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As Social Media Breaks, News Orgs Experiment With Analog Outreach

To reach affected audiences, the Tribune printed 500 flyers and 1,000 postcards in English and Spanish. Journalists knocked on doors in the neighborhoods where they’d reported and made additional stops in school pick-up lines, churches, grocery stores, laundromats, and other spots where residents gather. - NiemanLab

Remarkable: How AMC Movie Theatres Have Survived Despite Massive Debt

“We’re still here,” Adam Aron says of Kansas-based AMC, which operates 895 theaters globally. “When you think about what we’ve been through the past four years, it’s kind of a miracle. It could have gone kaplooey 10 times, but it didn’t. And good for us. We’re almost finally through it.”  - Variety

Fresh From Firing Storytellers At Pixar, Disney CEO Bob Iger Tells Artists To “Embrace Technology Change”

“Don’t fixate on its ability to be disruptive — fixate on ability to make us better and tell better stories. Not only better stories, but to reach more people,” Iger said. - Variety

García Márquez Didn’t Think “One Hundred Years Of Solitude” Could Be Adapted. Will Netflix Prove Him Wrong?

Netflix’s VP of Latin American content. asked if the miniseries will work out like those multi-generation-family hits Game of Thrones and The Crown, replied, "Well, the Buendías are certainly more fun than the Windsors." As Gabo knew, the raw material is there and the execution is the hard part. - Vanity Fair

Where Are The Movies That Can Earn $100 Million On Opening Weekends?

"For the first time in over a decade — excluding the worst of the COVID-19 crisis — no movie opening during the first six months of the year has come close to hitting the $100 million mark in its domestic launch." Indeed, the last one to do so was last summer's Barbie. - The Hollywood Reporter

Entertainment Jobs Are Leaving Hollywood

Production has been slipping away from Hollywood since the 1950s, but the effects have never been more apparent than at present. - Los Angeles Times

How Google’s Search AI Will Kill Web Publishers

While links to external websites do appear below the AI-generated answers, some publishers and groups such as the News Media Alliance are afraid that they will attract precious few clicks, since the AI will have already provided the most obvious answer to the user’s question. - Columbia Journalism Review

Pixar Is Being Restructured By Disney, With Major Layoffs

"Approximately 14 percent of Pixar’s workforce, or around 175 employees, will be let go. … The layoffs are part of Disney chief Bob Iger’s overarching mandate to return to a focus on quality versus churning out content for streaming, which was a priority for his short-lived successor, Bob Chapek." - The Hollywood Reporter

WGBH, Boston Public Radio/TV Outlet, Lays Off 31 Staffers And Suspends Three TV Programs

"In addition to laying off staff across 13 departments," including 11 people from the newsroom, "GBH will also stop producing (the shows) Greater Boston, Talking Politics, and Basic Black, (because they) 'no longer draw enough viewers to justify the cost of making them for television.'" - The Boston Globe (MSN)

After Decades Of Being Youth-Obsessed, TV Gets Comfortable With The Old

Most people watching TV are older than those groups. Among cable channels, the median age for TNT and Bravo viewers is 56, for HGTV it is 66, and even the once-youthful MTV’s median-age viewer is 51, according to Nielsen data. The cable news audience is even older. - The Wall Street Journal

China Is Using AI-Generated News Anchors To Spread Disinformation In Taiwan And Elsewhere

"The news presenter has a deeply uncanny air as he delivers a partisan and pejorative message in Mandarin: Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as limp spinach, her period in office beset by economic under performance, social problems and protests." - The Guardian

Public Radio’s Foundation Is Leaking. Some Real Planning Is In Order

Just like with the plumbing in our house, public radio can’t wait any longer to take action on the leaks in its foundation. They aren’t going to disappear. In fact, more critical systems will fail if we allow the problems to fester. - Current

Donald Trump Threatens To Sue Makers Of Biopic “The Apprentice.” They Aren’t Terribly Worried.

Trump spokesperson: "We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies." Director Ali Abbasi: "Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people. They don’t talk about his success rate, though." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

OpenAI Hits “Pause” On A ChatGPT Voice After Scarlett Johansson Points Out How Much It Sounds Like “Her”

The actress, who voiced the title character of the Spike Jonze movie about a guy falling in love with a chatbot, says OpenAI approached her last fall asking permission to use her voice for one of their bots. She declined, but says the company created one that sounds "eerily similar." - AP

It’s Not ‘TV Week’ Anymore

Netflix and Prime joined broadcast channels for the traditional week of wooing advertisers - and for good reason: “Streaming video now makes up 37% of U.S. television viewing, better than either broadcast or cable TV, according to Nielsen data.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

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