A Univision spokesman said Wednesday that customers in 37 markets, including New York and Los Angeles, home to large Hispanic communities, have lost access to Univision, the most popular Spanish-language network.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Fakes Are A Huge Problem In The Art World. The Trouble Is…
At the annual art-crime symposium held in November at New York University, participants agreed that the culprit was the market’s notorious secrecy. But discussions revealed deep divisions about what should be done. Insurers, auction houses, dealers and other players each have their own interests to protect in a market where, as one participant remarked, the “level of greed… is so great”.
Culture-Maker Facebook Now Has 1.8 Billion Users, Made $10 Billion In 2016
“Equally impressive are Facebook’s usage numbers: The social network attracted 1.23 billion daily active users in December on average, including 1.15 billion mobile daily actives, with the latter being up 23% year-over-year. And 1.74 billion of Facebook’s 1.86 billion monthly active users were on mobile devices for at least some of their visits.”
Two Syrian Refugee Children Who Play In The San Diego Youth Symphony Talk About Music And Life In America
“Carla Chehadeh, 17, remembers a teacher at her school who was shot and killed in an attack and Christine Chehadeh, 12, recalls huddling in a hallway during a large bomb blast. While they lived in Damascus, the sisters took cello and violin lessons, in part because their parents always regretted never learning themselves.”
For The First Time Since 2008 Book Seller Waterstone’s Makes A Profit
“The bookseller made a £9.8m pretax profit in the year to 30 April 2016. The previous year is made a £4.5m loss. Bought from HMV by the Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut in 2011 for £53m, Waterstones has shrugged off the rise of ebooks and Amazon to record a 4.3% increase in sales to £409m. Sales growth has continued in the past year, with a 4.7% rise over Christmas.”
Clamp Down On Copyright? This Is Dangerous Complicated Stuff
“First, in the era of popular services like Netflix and Spotify, it ignores that music industry revenues in 2015 saw “the biggest increases in the past two decades,” while the film industry has reported record-breaking earnings—all while piracy is at an all-time low. Second, it ignores the significant promotional benefits creators receive from hosting their work on free, ad-based platforms, and the ample evidence that more restrictive copyright law does not mean less piracy. And third, claiming stronger rules will “reward creativity” is highly dubious in a world where copyright is used to silence critics, prevent sports fans from filming a match, take downa video of a child dancing to Prince, or otherwise censor speech online.”
The Myth Of A “Liberal Hollywood Elite”
“There are risks in speaking out. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a unified liberal elite – if there were, people like Casey Affleck and Mel Gibson wouldn’t receive award nominations. (Or it means that the liberal elite is open-minded and forgiving, but that’s for another column.) But this year’s speeches have been overwhelmingly liberal. That may turn off some viewers, or make people with other opinions feel silenced. It may affect Hollywood’s bottom line: Based on box-office figures from the week before and the week of the Oscar nominations, none of the contenders I checked – Hidden Figures, La La Land, Moonlight, Fences, Lion and Jackie – showed an Oscar bump, an immediate post-nomination surge.”
Can A New App Finally Track Media Ratings Across All Platforms? (How’s That For Sexy?)
“It does so with an integrated app that passively collects audio fingerprints for all programming, both live and playback. Every single program automatically has an audio fingerprint, which is a condensed digital summary generated from an audio signal. The app simply matches it to a database that ingests all programming content across networks and streaming channels. The San Francisco startup, which launched in September 2015, depends on a diverse panel of users who run the app in the background of mobile devices, TVs, or laptops. The app offers brand-new insight into consumer behavior.”
In These Days The Arts Need Advocacy. This Is A Problem In Most US States
A large number of states (roughly a third) either have “no real functioning arts advocacy organization, or the existing organization was barely operational. That finding is particularly distressing as the sector now gears up for actions that may come – both on the Federal and on the State levels – that will impact the sector.”
This Year Netflix Tried To Take Over Sundance
“At this year’s festival, things were different from the word go. Netflix wasn’t just in Park City to buy: It was making a full show of force, starting with the first movie in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. That film was I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, the writing and directing debut of actor Macon Blair; Blair had pitched Netflix on the concept at Sundance 2016, and they financed the movie from the ground up.”