Walter E. Calmette Sr., a veteran film sales executive who oversaw licensing and merchandising for the iconic Felix the Cat cartoon character for more than 30 years, has died. He was 85.
Calmette died Jan. 6 at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena of complications of heart failure, his family announced.
Calmette joined New World Entertainment in 1984 as senior vp acquisitions, working in ancillary sales, licensing, merchandising and theatrical acquisitions worldwide. The experience led him to be hired by the Oriolo family to run business affairs for Felix the Cat Productions, overseeing worldwide merchandising and licensing deals for the company.
Calmette came to the U.S. from Peru in 1958. While putting himself through school, he got his start in the entertainment business in 1962 with an entry-level position at Films Incorporated in Hollywood, where he learned how to be a film salesman.
He traveled to college campuses across the country and eventually led the Hollywood office...
Calmette died Jan. 6 at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena of complications of heart failure, his family announced.
Calmette joined New World Entertainment in 1984 as senior vp acquisitions, working in ancillary sales, licensing, merchandising and theatrical acquisitions worldwide. The experience led him to be hired by the Oriolo family to run business affairs for Felix the Cat Productions, overseeing worldwide merchandising and licensing deals for the company.
Calmette came to the U.S. from Peru in 1958. While putting himself through school, he got his start in the entertainment business in 1962 with an entry-level position at Films Incorporated in Hollywood, where he learned how to be a film salesman.
He traveled to college campuses across the country and eventually led the Hollywood office...
- 1/24/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
GÖTEBORG, Sweden – Jan Troell, the 91-year-old Swedish director and 1972 Oscar nominee for “The Emigrants,” is giving interviews in a Göteborg hotel, his leg propped on a chair, a walking stick, his daughter, Johanna, and wife, Agneta, both collaborators on his films, by his side.
The director, who turned down a ten-year Warner Bros. contract to return to Sweden, has been awarded the 2023 Goteborg Festival’s Nordic Honorary Dragon Award. The prize reflects a life-long connection to still-and-moving images that began when his mother brought him home from the hospital and his dad began filming.
Some of that footage, as well as excerpts from his films, will be combined with new dramatic scenes, for a new film project “Dyning” which is a memoir.
“I’m enjoying editing ‘Dyning’,” said Troell, adding. “I don’t totally identify with my age. I do physically but I still have the same lust for making pictures and images,...
The director, who turned down a ten-year Warner Bros. contract to return to Sweden, has been awarded the 2023 Goteborg Festival’s Nordic Honorary Dragon Award. The prize reflects a life-long connection to still-and-moving images that began when his mother brought him home from the hospital and his dad began filming.
Some of that footage, as well as excerpts from his films, will be combined with new dramatic scenes, for a new film project “Dyning” which is a memoir.
“I’m enjoying editing ‘Dyning’,” said Troell, adding. “I don’t totally identify with my age. I do physically but I still have the same lust for making pictures and images,...
- 1/30/2023
- by Liza Foreman
- Variety Film + TV
Dušan Makavejev was born on King Milutin Street in Belgrade on October 13, 1932. This was about nine years before the city was occupied by the Nazis, at which point the Chinese embassy across the street became the headquarters of the German Chief Command of the Southeast. As a child, he watched German officers go in and out of the building, one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, would later become the Secretary of the United Nations—though of course the young Makavejev didn’t know this at the time. Following the Second World War, it was under Tito's Communist, but anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia that Makavejev first emerged as a major Eastern European filmmaker, initially associated with the loosely defined Novi Film (new film) movement. His eclectic career, the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Anthology Archives, garnered praise from the likes of Amos Vogel, Robin Wood, Stanley Cavell, Jonas Mekas, and Roger Ebert,...
- 2/27/2020
- MUBI
Cuphead borrows its art design from the same era that made Felix The Cat and Betty Boop household names, so it's only fitting that there's a black and white mode. Surprisingly, I almost prefer this mode over the standard color as I think it gives a more authentic vibe, but I can't deny the game looks just as beautiful in full color.
Check out 7 minutes of gameplay in the video below and let us know if you've bought or intend to buy this game!
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Check out 7 minutes of gameplay in the video below and let us know if you've bought or intend to buy this game!
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- 10/3/2017
- by Mick Joest
- GeekTyrant
If our calculations are correct, Felix the cat has eight lives left.
The lucky kitty, who is the office cat at London’s Royal Docks Management Authority, fell into the water after a chase with another cat, and her rescue by a fellow worker was captured on camera.
Felix the RoDMA office cat had a lucky escape as Scott rushed save her from the water after a tussle with another cat! She is safe & sound. pic.twitter.com/Km03vzYno1
— London's Royal Docks (@YourRoyalDocks) May 1, 2017
“Felix the RoDMA office cat had a lucky escape as Scott rushed save her from...
The lucky kitty, who is the office cat at London’s Royal Docks Management Authority, fell into the water after a chase with another cat, and her rescue by a fellow worker was captured on camera.
Felix the RoDMA office cat had a lucky escape as Scott rushed save her from the water after a tussle with another cat! She is safe & sound. pic.twitter.com/Km03vzYno1
— London's Royal Docks (@YourRoyalDocks) May 1, 2017
“Felix the RoDMA office cat had a lucky escape as Scott rushed save her from...
- 5/2/2017
- by Amy Jamieson
- PEOPLE.com
It’s another Turkey Day, and the floating gang is back!
Well, some of the gang are back. Though it may feel like you see familiar balloons each Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they are actually switched out — and often. “We have conversations all year about what might make sense to see up in the air,” says Executive Parade Producer Amy Kule. “We like to switch it up. There are classics, like the Peanuts characters. but there is also a new generation of fans who have their own favorites, so its important to mix the old with the new.” (Like this year,...
Well, some of the gang are back. Though it may feel like you see familiar balloons each Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they are actually switched out — and often. “We have conversations all year about what might make sense to see up in the air,” says Executive Parade Producer Amy Kule. “We like to switch it up. There are classics, like the Peanuts characters. but there is also a new generation of fans who have their own favorites, so its important to mix the old with the new.” (Like this year,...
- 11/24/2016
- by gilliantellingblog
- PEOPLE.com
The year was 1924; the place, New York City. A group of animals from the Central Park Zoo marched down a street in Harlem accompanied by a very special group of people: a handful of immigrant Macy’s employees, who wanted to express how thankful they were for living in the United States that year. And thus, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was born.
Though today the event is a big blowout, with A-list stars, Broadway performances and millions of spectators on hand to watch the marching bands, floats and balloons make their way downtown, the parade had humble beginnings,...
Though today the event is a big blowout, with A-list stars, Broadway performances and millions of spectators on hand to watch the marching bands, floats and balloons make their way downtown, the parade had humble beginnings,...
- 11/24/2016
- by Kate Hogan
- PEOPLE.com
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is getting a makeover this year. Thanksgiving Day Parade To Host New Floats Charlie Brown will be among the balloons that will be given a fresh new look. Another that will see improvements is Felix the Cat, which debuted in 1927. The new float will appear exactly as it did […]
The post New Floats Due At 2016 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade appeared first on uInterview.
