Chelsea Handler "went rogue" during the Critics Choice Awards, after Barbie won a bunch of awards during commercial breaks - including Best Comedy. Handler said, "Greta and Margot deserve the opportunity to make an acceptance speech," and invited Gerwig and Robbie onstage. - Variety
Cheating isn't a great look in sports - or sports media. "Since at least 2010, ESPN employees attached fake names to awards entries, the network said in a statement, and the scheme may have stretched back to 1997." - Los Angeles Times
The latest film & TV awards are the Critics Choice Awards, for which Barbie had 18 nominations. Oscars nominee voting ends Jan. 16, so these awards may have an outsize effect. At the time of posting, The Holdovers had already picked up two wins. - The Hollywood Reporter
While voting is still happening, "Many an Oscar has been won or lost on the basis of a good or bad performance on a podium a few weeks before." - The Guardian (UK)
If last year’s combined 191-day writers’ and actors’ strikes, with all the vitriolic exchange between creatives and management, has not convinced you that television’s riotous superbloom has officially come to an end, the 75th Emmys might. - Los Angeles Times
"Film producer David Ellison's Skydance Media is exploring an all-cash deal to acquire National Amusements Inc., the company that controls Paramount Global, (and) merge the two entertainment businesses." The deal would include, among others, Paramount Studios and the TV networks CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and VH1. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
If signed into law, the proposal, called the No AI Fraud Act, could curb a growing trend of individuals and businesses creating AI-recorded tracks using artists’ voices and deceptive ads in which it appears a performer is endorsing a product. - The Hollywood Reporter
It all started when, in 2021, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti decided he wanted to take the company public using a SPAC (remember those?), all the rage on Wall Street at the time. - New York Magazine (MSN)
"Amazon is laying off “several hundred” employees at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. Additionally, 500 employees — or 35% of the workforce — are being let go at Amazon-owned livestream platform Twitch." - Variety
As Civic Platform, the leading party in the new governing coalition, put it last year, "Poles deserve real public television, not like Russia Today, but like the BBC." But the old governing party, Law and Justice, had passed legislation that has made depoliticizing the public broadcaster complicated. - Columbia Journalism Review
"Under a new deal with an artificial intelligence company, members of the Screen Actors Guild will be able to create and license digital simulations of their voices for video games and other projects while enjoying safeguards against their potential misuse." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
