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The new movie Zero Dark Thirty, which tells the story of the tracking and eventual killing of Osama Bin Laden, has received several Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), but it’s attracting another kind of attention as well: several writers, including Jane Meyer at The New Yorker and Peter Maass at The Atlantic, have accused it of condoning or even glorifying the use of torture by US intelligence agencies.
Like it or not, if you use the Internet you have an online identity. Some people call this your “brand.” What’s a brand?
This winter the Olympics return to Canada for the first time since the Calgary games of 1988. For many people, the most vivid memories of that Olympiad are the colourful stories of some of the less accomplished athletes, such as British ski jumper Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards and the members of the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s unlikely, though, that there will be any charming underdogs in this year’s Olympiad, as the games become more and more the province of professionals. As audiences and advertising revenues drop, however, will the professionalization of the Games spell their downfall?
Have you ever wondered why Canadian private broadcasting networks such as CTV and CanWest air certain television programs over others? Why, for instance, does CanWest air House, or CTV air Grey’s Anatomy, over other television programs?
It’s been a busy few months for Facebook: a government investigation, another in a seemingly endless series of changes to the site’s privacy controls, a New Yorker profile of its famously publicity-shy founder and the upcoming release of The Social Network, a thoroughly unauthorized account of its early days. With all of the publicity and controversy around Facebook – not to mention its still-growing popularity – it’s almost impossible to remember what online life was like before it. In fact, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that those who began using the Internet after the introduction of Facebook and its competitors do so in a way that is fundamentally different from older users.
One of the most successful new shows of recent years is TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8. How successful? It consistently wins its time slot against all other cable competitors, including high-profile shows such as The Closer, and among the very desirable demographic of women between eighteen and thirty-four it outdraws broadcast network offerings Two and a Half Men, Heroes and 24. TLC has had a number of different identities over the years, and has become very nimble in responding to unexpected successes. Starting out with science programming, back when it was called The Learning Channel, the programming moved first into real-estate and home remodelling shows and then to programs such as The 750 Pound Man and It’s Not Easy Being a Wolf Boy. Among these was a pair of shows about unusual families, Little People, Big World and Jon & Kate Plus 8. When the latter became a runaway success the channel quickly capitalized on it, and now features several other shows about large families such as Table for 12 and 18 Kids and Counting.
If asked to think about community television (or public-access television, as a similar institution is called in the US) most people would probably conjure up the movie Wayne’s World or its real-life analogue, The Tom Green Show: TV made by people who would, under normal circumstances, never appear on TV, shot in someone’s basement or living room. Or perhaps they’d think of earnest, low-budget shows that showcase community events that wouldn’t otherwise be televised, such as ethnic festivals or the Canadian Improv Games.
Our kids are coming of age at a time that things like online shopping, Facetime, and texting are all normal everyday occurrences. Technology is enabling people to do some pretty amazing things, and even communicate in a whole new way using a new language. You may know this as texting.
Joe McGinniss’ book The Selling of the President had a shocking title for 1968, suggesting as it did that in the television age the presidency had become nothing more than another product to be packaged and sold. A new MNet resource, Watching the Elections (a lesson for Grade 8 to 12 Social Studies classes), shines a light on how the different aspects of an election – from the debates to political ads to the candidates themselves – are actually media products.
Someone encountering the Internet for the first time might be forgiven for assuming it was created specifically for teenagers. Indeed, the Internet could reasonably be said to have been aging backwards since its birth – the domain first of scientists and the military, then of university students in the 1990s and now children and teenagers.