The post New Floats Due At 2016 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade appeared first on uInterview.
- 11/1/2016
- by Hillary Luehring-Jones
- Uinterview
I remember the ’80s as a mean decade. Around 1981, my parents separated. I started eating a lot, and kids teased me for being fat. I watched a lot of TV. Saturday mornings meant Pop-Tarts and “Felix the Cat.” Eventually I would get into harder songs: ’80s TV themes. My dad had my brother and I on weekends. On Friday nights, we would go to Straw Hat Pizza and watch the “Dukes of Hazzard” on the big screen. One of the big mysteries of my childhood was why we never saw the face of the man playing guitar. Also: It...
- 9/23/2016
- by Tim Molloy
- The Wrap
A history of paranormal exterminators in pop culture pre-1984.
Anytime you have a remake or reboot of a popular movie or franchise, fans of the original are going to whine about it. With Ghostbusters, there’s a new level of objection, some of it stemming from the same sort of nostalgic ownership of any beloved property from childhood and some of it arising out of misogyny. The only thing they ought to be concerned with is whether or not fans of the new movie will recognize its roots. And that’s not exclusive to the 1984 movie it’s based on and its 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II.
The Ghost Busters
Most famously, there was already something titled The Ghost Busters, a live-action TV series for children that ran for 15 episodes in 1975 and featured two men and a gorilla hunting mostly spirits and also sometimes famous monsters like Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature. The...
Anytime you have a remake or reboot of a popular movie or franchise, fans of the original are going to whine about it. With Ghostbusters, there’s a new level of objection, some of it stemming from the same sort of nostalgic ownership of any beloved property from childhood and some of it arising out of misogyny. The only thing they ought to be concerned with is whether or not fans of the new movie will recognize its roots. And that’s not exclusive to the 1984 movie it’s based on and its 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II.
The Ghost Busters
Most famously, there was already something titled The Ghost Busters, a live-action TV series for children that ran for 15 episodes in 1975 and featured two men and a gorilla hunting mostly spirits and also sometimes famous monsters like Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature. The...
- 7/15/2016
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Story By
Rafer Roberts
Art By
David Lafuente, Ryan Winn
Colors By
Brian Reber
Letters By
A Larger World Studios
Cover By
David Lafuente, Kano, Trevor Hairsine
Publisher
Valiant Entertainment
Cover Price:
$3.99
Release Date
Mar 16th, 2016
Synopsis:
Archer (A teenager trained to be the ultimate martial artist) is about to set off on his most dangerous mission yet - a quest into the mystic reaches of Armstrong's (Archer’s immortal, and definitely alcoholic adventuring buddy) bottomless satchel to liberate his friend and comrade from the clutches of the mad god Bacchus! (Okay, so, Armstrong went into the satchel himself to get a bottle of whiskey that he kinda misplaced and got stuck. It's like the Amazon warehouse of arcane treasures in there...and he doesn't exactly have a maid service.)
Review:
Archer and Armstrong feels like something that would fit perfectly into a late night slot on cartoon network, right there with Venture Bros,...
Rafer Roberts
Art By
David Lafuente, Ryan Winn
Colors By
Brian Reber
Letters By
A Larger World Studios
Cover By
David Lafuente, Kano, Trevor Hairsine
Publisher
Valiant Entertainment
Cover Price:
$3.99
Release Date
Mar 16th, 2016
Synopsis:
Archer (A teenager trained to be the ultimate martial artist) is about to set off on his most dangerous mission yet - a quest into the mystic reaches of Armstrong's (Archer’s immortal, and definitely alcoholic adventuring buddy) bottomless satchel to liberate his friend and comrade from the clutches of the mad god Bacchus! (Okay, so, Armstrong went into the satchel himself to get a bottle of whiskey that he kinda misplaced and got stuck. It's like the Amazon warehouse of arcane treasures in there...and he doesn't exactly have a maid service.)
Review:
Archer and Armstrong feels like something that would fit perfectly into a late night slot on cartoon network, right there with Venture Bros,...
- 3/17/2016
- by Jeremy Scully
- LRMonline.com
Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress and pioneering female film producer. Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress was pioneering woman producer, politically minded 'femme engagée' Danièle Delorme, who died on Oct. 17, '15, at the age of 89 in Paris, is best remembered as the first actress to incarnate Colette's teenage courtesan-to-be Gigi and for playing Jean Rochefort's about-to-be-cuckolded wife in the international box office hit Pardon Mon Affaire. Yet few are aware that Delorme was featured in nearly 60 films – three of which, including Gigi, directed by France's sole major woman filmmaker of the '40s and '50s – in addition to more than 20 stage plays and a dozen television productions in a show business career spanning seven decades. Even fewer realize that Delorme was also a pioneering woman film producer, working in that capacity for more than half a century. Or that she was what in French is called a femme engagée...
- 12/5/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Development continues on the DreamWorks Animation property, "Felix The Cat", with producers declaring that Felix will soon be 'a desired fashion brand':
"Felix really goes beyond evergreen status," said the studio's Jeffrey Katzenberg, "and rises to something even more uncommon...We plan to make him one of the most desired fashion brands in the world...".
Felix became popular in the 1920s in animated shorts, a comic strip and merchandise including ceramics, toys and postcards.
New 'Felix' cartoons began airing on TV in the 1950's with a 'Magical Bag of Tricks' that could assume a variety of shapes, the debut of the villain 'The Master Cylinder' and the young scientist 'Poindexter'.
DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media in 2012 from private equity group Boomerang Media Holdings for $155 million, including 'Casper', 'George of the Jungle', 'Where’s Waldo' and 'Rocky and Bullwinkle' — along with 450 films and more than...
"Felix really goes beyond evergreen status," said the studio's Jeffrey Katzenberg, "and rises to something even more uncommon...We plan to make him one of the most desired fashion brands in the world...".
Felix became popular in the 1920s in animated shorts, a comic strip and merchandise including ceramics, toys and postcards.
New 'Felix' cartoons began airing on TV in the 1950's with a 'Magical Bag of Tricks' that could assume a variety of shapes, the debut of the villain 'The Master Cylinder' and the young scientist 'Poindexter'.
DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media in 2012 from private equity group Boomerang Media Holdings for $155 million, including 'Casper', 'George of the Jungle', 'Where’s Waldo' and 'Rocky and Bullwinkle' — along with 450 films and more than...
- 7/24/2015
- by Michael Stevens
- SneakPeek
All hail another cartoon superstar who shines brightly in the animation galaxy. Well, he’s been shining for more than fifteen years now, actually. But in the realm of ‘toon icons, this lil’ guy is pretty unique. He’s not part of the group that were created during Hollywood’s “golden age” to star in pre-feature film short subjects, this includes Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse in the 1920’s right through to the 1960s’ with the Pink Panther (of course, a few jumped from the printed page to the big screen like Popeye the Sailor and Casper the Friendly Ghost). This fella’s an off-shoot of the made-for-tv superstars that include Rocket J Squirrel and his pal Bullwinkle J. Moose, the Simpsons, and the colossal roster of characters from Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s company (Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, and Scooby Doo). While they debuted on old-fashioned broadcast networks,...
