Ten (or more) media industry stories you might have missed recently.
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What Are You Missing? May 9-May 23
The Empire Strikes Back?: NBC at the 2010 Upfronts
The upfronts may seem like a vestige of a dying regime. However, given that this is also an era of brands - i.e., hot shows, and in theory, hot networks - the upfronts also serve to launch anticipation on multiple fronts. Derek Kompare takes a look at the NBC upfronts in this media context.
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Official Eclipse Trailer: For the Boys
What Summit Entertainment fails to see is that by courting male viewers, they are devaluing Twilight’s devoted female fans and missing an incredible opportunity to develop the terms for future female franchises.
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Media Studies, Have We Lost Our Feminism?
I came away from Console-ing Passions with ongoing questions regarding why feminism seems lost at times in contemporary media scholarship and the place of feminism in my own work and life.
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Using Its Voice: Glee Shows Us What Kind of Musical(s) It’s Made of
Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris come to Glee; the results may not be what you think. Last week the glee club found its voice; this week Glee shows us its own.
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Lost Wednesdays: Three Choices
Three characters make fate-changing choices, as we're back in the contemporary timeline(s) to set-up the endgame.
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Musical Performance Finally Gets Its Due in Treme
Dramatic television has rarely shown much affinity for musicians, and neither has it shown much artistry for dealing with musical performances within the narrative. This time, David Simon and HBO finally get it right.
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Author as God? or, Kripke, We Don’t Need You to Explain Supernatural to Us
I like active viewers/readers, and while I don’t think that authors are dead, I don’t think they should run after their texts telling us what they mean. A good text should show me its myriad meanings, and great texts tend to contain multitudes.
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For Worse and For Better: My Bill Simmons Weekend
Bill Simmons' organization of a series of live fan chants during the Celtics game underscores his unique power as an internet star to turn commentary into real life action.
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Greetings from National Broadband Plan, Ohio!
What the FCC, which received lackluster response to its announcement that it wanted to bring 100-megabit broadband to American homes, can learn from Google.
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Nielsen’s One-Stop Shop for Media Audiences
Nielsen's planned return to being publicly traded is the latest significant change for a company that has become much more than the primary source of television ratings, but rather has evolved into the primary arbiter of media audiences of virtually all types.
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The Rehabilitation of Russell Crowe
Crowe is consciously attempting to rebrand his image - illuminating the 'softer,' emotional side of the hard body - just in time for a massive publicity tour for Robin Hood.
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Friday Night Lights: The Musical! or Glee‘s After-School Sing-a-long
I feel like the “powers that Glee” (PTG) are trying to combat complaints of minimal plot development. After last week’s most excellent narrative-filled musical numbers, my hopes were high. It looked like they might pull it off, but then it became Glee meets Friday Night Lights. Say it ain't so!
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Lost Wednesdays: A Very Special Episode
It might be the most divisive, bold, and risky episode in series history. What can we make of it the morning after?
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Did the UK General Election Debates Make a Difference?
The British General Election of 2010 likely will be seen as a decisive moment in the country’s democratic history, not just because of its unusually messy result, but also because it heralded a new era in the mediation of electoral politics.
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Farewell to a Great TV Show
Thoughts on the retirement of one of America's great journalists, Bill Moyers.
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