Category: media

To date, the 99% Invisible Kickstarter campaign has raised $87,536 (more than double its funding goal), with 21 days left to go. Mars’s success may end up opening the floodgates for other independent radio producers eying Kickstarter as a funding source. “I want to further blow up the idea of what a public radio show is, how it should be distributed, and how it could support itself.”

In a British trial, most newspapers have been excising the accused’s swearwords with asterisks. This is a problem: “First, people are being denied a full and accurate report of what the entire case hinged on: the swearing was central, not peripheral. Second, the shocking force of the language used is surely diminished by reducing it to asterisks. Third, readers are being treated as children, unable to cope with the reality – however unpleasant – of what, we now learn, highly paid professional footballers say to each other on the pitch.”

“Like so many of the political actors here, most of the films seemed unable to sensitively portray both sides of the perpetual conflicts, or uninterested in doing so.”

“Warner and other studios did the right thing in muzzling the box-office machine this weekend. Counting dollars is trivial in light of the tragedy in Colorado. But then, is it any less trivial this weekend than the other 51 weekends of the year?”

“The deadly rampage in Colorado shattered a fundamental appeal of moviegoing: a chance to escape the humdrum for a world of fantasy. Now, theater owners and theWarner Bros.studio must figure out whether The Dark Knight Rises can still be an entertaining diversion, not a reminder of a tragic mass shooting.”

“Previously it took years to establish a new show on public radio, and the process involved grant writing and lots of politics. Now radio stations and producers themselves can turn to Kickstarter and show there’s an audience that values their ideas. … [But what] if listeners stopped giving to their local stations and instead just spent all their money to directly fund producers via Kickstarter?”

Blogger and aspect ratio obsessive Jeffrey Wells posted a rant this week slamming the Criterion Collection’s new remastering of Rosemary’s Baby for using what Wells sees as the wrong screen width-to-height proportion. And who should turn up at the tail end of the reader comments?

“Thanks to crowdfunding and digital distribution, the public seems to be acquiring a power those elites have lost: the ability to fund a project because you want to see it.”

“On July 10, the day before the blackout started, 1.76 million viewers were watching Nick during the day, according to Nielsen. On July 11, that average dropped to 1.23 million, a drop of 30 percent overnight.”

The absence of “The Good Wife” from the drama category might raise an eyebrow, but the six series that made the cut were entirely predictable.