- 2/6/2015
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
DreamWorks Animation and Hasbro are in talks to combine forces. Under the potential deal, the toymaking giant would pay about $35 a share for DreamWorks Animation, with Dwa chief Jeffrey Katzenberg becoming chairman of the combined "DreamWorks-Hasbro." [Variety] Under pressure to diversify, Katzeberg is looking to boost the bottomline of the publicly-held company, whose slate of animated family films from "Rise of the Guardians" to "Turbo" and "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" continues to disappoint at the box office. "Mr. Peabody" alone sparked a $57 write-down for Dwa, which shifted gears earlier this year by acquiring "Felix the Cat" and partnering with Netflix on 1,000 episodes of original animated programming. Read More: DreamWorks Animation Acquires Classic Cartoon "Felix the Cat" But one monkey wrench to consider in this potential merger is DreamWorks Animation competitor Disney's deep ties to Hasbro, which...
- 11/13/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
Shirley Clarke’s final feature film emulates the free form style of its subject, legendary jazz musician Ornette Coleman, playfully editing fragments of live performances, interviews and fictionalized visions of the saxophonist’s upbringing with the fervent energy of early MTV music videos. The result is a sort of telegenic collage that allows Ornette to age and mature in stature over the course of decades through performative observation and on screen accolades from colleagues and critics alike. Yet, Coleman’s career has continued to grow and flourish since the release of Ornette: Made in America back in 1985, having even been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music for his record Sound Grammar.
From the opening of the film Ornette’s seen being honored, in this case by the mayor of his hometown, Fort Worth, Texas, with a key to the city. It’s a recurring theme. Though at first misunderstood in his local musical community,...
From the opening of the film Ornette’s seen being honored, in this case by the mayor of his hometown, Fort Worth, Texas, with a key to the city. It’s a recurring theme. Though at first misunderstood in his local musical community,...
- 11/11/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
At this year's Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, Jeffrey Katzenberg confirmed that DreamWorks Animation have acquired the 95-year old cartoon property, "Felix The Cat", with Katzenberg declaring that Felix will soon be a 'desired fashion brand':
"Felix really goes beyond evergreen status," said Katzenberg, "and rises to something even more uncommon...We plan to make him one of the most desired fashion brands in the world...".
Felix became popular in the 1920s in animated shorts, a comic strip and merchandise including ceramics, toys and postcards.
New 'Felix' cartoons began airing on TV in the 1950's with a 'Magical Bag of Tricks' that could assume a variety of shapes, the debut of the villain 'The Master Cylinder' and the young scientist 'Poindexter'.
DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media in 2012 from private equity group Boomerang Media Holdings for $155 million, including 'Casper', 'George of the Jungle', 'Where’s Waldo' and...
"Felix really goes beyond evergreen status," said Katzenberg, "and rises to something even more uncommon...We plan to make him one of the most desired fashion brands in the world...".
Felix became popular in the 1920s in animated shorts, a comic strip and merchandise including ceramics, toys and postcards.
New 'Felix' cartoons began airing on TV in the 1950's with a 'Magical Bag of Tricks' that could assume a variety of shapes, the debut of the villain 'The Master Cylinder' and the young scientist 'Poindexter'.
DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media in 2012 from private equity group Boomerang Media Holdings for $155 million, including 'Casper', 'George of the Jungle', 'Where’s Waldo' and...
- 6/23/2014
- by Michael Stevens
- SneakPeek
Tim here. It’s been a weird week for fans of old animation. Nathaniel already said his piece (which is indistinguishable from mine) on the news that Warner is re-rebooting Scooby-Doo a mere 12 years after the first grisly first live-action/animated reboot of the ‘70s cartoon (the recent death of Casey Kasem, mere days before the announcement, now looms as some sort of grim karmic metaphor). And in the last couple of days, we’ve been hit with the first promotional artwork for an in-development Popeye feature at Sony Animation, and the news that DreamWorks has purchased the rights to Felix the Cat from the family of the 95-year-old slapstick animal’s creator.
More...
More...
- 6/20/2014
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
How well-known is Felix the Cat of late? In the Us, maybe not so much. Los Angeles residents know him thanks to the sign for Felix Chevrolet on S. Figeuroa St, which has stood for over fifty years. If you’re in that part of town, it’s difficult to miss. For everyone else, Felix still has a […]
The post Dreamworks Animation Picks up ‘Felix the Cat’ Rights appeared first on /Film.
The post Dreamworks Animation Picks up ‘Felix the Cat’ Rights appeared first on /Film.
- 6/18/2014
- by Russ Fischer
- Slash Film
Not content with creating its own characters (or, more accurately, loosely adapting the likes of Shrek and the How To Train Your Dragon gang from books), DreamWorks Animation has been on the look out for other properties to snap up, targeting the Troll dolls most recently. But though the spiky haired ones already have a film in production, it appears the company’s latest acquisition, Felix the Cat, might have to wait a while before he hits screens again.Speaking at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg talked up the purchase as part of the company’s presentation. “Today, DreamWorks has acquired all rights to Felix the Cat,” Katzenberg said according to Variety. “Felix really goes beyond evergreen status and rises to something even more uncommon, as he is a true icon. We plan to make him one of the most desired fashion brands in the world.
- 6/17/2014
- EmpireOnline
DreamWorks Animation has acquired all rights to Felix the Cat, the feline cartoon from the silent film era, Dwa CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said during a speech at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. A popular cartoon throughout the 1920s, Felix first appeared in film shorts and a comic strip. He resurfaced in various TV shows and movies since the introduction of sound, and ranks as one of the greatest cartoon characters of all-time. “Felix really goes beyond evergreen status and rises to something even more uncommon, as he is a true icon,” Katzenberg said during a speech given to executives from retail,...
- 6/17/2014
- by Lucas Shaw
- The Wrap
One of the things that makes Who Framed Roger Rabbit special is that it had non-Disney-owned cartoon characters appear in a Disney film. How did that happen? Producer Steven Spielberg has some clout and he negotiated deals with Warner Bros., Fleischer Studios, King Features Syndicate, Felix the Cat Productions, Turner Entertainment, and Universal Pictures/Walter Lantz Productions. Sadly, not every famous cartoon character made it into the film. Notably left out of the mix were Popeye characters, Tom and Jerry, and Casper the Friendly Ghost. All of them would've appeared in a sequence set at Marvin Acme's funeral, but it was cut due to pacing concerns. Storyboards for this scene recently surfaced on EBay. As you can see below, Bluto, Elmer Fudd, Herman the Mouse, Felix the Cat, Goofy, Popeye the Sailor and Yosemite Sam carry Marvin Acme's casket to his final resting stop. For a more in-depth analysis of...
