Category: media

“We have a looming deficit. We have to make cuts every year to balance the budget. Most of the shows on TV are made by independent producers, and they work very differently. We have a 40-year-old contract, and we have to hire more people than everybody else to produce the same type of work.”

“Viewers should not have to adjust the volume at every commercial break, and we will work with the broadcasting industry to find an acceptable solution.”

“The Australian film-maker Philippe Mora says he has discovered two 30-minute 3D films shot by propagandists for the Third Reich in 1936, a full 16 years before the format first became briefly popular in the US.” (One of the films shows “sizzling stereoscopic bratwursts on a barbecue.”)

“The pop-culture icons they portray” – from Charmin-squeezing Mr. Whipple to E*Trade’s stock-trading baby – “are known to more people than many movie stars. But in their chosen fields, as actors or stand-up comics, they are still struggling for recognition, roles, and a living wage. The commercials are steady work and steady money – six-figure money, in fact.”

The envelopes and announcement cards that herald the winners of the Academy Awards have gotten a glam facelift thanks to designer Marc Friedland. The envelopes are such an integral part of the Academy Awards, yet there has never been a dramatic, specially designed envelope and card to announce the Oscar recipients,”

“The surprising popularity of casual games among even the hardest of the hard-core foreshadows a sea change for an industry that over the years has grown to resemble Hollywood, complete with star directors, creaking franchises and budgets that dwarf the annual operating costs of a small city.”

“Its charter is not to show you only those things you already know you like or to confirm you in your beliefs, but rather to open you up to new things, to enlarge your mind, which means possibly to change it. Its underlying purpose is to make us smarter, better citizens, and that this is worth $1.35 a year seems to me well beyond dispute.”

“The order from the country’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television — viewed Tuesday on its website –orders producers to minimize plot lines and scenes involving tobacco and show smoking only when necessary for artistic purposes or character development.”

“After years of consistent growth, retail sales of core console games, which often cost around $60, are at best flat these days. Though an improving economy could change that, the major growth in the game business is on social networks and cellphones.”

“In an era when the publicity agents of the rich and famous have an ever-greater grip on the way their clients’ stories are told, the broadcast interview is rarely what it is intended to be: an open conversation in public.”