“Traditionally, documentaries have targeted niche audiences, defiantly unconcerned with commercial success. They don’t attract nearly as many viewers on the big or small screen as their commercial-minded Hollywood counterparts. Netflix thinks it can change that dynamic, drawing big audiences to nonfiction fare using the same algorithms and data it’s relied on to engineer hits like House of Cards.”
Tag: 05.25.15
ACF: (After Comcast) Time-Warner To Be Bought By Charter Communications?
“Charter plans to announce on Tuesday a $55 billion deal for its larger rival and an approximately $10 billion takeover of a smaller competitor, Bright House Networks, people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday.”
Pittsburgh’s New Burst Of Dance Activity
Pittsburgh is helping to pen a new chapter to this “A Chorus Line”-esque experience that’s colored many dancers’ early careers. Rather than fleeing here after school for the likes of Manhattan or Los Angeles to find a gig, lots of aspiring artists are choosing to stay and start their own dance groups or collaborate with some of Pittsburgh’s already established ones.
Dealing With Bad Reviews
“The poison of a bad review is not the public shame, although that doesn’t feel great. And it’s not the fact that an expert believes you may be an untalented writer or a horrible mother or a sub-standard teacher. It’s that a bad review can confirm your worst suspicions about yourself.”
Women Are Studying Animation In Record Numbers, But The Workforce Skews Very, Very Male
“‘People can share their artwork on Tumblr and Vimeo and YouTube and DeviantArt,’ she says, ‘and see that it’s actually a thing that a lot of people are interested in, not just men.'”
Mary Renault And The Drug-Fueled Sensuality Of The Ancient World
“Cutting-edge science now tells us ancient warriors would indeed consume vast vats of liquid opiates and a ferocious honey-mead, retsina and wine cocktail. There was cannibalism. Girls and boys did oil one another with rose and saffron-scented olive oil. Renault heard and smelt the ancient world many millennia after it had died and decades before it was resurrected by contemporary technology.”
Librarians Fight Back Against NSA’s Big Brother-Style Mass Surveillance
“The American Library Association has counted privacy among its ‘core values’ since 1939, but [Alison] Macrina thinks that now, in the age of dragnet data collection by intelligence agencies and corporations, librarians aren’t taking enough concrete steps to protect their patrons, in many cases because they don’t have the technical skills.” And she’s working to change that.