- 5/10/2014
- ComicBookMovie.com
The following is a list of all comic books, graphic novels and specialty items that will be available this week and shipped to comic book stores who have placed orders for them.
AC Comics
Femforce #166, $9.95
Action Lab Entertainment
Princeless Volume 1 Tp (New Printing), $11.99
Adhouse Books
Basewood Hc, $19.95
Antarctic Press
16-Bit Zombies #1, $3.99
Ghost Cop #3 (Of 3), $3.99
Applause Publishing
Stephen King Films Faq Sc, $24.99
Zombie Film From White Zombie To World War Z Sc, $29.99
Arcana Studio
Spotlight Gn, $14.95
Steam Engines Of Oz Volume 2 The Geared Leviathan Tp, $19.95
Archie Comic Publications
Archie’s Funhouse Double Digest #3, $3.99
Fox #5 (Dean Haspiel Variant Cover), $2.99
Sonic The Hedgehog #258 (Rafa Knight Return Of Princess Sally Variant Cover), $2.99
Sonic The Hedgehog #258 (Tyson Hesse Regular Cover), $2.99
World Of Archie Double Digest #38, $4.99
Avatar Press
Crossed Badlands #49 (German Erramouspe Wraparound Cover), $3.99
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Red Crossed Incentive Cover), Ar
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Regular Cover), $3.99
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Torture Cover), $3.99
God...
AC Comics
Femforce #166, $9.95
Action Lab Entertainment
Princeless Volume 1 Tp (New Printing), $11.99
Adhouse Books
Basewood Hc, $19.95
Antarctic Press
16-Bit Zombies #1, $3.99
Ghost Cop #3 (Of 3), $3.99
Applause Publishing
Stephen King Films Faq Sc, $24.99
Zombie Film From White Zombie To World War Z Sc, $29.99
Arcana Studio
Spotlight Gn, $14.95
Steam Engines Of Oz Volume 2 The Geared Leviathan Tp, $19.95
Archie Comic Publications
Archie’s Funhouse Double Digest #3, $3.99
Fox #5 (Dean Haspiel Variant Cover), $2.99
Sonic The Hedgehog #258 (Rafa Knight Return Of Princess Sally Variant Cover), $2.99
Sonic The Hedgehog #258 (Tyson Hesse Regular Cover), $2.99
World Of Archie Double Digest #38, $4.99
Avatar Press
Crossed Badlands #49 (German Erramouspe Wraparound Cover), $3.99
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Red Crossed Incentive Cover), Ar
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Regular Cover), $3.99
Crossed Badlands #49 (Rafa Ortiz Torture Cover), $3.99
God...
- 3/18/2014
- by Adam B.
- GeekRest
20) Road Signs
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
Peter Drucker
Home Box Office has dodged more bullets than Wyatt Earp at the Ok Corral. Going on the satellite in 1975 turned the company from a regional possibility into a national success; then came “hitting the wall” and the challenge of VCRs in the 1980s; and then there was the late 1990s course correction which turned the service into an original series king; and then there was the struggle of the Chris Albrecht years and the WGA strike.
Today, HBO has its big hits – Game of Thrones and True Blood, and its second tier, buzz-making winners like Girls, The Newsroom, Veep and Treme. Medical dramedy Getting On, and Looking – often described as a gay Sex and the City – show the service hasn’t gotten any shyer about trying to tackle provocative subject matter in risky ways.
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
Peter Drucker
Home Box Office has dodged more bullets than Wyatt Earp at the Ok Corral. Going on the satellite in 1975 turned the company from a regional possibility into a national success; then came “hitting the wall” and the challenge of VCRs in the 1980s; and then there was the late 1990s course correction which turned the service into an original series king; and then there was the struggle of the Chris Albrecht years and the WGA strike.
Today, HBO has its big hits – Game of Thrones and True Blood, and its second tier, buzz-making winners like Girls, The Newsroom, Veep and Treme. Medical dramedy Getting On, and Looking – often described as a gay Sex and the City – show the service hasn’t gotten any shyer about trying to tackle provocative subject matter in risky ways.
- 2/14/2014
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive.
Steven Spielberg
As HBO’s CEO, Michael Fuchs, who’d come up through the company’s programming side, had spent 11 years working to transform the service from a movie channel with some pleasant original filler into a true programming platform. Ironically, Fuchs’ vision wouldn’t come to full fruit until after he’d left the company in May 1995, and it would happen under a guy who had no programming experience at all: Jeff Bewkes, who took over the CEO’s slot after Fuchs’ departure.
A friend of mine in the company who’d worked with Bewkes once explained his programming philosophy while we were talking about some of the company’s big dollar extravaganzas, like Band of Brothers. Bewkes didn’t interfere with the creative side. “If you can make it make business sense to him, Jeff’ll say, ‘Go ahead.’ If you can...
Steven Spielberg
As HBO’s CEO, Michael Fuchs, who’d come up through the company’s programming side, had spent 11 years working to transform the service from a movie channel with some pleasant original filler into a true programming platform. Ironically, Fuchs’ vision wouldn’t come to full fruit until after he’d left the company in May 1995, and it would happen under a guy who had no programming experience at all: Jeff Bewkes, who took over the CEO’s slot after Fuchs’ departure.
A friend of mine in the company who’d worked with Bewkes once explained his programming philosophy while we were talking about some of the company’s big dollar extravaganzas, like Band of Brothers. Bewkes didn’t interfere with the creative side. “If you can make it make business sense to him, Jeff’ll say, ‘Go ahead.’ If you can...
- 1/17/2014
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
It said something about HBO’s elevating stature as a programmer that the company strategy was no longer catch-as-catch-can. HBO now found itself in the enviable position of being able to afford to turn shows down based on its view the project was – in the phrase I was coming to hear more and more often – “an HBO show.” Like the old joke about art, nobody could define what that meant, but they knew it when they saw it.
Case in point:
In 1996, HBO rolled out Arli$$ (1996-2002). Like The Larry Sanders Show, Arli$$ came from the off-kilter imagination of a stand-up comic, in this case Robert Wuhl, who also starred. In synopsis – and no doubt why HBO was interested – Arli$$ sounded like a sports version of The Larry Sanders Show. Wuhl played Arliss Michaels, a top-flight sports agent with the integrity of a hired killer moving through the circles of...
Case in point:
In 1996, HBO rolled out Arli$$ (1996-2002). Like The Larry Sanders Show, Arli$$ came from the off-kilter imagination of a stand-up comic, in this case Robert Wuhl, who also starred. In synopsis – and no doubt why HBO was interested – Arli$$ sounded like a sports version of The Larry Sanders Show. Wuhl played Arliss Michaels, a top-flight sports agent with the integrity of a hired killer moving through the circles of...
- 1/9/2014
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
HBO’s rise from the you’re-spending-my-subscription-money-on-that-crap? original programming basement to cable TV’s creative gold standard can be charted over a period of about ten years with the successes of several key original offerings.
