Media

Netflix dominated the 72nd Emmy Award nominations on Tuesday, breaking the record for the most nominations ever, and a newcomer to the streaming universe, Disney+, scored a nomination in a big category for “The Mandalorian” in yet another sign of the growing importance of digital technology to Hollywood. – The New York Times

The move to Freeview, the digital network free to all UK residents, has been under discussion for years and is motivated by “a passion to get as much content to as many people as possible and make it more accessible”. But Sky Arts “isn’t a ratings-driving channel. We’re there to be a bit more experimental. We’re there to help nurture new talent and find new voices; new creative voices… The call out that we’re doing today, as we’re launched as free to air is: ‘Artists, what would you do if I gave you the channel for 24 hours to do with what you will?’ – The Art Newspaper

“In a move expanding the news outlet’s presence in Hollywood, The New York Times has named Caitlin Roper executive producer for scripted projects. Roper, who has been a senior editor at The New York Times Magazine since 2016, will develop Times stories for film and TV, ‘developing and producing alongside Hollywood producers using our stories as the launching point for fictional projects.'” – The Hollywood Reporter

Whoops, not an eight-episode season; a seven-episode season. That standalone can come later, if at all. – BBC

With fresh spikes in the virus in the U.S., studios delay releases again, and “hopes for a speedy substantial resurgence at the global box office were dashed.” – The Guardian (UK)

Just as some of the Boomers and Gen-Xers first encountered opera on Tom and Jerry, and just as some Millennials first found memorized U.S. presidents or learned the nations of the world from Animaniacs, younger generations have Arthur, and that’s why it was important for Rep. John Lewis, civil rights icon, to appear on the animated show. “Arthur decides to organize a cafeteria sit-in to force the school to hire an assistant for Mrs. MacGrady, and Lewis joins in the demonstration.” Of course he did. – Los Angeles Times

Podcasts were hot before the virus killed the commute, but even as their popularity takes a perhaps momentary break, true crime remains popular among listeners (yes, yes, Serial, but there are so many others). Many of them have focused on white men, but a few award-winners meet the standards for diversity in hosts and subjects. – The New York Times

The Avatar sequels are delayed – again. That’s the seventh delay, in case you’re counting. Will they ever happen? And what’s going on with James Cameron? – Vulture

“TikTok is launching a program to fund its most popular creators directly for their videos — with an initial $200 million earmarked for the U.S. … How much individual creators will be eligible to earn — and what specific criteria those payments will be based on — isn’t fully clear.” But you can apply starting in August. – Variety

“As part of the Times, Serial Productions will independently commission and edit its own stories, which ‘will now be amplified by the Times,’ the company said.” (The price was reportedly $25 million.) “In addition, the Times said it had entered into an ‘ongoing creative and strategic alliance’ … that will let This American Life continue to collaborate on long-form audio stories with Serial Productions as well as partner with the Times on marketing and ad sales.” – Variety

One force we must confront is the attention economy, an incentive structure designed to reward the most uncompromising, polarized, clickable minority. (Ironically, this minority is very often part of the white majority; see breathless, disproportionate coverage of white nationalists and supremacists following the 2016 election.) The resulting tyranny of the loudest presents an algorithmically-warped view of what’s happening in the rest of the United States. – Wired

A 44-year-old “animal rights activist” named Maksim Krivosh, who recently finished a prison term for fraud and weapons charges, ended a 12-hour standoff and released 13 hostages in the city of Lutsk after President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly endorsed a documentary about industry’s use and abuse of animals titled Earthlings and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. – BBC

Reasons for synchronising release dates globally, such as minimising piracy and coordinating marketing, hardly seem like priorities given present circumstances. The US is still the largest single cinema market, but in 2018 it made up just 27% of the global box office. The longer the “America-first” principle remains, the worse things get for everyone: cinemas and related businesses, Hollywood itself and moviegoers – whose expectations for Tenet are now so sky-high, the movie will have to singlehandedly cure the coronavirus to live up to the hype. – The Guardian

The Authors Guild said its members had lost on average 43% of their regular income since the start of the crisis. The Freelancers union said over 80% of its members were reporting loss of income and work opportunities because of the crisis, and are depending on government relief in record numbers. – Los Angeles Times

For decades, the P in NPR stood for “public,” as in publicly supported, noncommercial radio and digital news. Yet with its growing dependence on corporate advertising, NPR has found itself on equally troubled footing as its for-profit competitors, all of them reliant on the same pool of advertising dollars that have dried up during the coronavirus pandemic. – Washington Post

“By midnight [of the first day, July 20], cumulative nationwide gross takings totalled $502,000. … Earlier in the day, state media had reported that the total included more than $150,000 of prior bookings, which indicates that only modest numbers of cinema-goers made decisions on the day.” – Variety

Last week, Netflix suddenly decided to “reveal” its Top 10 movies of all time. Hm. “The catch was that Netflix provided the ranking and the numbers itself, meaning there was no way to verify any of it, so the whole list was only slightly more informative than when Netflix insists that something is popular without providing any numbers at all (as it did in 2018 with Bright, a movie that didn’t even appear on the list despite how successful Netflix said it was). Interesting? Yes. Informative? Eh.” – AV Club

At least partially – the biggest ad buyer this year on the social media giant has decided to pull its Disney Plus and Hulu ads, probably, along with hundreds of other advertisers, over concerns about how the platform handles hate speech. – Variety

While Spain’s figurehead monarchs went to the movies in Madrid, the Catalan government shut down Barcelona theatres and other mass gatherings (though it’s awfully hard to shut down Barcelona street parties, looks like). “The mandated shutdown is fiercely contested by Barcelona area town halls, adding to a nationwide debate about just how safe it is to go to the cinema.” – Variety

When you have to ask yourself, “Am I actually dying to see this movie?” it might be too early for the theatres to reopen. “Infections are still going up in many states, and there is no federal plan in place to halt that spread. Simple acts to contain the coronavirus, like wearing a mask or staying at home, have now become so hopelessly politicized that it’s all but impossible to imagine our country flattening the curve by Aug. 12.” – The New York Times

Why? Well … drive-in movies and a summer that’s full of actual horror as well. “It turns out that inexpensive horror flicks, which have been part of the Hollywood ecosystem as long as cinema has existed, are thriving as a result of a sparse film landscape and a largely quarantined moviegoing populace.” – The Atlantic

Truly embarrassing themselves again, major studios released 118 films in 2019 and, well, they all got low grades from GLAAD. “Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, United Artists Releasing and Universal Pictures were marked as ‘insufficient’ by GLAAD, while Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Studios received ‘poor’ grades and STX Films was slapped with a ‘failing’ grade as it had no LGBTQ representation in its 2019 film slate.” But they all failed at trans representation. – The Hollywood Reporter

Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR’s radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network’s shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020. – NPR

Documentarian Anthony Baxter writes about how his 2016 film You’ve Been Trumped Too — which shows how the seizure of land for and the construction of Trump’s Scottish golf resort affected nearby residents, including one farm family whose water supply has been cut off ever since — was suppressed by legal threats from the Trump Organization and the exorbitant premiums demanded by companies for providing errors-and-omissions insurance. – The Guardian