Month: April 2014

Posted on

He also praised Simon Cowell’s You Generation brand, a YouTube-focused global talent show, and Disney for the way it encouraged fans of its film Frozen to post their own cover versions of its songs on YouTube. One by musician Alex Boyé has been watched more than 30m times.

“The studio could have very easily issued copyright claims against this video and any others and taken them down, but they made a different choice: a fan-friendly choice. They chose to let those videos stay,” said Carloss, suggesting that the buzz around Frozen on YouTube contributed to its strong performance at the box office.

“Creators everywhere can make the choice Disney did. Allow fans to pay tribute, and you will see the incredible benefits of their passion.”

YouTube’s global head of entertainment Alex Carloss on the new relationship between content creators and audiences.

There’s something to be written by someone smarter than me about the new relationship creators have to accept about ownership of their content these days. Being old and reactionary, I’m surprised to see the widespread acceptance of and eagerness towards the popularization of and monetizing of fan content that steals intellectual property from its owners online.

You own your work until others are “inspired” by it, it seems.

Posted on

The publisher of both titles, St Joseph Media, was accused by the government of violating provincial labour laws. It responded by dispensing with the internship programmes.

Another Toronto-based magazine owned by Torstar, The Grid, reacted by dismissing five unpaid interns.

Yes, that’s right: Rather than paying them, two separate magazines in Canada just fired all their interns instead. Cheap holidays in other people’s misery indeed.
Posted on

The venerable Spidey616 asks, “The most recent solicits have readers worried that [Matt] Fraction’s ‘Hawkeye’ is coming to an end. Please say it ain’t so, or if it is we’ll be getting a relaunch?”

Alonso: Too soon to comment on the rumors, Spidey616. But I will say that I’m very excited about the future of Hawkguy.

So, obviously the current Hawkeye series is coming to an end based on that non-answer from Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso. The only question is whether it’ll be relaunched with Fraction attached or not. I mean, surely yes, and yet…
Posted on

Look at T4 [on Channel 4] – it went away, now there is very little youth programming going on. BBC3 was something that … of course there was the odd questionable title, as there is with any channel, but it was really specifically targeted at making documentaries for young people.

It was educating them, nurturing them, saying you are important, we are gifting you with knowledge that will arm you in later life. We are not doing that, we are expecting them to find it for themselves and everything is online now. Everyone is becoming very separated in the next generation, chatting on Facebook and Twitter. They are becoming isolated.

That’s Jameela Jamil, talking about the closing of BBC3 in the UK. I’ve no real experience of the channel, and so no real opinion about whether or not it’s a loss, but the idea of a generation being “abandoned” to the Internet is something that sticks in my head – I’m not sure whether or not I agree with the premise, or even if the idea that the Internet is less suited to educate people on life than television, but it sticks inside nonetheless, poking and prodding towards a question I haven’t managed to form yet.
Posted on

Look at T4 [on Channel 4] – it went away, now there is very little youth programming going on. BBC3 was something that … of course there was the odd questionable title, as there is with any channel, but it was really specifically targeted at making documentaries for young people.

It was educating them, nurturing them, saying you are important, we are gifting you with knowledge that will arm you in later life. We are not doing that, we are expecting them to find it for themselves and everything is online now. Everyone is becoming very separated in the next generation, chatting on Facebook and Twitter. They are becoming isolated.

That’s Jameela Jamil, talking about the closing of BBC3 in the UK. I’ve no real experience of the channel, and so no real opinion about whether or not it’s a loss, but the idea of a generation being “abandoned” to the Internet is something that sticks in my head – I’m not sure whether or not I agree with the premise, or even if the idea that the Internet is less suited to educate people on life than television, but it sticks inside nonetheless, poking and prodding towards a question I haven’t managed to form yet.
Posted on

A Manhattan court stenographer caused chaos in New York’s legal system when he typed nonsense instead of recording the proceedings in the trials for which he was responsible – including, in one case, reportedly writing, “I hate my job, I hate my job” into the transcript.

Officials have been rushing to fix the mess, first reported by the New York Post, by calling back witnesses, lawyers and judges in the affected cases to try to reconstruct missing transcripts.

A source at the New York state unified court system confirmed that the stenographer, Daniel Kochanski, 43, had been fired after officials learned of issues with the transcripts for six trials and 24 other legal proceedings he had worked on.

The source said he could not confirm what Kochanski was transcribing but conceded: “He wasn’t transcribing what was happening in the courtroom.” He said Kochanski was fired for “not doing his job.“

So, so great.
Posted on

Tribune Digital Ventures bought ratings resource TV by the Numbers for an undisclosed sum and hopes to parlay its information into additional revenue streams.

Graham McKenna, the company’s vp of marketing and communications, told Adweek that it is considering the possibility of selling the TV metrics from the site to industry insiders. Tribune Digital Ventures is also looking at expanding TV by the Numbers to include information on how social media influences people to watch certain shows.

Something about this feels significant, especially in the light of TelevisionWithoutPity going away. I wonder who owns BoxOfficeMojo, and whether or not someone’s going to buy that soon?