By the end of the 1980s, the movie box office was becoming dominated by young-skewing sci fi and fantasy adventures, over-the-top action blockbusters, and sequels to sci fi and fantasy and over-the-top blockbusters. Box office Top Tens for 1989-1990 included the likes of Batman (1989), Ghostbusters II (1989), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Home Alone (1990), Total Recall (1990), and Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990). Over on the small screen, the penchant was for the sweet, the nice, the inoffensive. TV series at the top of the rating charts during the same period included The Cosby Show, Golden Girls, Wonder Years, Who’s the Boss?, and Murder, She Wrote.
There were writers and directors and producers in Hollywood itching to do something different,...
By the end of the 1980s, the movie box office was becoming dominated by young-skewing sci fi and fantasy adventures, over-the-top action blockbusters, and sequels to sci fi and fantasy and over-the-top blockbusters. Box office Top Tens for 1989-1990 included the likes of Batman (1989), Ghostbusters II (1989), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Home Alone (1990), Total Recall (1990), and Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990). Over on the small screen, the penchant was for the sweet, the nice, the inoffensive. TV series at the top of the rating charts during the same period included The Cosby Show, Golden Girls, Wonder Years, Who’s the Boss?, and Murder, She Wrote.
There were writers and directors and producers in Hollywood itching to do something different,...
- 12/30/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
“Every winning streak will have to end sometime.”
Jahinger Khan
In recognition of the job HBO CEO Michael Fuchs had done growing HBO and diversifying its business, he was invited uptown in 1995 to take over Warner Music while still keeping HBO as part of his new, expanded dominion. Assuming Fuchs’ top exec slot at HBO was Jeff Bewkes.
Not long after Fuchs had been given command of HBO in 1984 after the ouster of Frank Biondi, it had been clear that Fuchs’ strengths were not universal. Programming and long-term strategic vision were his fortes. Some of the more mundane and, for Fuchs, onerous tasks, such as kissing up to officers of the major cable MSOs, was something for which the often high-handed Fuchs didn’t have much of an affinity. The solution had been to divvy the company up, putting those non-Fuchsian — but critically important — responsibilities under a newly-created office of President.
Jahinger Khan
In recognition of the job HBO CEO Michael Fuchs had done growing HBO and diversifying its business, he was invited uptown in 1995 to take over Warner Music while still keeping HBO as part of his new, expanded dominion. Assuming Fuchs’ top exec slot at HBO was Jeff Bewkes.
Not long after Fuchs had been given command of HBO in 1984 after the ouster of Frank Biondi, it had been clear that Fuchs’ strengths were not universal. Programming and long-term strategic vision were his fortes. Some of the more mundane and, for Fuchs, onerous tasks, such as kissing up to officers of the major cable MSOs, was something for which the often high-handed Fuchs didn’t have much of an affinity. The solution had been to divvy the company up, putting those non-Fuchsian — but critically important — responsibilities under a newly-created office of President.
- 11/28/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Farmer Gray is tooling down the road one fine day in 1981, and there ahead of him he sees Sam’s Appliance Store. Farmer Gray has had a heck of a wheat crop this year and he’s got $40,000 burning a hole in his pocket. On a whim, he goes into Sam’s. He’s worked hard this year; he figures he owes himself a toy.
“Sam,” he says. “I’m all the way the heck out in the middle of nowhere. You got one of those forty, fifty foot TV antennas I could put up so I could get at least a little bit of TV? I hear this Happy Days thing is just terrific, but where I’m sitting, I can’t get anything on my set but the buzz from my wife’s Lady Schick.”
And old Sam, why he says, “I can do you one better, Farmer Gray.
“Sam,” he says. “I’m all the way the heck out in the middle of nowhere. You got one of those forty, fifty foot TV antennas I could put up so I could get at least a little bit of TV? I hear this Happy Days thing is just terrific, but where I’m sitting, I can’t get anything on my set but the buzz from my wife’s Lady Schick.”
And old Sam, why he says, “I can do you one better, Farmer Gray.
- 11/19/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
If you aren’t making any mistakes,
it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.
John Maxwell
By the end of the 1980s, HBO’s nightmarish headlong collision with The Wall in 1984 was just that; a bad dream fading over time. Even during the tough days, the company had remained a money-maker, and although it was taking more effort and cash to bag subscribers, the service was growing again, HBO original programming was racking up awards and acclaim, and in subscriber homes, the channel was kicking broadcast network ass. During the 1990-91 television season, the service beat all three major networks during Saturday and Sunday prime time hours. The good times were back.
Which did not change the underlying, immutable fact, and the greatest lesson to come out of that horrifying 1984 flatline: that the domestic cable universe was finite. Sooner or later, HBO was bound to hit another wall.
it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.
John Maxwell
By the end of the 1980s, HBO’s nightmarish headlong collision with The Wall in 1984 was just that; a bad dream fading over time. Even during the tough days, the company had remained a money-maker, and although it was taking more effort and cash to bag subscribers, the service was growing again, HBO original programming was racking up awards and acclaim, and in subscriber homes, the channel was kicking broadcast network ass. During the 1990-91 television season, the service beat all three major networks during Saturday and Sunday prime time hours. The good times were back.
Which did not change the underlying, immutable fact, and the greatest lesson to come out of that horrifying 1984 flatline: that the domestic cable universe was finite. Sooner or later, HBO was bound to hit another wall.
- 11/6/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
This year's edition of the silent film festival featured Welles' previously-thought-lost Too Much Johnson amid a typically irreverent and varied selection
• Orson Welles's first professional film discovered in an Italian warehouse
• Review: Peter Bradshaw on Blancanieves
The first full day of the 32nd Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world's most prestigious silent-film festival, took place exactly 86 years after The Jazz Singer premiered in New York. There were no mournful faces in the town of Pordenone, Italy, where the Giornate is held, however. In this corner of the world, for one week only, it is not quite as if the talkies never arrived, but rather that they failed to stop the party. Silent cinema continues to reinvent itself, to surprise even its most protective guardians, and to multiply.
The opening gala night of the festival featured a recent film that paid tribute to European silent cinema, Pablo Berger's invigoratingly...
• Orson Welles's first professional film discovered in an Italian warehouse
• Review: Peter Bradshaw on Blancanieves
The first full day of the 32nd Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world's most prestigious silent-film festival, took place exactly 86 years after The Jazz Singer premiered in New York. There were no mournful faces in the town of Pordenone, Italy, where the Giornate is held, however. In this corner of the world, for one week only, it is not quite as if the talkies never arrived, but rather that they failed to stop the party. Silent cinema continues to reinvent itself, to surprise even its most protective guardians, and to multiply.
The opening gala night of the festival featured a recent film that paid tribute to European silent cinema, Pablo Berger's invigoratingly...
- 10/14/2013
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
An Original Voice
“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.
But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...
“We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get shown the door when the company had suddenly flatlined after eight years of phenomenal growth, and what we got was scared.
