Category: media

“Sorry, news anchors – you might soon have to share your job with avatars. A virtual news technology is turning heads by quickly creating news stories and commentary, no humans required… News At Seven (newsatseven.com) is an automated system combining 3-D avatars, images, video, opinion and generated speech. The website collects news stories from the Web, edits them automatically and formats the content for artificial anchors.”

“First of its kind in the region, the state-of-the-art display covering the western wall of the new WGBH headquarters debuted amid fanfare last year, when it began beaming an ever-changing array of images … to the half-a-million Boston-bound motorists who pass by it each week on the Massachusetts Turnpike.” But the screen, “marred by dark spots,” was turned off in June, and WGBH is suing the maker of its “digital mural.”

“As television audiences migrate online, media companies are eyeing social networking as a possible killer app for hooking viewers through their laptops. From simple chat rooms to unique games, the race is on to develop content that complements traditional shows — the more creative and addictive the better.”

“Now Google Earth has embraced a frontier dating back 17 centuries: ancient Rome under Constantine the Great. Soaring above a virtual reconstruction of the Forum and the Palatine Hill or zooming into the Colosseum to get a lion’s-eye view of the stands, Google Earth’s 400 million users will be able to explore the ancient capital as easily ‘as any city can be explored today,’ Michael T. Jones, chief technology officer of Google Earth, said Wednesday….”

“It’s never good news to discover that your generation, broadly speaking, is in charge of things. … But it’s nice, sort of, that the people tasked with putting stuff on TV at least remember what it was like to love it, to love Bosley, to love Squiggy, to love Les Nessman, to know who Skippy and Mallory are. If you’re going to fix something, it helps to love it first.”

“At the show’s Web site, average Americans (or ‘folks,’ as one always wants to call them after an election season) upload video clips of themselves asking questions. In the studio, standing on a six-spoked set paying homage to the home game, three pleasant contestants attempt to answer them.”

“Vivian Schiller, 47, will take over as president and CEO of Washington-based NPR at a time when many media companies are under severe economic stress due to declining advertising support and rapidly shifting consumer tastes.” So far, NPR has avoided fiscal trouble, but “Schiller takes over an organization… that has been roiled by internal disagreement.”

“Director Baz Luhrmann says he has yet to finish his $130m (£84.2m) epic film Australia, despite the fact it is due to have its world premiere next week… The 46-year-old, who has spent the last four years working on the film, said he was ‘going back to the mixing desk to finish it in 24 hours’.”

In Dostana, Indian film superstars Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham play gay. Except it’s Three’s Company-gay: their characters are straight buddies pretending to be lovers so as to share an apartment with a hot babe. In India, this is seen as extremely daring.

Sikkim, a 1971 documentary about the tiny Himalayan kingdom, was suppressed by Indian censors because it was found to glorify monarchy. (The statelet was a sensitive subject: India went on to annex Sikkim in 1975.) A print of the film, thought to have been destroyed, turned up at the British Film Institute in 2003 and “was restored digitally frame-by-frame by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”