NBC newscaster John Cameron Swayze was television’s first “anchor man” – though not for presenting the news. The term referred to his status as permanent panelist of the quiz show Who Said That?
Wikimedia Commons
Last weekend Channel 9’s two-part television drama, House of Hancock, was screened. It wasn’t quite the version that the producers had expected to air. After legal action was initiated against Channel…
3D TV was all the rave at one time – so what happened?
Flickr/Warrenski
Television broadcasts in 3D promised to give people an extra dimension in viewing movies, sport and other entertainment but take up of the technology has not been that great. This is not the first time…
Part of the reason we’ve lost faith in politicians, perhaps?
ITV
Armando Iannucci, the man who gave us The Thick of It and Veep, has just called on Britons to make sure they vote in the upcoming general election. Iannucci points out, rightly, that politicians only notice…
‘I’m sorry honey, there may be no way back.’
KennyK
It has been 30 years since EastEnders arrived on UK screens to begin chronicling the lives of the denizens of fictional Albert Square in east London. But the history of soap operas goes back a great deal…
On January 11 1999, when Jon Stewart took over as host of The Daily Show from Craig Kilborn, no one could have predicted that, 16 years later, Stewart would become an icon of satire. Under Kilborn, the…
Jon Stewart’s tenure at The Daily Show may ultimately be remembered more for how he skewered the mainstream media than for the laughs he generated.
Jason Reed/Reuters
Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid…
You don’t wanna mess with crooked King John.
BBC/Lions TV
The British Library has just staged an exclusive one-day exhibition. The four earliest surviving copies of the original Magna Carta were brought together for an audience of 1,215 people, selected by public…
Barack Obama watches Super Bowl.
Pete Souza/Executive Office of the US President
Forget about the Presidential State of the Union address. If you want to understand American values, you need to watch the annual Super Bowl advertisements. This year 114 million people watched the ads…
More tech on the way to keep us watching sport live on TV.
CCat
Australia’s love of sport appears to be more from in front of a TV screen than actually attending any event live, and that could be on the increase given some of the new technology heading our way. Samsung…
Frankie Alvarez as Agustin and O.T. Fagbenle as Frank in Looking.
Foxtel
Show a gay man on TV, and you immediately open yourself up to a degree of scrutiny that other artists usually have the privilege of avoiding. Representations of marginalised subjects on screen or in literature…
The current five year broadcast rights for Cricket Australia are A$590 million.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Yesterday Cricket Australia launched onto the Apple TV network, becoming the first Australian sports organisation to join the platform. The new Cricket Australia channel will feature a mixture of interviews…
Stephen Colbert created an extraordinary character: a right-wing, bloviating pundit who was both outrageous and adorable.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
If you were following politics over the last few election cycles, you were most likely getting some of your information from satire. In fact, research has shown that in today’s political climate, satire…
Communications watchdog Ofcom have released a report which reveals that, after decades of continual growth for the first time, the number of UK households with a television has fallen, from 26.33m at the…
The ABC’s focus on digital will not help it make a case for its uniqueness.
Dan Peled/AAP
Is the ABC trying to make itself redundant? Because that appears to be its strategy. Here’s why. The ABC is expensive. In 2013 it was allocated more than A$1 billion of taxpayer funds. The ABC claims…
The First Contact cast members’ transformation over the series is an optical illusion of Australian race relations.
SBS
The SBS/Blackfella Films production First Contact – that takes six non-Indigenous people and immerses them into Aboriginal Australia for the first time – captured the nation’s attention this week amassing…
Is Doomsday Preppers simply a freakish version of Grand Designs?
National Geographic Channel
Environmental catastrophe, economic collapse, global pandemic … does it feel like the world is ending? If you think Armageddon is near and are trying to get ready, you are not alone. National Geographic…
Australians are increasingly tuning in to traditional broadcast television stations.
www.shutterstock.com
Netflix will launch in Australia and New Zealand in March next year. Expectations are this is just the start of an influx of new streaming options in Australia. The internet and television are increasingly…
Lynda Carter as Diana Prince in the New Original Wonder Woman. Her bullet-deflecting bracelets are made from an impervious metal: feminum.
Retrogasm/Flickr
In the epilogue to Jill Lepore’s new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, we learn about Wonder Woman’s importance to the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Lepore briefly notes Wonder…