Media

New York Public Radio, which includes news-talk outlets WNYC AM and FM and classical station WQXR as well as a podcast production unit and the local news website Gothamist, had been running a deficit even before the pandemic, which resulted in a decline of 27% in sponsorship revenue. Fourteen jobs, about 4% of the total, are being eliminated, including several senior positions in the newsroom. – Current

South Dakota’s tourist attractions featured heavily in parts of Best Picture winner Nomadland, and now the (iconic to some) Wall Drug and Reptile Gardens are seeing an uptick in tourism. – Rapid City Journal

From there? Things have been falling apart. NBC’s contingency plans if the group that runs the Golden Globes doesn’t get it together by their self-imposed deadline of May 6. “Among the more drastic options that could be considered: putting the Globes on hiatus, keeping the show but jettisoning the HFPA, or scrapping the awards altogether.” – Los Angeles Times

After being stuck at home, without movie cinemas, for well over a year, it’s time to break out the big bucks for all of the extras. “The expanding appetite for an enhanced theatrical experience has given the film and exhibition business a shot of confidence and a weapon against streamers amid devastation caused by the pandemic. Yet it also means theaters that don’t offer upscale sight and sound, plush seats and other amenities might struggle to lure customers.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Can tourists gain more appreciation of the real Hollywood – could the city do more (a lot more) to help them leave invigorated, and not disappointed? Check out the alley: “So many visitors to Hollywood would love to know about this unnamed space — where, in the early, exhilarating, madcap days of moviemaking, three of the greatest Hollywood stars of all time shot parts of three of their greatest films.” – Los Angeles Times

Britain may no longer have an empire, but at least it could have this: the title of the “true” father of cinema. “Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes [Bristol inventor William] Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and George Méliès, the Frenchman whose story was told by Martin Scorsese in the hit 2011 film Hugo.” – The Guardian (UK)

For Oscar-winner Brie Larson, who won for Room and has since played Captain Marvel in the eponymous movie and Avengers: Endgame, it’s not as if she needed a new revenue stream. But her weekly chats with herself, which now have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, are a form of self-care. – The New York Times

Citizen Kane used to have a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Then things changed. “The writer, credited as Mae Tinee (a play on ‘matinee’) comments: ‘It’s interesting. It’s different. In fact, it’s bizarre enough to become a museum piece. But its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it of distinction and general entertainment value,’ adding: ‘I only know it gives one the creeps and that I kept wishing they’d let a little sunshine in.'” – The Guardian (UK)

It’s normal – but an exciting kind of normal – for Sydney Freeland. When she started film school, “I remember thinking, like, ‘OK, wait. I’m Native American and I’m transgender, but I want to be a film director? That’s insane. That isn’t going to happen.’ But I wanted to see what I could do anyway.” – HuffPost

“Here we are in 2021 and many still think they can affect change by pulling their business from the very people who helped get the statewide and national results they claim to want. Apparently the way to get people to vote the way you like is to yank them around, threatening their ability to pay their mortgage and feed their children. While a middle-class actor like me could, in reality, move to another state where there is work, there are many good folks in my industry who would not have that privilege. For many, a boycott could mean a continuing elbow from the powerful that drives them deeper into the margins with fewer escape routes.” – ArtsATL

“In a way, every filmmaker is really just playing with moving light and color on surfaces. That’s the whole ball game, a filmic given. But Pixar takes it further, or perhaps just does it more self-consciously and systematically. Its emotionally weighty, computer-generated animated films deploy precisely calibrated color and light to convey narrative and emotion … But I’ll tell you a secret: When it comes to wringing emotion from color, Pixar cheats.” Reporter Adam Rogers explains precisely how they do it. – Wired

“It has been a year of struggle and experimentation for the television industry, which has had to learn on the fly while trying to create new diversions for an unusually captive home audience. … Some changes could outlast the pandemic. Just as the nature of schooling and office work has been transformed as millions have learned to function remotely, television has adapted as well, with showrunners, actors and crews all forced to innovate, tweak and change.” – The New York Times

In its first-quarter earnings report Tuesday, Google parent company Alphabet said YouTube brought in revenue of $6.01 billion in advertising revenue during the quarter — up from $4 billion from a year ago, for a growth rate of 49%. That’s an acceleration over its 46% growth in Q4. It’s also nearly twice the growth rate of Netflix, which reported 24% revenue growth in Q1, and expects growth to slow to 19% next quarter. – CNBC

Zachary Horwitz collected $690 million from investors for movie deals authorities say were fictitious. The HBO and Netflix contracts he used to convince Russell and others that his business was legitimate were forgeries, the government says. – Los Angeles Times

“A website called #allesdichtmachen (‘close it all down’) was launched on Thursday night, featuring 53 to-camera clips in which high-profile actors [from the long-running series Tatort] sarcastically boast of the lengths they have gone to restrict their social contacts and appeal to the government to lock down the country even harder.” Mein Gott, did they get dragged. One television host who’s been working as a paramedic summed up the general reaction, tweeting that the stars can “shove their irony up their ventilators.” – The Guardian

Back in the 1990s, before search engines were much good, Yahoo was a popular and useful portal, a directory organizing the great, amorphous mass of websites into something navigable (especially for those who didn’t want to be stuck inside AOL’s bubble). Now Yahoo’s seen as a giant, bumbling monster, gobbling up and wiping out beloved hubs of user-generated content — GeoCities, Flickr, Delicious, the old Usenet boards that became Yahoo Groups, and now Yahoo Answers. Kaitlyn Tiffany traces how it happened. – The Atlantic

The Chinese government imposed a virtual news blackout, and censors moved to tamp down or scrub out discussion of the award on social media. – The New York Times

To survive beyond the pandemic, theaters must persuade moviegoers not just to come back, but to come back more frequently than they did—to start thinking of their local cinema as akin to their favorite coffee shop. Because a return to pre-pandemic habits isn’t enough, industry executives told me they’ve been spending this past year rethinking the role of theaters in the first place. – The Atlantic

What a haiku is to language, a vibe is to sensory perception: a concise assemblage of image, sound, and movement. (#Aesthetic is sometimes used to mark vibes, but that term is predominantly visual.) A vibe can be positive, negative, beautiful, ugly, or just unique. It can even become a quality in itself: if something is vibey, it gives off an intense vibe or is particularly amenable to vibes. – The New Yorker