Comments on: Don't Do It, Robert Redford!

By: manny

manny — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:36:37 +0000

Sundance channel has sucked for years now. It reflects the festival itself well in that way.
Selling to someone can’t hurt the channel anymore than it’s hurt itself.

By: Kay McCann

Kay McCann — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:02:20 +0000

I live in metro Phoenix and have Cox cable. To my surprise, I woke up and found that there was no Bloomberg channel. When I called they told me nothing of any consequence, just that it was not being carried anymore. So I asked what tier bloomberg news was in - the sports tier - and I said cancel that since I don’t watch any of the 14 other channels I had to buy to get the 1 channel I wanted.

Now, IFC (non-commercial and tiered option) along with my AMC (on basic cable that does have commercials) are going to be sold.

Can anyone tell me why I can’t sign up with these companies and just check off the channels I want instead of ‘packaging’ that occurs? With technology where it is today, it should be easier then ordering a pizza online with specific toppings.

And one last comment: GE’s CEO came out and said NO NO NO they were not selling NBC/Universal, but I guess nobody asked him if he was shopping the 55% they own of Sundance.

TimeWarner would be good but so would MGM since they don’t have a channel to run their programs and instead have to find outlets for their programs.

Its nuts.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:20:12 +0000

What crap. Redford is a huge hypocrite, from the way he pretends not to have any responsibility for Sundance turning into a B-list celebrity freak show, or any of the environmental damage (all those Harvey Weinstein private jets,) to deciding to program the feed from the late Air America at 11:00pm on the Sundance channel. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more sensible to program movies? From the absurd Lions for Lambs to this, he’s become somebody who’s bought into his own myth.

By: dealingwithanutcase

dealingwithanutcase — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:16:39 +0000

He sold out Sundance film festival along time ago. More like hollywood gone north. To many big names not enough of people who actually need the exposure

By: Furious D

Furious D — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:36:50 +0000

I would suggest selling the channel to a consortium of independent film producers and distributors, but I don’t think there are that many left who haven’t gone belly-up or been absorbed into some bloated media conglomerate, never to be seen again.

Which is a shame, and a problem, because the big media companies own dozens, if not hundreds of channels and other outlets, and there’s a serious and growing drought of content. The drought is because there is only so much original content a single company can make, no matter how big they are.

And I think the Sundance brand lost a lot of “indie” street-cred when Paris Hilton started attending the festival.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:02:18 +0000

If Redford only has 10% of the stock, then the decision to sell or not is clearly outside his control. Imploring him not to do it seems pointless.