Category: media

The company was originally supposed to sell for $310 million under a pact the court approved in May. But in another twist in the long saga, the companies sparred over payment of the studio’s outstanding contracts, threatening to capsize the deal.

“It’s an insulting term. Most flies I know aren’t conscious at all, and I like to think I’m at least 2% conscious. … I come across this thing as a matter of chance, and maybe occasionally good judgment. I take the risk of shooting it because I think it might be interesting – then my job as an editor is to decide what it is saying, whether I want to use it, in what form, and where I’m going to place it.”

“YouTube said it will provide funding in about 20 global markets to support news organizations in ‘building sustainable video operations.’ The grants will let new orgs build out video capabilities, train staff on video best practices, and enhance production facilities. YouTube says it also will expand its team focused on supporting news publishers … and also detailed new features intended to flag misinformation and highlight authoritative news sources.”

Netflix is a production company of peerless scale when it comes to TV. It’s projected to spend $12 to $13 billion on original programming in 2018; meanwhile, HBO spent $2.5 billion on its shows in 2017. Netflix’s strategy is to overwhelm, pumping out fresh content at its subscribers and relying less and less on licensed material it doesn’t own. HBO has always had more of a “prestige” bent, taking a very long time to develop its shows and launching them with extreme fanfare, with an eye toward awards. But Stankey seems to view that deliberate pace as a result of laziness, and his desire to upend the network’s careful approach to putting out new shows (it only makes a handful per season) could mean the end of HBO as we know it.

“Premiering Tuesday on TruTV, Paid Off With Michael Torpey is pretty traditional for the genre: There are three rounds of play in which contestants buzz in to answer trivia questions and earn points. What sets it apart from other entries in the genre is what happens in the final round. If the top contestant answers eight trivia questions correctly, she wins a cash prize equal to the balance she owes on her student loans, because the contestant pool for Paid Off is the more than 40 million Americans who hold student loan debt.”

“When you watch Vertigo in the age of the internet, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, it resonates as loudly as a church bell.” Not to mention catfishing and #MeToo.

Co-founder Simon Walker said the service would be home to the “freshest, most innovative, most adventurous performances around”.  Content available from its launch includes David Tennant in Richard II and New York City Opera’s Brokeback Mountain, based on the story by Charles Wuorinen and Annie Proulx. Marquee has also teamed up with Opus Arte, the company that supplies filmed productions from the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne.

“We need hours a day,” Warner Media CEO John Stankey said. “It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.” HBO has 40 million subscribers stateside and 143 million worldwide, but Stankey insists that it wasn’t enough. He said that they have “to move beyond 35 to 40 percent penetration to have this become a much more common product.”

In recent years, several studies have concluded that any aggression provoked by violent media is more than offset by decreases in violent crime that can be attributed to the same media. One study, in 2009, examined crime rates in the U.S. from 1996 to 2004. On the nights when theatre attendance for violent blockbuster movies, including “Hannibal” and “Spider-Man,” was high, rates of violent crime fell slightly, even in the six-hour period after midnight, when most movies had ended. Apparently, the people who were prone to violence were more likely to see a violent movie, and this kept them from committing crimes.