“Although the landscape has become more challenging, TV news can still be a lucrative endeavor. The morning shows each generate hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue for their networks. The evening newscasts remain vital to each network’s image, and after years of fighting off irrelevancy, are now seeing a ratings renaissance.”
Category: media
Here’s Why It’s So Difficult To Run A Media Company Today
“Clutter is up — more ads, more channels, more content — advertising rates continue to drop, and audiences are programming their own universe in text, video and audio. Consumers don’t want to watch commercials, are fleeing networks, hate reruns, are increasingly bored by reality programming, shun print products and, oh, by the way, don’t want to pay much for content either. Yikes.”
Does Hollywood Have A Race Problem?
“Despite America’s changing demographics, Hollywood’s most powerful industry leaders have been slow to respond to a demand for movies that reflect cultural and racial shifts that have long been underway.”
“Serial” Update: Jay Speaks Publicly For The First Time
“The star witness at [Adnan] Syed’s trial was Jay Wilds, a former classmate who testified that he helped Syed dispose of Lee’s body.” Jay declined to speak to the producers of Serial while the podcast seires was being prepared; now he feels he was unfairly portrayed and has spoken to a different outlet – with yet another version of the events in question.
Cracking The Sitcom Formula
When Noah Charney (a U.S. expat in Slovenia) was asked to write a sitcom for Croatian TV, he said yes, despite knowing little about either Croatia or sitcoms. As he learned from lots of Googling and watching old shows online, he learned that “there is a highly-specific, minute-by-minute recipe used to write the vast majority of sitcoms out there. And once you know the formula, it makes it much easier to write them, and much harder to watch them.”
Are Cinema’s New Shared Universe Sagas A Good Thing?
“There’s a chunk of every Marvel movie that doesn’t belong there, either because it’s effectively a trailer for a subsequent film, or because it’s an arch allusion to an earlier one. The danger is that as the MCU gets more byzantine, and the intertextual nods and winks become more common, its films won’t make any sense unless you’ve seen all the others.”
Funding Is A Struggle Even For Big-Name Hollywood Projects, If They Feature African Americans
“Despite America’s changing demographics, Hollywood’s most powerful industry leaders have been slow to respond to a demand for movies that reflect cultural and racial shifts that have long been underway.”
Do Christmas Movies Have A Shot At The Oscars Anymore?
“For a four-year stretch at the turn of the 21st century, December was the most wonderful time of year to be a best picture Oscar contender. … Since then, though, only one December movie — ‘The King’s Speech’ — has won best picture.”
It’s Taken 50 Years To Get A Civil Rights Movie Focused On African Americans Instead Of Whites
“The 1988 film Mississippi Burning, which focuses on two white FBI agents, exemplifies the normal Hollywood approach to the civil rights movement. The film angered a lot of black movie-goers because it made the FBI into heroes when, according to civil rights activist Charles Cobb, the bureau often looked the other way as black Southerners were beaten and murdered in the early ’60s.”
How Do Iraqi Arts Students Get U.S. Dance, Music, Or Art Instructors?
Skype, of course. “For the pianist Hersh Anwer, 24, of Erbil, the visits meant access to trained professionals. ‘After they’re gone, there is no piano teacher,’ he said.”