But it’s to the credit of HBO’s execs that whatever anxieties they may have had, they showed no panic or even nervousness in public. Instead, they poured any concerns into energetically and immediately addressing the question of, “What do we do now?” The world we knew had changed and there was no going back to the Gold Rush days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company required a humongous...
- 10/11/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
15) The Wall
“I used to say this to the staff,
‘We’re all working very hard, but pause and reflect,
because not many people in their professional lives ever get the chance that we’re having.”
Tony Cox
It’s New York, the early 1980s, and if you were young, still relatively new to The City, looking for only your first or second job, it would’ve been hard to find a more exciting – or fun – place to work than Home Box Office. It was a great, grand time for the company, one in which it was hard not to feel you were part of what still felt like an adventure into unmapped territory, where success followed success, and where – as I remember one of my colleagues saying in reflection – it often seemed like one, big party. In an HBO 20th anniversary commemorative brochure, Tony Cox, one-time president of the HBO Network group,...
“I used to say this to the staff,
‘We’re all working very hard, but pause and reflect,
because not many people in their professional lives ever get the chance that we’re having.”
Tony Cox
It’s New York, the early 1980s, and if you were young, still relatively new to The City, looking for only your first or second job, it would’ve been hard to find a more exciting – or fun – place to work than Home Box Office. It was a great, grand time for the company, one in which it was hard not to feel you were part of what still felt like an adventure into unmapped territory, where success followed success, and where – as I remember one of my colleagues saying in reflection – it often seemed like one, big party. In an HBO 20th anniversary commemorative brochure, Tony Cox, one-time president of the HBO Network group,...
- 9/16/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Washington, Sept. 5: Canines are apparently the favourite TV animals of all time, taking three of the top five spots and 20 places overall in a new survey.
According to TV Guide Magazine's new list, Lassie, the beloved collie, stood on the first position with a 19-year TV run, while the second spot was nabbed by the fictional talking horse Mister Ed, Fox News reported.
The adorably precocious Jack Russell terrier, Eddie, from the Us sitcom 'Frasier' grabbed the third spot and was followed by 'Today Monkeyshines's temperamental chimp J. Fred Muggs.
Scooby-Doo from 'Scooby-Doo' series made up the top five.
Other animals on the list included Felix, from 'Felix the Cat', Kermit the frog, from 'Sesame Street',.
According to TV Guide Magazine's new list, Lassie, the beloved collie, stood on the first position with a 19-year TV run, while the second spot was nabbed by the fictional talking horse Mister Ed, Fox News reported.
The adorably precocious Jack Russell terrier, Eddie, from the Us sitcom 'Frasier' grabbed the third spot and was followed by 'Today Monkeyshines's temperamental chimp J. Fred Muggs.
Scooby-Doo from 'Scooby-Doo' series made up the top five.
Other animals on the list included Felix, from 'Felix the Cat', Kermit the frog, from 'Sesame Street',.
- 9/5/2013
- by Leon David
- RealBollywood.com
14) The Movie Duels
Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.
Thomas Edison
There’s a story that on the November night in 1972 when HBO went on the air for the very first time to a few hundred subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Gerald Levin – then HBO’s top programmer and soon-to-be chief exec – ordered living room furniture installed in his office so he could watch that premiere night of HBO the way the channel’s first subscribers would see it. He wanted to see HBO through their eyes.
Today, in an era of Netflix, Hulu, on-demand, downloadable content available on almost everything but the kitchen toaster, it’s hard to appreciate how novel the concept of HBO was over 40 years ago. Except for a few small pockets of the country which had experienced the come-and-go efforts of earlier subscription TV services, nobody – including the people running...
Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.
Thomas Edison
There’s a story that on the November night in 1972 when HBO went on the air for the very first time to a few hundred subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Gerald Levin – then HBO’s top programmer and soon-to-be chief exec – ordered living room furniture installed in his office so he could watch that premiere night of HBO the way the channel’s first subscribers would see it. He wanted to see HBO through their eyes.
Today, in an era of Netflix, Hulu, on-demand, downloadable content available on almost everything but the kitchen toaster, it’s hard to appreciate how novel the concept of HBO was over 40 years ago. Except for a few small pockets of the country which had experienced the come-and-go efforts of earlier subscription TV services, nobody – including the people running...
- 9/2/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
13) Title Fights: The King of Pay-tv
In 1977, Jeff Bewkes was an affable 25-year-old Mba graduate out of Stanford, one of a number of similarly young grads in the trainee program of Citibank of New York, doing whatever bank trainees do in a nest of cubicles at Citibank’s training center in a drab Long Island City warehouse across the East River from the gleaming towers of Manhattan. One morning, Tony Wojick, a trainee in Bewkes’ Citibank accounting class, was talking about some movie he’d seen on TV the previous night.
That didn’t make sense to Bewkes; the movie Wojick was talking about hadn’t been in theaters that long ago. It was too soon for it to be on TV. “You saw it on the Monday Night Movie?” he asked Wojick, surprised one of the networks had gotten it for one of their movie slots so early.
“No,...
In 1977, Jeff Bewkes was an affable 25-year-old Mba graduate out of Stanford, one of a number of similarly young grads in the trainee program of Citibank of New York, doing whatever bank trainees do in a nest of cubicles at Citibank’s training center in a drab Long Island City warehouse across the East River from the gleaming towers of Manhattan. One morning, Tony Wojick, a trainee in Bewkes’ Citibank accounting class, was talking about some movie he’d seen on TV the previous night.
That didn’t make sense to Bewkes; the movie Wojick was talking about hadn’t been in theaters that long ago. It was too soon for it to be on TV. “You saw it on the Monday Night Movie?” he asked Wojick, surprised one of the networks had gotten it for one of their movie slots so early.
“No,...
- 8/30/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
12) Into The Skies, Junior Birdmen!
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something,
perhaps when you are least expecting it.
I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
Charles F. Kettering
Home Box Office debuted to a handful of subscribers on a single cable system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania one November night in 1972, and then — …
And then not too much.
There’d been no media coverage at all of the HBO launch, not even from the local press. The one “celebrity” that was supposed to show — the Wilkes-Barre city manager — decided to pass on attending. Time Inc.’s president and chief executive officer, J. Richard Munro, was supposed to attend the opening ceremonies, but he got stuck in a traffic jam on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge and wound up phoning in his regrets from a White Tower burger palace.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something,
perhaps when you are least expecting it.
I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
Charles F. Kettering
Home Box Office debuted to a handful of subscribers on a single cable system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania one November night in 1972, and then — …
And then not too much.
There’d been no media coverage at all of the HBO launch, not even from the local press. The one “celebrity” that was supposed to show — the Wilkes-Barre city manager — decided to pass on attending. Time Inc.’s president and chief executive officer, J. Richard Munro, was supposed to attend the opening ceremonies, but he got stuck in a traffic jam on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge and wound up phoning in his regrets from a White Tower burger palace.
