By Jonathan Pie, TV Reporter!
It’s not like you’re being asked to shove a tin of beans sideways up your ass.
Posted on July 27, 2020
The Fox News Coronavirus Misinformation Machine
By Jessica Corbett/Common Dreams
Fox News hit viewers with an “avalanche of misinformation” in its weekday coverage of the coronavirus crisis from July 6 through 10, according to a national media watchdog group that documented at least 253 instances of the network’s coverage undermining science, politicizing the pandemic, emphasizing economic issues, and promoting other lies or problematic positions in those five days alone.
Media Matters for America (MMFA) noted in a statement that its new analysis released Thursday follows Yahoo News reporting from earlier this month which claims that Fox News’ messaging on COVID-19 was undergoing a “remarkable turn” from its earlier coverage to “acknowledge . . . that the coronavirus is a far graver threat.”
In contrast with the kind of shift reported by Yahoo, MMFA revealed that:
Posted on July 18, 2020
Tom Hanks Meets His Match
By David Rutter
Tom Hanks has always been the perfect movie American mid-level military manager. Smart, dedicated, strong but not overbearing or willful. He is a mannerly soldier and, if not a father figure, at least a good uncle model.
He now has found his perfect leading lady to complement that personality. She is powerful, elegant, heroic, and sleek. And deadly.
She is a World War II destroyer. Greyhound, the fiction-based-on-real-events movie about their relationship, is big. How big?
Apple’s spokesfolks have told Deadline analysts that Greyhound has become the largest opening-weekend release ever for Apple TV and turned in a viewing audience commensurate with a summer theatrical box office hit. That’s what it was built to be.
Posted on July 17, 2020
NBC’s 1976 Bicentennial Special
By The Museum of Classic Chicago Television
Including commercials for Stroh’s beer, the Dodge Colt, the AMC Pacer, the Volkswagen Rabbit, and Krylon spray paint.
Posted on July 4, 2020
Remembering M*A*S*H Theme Song Composer Johnny Mandel
Suicide Is Painless
“Johnny Mandel, who composed and arranged for some of the leading big bands of the 1940s and ’50s before establishing himself as a writer of memorable movie scores and themes like ‘The Shadow of Your Smile,’ ‘Emily’ and ‘Suicide Is Painless,’ died on Monday at his home in Ojai, Calif. He was 94,” the New York Times reports.
“Mike Altman, the teenage son of Robert Altman, the director of M*A*S*H . . . wrote the words for “Suicide Is Painless,” Mr. Mandel told JazzWax, after his father tried writing them himself but decided, “I can’t write anything nearly as stupid as what we need.”
Posted on July 1, 2020
Global TV Market Spikes With Pandemic
By Research and Markets
The global television station market is expected to grow from $127.62 billion in 2019 to $143.17 billion, according to the new report “Global Television Station Markets 2020-2030: COVID-19 Implications and Growth.”
Due to the global pandemic of coronavirus infection, the market for television seeing significant demand in 2020 as consumers ramp up media consumption to stay informed, as well as to spend time during home quarantine. The market is expected to stabilize at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% and reach $158.42 billion by 2023.
Posted on June 29, 2020
The Myth, Mirth, Malarkey And Magic Of Glastonbury And The Arts
By Jonathan Pie, TV Reporter!
“In a year’s time, after watching Netflix and Amazon Prime and your Insta feed and nothing else I guarantee you’d turn around and think where the fuck did all that go?”
Posted on June 26, 2020
Soul Survivors
By The Souls Survivor Organization
The Souls Survivor Organization, a group formed by former African-American participants of Survivor, will host “Tribes and Tribulations” on Friday, a live discussion of their experiences being Black on a competitive reality television series. The conversation will be streamed via YouTube and through the event page starting at 5:30 pm CT.
The event will focus on uncovering racism and producing a change for the future of reality television, as we know it. The group is also championing an online petition to support anti-racism efforts by Survivor.
Posted on June 23, 2020
The John Oliver Coronavirus Chronicles VIII: Prisons & Jails
By Last Week Tonight
We’re not supposed to punish people by giving them diseases, yet the five largest clusters of the coronavirus are correctional institutes.
Posted on June 22, 2020
Hollywood’s Long History Of Collaborative Police Myth-Making
By Carol A. Stabile/The Conversation
In a recent interview, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was asked why it’s so difficult to prosecute cases against police officers.
“Just think about all the cop shows you may have watched in your life,” he replied. “We’re just inundated with this cultural message that these people will do the right thing.”
While two of those shows, Cops and Live PD, have just been canceled, Americans have long been awash in a sea of police dramas.
In shows like Hill Street Blues, Gangbusters, The Untouchables, Dragnet, NYPD Blue and Law and Order, audiences view the world from the perspective of law enforcement, in which alternately heroic and beleaguered police fight a series of wars on crime. These shows – and countless others – mythologize the police, ensuring that their point of view has dominated popular culture.
This didn’t happen by accident.
Posted on June 17, 2020