Category: media

“The report found that across the five main broadcasters, women accounted for 48% of the total workforce – compared with 51% across the general population – and held 39% of senior roles. Ofcom also said those from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background made up 12% of workers, and disabled people just 3%, despite accounting for 14% and 18% of the general population respectively.”

“An Emmy is not necessarily the mark of true greatness, any more than an Oscar win is. What the Emmys reflect is the taste of the voters who work in the TV industry. Not all will be familiar with nominated series on FX, National Geographic or PBS. But you can bet they all have access to Netflixand all the networks.”

We are living in the golden age of the silent video. Though we may still pop headphones in to watch a YouTube rant, social media has cultivated its own mute visual culture. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are designed to encourage endless scrolling, and that boosts videos that are made to catch the viewer’s eye without offending her ear with grating bursts of noise.

Glenn Close: “I’m proud my character elicited such a visceral response. Now she’s considered one of the greatest villains ever, and that to me is a mistake. I’ve never thought of her as a villain, just in distress.”
Adrian Lyne, director: “I never realized, 30 years later, people would still be talking about bunny boilers.”

“By 2021, the number of cord-cutters will nearly equal the number of people who have never had pay TV — a total of 81 million U.S. adults. That means around 30% of American adults won’t have traditional pay TV at that point, per eMarketer’s revised forecast.”

“In an industry financially dependent on an ever-smaller handful of films, studio executives are less willing to take chances and more willing to make big changes if needed, even if the moves generate ugly headlines or expensive reshoots. When hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake in ticket sales and ancillary businesses, no one is irreplaceable.”

“Will & Grace pushed well past the broadcast network comfort zone when it arrived with a finger snap in 1998. … Now, however, with the legalization of gay marriage and Transparent and gay characters even popping up on the Disney Channel, … [and] at a time when Hollywood is under intense pressure to avoid stereotypes and to promote diversity from every possible angle, Will & Grace – once seen as the epitome of diversity on television – could actually find itself assailed for being behind the curve.”

“Ensuring these women were not portrayed, in any way, as broken, was crucial. ‘The female characters are fully rounded,’ says one of the show’s writers, Lisa Lutz. ‘They might make some bad choices, they might have some terrible experiences, but they are not silent victims.'” Says director Michelle MacLaren, “We want the 1971 version of this show, not the present-day one. We had to remember this is the pre-Aids era and certain things we take for granted now, attitudes towards women and sex, were not looked at as clearly in this time.'”

“Any brown person who’s taken a selfie in the club can tell you cameras aren’t made for us. Yet in Insecure‘s club scenes, dark-skinned protagonists like Yvonne Orji’s Molly continue to impress. You can thank Ava Berkofsky, the show’s director of photography, for that. … So how do you make a show look like a piece of art while also doing justice to black faces? The answer is a special whiteboard and a light dab of shiny makeup.”

“‘We all came to the show from different places wanting to be in the entertainment industry, but also being trivia nerds, so we’ve been lucky enough that this merges those two things.’ Jeopardy! head writer Billy Wisse … walked us through the question-making process from start to finish.”