In 2008, I was retained to develop programming strategy for HITN-TV, a Spanish-language public television network located in Brooklyn’s historic Navy Yard. The recommendation: Create low-cost, primetime series that respond to the urgent information needs of around 50 million U.S. Latinos. Immigration was the no-brainer as topic #1. With super-scarce resources, we went on to …
Virtual Reality is suffering in the ‘trough of disillusionment.’ That’s the verdict on VR from the CES Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to Nick Winfield and The New York Times (January 9, 2017). The VR negatives keep piling up: Headsets come with sick bags. Price points induce sticker shock. Sales are slack. Headset …
What’s The Buzz? LIVE! The famous session that covers the year’s editorial trends led off with safariLIVE, the Nat Geo Wild daily feed from Kruger National Park. We covered safariLIVE in a panel at Wildscreen in October. It’s a groundbreaking brand-builder for Nat Geo Wild that also attracts new viewers on Facebook. The immiediacy and authenticity …
My valued colleague Dr. John Morse attended the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) symposium on the Election and Polling Research. The panel shed light on how Hillary Clinton convincingly carried the popular vote, but was narrowly defeated in enough states to lose the archaic electoral college. Here are John’s recap and key insights: The difference between what people …
Our son James Hamilton teaches and practices architecture in beautiful Stockholm. It’s become my #3 home town after Melbourne and New York, with countless lovely city landscapes, and of course great food… For visiting guests at their wedding last summer, Malin Heyman and James prepared this list of Stockholm highlights, and I’m sharing it here …
(Originally published, September 21, 2014). The PBS/NGCI documentary The Fidel Castro Tapes caught our attention with its compelling and unseen footage of the Cuban revolution and the Cold War drama that followed. We wondered about the challenges of creating an archive-based film about an 88-year old Spanish-speaking personality who can be dangerously controversial, and who …
How can a producer best establish a winning relationship with a distributor? Creative Europe Media sponsored a workshop on distribution at mipcom that was moderated by Jone Aldave and featured Windrose’s Pauline Mazenod. The workshop complements our unique post on how a documentary distributor like Windrose manages its workflow at a major industry events like mipcom. …
WildLIVE! Understanding the Trend towards Real Time Wildlife Programming. Wildscreen, Bristol UK, October 12. LIVE is as hot as chili peppers. LIVE is popping up across territories, genres and formats. For example, just this week, A&E announced a live COPS documentary mini-series located in Dallas TX. At Wildscreen in Bristol, the BBC’s James Honeyborne will …