|
Media executives question Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 03:17 PM PDT By Liana B. Baker (Reuters) - One of the top executives of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc has raised questions about Comcast's potential dominance of the U.S. broadband Internet market if regulators allow its $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable to be completed. Speaking at an investor conference on Tuesday, Chase Carey, Fox president and chief operating officer, said the "broadband issue" will be front and center when U.S. regulators review the tie-up that merges the No. 1 and No. 2 cable operators. ... Full Story | Top |
When Zach met Barack: pitching Obamacare online Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 02:23 PM PDT By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama took his quest to sign young people up for health insurance to an edgy comedy website on Tuesday, where he traded insults with host Zach Galifianakis while plugging his signature Obamacare health program. Obama sat for an interview on "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis," on the Funny or Die website. The actor, who starred in "The Hangover" films, is known for his cringe-inducing banter on the program. ... Full Story | Top |
Disney TV executive Sweeney to leave company in January Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 02:07 PM PDT By Lisa Richwine and Ronald Grover LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Anne Sweeney, the president of Walt Disney Co's Disney/ABC Television Group, will leave the media company in January after 18 years to pursue a career in television directing, the company said on Tuesday. Sweeney, also co-chair of Disney Media Networks, oversees the ABC broadcast network, ABC Studios and cable networks including the Disney Channels and ABC Family. Full Story | Top |
Disney in talks to buy YouTube network Maker Studios: report Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 01:55 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co is in talks to buy Maker Studios, potentially valuing the fast-growing developer and publisher of YouTube entertainment videos at half a billion dollars or more, tech blog Re/code reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest investments in a YouTube developer by a traditional media giant. ... Full Story | Top |
On heels of memoir, Keith Richards to publish children's book Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 11:40 AM PDT Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, famous for surviving years of rock 'n' roll excess, will release a children's picture book with illustrations by his daughter Theodora Richards, his publisher said on Tuesday. The book, "Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar," tells the story of how Richards was first introduced to music by his grandfather and given his first guitar. "'Gus & Me' invites readers to be in the room at the electrifying moment that Keith holds a guitar in his hands for the first time," Megan Tingley, executive vice president and publisher of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, said in a statement. In his memoir, "Life," Richards also recounts the role his grandfather - jazz big band member Theodore Augustus Dupree, who is known as Gus - played in his life. Full Story | Top |
Austria fires national theatre head in financial scandal Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 10:24 AM PDT Austria's culture minister sacked the director of its national theatre on Tuesday over a financial scandal that has rocked the famed 250-year-old institution. Matthias Hartmann, a German ex-director of the Bochum Civic Theatre and Zurich Playhouse, had presided over a loss of 8.3 million euros ($11.6 million) last season, and the supervisory board said fraud and embezzlement might have occurred. The affair at the Vienna Burgtheater, one of the most important theatres in the German-speaking world with an annual budget of 230 million euros, has shocked Vienna's cultural establishment since it erupted late last year. "This step had to be taken to avoid further damage to the republic and the Burgtheater," Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer told a news conference, according to Austria Press Agency. Full Story | Top |
Justin Bieber faces May 5 trial date in Florida drunken driving case Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 10:13 AM PDT A Miami judge has set a May 5 trial date for pop singer Justin Bieber, who faces charges of driving under the influence, resisting arrest and using an expired license after police say he was caught drag racing in Miami Beach. The 20-year-old Bieber has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He did not attend the hearing on Tuesday in a Miami-Dade county court. The initial March trial date was postponed after lawyers for Bieber and several news organizations argued in court over whether the media should have access to video images of the singer while he was in police custody following his arrest on January 23. Full Story | Top |
CBS may go online, cut off its broadcast signal if Aereo prevails: CEO Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 10:02 AM PDT (Reuters) - CBS Corp Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said the No. 1 rated broadcaster could offer its content directly to consumers over the Internet and cut off its traditional broadcast signal if the Aereo video streaming service is deemed legal. Major broadcasters are challenging Aereo Inc's use of their television broadcast signals without paying for them. The case will be argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in April. "If Aereo should work, if they should win, which we don't think will happen, we can go OTT with CBS," Moonves said on Tuesday at an investor conference. Full Story | Top |
Descent into madness entwines Van Gogh, Artaud at Paris exhibition Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 07:19 AM PDT By Alexandria Sage PARIS (Reuters) - The shrieks of mad women assault visitors entering the Musee d'Orsay's new exhibit on Vincent Van Gogh, an arresting look at the painter's work as seen through the eyes of the late avant-garde French theatre director and playwright Antonin Artaud. "The Man Driven to Suicide by Society", opening on Tuesday in Paris, is a fitting title for a display of 55 Van Gogh works using Artaud's own commentary to see them in a new light. Artaud - one of the great theorizers about the stage, renowned for his short but seminal 1938 tract "The Theatre of Cruelty" - was, like Van Gogh, tormented throughout his life by hallucinations and hospitalized in psychiatric asylums. Full Story | Top |
Saunders wins Folio prize, sees boost for short story Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014 05:50 AM PDT By Michael Roddy LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. author George Saunders, whose short stories specialize in "darkly playful" twists of fate, said after winning the inaugural Folio literary prize worth 40,000 pounds ($66,500) on Monday he hoped it would draw attention to the role of the writer in society. Saunders, 55, also saw the award as a further boost for the short story form, another of whose practitioners, the Canadian writer Alice Munro, won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. You think, 'Well, when was it gone?' But it does seem like a good time for short stories." Saunders, who started out as a geophysicist and worked in the oil fields of Sumatra before turning to writing, was selected from a shortlist of eight authors for the new prize sponsored by the Folio Society publisher of deluxe books. Full Story | Top |
No comments:
Post a Comment