Category: media

“A BBC training scheme that was set up to nurture emerging comedy writers and endorsed by leading creative talents such as Armando Iannucci and David Mitchell has been scrapped after it failed to secure funding for a fourth year.”

Denis Côté: “That word was created by TIFF programmer Martin Bilodeau. He wrote it in the catalogue and it seems to be following me everywhere. What does accessible mean? I’ve made five films since 2005 and three were partly improvised and made in 10 days.”

What makes the executive culture at nonprofit NPR so murderous? There are as many bodies on display here as in a production of Hamlet. Would you apply for one of these high-level jobs after witnessing the carnage?

If it comes to a final vote on funding, supporters should at least move to bifurcate the question and have lawmakers vote separately on public support of the troubled mother ship and on public support for local affiliates. I suspect it would be much harder for even budget hard-liners to vote against their local public radio and TV stations.

The new video includes recordings of phone conversations between NPR executive Betsy Liley and an activist posing as a member of a phony group with ties to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. The two discuss the logistics of a potential $5 million donation from the group to NPR and the ways in which it could be kept anonymous and shielded from government scrutiny.

Breaking, as they say in the news business: NPR is always going to be a Republican punching bag. The main claim is its liberal bias, not its funding source.

From documentaries by European auteurs like Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog, to the feature-length films of everything from classical opera to the Isle of Man’s world-famous TT motorcycle race, it seems the stereoscopic craze is no longer confined to the Hollywood blockbuster or computer-animated cartoons. The age of 3D arthouse has finally dawned.

“Our concern is not about any one person at NPR, rather it’s about millions of taxpayers,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said after Schiller’s resignation. “NPR has admitted that they don’t need taxpayer subsidies to thrive, and at a time when the government is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, we certainly agree with them.”

“The nearly 80 million boomers, who turn 47-65 this year, watch more TV — five to six hours a day, compared with the average of four hours and 49 minutes, according to Nielsen — and control half of U.S. consumer spending, according to the paper. And it highlighted that the average age of the primetime TV viewer this season hit 51.”

“It’s a little bit embarrassing and a big bowl of sad. And, if you look at it in a certain light, possibly even shameful. Because right in the midst of an unprecedented influx of smaller cable channels getting into the scripted game, a noble but expensive decision, the audience is looking elsewhere.”