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TV Viewing Down? Networks Protest Nielsen Data

Through the trade group Video Advertising Bureau, the networks are perplexed by Nielsen statistics that show the percentage of Americans who watched their televisions at least some time during the week declined from 92% in 2019 to 87% so far this year. - Toronto Star (AP)

In The Netflix Era Does It Make Sense To Classify Movies?

Censorship ain’t what it used to be, including in Ireland. Here, as elsewhere, it’s been replaced by a different C-word. The last Irish film censor, John Kelleher, was instrumental in seeing through legislative reform which in 2008 renamed and redefined his office: he was now a Classifier of films. As a result, the curtain was finally lowered on a...

One Of The Movie Theater Chains That’s Closing Also Owns Cinerama Technology. What Happens To That Now?

"Pacific Theatres announced on Monday that it would close all of its locations, which include the ArcLight Hollywood and the historic Cinerama Dome. Not as well known is that the theater chain also owns the Cinerama technology. The three-camera filming technique was introduced in 1952 in response to the rise of television, and was virtually obsolete by the time...

How A Gentle Little Movie By One Of Pakistan’s Favorite Directors Got Banned For Blasphemy That Isn’t There

Novelist Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) writes about the strange case of Sarmad Khoosat's film Zindagi Tamasha ("Circus of Life"), which has won multiple prizes at international festivals, was cleared by three Pakistani boards of censors, made the country's official entry for the Best International Film Oscar, glommed onto as a political football by people who hadn't...

How Endorsements Took Over Celebrity Culture

"The celebrity endorsement is a three-way relationship connecting the star, the product and us, and the internet has worked to draw all of its participants closer and closer together. We’re all mingling on the same platforms, our photos pinned to the same timelines. Social media influencers have narrowed the distinction between celebrities’ claims to fame and their ability to...

Univision And Televisa Sign Merger To Create Spanish-Language Media Giant

Univision, the largest producer of Spanish-language in the United States, and Televisa, Mexico's largest media conglomerate (and one of the world's biggest single producers of broadcast material in any language) will combine their content operations to form Televisa-Univision, which could become the dominant media force in the entire Hispanophone world. - Variety

One Of Australia’s Most Popular Soap Operas Roiled By Accusations Of On-Set Racism

Neighbours, which has been running in Australia since 1985 and is one of the country's most successful TV shows internationally, has had two indigenous cast members and one of Indian descent publicly describe some brazen behavior from fellow cast and crew members, including one incident where an actor compared the Indian-Australian colleague to a bobblehead doll. - The Guardian

What The Closing Of The Arclight Theatres Means For Movie Theatres

The truth is, the cinema experience as we know it, is likely doomed. While it isn’t going to disappear entirely, it will become a “nice to have” option for the populace, versus the “must have” it was through much of the 20th century. Look forward to much more expensive tickets and far fewer movie houses, more like what happened...

Awards Shows Used To Be Ratings Gold. Now They Struggle

The Emmy Awards — already in a ratings tailspin in recent years as it no longer celebrates mass-appeal hits — showed how far audience levels can drop, sinking 9% to 6.1 million viewers Sept. 20. Other shows, such as the American Music Awards, the Country Music Assn. Awards and the Billboard Music Awards, hit all-time lows as well. -...

Two Beloved California Movie Theatre Chains To Close

ArcLight's stable includes the prized Cinerama Dome Hollywood. The Dome, built in 1963 by Pacific Theatres' parent company the Decurion Corp., is the crown jewel of the small theater complex that was later reconstructed in the early 2000s. Throughout the decades, the Dome, in particular, has been a favorite site place to stage premieres — it timed its opening...

Nature Documentaries Are A Lot More Like Porn Than You’d Like To Think

It's not just that they're wildly popular and can be addictive. It's because nature documentaries have at least as much artifice as any studio-produced adult video and maybe more. ("Are these seabirds supposed to be majestic or comical as they enact their mating dance? The music tells us. Whom are we to root for in this interaction of predator...

The Surrealists Would Have Loved TikTok

In fact, reporter Angela Watercutter compares the 15-second-video service old Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse: "The platform, thanks to its duetting and stitching functions, automates a lot of what the Surrealists were doing. It' not exactly an exquisite corpse, since TikTok records the entire genealogy of any given work, and there is a want for continuity with what others have...

And Now: Virtual DJ’s Powered By AI

"Virtual entertainment is the new cultural center of gravity," Authentic Artists founder and CEO Chris McGarry told Protocol. Authentic Artists has developed a dozen such virtual DJs thus far, and is powering their performances with a custom-built AI music engine that uses a catalog of 130,000 MIDI files to generate performances in real time. The resulting music is being...

Hot Off The Press — How The Sacramento History Museum Became A TikTok Star

Museum docent Howard Hatch started making short videos of him working an old printing press. Soon the museum had more than a million followers on TikTok - WESH (Sacramento)

The British TV-Watching Public Complained A Lot About An Excess In Coverage Of Prince Philip’s Death

As a matter of fact, there were so many complaints about the bump in programming for special coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death that the BBC had to set up an whole new temporary complaint page. And it wasn't just the main channel. "BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live also aired special programming charting Prince Philip's life,...

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