According to an analysis performed by one of our authors, total direct revenue for the largest 123 news-focused public radio licensees has grown steadily, from roughly $678 million in FY2009 to just under $1 billion in FY2020. - Current
Great institutions, like great literature, are often born from existential angst, as urgent responses to the prevailing horrors of their era. As with TS Eliot's The Waste Land, released in 1922, so with the BBC. - BBC
The idea and hope behind Ulitsa Sezam, which debuted in 1996, five years after the USSR came apart, was to help its young audience learn the values of a free-market, democratic society. The translation from American to Russian culture and mindset, however, was far from smooth. - Smithsonian Magazine
The more important factor in the dwindling of the Academy Awards viewership is that the Academy has been hurting itself by doing its job: honoring the best movies each year. “Best” is famously a matter of taste, but most observers would agree that it doesn’t mean “most successful financially.” - The Daily Beast
"Disney is to release Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in French cinemas next month but has warned that future blockbusters may go straight to its streaming service, Disney+, unless France relaxes film distribution rules" which keep films off streaming services until long after a theatrical run. - The Guardian
For an American, it can be easy to forget how much ideology is packed into the genre — until you watch a film from elsewhere, and are confronted with the cartoonish heroes and villains of other cultures. - The New York Times
"The mystery genre, Park’s chosen conduit this time around, scratches an existential itch in the human condition, he thinks. Since our lives overflow with enigmas — the meaning of our birth, what comes after death, why the people around us behave as they do — we long for certainty." - Los Angeles Times
Those exports are still relatively rare, but the increase is notable. "Significantly, half of the 48 titles exported by Italy around the world over the past five years were distributed by global streamers." - Variety
Mallory Rubin watches each House of Dragons episode three times before her two podcasts. "It would be hard to engineer a commentator better equipped for this moment, when growth-obsessed streaming services and movie studios have coaxed audiences toward the outer limits of franchise entertainment." - The New York Times
"Coltrane, across a decade of movies, imbued in him a depth and warmth that made him feel not just instantly memorable, but real. In doing so, he subtly pushed against the scripts’ inclinations to turn the character into mere comic relief or an adorable buffoon." - The Atlantic
"The question shouldn’t be whether a movie should capture Black pain. The problem in film arises when the camera only asks for an audience to witness." - Time
The love and togetherness wasn’t “Barney” ’s problem. The character himself was uniquely unnerving—more Grimace than T. Rex, somehow dopey and condescending at once—and some of the outrage, I suspect, came from viewers’ impassioned feelings about what good educational TV should be. - The New Yorker
"The ad-supported service is scheduled to debut Nov. 3 as Netflix tries to reverse a drop in subscribers. It will cost $7 per month in the U.S., a 55% markdown from Netflix's most popular $15.50-per-month plan, which is ad-free." - AP
