Project status meetings

I never hold meetings just to update project status. It's a horrible use of stakeholders’ time, and stakeholders are right to despise such meetings.
I gather task statuses from people via email, face-to-face conversations, phone calls, etc. before I meet with my team. I analyze the information submitted, then I send an email to the participants summarizing any significant information gleaned from the status updates. This enables everyone to walk into the meeting prepared to discuss important matters, instead of wasting time listening to people provide their statuses. It takes more effort on my part to do this, but it makes for much more productive meetings, and I show stakeholders that I respect their valuable time, which makes them much more likely to meet with me.

I think team tasks status could be easily captured through some tool like JIRA or daily stand up calls.
Then prepare a status update sheet/report for management and present them. In this meeting, team involvement is not mandatory.

Updating project/ task status is an ongoing activity. I'm guessing in your team each task/ activity has someone who is responsible for updating the status (do you have a RACI matrix built?). I find using traffic light indicators useful, so in the meeting only look at the reds.

Ensure that the communication plan allows for the appropriate amount of status updates, and reduce the need for these meetings.

Status update meetings can get boring and consumes a lot of productive time, if everything is a news for attendees. Status of project should be updated and communicated to stakeholders as per their requirements and do get feedback on these updates. This will ensure a precise and crisp agenda of meeting (if at all it is still required).

I hold a conference calls 3x weekly for 1hr (normally lasts 30mins) to discuss project status and get updates. I think compiled data and forward on as necessary

Have the status continously visible in the project team room and have regular update on it by the team. In consequence, no need to discuss status in meetings. It is better to use the time to discuss risk mitigation actions and improvement needs with focus on agreed/ delivered results.

My point of view there should be prior agenda and fixed schedule for such meetings and if every one restrict to only agenda then there will no wastage of time. It is duty of person conducting the meeting to control the progress of meeting so that it should not off track.