Category: media

“Some homes are turning to over-the-air signals because they can’t afford cable. But a growing number of them are millennials who use over-the-air TV for live sports and broadcast network shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox while getting a wide array of programs from streaming video services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. They are happy to pay for broadband Internet, but not TV.”

“The wonderfully absurd universe of the sketch – a woman [Schumer herself] literally on trial for the crime of not being ‘bangable’ – … [is] a parody with a tone that adheres remarkably close to its source material … with the fatal strike coming from the direction you weren’t looking.” (And the cast – Paul Giamatti, Jeff Goldblum, John Hawkes, etc. – is terrific.)

Schumar: “I was at a party and these guys were talking about Michelle Williams, and they were like, ‘Yeah I don’t think she is hot actually.’ … These guys would be so lucky to even get to have a conversation with her but they were like really deliberating over whether or not they would fuck her. And I was like, ‘You know what, that scenario is never going to present itself, you guys.’ But that word ‘deliberation’ is what made me think, What is the ultimate deliberation? An actual jury deliberating. And I love the movie 12 Angry Men.” (includes video)

“Here’s the thing: under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), YouTube is not legally obligated to have a mechanism for policing its content for infringement at all. The site is charged with taking content down when it receives notices to do so, but that’s the extent of it. Nevertheless, YouTube takes an overly active role in policing for copyright infringement, and the technology it employs to do so is flawed – which can end up hurting artists and other content creators who employ copyrighted works legally.”

“Now, The Onion is not just a comedy website. Onion Inc. cannot be described, simply, as a publisher. It has been transformed into a bonafide digital media company – with a profitable, in-house advertising agency in tow – that wants to succeed where the targets of its barbs have not.

“There’s a paucity of roles for Native Americans — according to the Screen Actors Guild in 2008 they accounted for 0.3 percent of all on-screen parts (those figures have yet to be updated), compared to about 2 percent of the general population — and Native American actors are often perceived in a narrow way.”

“I am now seeing what the The Wire was missing, despite its much lauded, painstaking verisimilitude: the voices of people organizing together for change. Everyone on The Wire seeks individual solutions for social problems: the lone cop, the lone criminal, the lone teacher, the lone newspaper reporter. Yes, it is certainly true that when entrenched bureaucracies battle individuals, individuals lose. But when bureaucracies battle social movements, the results can be quite different.”

“This may come as a surprise to those who expected the television of the future to resemble, say, a smartphone screen, where every channel would be roughly like an app that you subscribe to à la carte. But overestimating change in the television industry is a rookie mistake.”

“Turns out, the lethal, ass-kicking Natasha Romanoff is just a simple girl looking for love in the Big Apple. She’s a leather-clad intern at magazine Fashion Weekly who falls for the wrong guy (er, robot): Ultron.”