Category: media

“In a speech to lawmakers televised live across the country on state television’s flagship news show Vesti, Medvedev warned officials against trying to interfere in freedom of expression in the press, radio and television.”

There are three major biopics in development about the arch-Surrealist painter: Dalí, with Antonio Banderas in the title role; Dalí & I: The Surreal Story, starring Al Pacino; and Little Ashes, a portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man with Robert Pattinson as said artist.

American TV shows seem always to be based in either New York, Chicago, or LA, and they tend to be full of implications that only an idiot or a redneck would live anywhere else. But in Canada, the top-rated comedies of the moment all seem to take place on the wide-open prairie. “When things are not pushed and rushed as they can be in the city, just as a lifestyle, funnier stuff can percolate.”

“The election wasn’t just a historic milestone, it turned out to be a television event as thrilling and uncharted as the first lunar landing: For many long, nerve-racking hours, attention was focused on the clock and a tangle of numbers and technological details, then suddenly, and almost shockingly, a feat long awaited, but never fully expected, came to be.”

The Toronto International Film Festival is in the midst of building its new home, the Bell Lightbox complex. But the campaign to fund the place has stalled at C$147 million, about three-quarters of the way to its goal of C$196 million. Having evidently tapped out government and corporate support, TIFF is now seeking private donors.

“The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to open up unused, unlicensed portions of the television airwaves known as “white spaces” to deliver wireless broadband service. The vote is a big victory for public interest groups and technology companies such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that say white spaces could be used to bring broadband to rural America and other underserved parts of the country.”

“One of the top story lines of the 2008 campaign has been a possible surge of fake voters. But as we concern ourselves with voter fraud, let us not forget our country’s long history of fake presidential candidates.”

“[R]esearchers at the Rand Corporation say they have documented for the first time how such exposure can influence teen pregnancy rates. They found that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV were twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20.”

Google and other tech companies are likely to get an Election Day gift “when the Federal Communications Commission votes on a proposal to make a disputed chunk of radio spectrum available for public use. … But a coalition of old-guard media — from television networks to Broadway producers — is objecting to the proposal, saying it needs a closer look. The opponents argue that signals sent over those frequencies could interfere with broadcasts and wireless microphones at live productions.”

“In a batch of 20 new webisodes, Charlie Brown and the gang have been brought back to animated life, much in the style of their classic holiday TV specials. But Lucy, Snoopy and others have been remade for the Web in 3- to 4-minute videos taken directly from classic 1964 comic strips.”