- 8/18/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
10) The Green Channel
Let’s say it’s the 1960s, and you live in New York City, some place in downtown Manhattan. You’re cool, you’re with it, so maybe it’s a nifty loft in the Chelsea district. That puts you maybe twenty blocks from the Empire State Building, the transmission source for all over-the-air TV signals in the city. Well, if your neat, beatnik pad happens to be in just the wrong place, with one of those famous New York City skyscrapers standing between you and the Empire State, somebody living 15 miles away in the New Jersey ‘burbs is getting better TV reception than you. While you may appreciate the poetic irony of living amidst the greatest collection of television signals in the country and not being able to get any of it, you don’t think it’s nearly as funny as your friends over in Jersey do.
Let’s say it’s the 1960s, and you live in New York City, some place in downtown Manhattan. You’re cool, you’re with it, so maybe it’s a nifty loft in the Chelsea district. That puts you maybe twenty blocks from the Empire State Building, the transmission source for all over-the-air TV signals in the city. Well, if your neat, beatnik pad happens to be in just the wrong place, with one of those famous New York City skyscrapers standing between you and the Empire State, somebody living 15 miles away in the New Jersey ‘burbs is getting better TV reception than you. While you may appreciate the poetic irony of living amidst the greatest collection of television signals in the country and not being able to get any of it, you don’t think it’s nearly as funny as your friends over in Jersey do.
- 8/11/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
9) Walson’s Mountain
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge
has marked the upward surge of mankind.
From the movie, Wall Street (1987)
Up until alternate delivery systems — like home satellite dishes, home video, and, later, HBO’s online service, HBO Go — Home Box Office was synonymous with cable television. In fact, go back far enough and there was a time where, when you said “cable,” you meant “HBO,” and when you said “HBO” — … Well, you get the picture.
And that’s one of the several ironies in the birth of HBO, because cable TV was not originally developed as an alternative to broadcast television, but as an adjunct; you subscribed...
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge
has marked the upward surge of mankind.
From the movie, Wall Street (1987)
Up until alternate delivery systems — like home satellite dishes, home video, and, later, HBO’s online service, HBO Go — Home Box Office was synonymous with cable television. In fact, go back far enough and there was a time where, when you said “cable,” you meant “HBO,” and when you said “HBO” — … Well, you get the picture.
And that’s one of the several ironies in the birth of HBO, because cable TV was not originally developed as an alternative to broadcast television, but as an adjunct; you subscribed...
- 8/3/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
After the grueling two-hour Men Tell All special, I thought the boys of The Bachelorette deserved a break. So I let a handful of them try to impress me with the answers to four important speed-dating questions to determine who would be getting a rose from me — you know, if I had roses.
Juan Pablo and I chatted primarily about his favorite subject: his daughter Camilla. He deferred to her love of all the Disney princesses when I asked him his favorite, and in the end he didn’t come up with a straight answer. But now I know Camilla...
Juan Pablo and I chatted primarily about his favorite subject: his daughter Camilla. He deferred to her love of all the Disney princesses when I asked him his favorite, and in the end he didn’t come up with a straight answer. But now I know Camilla...
- 7/23/2013
- by Amanda Taylor
- EW.com - PopWatch
The Wasteland:
Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs;
and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.
Lee Loevinger
When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials about commercial TV. By definition, it is not a public service. It is not commercial TV’s job to enlighten, inform, educate, elevate, inspire, or offer insight. Frankly, it’s not even commercial TV’s job to entertain. Bottom line: its purpose is simply to deliver as many sets of eyes to advertisers as possible. As it happens, it tends to do this by offering various forms of entertainment, and occasionally by offering content that does enlighten, inform, etc., but a cynic would make the point that if TV could do the same job televising fish aimlessly swimming around an aquarium,...
Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs;
and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.
Lee Loevinger
When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials about commercial TV. By definition, it is not a public service. It is not commercial TV’s job to enlighten, inform, educate, elevate, inspire, or offer insight. Frankly, it’s not even commercial TV’s job to entertain. Bottom line: its purpose is simply to deliver as many sets of eyes to advertisers as possible. As it happens, it tends to do this by offering various forms of entertainment, and occasionally by offering content that does enlighten, inform, etc., but a cynic would make the point that if TV could do the same job televising fish aimlessly swimming around an aquarium,...
- 7/22/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
The Numbers Racket:
Do not put your faith in what statistics say
until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
William W. Watt
The nets don’t just pull a price out of their respective hats for their advertising time. Advertisers are paying for viewers’ attention. They want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth and the only way to do that is to know how many people are watching. This need has always been so imperative that as early as 1949, just one year after the third network — ABC — went on the air, and even before any of the nets had begun coast-to-coast operations, a regular ratings system was in effect.
Rating broadcast programs did not start with TV. Broadcast programmers had been doing that kind of thing back in the radio days for the same reasons: so that sponsors would know who was watching what,...
Do not put your faith in what statistics say
until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
William W. Watt
The nets don’t just pull a price out of their respective hats for their advertising time. Advertisers are paying for viewers’ attention. They want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth and the only way to do that is to know how many people are watching. This need has always been so imperative that as early as 1949, just one year after the third network — ABC — went on the air, and even before any of the nets had begun coast-to-coast operations, a regular ratings system was in effect.
Rating broadcast programs did not start with TV. Broadcast programmers had been doing that kind of thing back in the radio days for the same reasons: so that sponsors would know who was watching what,...
- 7/15/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
In the Beginning Was the Word — Radio:
“I like doing radio because it’s so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you’re inside their heads, not only that, you’re in there laying eggs”.
Doug Coupland
We can watch TV — or movies, YouTube videos, play videogames, exchange video phone calls — from anywhere and everywhere: on line at McD’s, from our seat on our commuter bus or train (usually annoying the hell out of the napping business professional next to us), even from a toilet stall (crass, I grant, but I’ve seen — , well, ahem, I mean, I’ve heard it done). It’s nearly impossible for a generation growing up immersed, submerged, and buried in portable visual media to imagine the magnetic hold radio had on its audiences back in its early days. Think about it, all you smartphone and ipad users, wi-fiers and Hopper subscribers: there...
“I like doing radio because it’s so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you’re inside their heads, not only that, you’re in there laying eggs”.
Doug Coupland
We can watch TV — or movies, YouTube videos, play videogames, exchange video phone calls — from anywhere and everywhere: on line at McD’s, from our seat on our commuter bus or train (usually annoying the hell out of the napping business professional next to us), even from a toilet stall (crass, I grant, but I’ve seen — , well, ahem, I mean, I’ve heard it done). It’s nearly impossible for a generation growing up immersed, submerged, and buried in portable visual media to imagine the magnetic hold radio had on its audiences back in its early days. Think about it, all you smartphone and ipad users, wi-fiers and Hopper subscribers: there...
- 7/6/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Baby Steps:
“We…repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without
improving our purpose.”
Will Durant
There’s no telling how much earlier commercial television would’ve been on the air if the early developmental days of the medium hadn’t had to suffer through two of the century’s more cataclysmic events, the first being The Great Depression.
