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Viewers Are Watching Ad-Full TV Again, With No Complaints

Perhaps it's the higher cost of living and inflation, but as Netflix's subscriber base drops, the ad-supported streamers rise. Streamer Tubi's chief: "The business model of free is working quite well." - Los Angeles Times

A Ukrainian Director Killed In April Had A Documentary Premiere At Cannes

"A few days after the city itself fell to invading Russian forces, Kvedaravičius’ fiancée Hanna Bilobrova fought back tears as she introduced the film, which she completed after smuggling the footage out of the country." - Slate

Public TV Fundraising Telethons Are Losing Their Effectiveness

An analysis by Contributor Development Partnership of March pledge results reported a 24% decline in the number of gifts year-over-year, a nearly 5.5% drop in the number of new donors and a 7.5% slide in the percentage of sustainer gifts. - Current

Could a New $100 Million Movie Studio Transform Newark’s Economy?

One study estimated that the Newark project could bring as many as 600 long-term jobs and a constellation of new business opportunities to the city, the state’s largest with a population of 312,000 and a median household income of less than $38,000. - The New York Times

Head Of Cannes’ First Tiktok Festival Jury Quits Over Concerns About Independence

“The difficulty is that TikTok is a marketing-focused company and fails to understand creators and their independence…They kept asking me for reports on our progress, even though we hadn’t even seen each other,” he said. - Deadline

Virtual Reality Gets Smelly: Startups Are Trying To Bring Aroma To The Metaverse

"Today, as metaverse engineers, designers, and architects map out the look of digital future experiences, for some, smell has become a key part of the puzzle. Whoever defines the smell-o-verse first will lead this nascent category, meaning the smell-off is ON." - Fast Company

Popular Podcast “Reply All” Is Ending Next Month

A staff memo from Gimlet Media chiefs said that "the decision to end this iteration of the show" was made as the series's two hosts, Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi, were leaving. The move comes after a turbulent 18 months at Reply All, Gimlet, and parent company Spotify. - The Verge

How Toronto Movie Theatres Survived COVID

“We had a few fully-masked concerts. We did livestreaming. We had a couple of adverts filmed here. We sold takeout meal kits when we couldn’t open the restaurant. The biggest one of all: we repurposed the theatre lobby into a wine bottle shop.” - Toronto Star

How Hollywood Movies Fed Southern California’s Addiction To Water-Guzzling Green Lawns

"Hollywood did not create this country's desire for green lawns — that longing originated when wealthy Americans tried to replicate the resplendent gardens of French and English nobility of centuries past. Then Hollywood did what it does best: propagate the myth through relentless, omnipresent imagery." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Motion Picture Academy Makes Post-COVID Changes To Oscar Rules

The biggest change is the return of the requirement that a film must have a theatrical release during the relevant calendar year.  However, that release no longer must be in either New York or Los Angeles; showings in Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and the Bay Area also qualify. - The Hollywood Reporter

As War Drags On And Censorship Grows More Strict, Russian Filmmakers Choose Between Flight And Submission

Says one who is leaving, "I can't see how I can be part of a community that will be charged with ideological tasks and has to comply." Many observers believe Putin's government will ramp up production of the sort of films that the Soviet industry used to make. - Variety

Peter Greenaway, Cinema’s Most Playful Post-Structuralist

"Right off the bat, Peter Greenaway wants to make clear that he's never really taken himself seriously as a filmmaker — although like so many of the paradoxes that comprise Greenaway's identity, it's not wise to take such a claim too seriously." - Variety

With A Billion Downloads, The Economist Has Become A Podcasting Powerhouse

The magazine's flagship audio property, a daily news podcast called The Intelligence, averages 3.9 million downloads each week and 2.5 million unique listeners a month; collectively, The Economist's five podcasts have had 1 billion downloads since launch in 2016. - Adweek

Chicago’s Alt-Weekly May Have Finally Saved Itself

After the sale of the Chicago Reader "was nearly derailed over a co-owner’s column opposing COVID-19 vaccine requirements for children," and after a lot of protests and work, the sale to a nonprofit is expected to work. - Seattle Times (AP)

Why Black Cinema Had A Kung Fu Explosion In The 1970s

"If the very essence of Blaxploitation films to challenge the world order, the creative marriage between Kung Fu and Blaxploitation offered global imagery of resistance." - Black Film Archive

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