TV’s Jughead, Riverdale actor Cole Sprouse, was among those arrested in LA over the weekend.
“I was detained when standing in solidarity, as were many of the final vanguard within Santa Monica. We were given the option to leave, and were informed that if we did not retreat, we would be arrested. When many did turn to leave, we found another line of police officers blocking our route, at which point, they started zip tying us.”
Source: Vulture
It is possible that up to 40% of cinemas in China may close for good. That’s approx 5,000 theatres and 27,920 screens. That’s a huge hit for Hollywood films that have increasingly looked to the Chinese market for a huge chunk of its box office in recent years.
Source: Variety
With film and TV production on the cusp of returning in Australia, Oscar-winning producer Emile Sherman is calling on the govt to assist in covering the cost of insurance.
"Insurance is not a sexy issue and it’s something I try not to think about too much, but without it there is no independent film and television sector," said Sherman.
Source: The Age
How many people use Android TV as the software that powers their TV? An indicator might be that there have been over 50 million installs of the YouTube app on Android TV.
This means Android TV has blown past the market leading Roku and Amazon Fire TV platforms which both have approx 40 million each globally.
Source: Next TV
Back in 2000, the 1995 indie film Clerks was adapted into an animated TV series for broadcast TV. Surprising no one it was cancelled after just two episodes. While the show was never brilliant, it had some good jokes and had started to find a real groove by the end of the six episodes that were eventually produced (it was released in full on DVD).
Consequence of Sound have an oral history of the animated show with all of the key creatives involved. In addition to Kevin Smith (who has blocked me on Twitter), there is also a lot of commentary from Dave Mandel who has since gone on to run the show Veep:
Yes, I’m the voice of the semi-racist Korean animator. [Laughs.] If memory serves, I did two takes, where I just narrated what I was seeing. There was not a lot of writing. I just got behind the mic and played the sequence and I just went, “Oh my god, Pikachu,” and I just said what I was seeing. At some point, it was just like: “Who is driving? Oh my god. Bear is driving.”
Source: Consequence of Sound
Happy 40th anniversary to CNN which started broadcasting on 1 June 1980. To mark the occasion, CNN has released a compilation video of all the notable news coverage during that time.
Not seen on the video: the extensive panel shows that CNN has become known for in recent years. The video is also very focused on CNN’s US operations with little consideration given to CNN International.
The video is a reminder of what an impact CNN has had on the way that news is reported and shown around the world. It pioneered 24/7 news coverage and has brought rolling coverage of the world’s biggest moments into lounge rooms across the globe. For the most part, I *think* CNN has been a positive…
Speaking of US cable news, Ben Smith at the New York Times continues to be breaking news in his weekly media reports for the paper. This week he has gone inside each of the cable news networks as they’ve responded to the protests, riots, and looting across the US over the past 7 days.
Covered:
- Murdoch hiring a small team to defend Fox News against criticism from orgs like Media Matters and Sleeping Giants, protecting ad dollars
- The ratings drop experienced by MSNBC from Feb when Trump was exonerated by the Republican-controlled US Senate
- Plans for business channel CNBC to pivot to a lot more conservative news talk in the evenings as “an olive branch to Mr. Trump and his avid supporters.”
Read the article in full: NYT
Conservative streaming news channel The First only has a handful of shows, but today it adds to its roster the big dog Bill O’Reilly. His show, which is already streamed on YouTube and through his own site, will air at 8pm in the same timeslot as his former Fox News show. Until now the biggest name on the channel was the former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.
Read more: Deadline
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