TV technology development was the preserve of large corporations with large bank accounts. By this time, all the new gizmos required to make TV work simply cost too much for people like Philo Farnsworth to do the work in their backyard workshops. But, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 dried up enough of those corporate assets to slow the development of television (and nearly everything else in the world) considerably.
Slowed, but not stilled. Experimental stations still sprung up here and there, and broadcast technology inched its way along the road to improvement. Despite The Depression,...
“We…repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without
improving our purpose.”
Will Durant
There’s no telling how much earlier commercial television would’ve been on the air if the early developmental days of the medium hadn’t had to suffer through two of the century’s more cataclysmic events, the first being The Great Depression.
TV technology development was the preserve of large corporations with large bank accounts. By this time, all the new gizmos required to make TV work simply cost too much for people like Philo Farnsworth to do the work in their backyard workshops. But, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 dried up enough of those corporate assets to slow the development of television (and nearly everything else in the world) considerably.
Slowed, but not stilled. Experimental stations still sprung up here and there, and broadcast technology inched its way along the road to improvement. Despite The Depression,...
- 7/1/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
3) Towards Felix the Cat
“Invention breeds invention.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we climb into the family car we don’t think too much about it. We slip behind the wheel, turn the key, are happy it starts, and off we go. If we think about cars in a more expansive sense, it’s probably not all that expansive. When we start musing about how the old clunkers our parents used to drive evolved into the nifty little numbers with their sleek “airflow design” that we’re driving now, our musings probably don’t go very far. Our idea of automotive history may only extend back as far as Heavy Chevies from the ’50s, or maybe Model Ts from early in the century.
What we don’t think about are all those years and lines of unrelated research that eventually crossed and produced what we know of as a car. We...
“Invention breeds invention.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we climb into the family car we don’t think too much about it. We slip behind the wheel, turn the key, are happy it starts, and off we go. If we think about cars in a more expansive sense, it’s probably not all that expansive. When we start musing about how the old clunkers our parents used to drive evolved into the nifty little numbers with their sleek “airflow design” that we’re driving now, our musings probably don’t go very far. Our idea of automotive history may only extend back as far as Heavy Chevies from the ’50s, or maybe Model Ts from early in the century.
What we don’t think about are all those years and lines of unrelated research that eventually crossed and produced what we know of as a car. We...
- 6/21/2013
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
It's happened to all of us before: you see someone on the street you swear you know. But what if you recognized that person not because they look like a friend, but because they look just like you? That's the mind-bending premise of "Orphan Black," the new sci-fi series premiering on Space and BBC America on March 30.
And while good science-fiction always grounds its more out-there elements in something familiar, like a shared personal experience or universal theme, "Orphan Black" takes the idea of identity crisis and multiplies it. That's because the series star Tatiana Maslany doesn't just play one leading role in the new show, she plays enough to necessitate the use of a cheat sheet.
It all starts when Sarah (Maslany) witnesses a woman who looks just like her, Beth (also Maslany), jump in front of a train. And looking for a way out of her own less-than-perfect life,...
And while good science-fiction always grounds its more out-there elements in something familiar, like a shared personal experience or universal theme, "Orphan Black" takes the idea of identity crisis and multiplies it. That's because the series star Tatiana Maslany doesn't just play one leading role in the new show, she plays enough to necessitate the use of a cheat sheet.
It all starts when Sarah (Maslany) witnesses a woman who looks just like her, Beth (also Maslany), jump in front of a train. And looking for a way out of her own less-than-perfect life,...
- 3/28/2013
- by HuffPost Canada TV
- Huffington Post
As my love of Real Artists proves, I'm a sucker for mixed media web series that combine live action with meticulously crafted animation. Therefore, you can imagine my excitement regarding Franklin the Ladies Cat, a new web series by digital artist Bard Edlund. Franklin the Ladies Cat follows the sad life of its titular feline, who talks a big game but actually spends most of his time sleeping in back alleys and stalking attractive women who think he's nothing more than an adorable kitty. No other characters show their faces throughout the course of the debut episode, which has been released on Edlund's personal YouTube channel to modest four-digit views. Edlund was inspired by old-school cartoon animals such as Felix the Cat and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but the manner in which regular humans view him as a regular cat is most reminiscent of several famous comic animals who exhibit the same characteristic,...
- 1/15/2013
- by Sam Gutelle
- Tubefilter.com
Dreamworks Animation (Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon) just bought out Classic Media for $155 million and have now called the company Dreamworks Classic. So what did Classic Media do or have that calls for such a grand number? Well glad you asked, Classic Media was a animation/production/distribution company that had collected the rights to a lot of old kid properties. Now that Dreamworks bought them out they now have the rights (not all of them complete) to the following...(takes deep breath)
Postman Pat
Where's Waldo?
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
The entire Filmation catalog (Huge In The 80's) He-Man, Fat Albert, etc.
The Lone Ranger
Lassie
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Richie Rich
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Dudley Do-Right
Underdog
Tennessee Tuxedo
Gumby (that takes me back)
Felix the Cat
Mr. Magoo
Gerald McBoing-Boing
Little Golden Books (Pokey the Puppy Anyone?)
Turok
Little Lulu
Noddy (huge...
Postman Pat
Where's Waldo?
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
The entire Filmation catalog (Huge In The 80's) He-Man, Fat Albert, etc.
The Lone Ranger
Lassie
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Richie Rich
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Dudley Do-Right
Underdog
Tennessee Tuxedo
Gumby (that takes me back)
Felix the Cat
Mr. Magoo
Gerald McBoing-Boing
Little Golden Books (Pokey the Puppy Anyone?)
Turok
Little Lulu
Noddy (huge...
- 7/24/2012
- by cole@kidspickflicks.com (Cole the Kid Critic)
- kidspickflicks
Dreamworks Animation is on the verge of expanding their library of characters to include Casper the Friendly Ghost, Voltron, He-man, Gumby, Felix the Cat, and many more. Classic Media holds character rights for dozens of characters but several of them are tangled together with other companies. Dreamworks has placed the highest bid, according to sources, at $150 million. It looks like they are the likely winner for the purchase, but that does not mean they will have a clear path to make...
- 7/17/2012
- by Alex Maidy
- JoBlo.com
Smash S01E04: "The Cost of Art"
There was a point in the history of network television when the drives of artistry and commerce were both considered, and almost instantaneously artistry was laughed out of the room. Since that day (probably a week before Felix the Cat aired) anything of distractingly high quality has been viewed as almost ostentatious, And Smash is just that: noticeably high-quality, with higher aims,... More >>...
There was a point in the history of network television when the drives of artistry and commerce were both considered, and almost instantaneously artistry was laughed out of the room. Since that day (probably a week before Felix the Cat aired) anything of distractingly high quality has been viewed as almost ostentatious, And Smash is just that: noticeably high-quality, with higher aims,... More >>...
- 2/28/2012
- by Lily Sparks
- TV.com
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