is taking time out from the hoopla over his appointment, and the rescue of that institution, to discuss Hollywood coverage under his soon-to-be leadership......

Imagine a movie advertised as a thriller but lacking suspense, with a plot where the bumbling heroes reward the big bad villains in the end. Little wonder that the script for the FCC’s coming attraction this summer — that June 2 meeting certain to relax longstanding ownership restrictions on Big......

The New York Times is asking, “Why?” Hollywood is asking, “Why not?”   As is usual with this kind of in-the-news scandal, you can bet that the Hollywood suits are collectively scratching their hair plugs as they stand on their office porches overlooking the tobacco fields and cattle pastures and......