Category: media

“This week, Peter Jackson announced that he is shooting his new version of The Hobbit at 48 frames per second … In his blog, Jackson says that we have tolerated the sprockety old 24fps speed for far too long, and this is like ‘the moment when vinyl records were supplanted by digital CDs’.”

“The demise of one of broadcasting’s oldest institutions, the daytime soap opera, crept closer Thursday as ABC announced it would end two of its long-running daily serial dramas, All My Children and One Life to Live.”

“Over the last two weeks the WWE has sent out press releases and contacted various media outlets to inform the public that the WWE will be dropping its wrestling label in efforts to create a broader entertainment company.… One example of this change is that the WWE wants to be known as an ‘action soap opera’ not pro-wrestling or even sports entertainment.”

“Nowadays Tribeca is not considered a threat to the status quo but a useful cultural stimulant that has been good for movies and good for New York, particularly the Lower Manhattan neighborhood left broken in the wake of 9/11. Estimates of the economic activity it has generated since its inception exceed $600 million.”

“With the advent of international performing arts product in cinemas around the country and already available online there is a strong need for Australian major performing arts companies to enter the digital market. We do not want to be in a situation in which Australian cinemas and the NBN are replete with overseas performing arts product and little Australian content.”

“At issue was the FCC’s desire to reclaim some of the airwaves, or spectrum, broadcasters use for next-generation cellphones and tablet devices such as Apple’s iPad. The FCC and some telecommunications companies have argued that there is a shortage of spectrum on the horizon and a solution is for broadcasters to voluntarily auction off some of their spectrum.”

The complex, founded by Mussolini’s government, “sits on 99 acres of public land, uses public-owned buildings and depends on public tax breaks, but it is a private, for-profit enterprise with a list of glittery investors.”

“In a statement (available here in Chinese) dated March 31, the State Administration for Radio, Film & Television said that TV dramas that involve characters traveling back in time ‘lack positive thoughts and meaning’.”

“Juxtaposed against other hardships in Appalachia, the beaming of a radio signal might seem a luxury. But WMMT, which reaches across the mountains, coal fields and hollows of eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia, creates a connective tissue for its far-flung, geographically isolated listeners.”

“Sixteen years ago Tom Klein was staring at a Woody Woodpecker cartoon, ‘The Loose Nut,’ … [and] watched that maniacal red-topped bird smash a steamroller through the door of a shed. The screen then exploded into images that looked less like the stuff of a Walter Lantz cartoon than like something Willem de Kooning might have hung on a wall.”