Category: Entertainment

Someday soon, more U.S. households will be subscribers of Amazon Prime than cable or satellite TV, according to recent estimates of Amazon’s popular shipping and entertainment service.

According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership*, up from around 66 million at the end of last year.

That compares to a projected 90 million U.S. households that will pay for cable or satellite TV this year, according to S&P Global.

According to these estimates, more U.S. households may have an Amazon Prime subscription than a pay TV subscription as soon as next year.

The implication here is not that Amazon’s Prime Video service is more popular than TV; the main reason most people subscribe to Amazon Prime is still the fast delivery of products.

But it is an indication that Prime is moving toward becoming a “no-brainer” for more than just wealthy Americans.

Read more at Recode.

Image courtesy of Recode.

Some questions will be pondered for all eternity. What is the meaning of life? Where do you go when you die? And even more puzzlingly, what is the right way to pronounce “GIF”? The Graphics Interchange Format, a file type commonly associated with web animations, is older than the world wide web itself. Debates over whether it begins with a hard “g”, as in “gift”, or a soft one, as in “giraffe”, can make discussions about religion or politics look civil by comparison. Well aware of the risk that taking a side could lead to protests, boycotts or worse, the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster have maintained strict neutrality. They proclaim that both pronunciations are acceptable, betraying nary a hint of favouritism.

With the lexicographical authorities resigned to a “descriptivist” approach, following words and pronunciations wherever the unwashed masses go, those determined to resolve the question once and for all are taking matters into their own hands. In a recent survey Stack Overflow, a forum for computer programmers, asked over 50,000 users in nearly 200 countries a battery of questions. The study began with softball inquiries, such as what respondents had studied and how long they had been coding. Only once they felt at ease and were likely to share their true sentiments, rather than providing whatever they believed was the “politically correct” answer, did the poll segue to its highly sensitive aim: the pronunciation of GIF.

Read more at The Economist.

Image courtesy of The Economist.

For some TV networks, the Golden Age of Television is losing its luster.

MTV, A&E and WGN are all cutting back on high-end productions after failing to attract big enough audiences in an increasingly crowded landscape.

Their decision to retreat from non-reality series suggests a reckoning may loom for other networks and the studios that make shows. Last year, the industry produced a record number of original scripted programs — a total of 455. John Landgraf, head of the FX network, has warned of a glut that he’s labeled “peak TV,” arguing the networks and streaming services are making more than viewers can watch.

Read more at Ad Age.

Image courtesy of Ad Age.

Every creative industry is engaged in a civil war. The creatives — whether writers, painters or musicians — want to play with new forms of expression; the capitalists prefer to go with what worked last time. But sometimes the two sides come together, on equal terms, in gloriously fertile equilibrium. We call these periods golden ages.

Today, a writer who cherishes a personal vision would have no qualms about taking it to the small screen. TV is the place to go if you want to make art and money at the same time. Paul Weitz, a screenwriter and director whose credits include American Pie and About a Boy, is currently at work on the fourth season of Mozart in the Jungle for Amazon Studios. “Your agent used to say, ‘Don’t do TV, it will hurt your film career,’” he recalls. “Now it’s the other way around.”

Read more in the Financial Times.

Image courtesy of the Financial Times.